Hopefully, most of us have learned that in order to keep your online life from damaging parts of your offline life, a little discretion is key. Those that get this choose to filter what they put up on Facebook and Twitter for all the world to see. Skipping work to spend a day at the races? Leave that drunk photo of you and your friends at the track on your iPhone.
But even if most people have learned to be careful about their own online reputation, there’s always one thing that’s completely out of their control – other people, of course.
And particularly jilted ex-lovers.
Your Facebook idiot of the week is comes from all the way down under, as an Australian man is looking at jail time for posting some nudie pics of his ex-girlfriend on the site. The Sydney Morning Herald calls it the “first social-networking-related conviction in Australian history and one of just a handful in the world.”
According to reports, Ronnie Usmanov didn’t waste much time lashing out at his ex-girlfriend. Only three months after the unidentified women left him, he threw the sexy pics on Facebook. The images were of the nude variety and clearly showed her breasts and genitals. Apparently, he then emailed her to tell her that”some of [her] photos are now on Facebook.”
When asked why he did it, Usmanov told the police:
‘I put the photos up because she hurt me and it was the only thing [I had] to hurt her.”
Simple, sad, unsurprising. It’s just the way it is – every little secret that anyone has is potential ammunition these days. Not that people didn’t use things against people for revenge purposes before social networking, but back in the day, the airing of grievances wasn’t as much of a public broadcast.
Usmanov was apologetic, and said that that it was a irrational decision made on the spur-of-the-moment. All of this might be true, but that’s just the point. We’re dealing with Facebook here – before you cool down and realize what you’ve done, hundreds of people have already seen your mistake. It’s immediate, and simply doesn’t favor those with a hair trigger.
For his “spur-of-the-moment” move, Usmanov was sentenced to six months in jail.