There’s a certain level of danger in mentioning anything on the Internet. One link falls into the hands of the wrong person and before you know it, innocent pictures or comments get turned into giant jokes.
This time the giant jokes spawned their own problems.
Last week, Brian Presley, an actor, took a red-eye flight straight to Embarrassment City. According to a series of tweets from model Melissa Stetten, Presley drunkenly hit on her a few times during the flight.
Presley is married, has a 5-year-old son and is so devoutly Christian he even tweets the praises of Joel Osteen. He battled an addiction problem many years ago and is now completely sober.
Obviously, you can spot the differences between these two stories. Stetten live-tweeted the entire exchange, which included discovering that he was actually married — although she claimed Presley said he was “engaged to another actress, but it didn’t work out because they didn’t ‘mesh well’ together.”
She also said he consumed “three Heinekens and is wasted” in response to one of her Twitter followers pointing out the fact that he’s been in recovery for alcoholism for about a year and a half.
Was Presley just a scumbag who didn’t get away with adultery, or was he wrongly accused?
Once this story broke, Presley fired back in a post on his Facebook page:
“Sobriety, God, & My Family are the most important things in my life! My Wife Rocks, My Kids Rock, and Sobriety Rocks!!!”
I hate when arguments descend into “he said, she said” debates. Especially when they’re between celebrities. And it’s also especially bad when they’re solely online.
There’s no way to tell who is telling the truth unless other witnesses chime in — and even then, no one knows if they’re just jumping on the bandwagon.
At the same time, do you remember all of those college sports scandals that claimed the young females involved in the claims were lying about being raped? Yeah. Not a bright time in our criminal justice system.
Caiden Cowger is a 14-year-old with a radio-style YouTube show. That’s pretty impressive, right? Downside is that it’s a conservative talk show broadcast from West Virginia.
He claims that becoming a homosexual is a conscious choice made by the individual. Cowger also berates the president for making kids gay and for encouraging that lifestyle by saying it’s OK.
Clearly Cowger must have some sort of understanding of the Internet if he can broadcast his own show to hundreds of fans. So he should have understood the ramifications of his slightly archaic words.
Shortly after that particular video was uploaded, Cowger’s YouTube account was hacked and closed. Cowger’s website gives a snippet of an email from whoever did the deed:
“Just to let you know, I ripped a bunch of your videos from Youtube before you threw a s**t fit and closed your account. I’m uploading them to my own personal webspace and will be tearing you apart in my article on (a website I do not want to give publicity to) and get paid for doing it and there’s f**k all you can do about it.”
This hacking is another instance of online vigilantes taking punishment into their own hands.
Should Stetten have put her phone away instead of potentially damaging a man’s career and personal life?
Should Cowger’s unfortunate point of view be allowed to continue instead of being temporarily removed from his channel?
Just be careful with what you put online. At this point, who knows where it’ll end up.
Sami Main is a journalism senior at UF. Her column appears on Tuesdays. You can contact her at opinions@alligator.org.
