Editorial: Social media is the new gatecrasher

Napier's Friday night fever is the talk of the town.

It began when youths descended en masse on a private Hornsey Rd home and partied a little too hard.

About 500 of them.

No one's that popular.

That's the size of a secondary school.

Unless we're dealing with the most favoured kid in the region, that number can only have been spawned by proxy invites. That is, in this case, Facebook. In party terms, social media is the new gatecrasher.

Police arrested 10, called in hefty reinforcements, threw handcuffs on fighting teens and dispersed hundreds of over-fuelled youngsters.

I'm betting most of them were nice kids. Kids who grew an inch with each swig of RTD.

Kids prone to succumb to pack mentality when the ethanol mixes with hormones.

Social media is a staple of modern living. In this case it wasn't particularly social.

Mass invites via Facebook turned an otherwise harmless party into a lawless Mardi Gras.

With this comes a high probability of fights, mass intoxication and bravado towards strangers.

I guess that's part of the draw for this age group. But I'm also guessing the added attractions weren't on the invite.

Many adolescent invincible keyboard warriors no doubt discovered on Friday the digital realm of social media doesn't always interface nicely with the real world. Facebook is, of course, a misnomer.

There's nothing face-to-face about this popular platform.

Users know full well you can't be friends with everyone.

For a take-home message try this: If it was too easy to get invited, you shouldn't be there.