Last night, at a retreat in Arizona, two people died and another 19 had to be hospitalized after something went horribly wrong at a sweat lodge. Normally, such a story, while interesting, wouldn’t be right for TechCrunch. But there’s a tech angle here.
Apparently, the man who rented the place and threw the retreat, author James Arthur Ray, is also an avid Twitter user. And yes, during the night of the incident he was tweeting about it. Ray later deleted those tweets and all the tweets about the retreat. But, as Mark Maunder discovered, they’re still available in Twitter search. And a couple are pretty interesting:
JamesARay: is still in Spiritual Warrior… for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?
JamesARay: Day 5 of SPW. The Spiritual Warrior has conquered death and therefore has no enemies, and no fear, in this life or the next.
Now, we’re not presuming to know what happened that night, and authorities are still looking into the matter. But those are two very odd things to say on a night when two people died. And deleting them, obviously, does not look good.
The fact that these tweets still exist in Twitter Search is very interesting. Twitter recently updated its terms of service agreement, making it very clear that “your tweets belong to you.” But that ownership for whatever reason, be it technical or otherwise, doesn’t fully extend to the point that when you delete a tweet, it is gone forever.
This isn’t a new issue, but this could bring complete control of your data on Twitter to the forefront. If you delete a tweet, it’s not really gone, so be extra careful about what you say.
That’s pretty creepy.
No it’s not, he seems like a new age Jim Jones!
And that makes it not creepy? I’d say that makes the whole thing EXTRA creepy.
I think they are alive! Holy Cow!
Even google cache can be helpful for checking out deleted tweets sometimes.
Sounds like they were trying to see what they were made of. Guess they went too far.
I wonder if, if he hadn’t deleted those tweets, they would ring quite as sketchy. I doubt it somehow.
I hope this guy Ray goes away for a really long time. Whether or not he intended to cause injury or death to these people his actions were completely reckless and his comments are a complete slap in the face for his victims. I’m sure his lawyer probably had to advise him to remove the twitter remarks because his pampus ass is too ignorant to realize how inappropriate they were. I read online somewhere that traditional sweat lodges are not airtight and they use cotton blankets that allow air to pass. And 20 ppl is a very large gathering. This sweat lodge this genius had build had blankets and plastic tarps covering making it airtight. And if that wasn’t enough he packed over 50 ppl in there. 50 people in a small space with depleting oxygen…really? That’s like shooting a loaded gun into a group of ppl and claiming you’re shocked that ppl died. This makes me sick.
oh and http://jamesray...ual-warrior.php
obviously a deleted tweet only deletes one instance of the tweet… the original. then you have cache. and anyone who subscribed to the user has local copies in their twitter client. and 3rd party services that slurp the firehose or public timeline have copies. etc etc. it is not possible to fully delete a tweet.
+1
The Twitter message thing is a non-issue:
How many times does this have to be repeated – any data you put on the net is OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.
One way or another.
All your tweet are belong to me.
Interesting and thought provoking – around future scenarios where historical tweets become headline news.
And likely in future futuristic films where tweets from John Connors or Captain Kirk play a part in the storyline.
I haven’t been watching Law & Order lately, but I’d think they would have already added Twitter to one or more of their episodes. The above story is likely a future episode itself.
Are there already attorneys who specialize in social media . . . there’s gotta be.
Wonder what kind of legal implications the tweets have regarding the murders.. doesn’t sound like much, but it’s still interesting to know that tweets will essentially never be deletable.
Who said anything about murder?
Sounds like murder to me… have you read the full story? If not, manslaughter. How could James A. Ray not see that these people were falling ill. Sounds fishy to me. Arrest him pronto. Families should sue his ass too.
A little harsh, isn’t it? Guilty until proven innocent?
Tweet “I’m dead” and call in TAPS.
Never being in a sweet lodge but guessing it may be a little Carlos Castaneda/don Juan, maybe someone was tripping a bit too much and was not aware of the life threatening situation as it developed.
Should have followed through on my thought, … which would mean manslaughter not homicide.
It could just be a case where in retrospect, having tweets about metaphorical death on a day when people literally died, are regrettable and any person would have done the same and deleted them.
That’s pretty creepy.
You owe it to the rest of your life to get to Spiritual Warrior as quickly as you can. The investment is ONLY $9695 per person.
Holy cow. Only $10,000 per person. A lot of money for BS.
Insane! People are so gullible to pay that much money. Seems like some people are not effected by the bad economy that they like throwing their money away to so called “spirtual retreats” to cleanse and detox. What a load of crap.
Definitely creepy.
