Ten years ago, smoking guns were a lot harder to come by. Today, Rule Number One of any criminal is that his or her existence on the social media must be zero or next to zero.
Social media are like a knife, as they cut both ways. Teenagers can get depressed to the point of suicide if scheming “friends” post online activities that suspiciously excluded them.
Innocent people can be harassed by holier-than-thou keyboard warriors. Evil geniuses are finding it easier to manipulate public thoughts.
Pranksters are also using the social media a lot. The speed of misinformation is much faster than years, let alone decades, ago. Cue AI (Artificial Intelligence) and politics, and the social media always have the potential to be Frankenstein’s monster.
In the case of the iCon scandal, though, content is mostly eye-opening. Not only that, it has helped expand and quicken investigation. Also in the process, they teach everyone a valuable lesson about trust and what to believe.
Big-name celebrities denying that they “didn’t know” what the iCon Group was allegedly up to will have to argue with their own social media fingerprints that were all over the internet.
They will have to explain why “Then” and “Now” appear to contrast with each other so glaringly.
Video and audio clips as well as plain texts or still photos are being used to back up charges that they knowingly tried to fool naïve investors about luxurious lifestyles that could only be achieved if they joined the “iCon family”.
Clips and photos of supercars or expensive wristwatches along with inspiring speeches are being dug up, reposted, and scrutinised with fresh perspectives that encourage the digging up of more content.
Social media “detectives” are working tirelessly and they are feeding on one another. That is why the iCon case has snowballed very quickly and it is still expanding at this very second.
That key suspects are famous is a big stimulant to the already-speedy development. And what is good about the social media is that you can run but you can never hide.
One weak point of the mainstream media is that only the newsrooms make the judgement as to what should be played up, played down, or ignored entirely.
That used to be an undeniably good characteristic, as the social media are very judgmental and full of rumours, gossips or absolute misinformation.
But the biggest shortcoming sometimes can become an unrivalled advantage.
Let’s admit it, ideological leaning influences decision-making of the newsrooms. When the social media are concerned, however, what one ideology might try to suppress can be trumpeted by the other.
When information is not “screened” by the mainstream media, everything goes straight to viewers uncensored.
Bad news is the content can be pure garbage or even downright toxic, but good news is that there are a lot fewer places for the bad guys to hide.
Cover-ups will be harder, so to speak. Secrets unravel for more and more people no matter how hard the schemers try to keep the lids on them.
If the iCon Group did what it allegedly did, it will be a classic case of getting destroyed by its own creation. Suspected hype drew massive public attention, as the executives must have allegedly wanted, but it also left a lot of digital footprints.
When the social media detectives get started, it is impossible to stop them. In the not-so-distant past, it would take weeks, if not months, for everyone to know or suspect that the obscenely-expensive wristwatches of “Boss Paul”, or Waratphon Waratvorakul, found at a rented room of his were fake.
As it turns out, the development is lightning quick.
In just one day, the news report of the rented room raid was posted on YouTube along with what the police “found”, suspicions of amateurish and professional wristwatch collectors were aroused, their doubts then spread like a wildfire, past photos of Boss Paul wearing his watches came swiftly back on screen and theories quickly ensured.
If the seized watches were not authentic, here are possible scenarios. The first had it that there were never real ones, and the “fake” watches were used to deceive people. There were attempts to hide the watches, but the authorities managed to find them anyway.
The second theory was that the authorities were led there on purpose, so they would find the “fake” items instead of the real things that were kept elsewhere. This would allow a lucrative sale of the genuine watches later.
The third theory was that the police already had the real ones but what were put on show were fake. Why would the police do that? One possible answer is in good-cop-bad-cop movies.
All those theories were thought up within hours of the rented room raid. Proponents of the second and third theories backed them up with photos or clips of Boss Paul wearing different watches on different occasions.
None of those watches looked similar to the ones shown by the police after the raid, they insisted.
Digital footprints and social media detectives are shedding more and more light on the iCon case which has encompassed borders and social as well as political spectrums. Boss Paul himself is armed with his own secretly-recorded audio clips which could unleash a new set of shocking information.
As for every neutral news consumer, welcome to the new, confusing world, where crimes are committed and exposed on the social media, where criminals use the social media as an escape route but some of them become undone in the very process, and where the innocent are either punished or helped by the social media.
But no matter how smart the criminals are, their fingerprints are easier to find nowadays.
According to Abraham Lincoln, you may be able to fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you will not be able to fool all of the people all of the time.
Sometimes repulsive and sometimes noble, the social media may be helping prove that right at an astonishing speed.
