Yesterday news hit the web of the death of Jackass star Ryan Dunn in a car crash in Pennsylvania. Ryan Dunn and the hashtag #ripryandunn immediately began trending online.
While early reports suggest that speed may have been a factor in the crash a more sinister suggestion is circulating the web.
Earlier in the evening Ryan Dunn tweeted a picture of himself drinking with friends, leading to speculation as to whether the star was over the limit when the crash occurred.
Online news goes in to overdrive
With all the Hollywood gossip sites immediately covering the story and writing up tribute posts, speculation over details of the death was also fuelled by the West Goshen Township Police Department issuing a press release which was promptly uploaded by the Hollywood Reporter (is this standard practice for high profile incidents?)
Observers debated the detail that “DUI” was not checked on the initial report. Creepy.
Does the Twitter picture really matter?
Personally I find it all a little disturbing. For friends and family recovering from news of the crash, which by all accounts sounds horrific, they now have to face ongoing and public speculation that the star was responsible for his death and that of the other passenger.
No matter what your views are on celebrities and the right to privacy Dunn is no longer able to defend his reputation and, after all, the drink could’ve been non-alcoholic. Seeing official details of the death circulate so quickly also seems a strange and new reality we face in the online world.
As a disinterested party I’d wonder how much weight the police will give to this as potential evidence. Does the Twitter photo hold the key to the crash? Or is it just one of the final records of a life lived in the public eye?
Are we even entitled to take an image like this (which is in the public domain) and talk about it without crossing some murky line?
Tempero on Google+
The other thing about the picture being so widely circulated is that the with every story that showed the picture, it also stated the the passenger who died hadn’t been named/identified. If I were a friend or relative of the other two guys in this picture, I’d find that quite worrying!
I know, I was thinking about that too. I really do just feel sad for friends and family around stuff like this :-(