Millions of people helped New Zealand mass murderer go viral

A common refrain after the horrible mass murder of 50 Muslims in New Zealand was to criticize Facebook and YouTube for failing to block the killer’s video from spreading online. While that’s a valid point, I have a bigger question. Why did millions of people repost this bloody video?
According to CBS, Facebook said it deleted 1.5 million videos of the shooting in the first 24 hours after the attack, which was posted in real time on Facebook Live by the killer. It prevented 1.2 million videos from being uploaded.
YouTube hasn’t said how many times the New Zealand massacre video was posted there, but it’s been struggling to remove the video as fast as people are reposting it.
Both Facebook and YouTube removed user comments in support of the murders, as sick as that sounds.
That’s the bigger issue here. Millions of people want to see a white nationalist slaughter innocent people. Is it morbid curiosity? A desire to share breaking news? Maybe for some people, but I fear it’s worse than that. 

Social media has become a potent platform for spreading hate and violence. The difficulty that some of the world’s biggest and most advanced companies have in pulling these videos demonstrates how determined the supporters of hate are to voice their message.
The killer made this video to immortalize his deeds and find meaning in his trivial life by going viral - similar to the fictional characters in my novel “Famous After Death.”
Sharing the video is exactly what the killer wanted. Don’t give him that pleasure. Don’t say his name.
Don’t let him have the fame he seeks.

Eight ways the iPhone has changed society in 10 years

On June 29, 2007, the day the iPhone first went on sale, it would have been hard for anyone to imagine the monumental impact the device has had on society, even now-late Apple CEO Steven Jobs.

Ushering in the smart phone era has changed the way people interact, and perhaps even re-wired the brain. It has played a part in everything from love to war to politics to crime.

This won’t be the only blog today list on the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone, so I’ll keep with the theme of my latest novel and focus on the way these pocket-sized computers have transformed social interaction. Why am I listing eight ways instead of 10? Because in the age of mobile news, who has the patience to scroll down a 10-point list?

No more privacy in public

I hear a lot of prior generation athletes talk about the wild times they had on the road, partying and drinking and saying outrageous things in bars. Rarely did any of the details come to light, and when they did, it was based on memories, not proof.

Now, anytime something remotely controversial happens, it’s often captured on a camera phone. If there’s a pro athlete or celebrity involved, that’s almost a certainty. So people can’t simply mouth off without consequences.

The language of emojis

The emoji was created in 1998, but it didn’t take off as an common part of language until the smart phone. Text messaging, Facebook and Twitter are arts of the written word. Emojis says things that words can’t quite say, or they emphasize the meaning of sentences.

Unlike words, emojis can’t be translated into vocal language. There’s also unregulated and unlimited. No 26 characters here.

I’m still waiting for the first all emoji novel.

Constantly plugged in

People used to access the internet mostly at home or in the workplace on a desktop computer, or on a bulky laptop at a rare WiFi hot spot. Now the vast majority of the country has wireless internet access through a cellular network, and websites have been configured for mobile views, which is the fastest growing segment of traffic.

The good news is people can work and stay plugged into information remotely. No more sneaking out of the wedding to check the score on the TV at the bar. There’s no reason to drive around looking for a restaurant or a gas station.

The bad news is work has become inescapable. No matter where you go, people can email you and text you. People with important responsibilities are expected to respond no matter what. So it’s harder to truly unplug.

Instant information

I started journalism in college, writing for the Miami Hurricane student newspaper and then as an intern at the St. Augustine Record in 1999. There’s been a huge change in the expectations for news delivery over the years, especially since the smart phone era began.

People used to receive a brief overview of the day’s news during the evening telecast, and then a more detailed analysis in the next morning’s paper. Now, not only is the morning paper full of old news, so is the evening telecast. First people expected websites with stories updated regularly, hopefully within an hour of breaking news. That’s no longer good enough. With mobile phones in hand, people scroll Twitter and Facebook for instance news - reports within seconds of events, or even live streaming video.

Social media works so fast that some traditional news sites simply embed a social media feed about an event instead of writing a story (which I find highly annoying).

The drawback here is accuracy. The faster a reporter works, the easier it is to make mistakes. It can take time to verify information, but the pressure of instant news doesn’t allow for any delays.

Forever documenting the moment

Having a camera phone at all times allows people to capture every moment of their lives, but is capturing the moment the same as living in the moment?

