Is Facebook Dangerous? French Politicians Meet Next Week To Debate The Issue
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They’re called “aperos geants” — huge, boozy street parties organized through Facebook. Sort of flash mob meets keg party.
There have been five of them so far this year, reports Liberation, the leftist Parisian daily, in the provincial, mid-sized cities of Nantes, Brest, Nimes, Rennes and Montpellier. They began November 10, 2009 in Nantes when 3,000 people gathered. Last Wednesday, a 21 year-old fell, drunk, off a bridge to his death, prompting a meeting of local, regional and federal officials to prevent the trend from spreading or causing any further deaths.
French politicians will meet next week, grappling with whether — or how — to ban such events; in Montpellier, 11,000 people filled the streets:
Plus tôt dans la matinée, Jean-Marc Ayrault, le maire PS de Nantes, avait demandé au ministère de l’Intérieur d’organiser «une concertation» pour «casser la spirale» de ces apéros géants.
«L’interdiction pure et simple? Ce n’est pas forcément la solution. Regardez, à Montpellier, le préfet a pris un arrêté d’interdiction et il y avait 11.000 personnes dans les rues», a jugé le chef de file des députés PS. Deux députés socialistes, Claude Bartolone et Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, ont estimé de leur côté qu’il ne fallait pas interdire les apéros géants mais les réguler.
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If they didn’t use facebook, they’d find another way. The old way was flyers posted all over the neighborhood. I remember that. Then there were ads in newspapers, posters in coffee shop windows, then emails, then text messages… all they’re doing is keeping up with the times. The technology isn’t the issue here.
I think flash mobs are kinda cool. I am not advocating drunken flash mobs, but seriously people can’t even make it to appointments or social events even when they have 3 weeks ( or more) notice.
I didn’t know f/b was doing this – I had only heard of it on twitter. I joined in on one in my town ( 2 hour notice) little over 100 people showed – so it was noted later – and we had a water balloon fight ( 30 minutes we were all in/out). The water balloons were in already placed there in buckets at the site, no one knew ahead of time they would be water balloons there. It was all about seeing how fast people could get together at any given time w/ virtually no advanced warning.
To get a huge group of people together like that in little time (3000 people in France?!), that smacks of awesome.
[...] are organized on Le Facebook! — and as they become more popular and well attended, of course someone had to go and die at one, and now it’s a big political issue over there. And disappointingly, local pols are spouting off about wanting to ban/sue/hold Facebook [...]