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Woman murdered “after changing her Facebook status from ‘Married’ to ‘Single’”
That little ‘Relationship Status’ entry on your Facebook profile can be a powerful thing.
People probably pay more attention to relationship status changes in their news feed than anything else on the site. It can be a fun bit of gossip seeing someone change how they define their relationship. Those changes can lead to trouble though, as this story illustrates.
Cardiff Crown Court in Wales is currently hearing the case of Brian Lewis, 31, who is accused of killing partner Hayley, 26, a heavy Facebook user. Although not married, the couple’s Facebook relationship status was ‘Married’.
Mark Evans, prosecuting, told the court… ”Hayley started to expand her social life and was spending a lot of time on internet sites, in particular Facebook.
“She was quite secretive about this, preventing Lewis from using the site and turning the computer off. It is quite clear this rankled with him.
“On 2 March, she changed her Facebook relationship status from married to single and she made it clear their relationship was over.”
The court heard that fraught with worry over this, Mr Lewis stabbed Hayley while she slept before fleeing the scene. The trial continues. It’s an extreme case, but one that shows just how much of an effect online social networking has had on society in a short space of time.
On an interesting side note, Facebook recently removed the ability to search users by relationship status, making Facebook-based dating more difficult.
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Unbelievable…..that’s all I can say.
Wow, that’s scary. They should have talked more and presumed less. I personally know exactly what this is like, although nobody died in my case.
I can say, however, that it is not the technology at fault. There had to be a crack in the relationship to begin with, and the use of Facebook just happened to magnify that gap.
Guns dont kill people – Facebook does. I mean, Facebook doesn’t kill people, guys do – when they go off the deepend because they can’t communicate with their partner!!
lolloolol
So, there IS something to be gleaned here. (I’m happily married, so TG I am not in that hellscape commonly known as The Dating Scene.)
Relationships begin and end. Some people hold out hope that the relationship will ‘rekindle’ after it has ‘ended’ for one of the participants. Some hope it is not quite ‘over’.
The ability to “END!” the relationship using an artificial construction has seldom been available until now (with the exception of the secondhand notice) – and now FB (and other such relationship software) allows this very thing.
So now I guess we’re all gonna have to get a little thicker in the skin when it comes to these things. I remember the first time I was dumped. Ouch. For me, it was sudden, unexpected, and after a very short relationship.
I can only imagine popping your Significant Other’s FB up and seeing “single” out of the blue (not that this guy should have been surprised, apparently) would be quite wrenching.
So apparently, we’re all gonna hafta grow up a wee bit faster.