Hurricane Sandy / Frankenstorm Hype

As Sandy continues her track north along the Eastern seaboard, turning and twisting, playing with the minds of meteorologists and reeking havoc with the models trying to calculate what she is going to do next, there are many that are already seem pessimistic about the situation. As seems to be the case with some the last few years many call out “over hyped” mostly speaking of the media, but not exclusively. This criticism almost exclusively comes from Twitter, Facebook, etc. users that are not directly affected by the situation. Social media is a stream of current information, with millions of people commenting on various aspects of the world. Usually it is more random, localize information, both news media wise, but personally too. What this criticism likely comes from is a failure to full grasp the nature of what social media is, and how even as wonderful it is, it is far from perfect. Those diverse and ecletic voices sharing different things are now experiencing much of the same thing therefore a person’s social media feed is overwhelmed with that singular shared experience. I admit, it is a little annoying and monotomous to read the same or similar messages over and over again. But there ways and means to control that. That is why I generally don’t say that Sandy or many other similar situations (not just hurricanes) are over hyped, it is more just the fact of social media and the shared human experience.

HOWEVER….

There is one area that I do see as annoying and does qualify as “over hyped”. This criticism does rightfully belong to those that use too many colorful adjectives, are fishing for self recognition, saturate their output onto the social networks, etc. You know the ones:

Hey @johndoemediaperson Look at this image I just posted: pic.abc.123

This storm is totally freaking awesome, and I just saw a zillion WEDGE tornadoes

and it was a rainshaft or weak dust devil.

Now, I haven’t been perfect either. I am not trying to say I am holier-than-thou, but with some it is a chronic disease on their social networking. The shame of it is, it is media pros, experienced chasers, and other folks that in everyday life are calm and collected people. They certainly over dramatise the situation to the point it becomes less interesting and shows a poor ability to quantify the level of risk, danger, fun, importance, etc. When everything is EXTREME, nothing is extreme.

Sandy is a good storm with lots of high level risks and the media has a job to do, to get the information and warnings out to those that need it. Yes, there will be spillage of information in your feed that you don’t need or seems over kill, but it isn’t always about you! Keep things in perspective and most likely tou’ll enjoy the event a lot more.