For those not yet aware of Sharkeisha, she's the protagonist in an instagrammed fight that went viral on 27.11.13. She is now the subject of many meme's, has multiple posts in Urban Dictionary and may be, being investigated for manslaughter. What's social media's part in this?
On Tuesday night a video showing a girl called Sharkeisha talking with another girl, before attacking her went viral on Instagram. It had 20,000 likes before it was removed by the site as users "may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via the Service." The video is now hosted on Worldstarhiphop.
In less than 48 hours what has unfolded is a rather shocking illustration of how our (social) media usage is in a state of flux. After the video went viral an account @LilButtSHAR started tweeting about the event, and from then it's been a non stop tweetathon, calling out the police, the fact that she's trending, retweeting various memes (Check some here) that have sprung up and offering up the second part of the video, seeing her account grow from 400 to 28,000 followers.
It's Sharkeisha that courted social media attention. A number of different sites came to the fore with arrest photos of a Sharkeisha (One for "uttering a forged instrument.) and Sharkeisha is already listed in Urban Dictionary.
As yet there is no confirmation that Sharkeisha has been arrested, or of the worrying reports that the victim had committed suicide. If we're to believe twitter, after the video went viral.
To jump to a 'broken Britain-esque' view of society is probably a little over zealous, but it's interesting to think that the same tool that first shot to prominence in with the survivors of the Sandiego fire is the very same tool that has made an overnight 'star' of a girl for a violent attack.