A man who was on the Southwest Airlines flight when an engine exploded has taken a lot of flak for trying to live stream what he thought was the final few minutes of his life.
“All I could think of in that moment was, I need to communicate with my loved ones,” he told ABC television. “I thought, ‘These are my last few moments on Earth and I want people to know what happened.’”
Marty Martinez spent $8 to sign up for Southwest's on-board wifi and attempted to use it to live stream what he thought was an imminent plane crash.
Instead, flight 1380 made to the ground, but not before one passenger, bank executive Jennifer Riodan was killed after being partially pulled through the shattered plane window.
Once the flight was on the ground, social media users began piling on Martinez for what they said was a morbid attempt to video his death. The Associated Press collected some of the more ... virulent reactions to the live stream.
“Trying to contact loved ones is one thing, but to morbidly video and take pictures to post publicly is completely disgusting. Evidently the wrong person was taken from that flight,” Dennis Miller posted on Facebook.
“I didn’t see you say anything to the people you love,” said Lakeya Collins on Facebook. “This social media world today is sickening Everyone wants to go viral ugggh.”
“God forbid the outcome had been different, surely friends and family of those you captured would have at least had closure knowing the exact truth,” said Klaudia Olszowka.
Some defend Martinez's actions pointing out that no one knows how they will react when they believe their life is about to end. However, others say he was selfish to focus on himself and his situation instead of placing the focus on the person who passed away.
“You represent the worst of social media,” one Facebook user said.
Since the feature was introduced in 2016, the average number of Facebook live videos have skyrocketed, doubling year over year with more than 3.5 billion broadcasts so far.