That said (and slightly off-topic) I find there is something morbidly fascinating about the last tweet (or blog post) posted by someone who’s died.
Regarding the techie part -I’ve noticed deleted tweets seem to remain in the search stream (never checked how long though).
It’s also hard to unsend an email
+1
but google is making it easier =D
I’m just happy John Stamous wasn’t there.
Dave Coulier or Bob Sagat – I’m indifferent.
I smell a Law & Order episode …
lol & +1; although Law & Order: Sedona would be a very short season.
That’s pretty interesting and creepy.
I agree with @zee this is very creepy…
I smell a movie script in the making…
In my book “Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy” I warn about the dangerous consequences of appealing to archetypes such as the warrior in spiritual journeys: “For a man to access the Wild Man he must retreat into his psychic depths, into the forest, into a pre-Christian pagan space of hirsute manliness. Bly intends the Wild Man, with his relationship with the young boy of the Iron John story, to be an example of how men can be initiated into adulthood and the deep masculine. This would be a worthy exercise if it enabled boys to flourish for both their own sakes and the good of the community, but instead Iron John ‘celebrate[s] violence and killing as the means to establish male identity’. This is the archetypal path established by Bly. … This disturbing precedent is continued with Moore and Gillette encouraging men to access the warrior in the male psyche, whose natural presence is indicated by the fact that chimpanzees resort to battle, and men’s fascination with war movies such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket. Moore and Gillette would have their readers believe it is natural for mythopoetically inclined men to imagine themselves operating within the presumably dark and oppressive jungle … these appeals to archetypal models promote largely oppressive and violent masculinities.”
A sad outcome for everyone.
Lol?
Twitter is scary,once the tweets are deleted they should not come up
Good to see this getting more coverage.
I had already written about the story on the group blog Beyond Growth, as well as captured screen shots of all the deleted tweets (after someone alerted me to them), which can be viewed here:
http://beyondgr...t-lodge-fiasco/
Thanks Duff, I saw your find of the tweets last night. This whole tragedy has brought to my mind a number of questions:
*we don’t own the internet and of course our tweets/posts/mail is …well “out there” somewhere but we let go of the control when we hit enter, do people really think delete means gone everywhere?
*what are people thinking when they have no health insurance yet spend over $9,000 for a workshop, what are they searching for?
*how can we so easily be duped (I am sure these people were not ignorant) and how can we remember to stay centered in our own self (which no one can do for us no matter how much they charge)?
Thanks again Duff and MG Siegler for the coverage and place to discuss.
Aloha~
After reading the context of the tweets (being that all of them are based around the theme of metaphorical dying) it kinda makes those two twitters that were put out the day of the accident less implicating.
Although it is extremely creepy that he was twittering about metaphorical death all of the week before this accident.
crap article .. is there any other word for it?
not really a bug, but rather a question of (cpu) economy and efficiency.
it would appear that Twitter search data, and in this case the specific process of indexing tweets for the search application, is very separate from the main Twitter tweet-data and applications. and as such, “ghosted” tweets WILL show up until they are automatically expired (maximum 8-10 days if you read between the lines).
this bug (or feature, depending on how you look at it) has existed and, more importantly, has been known for a quite a while. but again, it’s probably more a matter of technical economy than anything else: having to only store or index keywords for the past 10 days makes everything so much more faster than indexing 1000 days. leave alone purging expired (deleted) items.
of course, this is only pure speculation, so yeah, nevermind.
Native American’s have been trying to warn ppl for years. These kinda deaths happen more than they should.
don’t pay to pray. and always check out the credentials of any one calling themselves a spiritual teacher.
you can check newagefraud [dot] org for authenticity
it’s creepy, but it’s nothing unusual for people who visit sweat lodges to say, given the mythical mumbo jumbo that’s usually attached to the process–(I’ve been to two sweat lodges–great fun!).
I’m guessing he removed the tweets because they could be easily misunderstood to refer to the actual deaths of those people rather than the metaphorical process of dying/renewal that he was probably referring to in the tweets before the people actually died.
this guy’s going to get his a$$ sued off. As the NY Times reported, visitors to James Ray’s weekened Renewal self help thingy, paid up to $9000 for the privilege of getting sick
No more Oprah appearances for Mr. Ray–Hope he bought insurance, or he might need to get his job back at AT &T
We have been warning about exploiters and thieves of our culture for years. The “James Arthur Rays” of this world only spit in our faces and laugh with money in their pockets. Wade Crowe, enrolled with the Yanktonai Hunkpati Dakota Sioux of Crow Creek, South Dakota
Sorry, but am I the only one who doesn’t know what a “sweat lodge” is?