At concerts and sporting events, especially in Miami, a huge amount of people are on their phones. Are they truly engaged in the action? Or are they trying to create a video to shows off to their jealous friends? A football games, some people are so distracted by their fantasy football league that they aren’t into the game in front of them.

Entertainment is personal

A decade ago, most home entertainment was spent in front of the TV screen or video game console. A family might be watching the same show on one set so they could share their experiences, or some family members might segment into different rooms to view their favorite programs.

Now, the TV is no longer king. Nielsen says that TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds has declined 39 percent since 2011. It also fell sharply in the 25-34 age group. That’s because millennials are spending more times on smartphones than watching TV.

So now family members can sit in the same room, and all be occupied by their individual devices - watching shows, playing games, surfing the web. They are together physically, not socially.

Shopping assistant

The smart phone has made it easier than ever to buy things no matter where you are. That’s great for the sake of convenience, no more trips to the store for one thing - as long as you can wait a day or two.

For compulsive shoppers, that means there’s no escape.

Redefining intelligence

In my high school and college years, certain classes focused on memorization. If you could memorize historical or scientific facts, etc, then you were smart. Even today, many game shows center around memorizing and repeating facts.

Under that definition of intelligence, anyone with a working smart phone is a genius. They can pull up any historical information, scientific fact, pop culture reference, spell perfectly, master geography, and solve the most common math problems. What’s the point of memorizing all of that when the information is one second away in a pocket-sized device? And why are many classes still structured as if smart phones were never invented?

So what’s it mean now to be smart. Perhaps the new intelligence means the ability to separate real information from fake news.

How many people need to die on Facebook Live until tech giant pulls the plug?

Sadly, people are murdered and committee suicide every day. Few of these incidents attract the global spotlight. That’s where Facebook Live and other instantaneous social media platforms come in.

Steve Stephens gained his 15 minutes of fame by fatally shooting complete stranger Robert Godwin, 74, in Cleveland live on Facebook. In Thailand, Wuttisan Wongtalay hung his 11-month-old daughter on Facebook Live before killing himself on the same platform.

Would these crimes, and many before them, have occurred without a global platform to broadcast these murders? These videos were viewed hundreds of thousands of times before Facebook pulled them. It appears that Stephens wanted to draw attention to himself as he dealt with personal problems. Shooting someone in anonymity would be another murder among hundreds every day. But a murder on Facebook Live, that put Stephens’ face all over the world.

That’s why live social media has become more frequently used by young people to broadcast suicide. Drawing more attention to their deaths has a greater impact on the people they blame for their suffering.

I anticipated this trend in my novel Famous After Death, where Miami teenagers commit murders in creative ways and post them online. In my story, most of these murders were recorded and posted soon after without the teens identifying themselves, but several of the crimes occur online in real time - similar to Facebook Live.

The question for Facebook, one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world, is what it’s prepared to do about it. After Godwin was murdered, CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to improve the monitoring of videos on Facebook Live. Right now the company depends on users reporting questionable content. It’s working on artificial intelligence, but that could be years away.

Until a better system is in place and Facebook Live can’t be effectively policed, Zuckerberg should consider taking it down. The world will survive without Facebook Live, and so will the company. It’s a nice feature, but it’s not a crucial part of the website.

What can’t be replaced is the lives of people like Godwin.

Of course, Facebook makes plenty of money off these videos. There are more than 8 billion daily views of Facebook videos. Mobile video advertising is a multi-billion dollar market. So there are financial incentives for Facebook not to back down.

This isn’t only a Facebook problem. Platforms like YouTube, Periscope and Snapchat have been used to promote violence. In some cases, terrorist groups have posted propaganda videos on social media that went unchecked for months. This issue has caused YouTube to pull paid advertising from certain categories of videos, since advertisers didn’t want to run the risk that their ads would run alongside offensive videos.

Facebook Live has the potential to be a great platform. I wish politicians would broadcast all their meetings live on social media instead of striking backroom deals.

But until Zuckerberg and Co. can police it, one murder is too many.

A new wave of viral violence begins with brutality on live stream

As social media evolves to become more instantaneous than ever, viral violence has once again hijacked the ride.

Why wait five seconds to post a video of your life? Services like Facebook Live and Periscope provide a real-time look at what’s in front of your face. With instant audience metrics and feedback, they make life like a mini TV station. What more can the host do in that moment to grow an audience and go viral?

