Alan O’Neill, formerly known as Alan Fulk, is either the dumbest son of a bitch in Tacoma, Washington, or the unluckiest. Maybe a bit of both.
New Technology. Old situation.
The corrections officer, which I think translates to prison guard, although the article I read just used the deliberately ambiguous term corrections officer throughout, left his first wife a few years back. Just up and moved out one day. Never called. Never wrote. Didn’t get a divorce or anything, just took off.
Then, he changed his name and got married to another woman, conveniently forgetting to mention to her that he was already married. I guess he figured the name change took care of that. New man.
As they set off on their journey of wedded bliss, of course, they post wedding pictures on facebook.
Wife #1 gets an automatic friend suggestion, one of those “people you might know” things, from Wife #2, so goes to check out her home page. She sees wedding pictures of a guy who looks a whole lot like her dear, still undivorced husband.
She phones up her (ex?)mother-in-law, who contacts her son and they have a confrontation. Then she calls the cops. Fulk/O’Neill is on suspension from his job and being charged with bigamy.
Now, I’m not really passing judgement on what he did. Relationships are complicated and there’s a lot we don’t know. Did the first wife never do the dishes, did she watch too many soap operas, did she snore? Was the second wife significantly younger and hotter? It probably would have been easier, and a lot smarter, to go ahead and get a divorce, but just being stupid doesn’t make the man a criminal. Well, I guess, technically, it did.
But you can’t blame facebook. 20 years ago, guys were getting busted by a strange female voice on the answering machine. 20 years before that, their name in your address book. Lipstick on your collar, a personal letter or a diary which wasn’t well hidden enough, a stray piece of clothing in the wrong place – men (and women, for that matter) have been getting busted for their marital indiscretions as long as there have been marital indiscretions, which is forever. It’s so common that I think that sometimes it’s deliberate.
No, you can’t blame facebook. It’s a public forum and everybody (or at least everybody except our friend Alan) knows that. He just forgot the cardinal rule:
Loose lips sink ships, facebook post, your ass is toast.
www.gurukalehuru.com 