I had no clue either. Here ya go:
http://en.wikip...iki/Sweat_lodge
Thanks Dave.. Yeah, we have a “sweat lodge” at the gym I never go to.
New Age bullshit packaged as ancient Indian tradition.
naw man i am with you on this. i usually think of it as being a euorpean thing or going to visit the hotprings or going skiing and then getting in one of these areas…or you could just do what i do and think about one of the oceans movies (i think) where brad pitt, clooney, or damon is in one of these sweat rooms with the sumo wrestlers.
sweat lodges are for large men and men who have too much money or time on their hands. i don’t know any female who does this…they go the spa/massage route, but i’d bet you could get a massage in the sweat lodge if you send the right cues.
no but you’re probably the only guy who would spend more time commenting that you don’t know than just googling it.
so i personally have not been to a sweat lodge. its kind like a steam room.it is a form of praying. they believe that it detoxifies your body as well as purifing your spirit. like a spiritual new beginning.
There are countless other services that have most tweets cached or stored forever, so deleting a tweet really doesn’t do much.
Could you list some of those sites please?
I never heard of this guy before this happened.
Had he conducted sweat lodges with his retreats before? People must be really needy that they would spend almost a 10 grand to attend one of these events. Very sad for the victims and their families.
James Shore was also a phenomenal – and I mean phenomenal SEM pro. And a completely cool dude.
clue me in please…
what is an SEM pro?
and can you tell us more about James Shore, the attributes which made him phenomenal…
and i feel this was just an obscene amt of money to pay or charge for a retreat….
its quite funny to me that ppl are more concerned with the alleged ghostly tweets, then the actual deaths.
Not really. The tweets might prove James A Ray’s motives.
Motives?!?!
What the hell are you talking about?
You don’t know the guy.
I worked with James and let me tell you…he just recently started dabbling with this sweat lodge thing.
He’s helped hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve seen it firsthand.
You people have no idea what you’re talking about.
It’s scary to see the mob mentality.
He will own up to what happened.
He had no motive to kill anyone. That’s absurd.
He is a good man who made a terrible mistake.
It was an accident.
Now he must deal with the deaths he caused.
Instead of coming out with your pitch forks and torches…why don’t you just pray for the victims and their families?
I am.
Fraid not – Ray’s events resulted in 911 call to unconscious participant in ‘05, too. According to those familiar, “Most every time people have been nauseous and sick for the six or seven years Ray has been doing this event”.
Your ‘good man’ is in heap big trouble. http://nielsenh...ves/011748.html
He may well have deleted the tweets so as not to cause more pain to the families of those who died, and not far any sinister reason. That said, these new age life coaching evangelists really get on my tits!
rest in peace.
this guy like anyone who sets themselves up to know more than others is a danger- gosh this smacks of Jonestown-Bloody ridiculous and whilst no one deserves to die or be maimed please look into your own hears and if you have $9,000 to throw away on some spiritual quest even more ridiculous.Scrub your grout walk with your kids- eat a good wholesome meal Take a hike. Make love- You’ll sweat and it wan’t cost you a dime.More garbage from these ’secret’ people- and where does Ray go…he runs away Fucking coward
Well said Angela.
That isn’t that much to pay – coaches of various sorts charge similar prices – split the cost x12 months per person – value of customer over year.
They say that kind of stuff at Sweat Lodges and Yoga and Illuminati Councils and Secret Meetings of the Skull and Bones etc… all the time.
It doesn’t really mean anything, except to the believer.
It is just Pageantry.
Just want to say I am VERY VERY SURPRISED that TechCrunch DID NOT KNOW that you can ONLY delete a tweet from YOUR PAGE and that it took THIS incident to discover this!!!
You are TECH CRUNCH after all! ;-D
You can NEVER delete something from a Real-Time stream (and all the places it’s gone to, it will always be in people’s @ replies if sent to them and in the main stream (searchable). WHY? It’s a real time stream. What’s tweeted/posted is now in the PAST.
This is a Time-Space reality we live in. You can’t DELETE from the Past!!
This is pure time-space logic and something TechCrunch should have long realized! LOL
Now you do!
Ummm…duh?
Why do people think that when they hit “delete” something should be gone?
When you put something out in a public place for the world to read, there should be absolutly no expectation that it can be removed. More than that, nobody should expect any “ownership” apart from that imparted the author of other public material (e.g. copyright ownership).
A “tweet” is just like the spoken word. Once you say it, you cannot really take it back.
so sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!