{"id":276,"date":"2010-05-02T00:47:30","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T00:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/05\/times-square-tennessee-flooding-and-oil-spills-how-do-you-respond-to-bad-news.html"},"modified":"2010-05-02T00:47:30","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T00:47:30","slug":"times-square-tennessee-flooding-and-oil-spills-how-do-you-respond-to-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/05\/times-square-tennessee-flooding-and-oil-spills-how-do-you-respond-to-bad-news.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s With Our Online Response to the Times Square Bomb Scare, Tennessee Flooding, Louisiana Oil Spill and other Bad News?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter is pretty grim tonight. Breaking news about the evacuation of Times Square<\/a> due to what appears to be a car bomb, floods in Tennessee<\/a> with the potential for more inclement weather and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico<\/a> with potential to be the worst environmental disaster in US history. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
As I watched these events unfold through breaking news stories and updates from friends and strangers (some who were in harms way and others tracking news feeds) I wondered about our response to such things. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As cyber-friends Tweeted about water approaching their homes in Tennessee, for instance, I contemplated words of encouragement but somehow felt that the gesture bordered on the voyeuristic. I thought of folks on the Gulf Coast that I met at a conference a year ago and catch up with from time to time on Facebook and felt the same way. Then I checked the #TimesSquare hashtag with tweet after retweet of breaking news stories (mine included) and thought. “what is really happening here?” <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I wondered…<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

What was the appropriate response to the fear, suffering or loss of “friends” I have only met online? <\/p>\n

What about strangers? <\/p>\n

Is tweeting and retweeting these stories helpful to anyone, or is is just something we do to commiserate in the face of fear and sadness? <\/p>\n

Is watching videos of swelled rivers and evacuated cities becoming part of our coping mechanism?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n
Would love to hear your thoughts…<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twitter is pretty grim tonight. Breaking news about the evacuation of Times Square due to what appears to be a car bomb, floods in Tennessee with the potential for more inclement weather and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with potential to be the worst environmental disaster in US history.  As I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's With Our Online Response to the Times Square Bomb Scare, Tennessee Flooding, Louisiana Oil Spill and other Bad News? - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/05\/times-square-tennessee-flooding-and-oil-spills-how-do-you-respond-to-bad-news.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What's With Our Online Response to the Times Square Bomb Scare, Tennessee Flooding, Louisiana Oil Spill and other Bad News? - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Twitter is pretty grim tonight. 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