How tweets may bring an end to hip-hop's Game
OPINION - For The Game especially, the allegations seem to fit in line with his disillusionment with police after several, public run-ins all over the country...
For celebs facing Twitter fire, few things save face after a stream of offbeat and incendiary tweets like saying your account has been hacked. By this point, the gesture is a subtle admission of guilt but still enough of an excuse to have critics back off without having to actually admit any wrongdoing.
It’s a must-have in the social media arsenal but when it comes to law enforcement, innocence will take a little more convincing. Especially for rapper The Game, who allegedly upped the ante on his classically West Coast crusade against all things police related after a tweet from his account listed the number to a Compton sheriff’s station as an internship opportunity. Needless to say, calls from a few hundred of his more than 500,000 followers incited a telephone flash mob that tangled and overwhelmed the emergency phone system last Friday.
Los Angeles County prosecutors allege the tweet from his account was in fact from the rapper and will turnover evidence of the criminal investigation to the district attorney’s office before deciding whether to move forward with charges against the rapper in the future.
For both sides the stunt was a testament to the power of social media.
For law enforcement, it forces them to re-evaluate and possibly prepare for future incidents like this. What if it had been a bigger celebrity than The Game directing more than a million followers to do one thing? We’ve seen how social media in Egypt and most recently, London, helped spawn, cultivate and ultimately launch uprisings. What would stop someone from shutting down emergency communication other than the hope that they were moral enough to not stand in the way of authorities ability to help those genuinely in need?
Outside of directing celebrities to either man up to their actions change their password from something as simple as ‘1-2-3-4,’ without a example of them flexing some legal might, what power do they have to stop it?
For The Game especially, the allegations seem to fit in line with his disillusionment with police after several, public run-ins all over the country.
The most notable for me was the YouTube video of the artist handcuffed and sitting on the mall floor in Greensboro, N.C. years ago. Urging his cameraman to continue filming after the artist, at the height of his fame then, walked through the mall and caused a stir that eventually ended in the incident escalating and him being led out of the only mall in the city in handcuffs.His staunchly anti-law enforcement angle is rooted in way more than a persona, or a childhood influenced by gangster rap and the L.A. riots, for him its much more personal. But for his music, what the stunt actually adds to the lore of The Game is negligible.
Like most of the buzz surrounding him in recent years, it has nothing to do with a hit record. It’s amazing his talking points are still allowed to be where he stacks up in the pantheon of rappers considering his catalog does little to even warrant the argument but for social media sake, his most recent harassment was one of the most relevant moves he could make. And it’s safe to say as long as celebs can depend on the flimsiest, 21st century equivalent of ‘wasn’t me,’ don’t be surprised to see the move happen more and more often.
We’ve seen artists take control or tear down the social media walls themselves before. Some will remember rapper Maino addressing an ‘internet thug’ in person and broadcasting the face-to-face altercation for all to see he wasn’t to messed with. 50 Cent took the hijinks up a notch but hacking one of his favorite targets, Rick Ross, account and interacting with fans who believed it to be the actual artist.
There’s still varying opinions as to the reality of our social media lives. What many take as just entertainment can have very real consequences. People take the wall created by a computer or mobile device as an opportunity to be as disparaging and insulting as possible because there’s no real threat to have to say those same things in the presence of a star and amongst millions of tweets, those negative ones will disappear into the ether after a string of retweets and a couple hours.
Few ever consider their attempts at humor ever reaching the eyes of their target and when they do even fewer are prepared for what could happen. Some recognize how instigating anything with a celebrity and especially getting a digital rise out them can be self-aggrandizing and propel them to a certain level of short-lived internet stardom and when artists decide to lash out, unlike a hacker, there’s no incentive to owning up to published streams of consciousness for accused celebs who can’t figure a better way out of hot water in short time.
For gossip blogs and entertainment reporters, romps like The Game’s keep things fresh but for the celebrities involved, attempting to up the digital ante can have potentially disastrous outcomes including real life charges when they’re only excuse is ‘it was only Twitter.’
