As if an exploding watermelon commanding the eyeballs of 800,000 people wasn’t proof enough that Facebook Live is an instrument of dark forces (okay, actually, that watermelon video was pretty amazing), consider this:
On Wednesday, Onasi Olio-Rojas lost control of his car on U.S. Route 6 in Providence, Rhode Island, colliding with a dump truck and then traversing three lanes to hit a concrete barrier. Shortly before the crash, the 20-year-old Pawtucket resident was livestreaming himself as he weaved through traffic in his Honda Civic, topping out at 115 mph, to a soundtrack of A Boogie & Don Q’s “Floyd Mayweather.”
Onasi’s three-minute homemade Top Gear episode ends abruptly, before impact. (What appears to be his original Facebook Live footage has since been uploaded to YouTube.)
Fortunately, Olio-Rojas survived. First responders extricated the amateur filmmaker from the vehicle, and he remains in critical condition as of Thursday. The truck driver was uninjured. It’s unclear if police will file charges against Olio-Rojas, who, in retrospect, probably wishes he’d just found himself a Chewbacca mask.