While the search was on to find Falcon Heene, a six year old boy who was believed to be carried away by a foil helium balloon, people turned to the realtime web to stay informed on his whereabouts and well-being. The child went missing from his Colorado home, leading authorities to think he had crawled into a homemade balloon basket before it was untethered, sending him thousands of feet in the air. However, when the balloon touched down over fifty miles away, there was no sign of the child. (Read more about the story here.)
While new updates and details were being released moment by moment, people took to their Twitter accounts to discuss the happenings. Within minutes of the story releasing today, #BalloonBoy became a trending topic, and in a ten minute span over 3,700 tweets with the hash-tag were featured. Some expressed genuine concern and sympathy, while others made light of the incredible yet tragic situation. Some one trying to make a quick buck even designed T-Shirts depicting a foil balloon with the words “Go Falcon, Go” on the front. Falcon Rick-Rolls were sent, Balloon-Boy Kanye memes were swapped, and even theories that this was a publicity stunt for the show “Wife Swap,” on which the boy’s family appeared, were whispered.
While it was an exceptionally unusual story, it was also one with a potentially tragic ending. Although it recently surfaced that in reality the boy never took the cross Colorado voyage, but instead was hiding in his attic, a more horrific ending was a legitimate possibility at the time. Were people being too insensitive during the ordeal, or is it the nature of the net to make light of bizarre tales, no matter what ending they may have?
(For the record, here at OneRiot we can say we are very relieved to hear that the boy is safe and sound, which is the only reason we felt it wasn’t inappropriate to post such a whimsy picture.)
This is the best article of all time. OF ALL TIME.
I knew this was a lie. They just wanted to get on TV once again. It was really easy to tell to you just needed to think. lol