Costa Rica’s 2015 social media sensations

December 22, 2015
1 Comments

Ah Facebook. And Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, YouTube. Name a social media platform and you can also name someone whose reputation — even whose life — has been made, radically transformed or ruined by it. Here are Costa Rica’s top five social media sensations of 2015.

1. Gerardo Cruz, Hero of Women

Gerardo Cruz
Gerardo Cruz, the young man who was stabbed shortly after exposing a perpetrator of street harassment toward a woman in San José, died at Calderón Guardia Hospital in Costa Rica on Thursday, Nov. 19. (Via Facebook)

This young man’s rise to social media sensation began when he saw an older man apparently trying to point his cellphone camera up a woman’s skirt while she walked down a San José street. The 22-year-old Cruz whipped out his own cellphone and filmed the older man, then boldly confronted him — while still filming — and then posted the whole incident on Facebook. The video went viral and prompted a wave of outrage from women (and men) tired of vulgar catcalls and other forms of what’s become known as street harassment.

Watch Cruz’s video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6EBOnqlGiY

Cruz’s fame might have ended there, but he was brutally attacked on a street near his home just south of the capital just a few days after he posted the video. He was reportedly on his way to a television interview. Cruz landed in the hospital where his survival was touch-and-go for a month. He died of a heart attack on Nov. 19. Police said at the time that they had no evidence that the young man’s social media crusading or his confrontation with the alleged pervert were related to the attack on him.

2. Óscar López, Twitter novice

This lawmaker and former presidential candidate from the Accessibility Without Exclusion Party surely wishes he hadn’t made this list. López was apparently coming down with a cold or flu virus in early December, and his brain must have been lost in a dense fog when he posted a photo of himself curled up in the fetal position on a couch — in his suit and tie — on Twitter. “I feel numb with cold, with aching bones and a little bit of a fever. How do you cure this?” he wrote in the Tweet.

López undoubtedly was hoping for some sympathy. He got very little. Within hours, dozens of memes popped up on social media featuring López’s image curled up on the set of Jurassic Park, in formation among a group of fit women at gym class, uselessly defending the goal during a football game, and on and on.

It wasn’t pretty for a national public figure who must want voters and colleagues to take him seriously. But some of the memes were belly-aching hilarious. We hope López got at least a few laughs out of the gaffe; they say laughter is an excellent cure when you’re feeling under the weather.

3. Narco Paloma

Prison police at La Reforma penitentiary captured this pigeon carrying marijuana and cocaine on August 11, 2015.
Prison police at La Reforma penitentiary captured this pigeon carrying marijuana and cocaine on Aug. 11, 2015. It was immediately dubbed "Narco Paloma." (Courtesy Ministry of Justice and Peace)

Costa Rica’s furry, feathered and scaled, social media sensations often outdo their human counterparts (we could’ve done a whole separate list; maybe next year). This year, a humble pigeon made headlines worldwide after flying into La Reforma prison sporting what looked like a black felt fanny pack stuffed full of marijuana and cocaine. Unfortunately for the pigeon, prison police caught on to its illicit activities, captured it, confiscated the goods and sent it to birdie jail, namely ZooAve Animal Rescue Center. The bird was reportedly given time because it is a non-native species, not because of its drug trafficking activities.

While the bird, nicknamed “Narco Paloma,” will likely spend the rest of its life behind bars, its legend lives on — on the Internet, on coffee mugs (created by @kabek) and in the dreams of inmates longing for a psychological escape from their own life behind bars. #FreeNarcoPaloma

4. The girl who frolicked with sea turtles

Tourists prevent arribadas at Ostional, Sep. 5 2015
Members from the Environment Ministry's union said several turtles on Sep. 5 returned to the ocean without laying a single egg due to the large number of tourists on the beach. (Via SITRAMINAE)

She looks so thrilled to be there among hundreds of slow-moving sea turtles trying to perform THE essential task of their lives: to reproduce. The image of the young woman, later identified as Emily Granados, flew around the world, causing outrage among many who saw in her radiant smile and Daisy Dukes complete indifference to the needs of the animals around her.

The Environment Ministry’s Workers Union reported on its Facebook page that hundreds of tourists had stood in the way of the turtles that day in early September, causing many of them to return to the sea without laying their eggs.

Granados later defended her actions in an interview with writer Diego Delfino that was published on Medium.com. She said she had gone to see the mass turtle arrival, called an arribada with an organized tour group. “They never told us we couldn’t walk near [the turtles] because that doesn’t bother them, only that we shouldn’t walk in front of them, which we didn’t.” Granados said she had to close her Facebook account for awhile because she was getting so many nasty messages from critics.

Following the bad publicity, local authorities outlined a plan to prevent further problems during upcoming arribadas. No major problems have been reported since.

5. Katy Perry’s Salsa Lizano

It’s hardly fair to include a mega-celebrity in a list of social media sensations in a small country like Costa Rica. But Katy Perry — or whoever manages her Twitter account — scored big time with Ticos when she posted the following tweet before playing a concert here on Oct. 19:

An international pop star — with close to 80,000 Twitter followers — who takes the time out of her busy social life to publicly praise Costa Rica’s autoctonous, indispensible condiment Salsa Lizano: What better compliment could there be?

You may be interested

Costa Rican government and unions willing to start a dialogue to end the strike
News
940 views
News
940 views

Costa Rican government and unions willing to start a dialogue to end the strike

AFP - September 18, 2018

President Carlos Alvarado told NC Once news that the government is set to talk with unions and announced that the…

Ex-president Cristina Kirchner charged in Argentina corruption scandal
Argentina
600 views
Argentina
600 views

Ex-president Cristina Kirchner charged in Argentina corruption scandal

AFP / Liliana Samuel - September 18, 2018

Argentina's ex-president Cristina Kirchner was charged with corruption on Monday as a judge asked that her legislative immunity be lifted…

Free press accuses Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship of wanting to impose a reign of silence
La Prensa
1032 views
La Prensa
1032 views

Free press accuses Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship of wanting to impose a reign of silence

La Prensa / Leonor Álvarez - September 17, 2018

On Saturday, Sept. 8, while reporters around the world were celebrating the International Day of Solidarity of Journalists, reporters, and…
http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/12/24/costa-rica-social-media-sensations-2015
www.ticotimes.net
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-39
90763
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:IVRRNGARQSHD75AOMSR5F2XVJGDJF4OV
<urn:uuid:0a5a9bc7-3306-4bcd-981b-c54999f1251e>
2018-09-19T00:23:48Z
104.27.129.142
text/html
sha1:LKMXLXZYGMHTLGATLOEB7NHKSC56KWBZ
<urn:uuid:6352afaa-66c2-47d8-abd8-df8b123b0895>
http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/12/24/costa-rica-social-media-sensations-2015
response
<urn:uuid:d1cd013c-dcad-49db-b22f-e740fd527a20>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-95-184-178.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/