Four teenagers in Chicago found a way to juice their Facebook Live viewership past 15,000. They kidnapped a mental disabled teenager they went to high school with, tied him up, mercilessly beat him, cut his scalp with a knife, and taunted him with racial insults. The victim was white and the attackers were black, so this might be classified as a hate crime.

The video went on for 30 minutes on one of the suspect’s Facebook Live page, with viewership building as the seconds tick by. Facebook removed the video after the four suspects were arrested.

This story has some strange parallels to my novel Famous After Death. In my story, the teenagers are also abusing victims for the gratification of an online audience. However, they mostly posted the videos after the fact, using public wifi and a device that couldn’t be traced directly to them, and they didn’t put their faces in the video. When there is an attack in my book that is filmed live on the internet, it’s the victim’s camera phone being used for the live broadcast, not the attacker’s phone. They don’t want to be caught!


With these suspects in Chicago, they acted with zero regard for evading capture. Not only did one suspect post this on a Facebook profile using a personal device, they all appeared in the video. You know, just to make sure there’s no doubt. Yet, like the characters in my novel, there was a pack mentality. Get a bunch of people together with bad intentions and a camera, and the watch their aggression multiply.

Were these teenagers so proud that they could beat the poor guy that they wanted to show the world?

Here’s the other thing that gets me. Did any one of the Facebook Live viewers bother calling the police?

Violence can’t go viral unless an audience supports it.

Posting assault on victim's Facebook page backfires for these two

Most Facebook users have probably had the experience of a person something on their page they'd rather not share with the world - a drinking face, bad hair day, the ex you were supposed to be done with. Delete! A video of you curled up in the fetal position getting beaten would be a most unwelcome addition to your Facebook page.

That's exactly what two (alleged) assailants did to Frankie Santana, a Detroit resident with cerebral palsy, which restricts his movements. The two 20-year-olds stole his phone, recorded his beating on it and then posted it all over Facebook, including on the victim's page.

See a snippet of what they did from this report via Fox 2 in Detroit.

 It certainly wasn't hard to catch them and prosecutors should have no problem finding enough evidence.

As I've highlighted in my novel Famous After Death, it's not enough for bullies and killers to hurt their victims physically, they want to shame them emotionally. Social media has become their weapon of choice.


Hopefully next time someone tags Mr. Santana on Facebook, the message will be more uplifting.

My radio interview: What drives teenagers to murder?

Cyrus Webb interviewed me for his ConversationsLIVE show on Blog Talk Radio this week. After reading my novel Famous After Death and writing a glowing review of the book, he asked me in-depth questions where the story came from.

Here’s a sample of what went down on the air:

When did you first have the seed planted that this was a book that you wanted to write?

I started working on it in 2010. I had the initial idea that I wanted to write about teenagers who were putting their crimes on the internet to get attention for it. I knew this was beginning to happen and I wanted to understand. These were teenagers who were smart enough to do it anonymously. And real life sort of beat be to the punch. You had a freshman at Rutgers jump to his death after his roommate filmed him making out with another man and his roommate put it on his Facebook page to bully him. There was a column by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald who wrote about how people are using the internet to bully people and to trash them here and the internet can bring out the ugliness with us. And that stuck with me. That was the point of my novel to show how people are using social media in the wrong way.

There was something that I was not expecting that came up in this book and that was the family element. Did you know going in that you wanted to make these young people more than just savage, that you wanted to show us the human side of them by letting us see their family?

I felt it was important to understand all of them got into a situation where they were juvenile delinquents, where they wanted to play pranks on people online, not really caring if the people got hurt. This doesn’t happen randomly. There’s a reason. The lead character Jorge, he’s very much a loner. He’s trying to make friends. He wears big black trench coats in Miami and doesn’t fit in. His mother is sort of OCD and so he is trying to get attention from the other boys. He wants to use his intelligence only to act like he’s cool and fit in.

Kelso is from a wealthy family where his dad is a motocross star and his younger brother is really the big guy in the family because he’s a great skater. He’s a better skater than Kelso. His brother always finishes first and Kelso is finishes distance. So he’s trying to show that he’s the man, that he can get a lot of hits from his videos. He feels like he’s passed over for his brother.

And Chris, who acts in a mean way toward everybody, he’s from a broken home where his father left his mother and started a modeling agency, and he’s with all the models. So he’s feels that angry inside that his family was broken and he’s angry at both parents and wants to take it out on everyone else.

Go here to listen to the full interview with Cyrus Webb.

