Ten days before her death, Hayley changed her Facebook profile status from “in a relationship” to “single.”
Is it time for the Facebook rage defense? Social networking made me do it, is apparently the courtroom argument in a Welsh homicide case. "The Facebook 'murder'", says Sky. The charge is that one spouse stabbed and/or strangled the other over the victim's time spent on her Facebook account.
Lewis claimed in a police interview he had accepted the split - and the only "tension" was about the time she spent on the web.
Mr Evans said drinkers at the Phillipstown social club claimed the defendant said: "If I can't have her, then no f***** else will because I will kill her first"...
On one level, this is classic internet fear, focused on uncontrolled or inappropriate sexuality. On another, this feels like a more recent fear, that of internet addiction.
Note the continued class status of Facebook in this case. The site isn't sleazy, but formal; not a grotesque yet exciting sexual thrill, but a relationship component.
We can wonder what the inevitable American version of this will be.
(thanks to the uncanny gaze of Todd Bryant)
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