Social media storm hit S. Fla. as tech savvy chronicled Matthew

While South Florida largely escaped the wrath of Hurricane Matthew, it did get hit with a social media storm as the tech savvy took to live streaming, Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram and SnapChat to chronicle the event so those in the desert of Arizona or the forests of Minnesota could experience the frenzy of an incoming tropical cyclone.

Some took to humor, creating numerous memes that inundated people’s smart phones — including an ominous one showing an enhanced satellite Hurricane Matthew looking like a skeleton skull that Twitter went nuts over.

The most recent serious hurricane threat to Palm Beach County was Wilma, which rumbled through more than a decade ago when flflip phones were considered the height of technology. So Matthew broke ground for being the area’s fifirst truly social-media hurricane. People posted damage — and the lack thereof.

InstaGram and Facebook were a hodgepodge of photos. Under #hurricanematthew2016, there was an Instagram photo of a young lady in a mini skirt with a green drink the size of a toilet bowl under the additional tag #evacuation party. There were bored kids hunkering down playing Monopoly, others reinforcing front doors with mattresses and group photos on the frothy beach.

And, of course, the presidential candidates expressed their concern on Twitter.

There was also damage. One InstaGram photo showed a pine tree cut in half by the storm with a ginormous limb on a house. Another showed the before and after photo of flflooding in St. Augustine where Matthew did cause real damage.

SnapChat compiled video taken during the hurricane into an interesting montage of experiences and damage.

Facebook had an option on Friday where people could check in safe for family and friends.

All of this tweeting and posting uses data and costs money. AT&T said Friday that it was waiving fees for data usage from Thursday through Saturday in areas of Florida affffffffffffected by Matthew.

Hyper local coverage

Isaac Cubillos went all out, posting videos, photos and texts on the conditions in his Southbend Lakes neighborhood in Port St. Lucie. He was able to make sure everyone was in good shape, especially elderly neighbors.

His posts were a microcosm, zeroing in on just the neighborhood, showing the Hurricane Matthew experience was different inland than on the coast.

“Social media allows for the connection that brings us closer during severe conditions like this hurricane,” Cubillos said. “It let my friends and family know how I was and the conditions of the environment that they would not get from network broadcast.”

Ice Ice Baby

Twitter seemed to be choice of how the news media or municipalities — police, fifire, emergency offifficials — got information out quick to the public, but now and then there were postings such as the shark swimming in the street of Jacksonville Beach due to storm surge.

Twitter was also the social media choice of Wellington’s own celeb- rity as Vanilla Ice scared his fans when he stopped tweeting and went to bed.

On Twitter, followers of the Wellington rapper and home improvement show king feared the worst when he started tweeting about riding out Hurricane Matthew and then disappeared off the social media site for hours.

One fan tweeted back to him, “dawg, you alright. You haven’t tweeted in four hours?” Of course, that call of concern occurred at 3:10 a.m. when most likely Vanilla Ice was tucked into bed.

The Florida Democrats Twitter feed felt it necessary to tell people: “We advise listening to your local offifficials not @vanillaice.”

Facebook Live

But i f any s oc i al media was especially used during Matthew, it was Facebook Live where people brought the storm right to families and friends across the country.

Richard Guercio, a consultant from L ake Worth, said he was able to answer all his family and friend’s concerns simply by showing them exactly what he was seeing as the hurricane made its glancing blow.

“It was an easy way to answer folks who were sending us texts from up North asking how we were,” he said. “One gal friend of mine said it was better than watching the news because she was getting real-time updates from me out on the street.”

Leslie Powell said what she liked about Facebook Live was that she was able to get responses immediately from friends and family watching her streaming feed from Phil Foster Park on Friday. “I love it because you are showing them what is going on around you and they are responding and you can talk to them live,” she said. “They were saying, ‘I’m glad you are OK. You all made it through.’”

Guercio added that Facebook Live did make some people nervous. “A lot of the comments I got were, ‘Get back in the house!’ ” Meme Me

Then there were the Internet memes — catchy phrases or video usually accompanied by text aimed at humor.

And indeed the satellite photo of the hurricane that went viral on Twitter and InstaGram looked like a skull.

The media frenzy took a hit with one meme showing two side-by-side photos: one of palm trees nearly blowing crazily with the heading “On the News,” and another of a lawn chair askew, stating “Out My Window.”

Another meme noted Matthew’s expected track to turn around in the Atlantic and head South Florida’s way next week with an image of the typical hurricane tracking map with the caption: “My bad South Florida. I missed Y’all. Imma circle back around real quick.”