Rihanna’s Instagram Post Gets Men in Trouble and Indicates Larger Problems

For those of you who don’t know, Instagram is an application on your Iphone or Android devise.  This application allows you to share photos and fifteen second long videos with people who follow you and has become insanely popular over the last year or so between many people.  Rihanna isn’t the first to be involved with conflict from instagram, many other stars and even people who aren’t famous, like students and adults, can get in trouble over Instagram along with other social media sites as well.  With Instagram getting extremely popular over last year, more and more people are starting to get punished for posting photos on instagram and tweets on twitter, and it is causing many people to get in trouble.

Currently Rihanna, a popular artist, is on her 5^th world tour, starting March 8^th in New York and lasting until October 22^nd in Israel.  Traveling through several countries all across the globe performing.  Tens of millions for dollars has been made so far and the tour still has a month to go.  Rihanna spent this last weekend in Bangcok, Thailand while on break from her tour.  After several tweets and a few Instagram photos that were posted, police were led to arrest two men for allegedly peddling protected animals.  In simpler terms, these men were accused of trying to sell animals that were illegal to have because they are protected for certain reasons like being close to extinction.

While on break this last weekend Rihanna posted a picture with a slow Loris, which is a squirrel like animal with large eyes.  This animal is protected in Thailand along with several other countries in the world, which raises suspicions after being posted by Rihanna last Friday night in Bangkok.  Several Tweets were also posted by Rihanna on twitter; some were talking about the protected animal.  All in all, Rihanna has a combined 41.5 million followers between twitter and instagram, and by posting anything can be seen by anyone in the whole world.

Just several hours after the photo was posted, local authorities were alerted of the photo that was taken by Rihanna with the protected animal.  Just a day later, authorities arrested two individuals.  These unnamed individuals had brought the slow Loris as a photo opportunity for tourists in Bangkok.  After arresting a twenty year old man and a sixteen year old boy, authorities found two slow lorises and confiscated them from the two men.  These two could face up to four years each in prison just for having these two protected animals.  Also there is a $1300 fine for being in possession of the protected animals as well.  To me, the those charges seem extremely ridiculous just for having protected animals with you.  Especially for the boy who is only sixteen years old and not even legally an adult, four years and $1300 dollars seems like too much.  If they were harming the two animals it would be a different story.  Therefore, the penalty just for these two men being in possession of the two animals seems like too much.

For many years, authorities have been on the lookout, trying to crack down on vendors trying to get money from people taking pictures with protected animals.  This doesn’t just happen there in Bangkok, it happens all the time all around the globe.  Mainly, this happens in areas that are very popular and full of tourists.  People may pay money to these vendors to take photos with different exotic animals, mainly while on vacations.  I can even recall an instance myself while I was in Mexico when I was younger and took photos with different types of birds.  It really makes you wonder if you have ever been around people doing this or even if you have taken a picture with a protected animal from a vendor as well.  The chances are if you have been to a foreign country, you have most likely witnessed it. 

This particular time it was a lot easier to solve the problem because the photo was exposed to several millions of people.  Authorities just had to contact Rihanna and talk to her about what happened so they could find the two men who were charging money to take photos with the protected animal.  Also her twitter revealed several places she was that night, giving authorities an idea of where the vendors were doing this at, and therefore leading them to make an arrest later on.  This case was very popular making it easier to solves, but every day things just like this happen and aren’t reported or questioned because they are on a much smaller level.

Rihanna’s run in with the vendors definitely wasn’t the first and is just one of several instances where people get into trouble over social media.  Today with all the social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Myspace, Facebook, and many more, more and more people are starting to get into trouble because of these social media sites.  There has even been laws made about them.  One I know of is that you cannot be friends with your teachers or students on facebook.  This is probably just one of several that are out there, but things like this are taken very seriously.  There can be cases where a teacher can even be fired over something as little as being friends with their students on Facebook.  I think that it is very hard to divide your social life from your work life, and as a teacher it would be even worse and they could have major consequences.  The only suggestion I have for teachers is to try to stay off of social media sites.  If that is a problem for you, like it would be for me, lock your profile so it is only viewable to people who you are friends with.

There are more problems with social media than just those involving teachers though.  Kids can get into a lot of trouble on social media sites as well, and It happens a lot more often.  Today with social media, it is a lot different than old times where there is no solid proof of who said or did what.  Now, when you post something on social media sites like twitter or instagram, it is out there for good.  Even if you decide to delete it, it’s been out there and chances are someone has seen it.  One person is all it takes, and once word gets out about something it spreads like a wildfire.  With texting and all the other technology we have today, word spreads a lot quicker.  When kids post pictures of themselves doing illegal things all it takes is one person to say something and it will eventually get around to people.  The majority of  people are on social media sites that are in high school and middle school also, making the problem even larger.  Therefore my advice to kids today is to be smart about your decisions.  These decisions you make as you go through life really reflect on everything you do.  Be wise and don’t do or post anything that you would not want the world to see.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/22/rihanna-instagram-photo_n_3971761.html

Leader, Jessica. "Rihanna's Instagram Photo With Slow Loris Leads Police To Smugglers."The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Sept. 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2013.