Law & Order Technopanic Watch
Has Law & Order: SVU done an episode yet where someone is attacked by a stalker and the detectives can’t narrow down the suspect list because the victim has 600 twitter friends? I don’t have TV anymore, so I can’t keep up with Dick Wolf these days (alas!), but for some reason I was thinking on the walk into work this morning that we’re about due for that episode. I can totally picture Benson’s tough-love, kids-these-days concern as she questions the victim; Stabler’s requisite family-life scene where he comes home and sees his teenage daughter on the Internet and gets That Look on his face; and Munch’s quasi-libertarian quasi-conspiracy-theorist offhand commentary, something misplaced about Orwell and irony. It’d be a good episode.
[P.S. Oh no, did I just inadvertently write SVU fan fic there?]
Yes, they’ve done at least two. One where a 14 year old who isn’t allowed to use the internet at home meets a child predator online anyways, and runs away with him to Prague, forced to pose for child pornography. Then there was the one where the spoiled rich kid posted photos of all his sexual conquests on his MySpace page, one of whom ended up dead. Those are just the two I can think of off the top of my rerun-addled head. And yes, there is the requisite scene where Stabler comes home to find his daughter whining that she can’t access her homework on the computer.
Daughter: “When are you going to trust meeeee?”
Stabler: “Honey, you know how every night I lock the doors to keep bad people out? This is the same thing.”
Oh, believe me, I’ve seen those (I’ve seen, like, every episode of SVU ever made until this year). I’m just wondering if there’s one specifically about twitter yet. Every new technology gets its own episode— Did you see the second life one?