Oslo schoolgirl's exam plea goes viral
The Local Norway - [email protected]
Published: 9 Jun, 2015 CET.
Updated: Tue 9 Jun 2015 21:40 CET
A 19-year-old Norwegian high school student who posted a message on Facebook to demonstrate the dangers of internet virality saw it spread to more than 30,000 people over four continents and get more than 27,000 comments in less than 23 hours.
Synne Lepsøe Sandberg (19), a student of International Communication at Oslo Private Gymnasium carried out the experiment as part of her preparation for an exam on Tuesday.
"Hi, My name is Synne. I have an oral exam about the dangers of social media in exactly 23 hours,” she wrote in the handwritten post, which she held up in a photograph. “Please help SHARE and LIKE this picture and write WHICH city you saw it from in the comments. Lets see how far it will get.”
Within a couple of hours the post began to pick up momentum, distracting her from the exam preparations she was supposed to be making.
“It is absolutely overwhelming,” she told Norway’s VG newspaper on Monday night.
“I thought maybe I'd get about a hundred comments, perhaps a message from family friends in the United States or England, but I never imagined it would reach these kinds of proportions.”
Soon people she had never met from far-flung places such as Finland, Dubai, South Korea, Australia, and Mexico, began commenting on the post, which she had left completely public on Facebook, disabling all privacy settings.
“Doing this with all the settings completely public is probably the stupidest thing you can do,” she said. “I look forward to putting on my privacy settings again. This has made me more aware of the consequences it can have, and of how careful you need to be."
"It’s been a lot of fun, but a little bit scary too," she added. "I never though I would get much attention.”
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Synne Lepsøe Sandberg (19), a student of International Communication at Oslo Private Gymnasium carried out the experiment as part of her preparation for an exam on Tuesday.
"Hi, My name is Synne. I have an oral exam about the dangers of social media in exactly 23 hours,” she wrote in the handwritten post, which she held up in a photograph. “Please help SHARE and LIKE this picture and write WHICH city you saw it from in the comments. Lets see how far it will get.”
Within a couple of hours the post began to pick up momentum, distracting her from the exam preparations she was supposed to be making.
“It is absolutely overwhelming,” she told Norway’s VG newspaper on Monday night.
“I thought maybe I'd get about a hundred comments, perhaps a message from family friends in the United States or England, but I never imagined it would reach these kinds of proportions.”
Soon people she had never met from far-flung places such as Finland, Dubai, South Korea, Australia, and Mexico, began commenting on the post, which she had left completely public on Facebook, disabling all privacy settings.
“Doing this with all the settings completely public is probably the stupidest thing you can do,” she said. “I look forward to putting on my privacy settings again. This has made me more aware of the consequences it can have, and of how careful you need to be."
"It’s been a lot of fun, but a little bit scary too," she added. "I never though I would get much attention.”
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