Roadblock a la Facebook

Jamaica definitely is coming fully into the Internet age. Last week when the plane hijacking went down in MoBay, I first found out about it on Facebook. Many people had comments up as their status message. There was even one yesterday about the report that Fray was disarmed by a female flight attendant (Related link: Who disarmed hijacker?).

Well, starting about the middle of last week, the GOJ budget discussion took center stage. And yesterday's Wall feeds have been interspersed with statuses, links and comments about various roadblocks protesting the gas tax increase. I figured this time around I'd capture a few of the comments because for me this is something new. Back in '99 if you weren't rich enough to have a cell phone, you just had to deal with the roadblocks as you came across them. Now with people Facebooking even from their phones, it seems to be a whole different ball game.





Of course, this can be both good and bad. Imagine if you have foreigners who don't know much about Jamaican culture on your friend list and they see this in their Wall Feed:



Although I suppose on one level, whether you know about Jamaican culture or not, we shouldn't tolerate people blocking the roads and disrupting the peace in this way — even if they can do it in an amazing 30 seconds flat. At the end of the day it's all part of what makes life on the rock unique.

Related links:
Protests bring disorder to Corporate Area and St. Catherine
Bogus police conning business to close early due to protests