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Let’s hope Rebecca Javeleau’s sweet 16 will be much less dramatic than her 15th birthday party.
Most teens planning a birthday party dread the no-shows, but 14-year-old Javeleau probably prays most of her RSVP’s are no-shows, since 21,000 responded to the English teen’s invitation, which she mistakenly posted to the entire Facebook community, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.
Suffice to say, the party is over before it ever began.
Privacy settings people, privacy settings!
Her mother (or should I say mum, since they are British?), Tracey Livesey, 40, of Harpenden, England, (in Hertfordshire county) has now stripped away her daughter’s computer and Internet privileges. She’s also had her daughter’s mobile phone SIM card changed. She told the Telegraph:
Her party is cancelled and she will be lucky to get a birthday card from me after this. I said she could have 15 friends along to the party but my sister-in-law said that 8,000 people had said on Facebook that they were coming.
Livesey’s daughter did not realize she was creating a public event, her mother said. Now her Facebook account is locked down, thanks to engaging those privacy settings, but not before 21,000 Facebook users had clicked the RSVP button in the affirmative. While it’s a good chance most of the accounts were fake, they did boast some A-list names, including Justin Bieber, Stephen Hawking, Stevie Wonder, Susan Boyle and Rick Astley, according to the Telegraph.
If even a fraction of those guests decided to crash the now non-existent party, this quiet, small town in the southeastern part of England (population 30,000), it would cause quite a commotion.
Local law enforcement is on alert and on extra patrols as they look out for would-be revelers on Oct.7, when the party would have taken place. They are concerned because even after the birthday posting was taken off, other events were created: pre-party, after-party, clear-up party and “hang-over” party, with some using the teen’s photograph.
CBS reported the creation of one group called “I Was Part Of The 7.10.10 FB takeover of Rebecca Javeleau’s Flat Party,” that had 261 followers.
“The party was to be held in a block of flats that wouldn’t accommodate more than 10 people, let alone 10,000,” Sgt. Lewis Ducket of the Hertfordshire Police Department, told CBS.
Police probably feared a repeat, on a grander scale, of what had happened in another English town in February, when 50 people crashed another teen girl’s party and engaged in some old-school crazy-rocker debauchery with smashed furniture, bubble bath poured on the TV, ornamental Samurai swords taken down and impaled into walls and vomit and urine all over the house, including in the bed of the teen’s younger sibling.
This type of thing seems to happen more often than you’d think, with one mansion in Spain robbed of items adding up to $12,000 in 2008. More than 400 people crashed that sweet 16, which I’m betting wasn’t so sweet after all was said and done.
And in 2008, The Times (of London) ran a story about the Facebook Republican Army, which professed to target teen parties, but which ended up being a hoax.
Livesey’s mom has a bone to pick with Facebook, which she said should have taken more responsibility.
They should make it obvious that an event that is created is not just going out to your friends but everyone else on the site. When this happened Facebook should have realised that thousands of people going to a 14-year-old’s party is not right and shut the group down automatically.
Facebook responded to the Daily Telegraph:
When someone creates an event on Facebook it clearly says ‘anyone can view and rsvp (public event)’. If you leave this checked then it is a public event so anyone can view the content and respond. If users do see content on Facebook that they feel is inappropriate or unsuitable We have clear reporting links on every page, including event pages, for users to flag it. We also provide people with the tools to manage their own content so with events for example, there are clear tools to allow you to control who can see and respond to the event.
Facebook also emphasize the value of educating children about the Internet and using Facebook responsibly.
What do you think?
