Cermele: Brutal Shark Attack “Tweeted” in Real Time

Not too long ago, Mr. Merwin posted a blog about the boom in on-line social media, particularly the micro-blogging site Twitter, and how it relates to anglers. John is not a “tweeter,” and (at the moment) neither am I, though I have been sucked into the black hole that is Facebook. Twitter basically allows you to track what your friends are doing 24-7, and that can range from drinking a beer on the couch to watching a man get ripped apart by a great white.

Here’s a quote from the story on the Sky News website:

Gregg Coppen watched as Lloyd Skinner was savaged in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday (local time) tweeting: “Holy s**t. We just saw a gigantic shark eat what looked like a person in front of our house…”

He added: “That shark was huge. Like dinosaur huge.”

Mr. Coppen witnessed the attack from his home near Fish Hoek beach during the height of the country’s tourist season.

Now not for nothing, but tweeting as you watch this is kinda messed up in my opinion. But it does drive the point home that social media has infected us, and what could have taken a day to reach local newspapers was spread globally before whitey took his last bite.

Where I do see some merit with Twitter is following real-time fishing reports. Even reports posted on the Internet have a delay, but tweets from the beach or river can tell you how the salmon or stripers are running that instant. It’s not bad info to have if you want to, say, fake sick and sneak out of work early to hit the water – JC