What could inspire me to write something so outrageous?

Now that “Famous After Death” is finally out and people can actually read it (without hacking into my computer) I’m sure people who know me and race through the first chapter will wonder what inspired me to write this.

The thriller starts with three Miami teenagers dangling a blowup doll over a highway overpass at night and waiting to see what happens when a car smashes it. WTF are they thinking? It’s an adrenalin burst amid their mundane lives and a way to seek glory on social media. See, the camera is out.

They’re sitting on the edge, bubbling with laughter but deep down terrified at what could happen. It’s a rush, until the police car rolls under the street light.

Read what happens in “Famous After Death” Chapter 1 for free here.

You might think I couldn’t be more different from those teenage delinquents. Truth is, I know what they were feeling. I took part in some “pranks” as a teenager that could have ended badly but didn’t.

One time I hid behind a fence and threw apples at cars driving by. Did I consider what could happen if the flying fruit distracted the driver and led to an accident? No. I wanted to see something go splat. I nailed a convertible good. Then it stopped and the driver got out. It was a huge guy, with arms as wide as my head.

At 14, I was just as short as I am today. My friend ran but I stood there paralyzed as the hulking guy scaled the fence and stormed towards me. He hoisted me over his head with his arms fully extended. This is it, I thought, he’s going to power bomb me on the pavement Undertaker style.

The man set me down and walked away, his point proven. One would think I’d have learned my lesson. Not even close. I wanted to top it.

What can I say? I was an asshole. Ok, I’m still an asshole, but at least I’m not a stupid asshole.

The fortunate thing for me is there weren’t cell phone cameras and social media sites when I was a teen in the ‘90s. By the time those came about, I came to the revelation that destroying stuff for no reason wasn’t so funny…unless it has a New York Jets logo on it.

Teenage delinquents today don’t have it so easy. Everything in their lives is chronicled on social media, so why not their pranks? It’s not hard to find clips of teens lighting things on fire, fighting, and humiliating people. Most of these jerks haven’t figured out that immortalizing their faces online will make them unemployable, unless they want a part in the next Jackass movie. 

What if they were smarter than that? What if one of the teenage delinquents was computer savvy and posted the videos anonymously? That’s what happens in “Famous After Death” and praise from the sadistic fringe online inspires them to go bold for their next deadly pranks.

There’s this stage some teenagers have where they feel invincible yet they can’t comprehend the damage they can cause. Looking back, I’m relieved that no one got hurt because of me.

If I was a teenager today, I’m afraid how it would go. I might become famous for the wrong reason.

“Famous After Death” is available now on Amazon and Kindle.

My 2014 plans: Book signing, new novel release, big sequel brewing

After reaching so many milestones last year both professionally and personally, I have more groundbreaking writing planned for 2014.

First up, I’m doing a book signing at the renowned Books & Books in Coral Gables on Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. I’ll read a chapter from Mute – I have one in mind but I’m open to suggestions – and then talk about how the story of my novel is a metaphor for my life. The discussion really moved the people who heard it at the Miami Book Fair so I suggest you hear it live.

If you can’t be there in person, Books & Books will stream it online. Go here for more information about the free event.

This fall Silver Leaf Books will release my second novel, Famous After Death, in print and e-book. My publisher already posted a landing page for my novel. How do you like the cover photo? It’s by the same photographer from Mute, El Cesana in Australia. The font for the title will probably change, but I feel the photo captures the shocking nature of the story.

I’m glad there weren't camera phones and YouTube when I was a teenager because a lot of the stupid things I did probably would have been shared, to maximum embarrassment. I’m lucky some of those stunts didn’t go so bad that people got hurt. But what if…

In Famous After Death, three Miami teenagers figure: Everything else has gone viral so why not murder?

This is fast-paced thriller set in South Florida (mostly Miami). The teenagers do terrible things for attention as the trials of their childhoods drove them to dehumanize their victims, and make them famous by posting their deaths online.

Most teenagers who glamorize their violence online are too stupid to hide their identities, but this trio is clever, and they have help from a mysterious hacker with an ax to grind against the police officer tracking them down.

Besides all this, what else could I possibly have cooking? Well, another novel of course. Mute is just itching for a sequel and I’m hard at work on the first draft. I can’t say how long it will take to finish and, especially, to edit. That’s the hard part.

I’ll say this, though. It’ll have more science fiction than the first novel, and more romance. Yet, other parts are pure horror. 

I call it…

Silenced