(Image Source: Beyond Honolulu)
BY JULIA CORDEROY
ANCHOR EMILY SPAIN
You're watching multisource world news analysis from Newsy.
A Canadian man has built a social network of more than 3,000 friends-- the old fashioned way. The really old fashioned way. CNET has the details.
“The Canadian has spent the last 15 years using the Atlantic Ocean as his very own Facebook by casting bottled messages on the waves... [Harold] Hackett has received over 3,100 replies to more than 4,800 messages he has sent out, a 64 percent response rate.”
He has received replies from all over the world - Africa, Russia, Holland, France, the Bahamas - just to name a few.
Hackett tells the BBC why he opts for the Atlantic over modern technology.
“I usually get about 150 Christmas cards, Christmas gifts, souvenirs. I just love doing it the old way. And another reason why I won’t put my phone number on my note then I know that they’ll all call me and I won’t get any letters back, I won’t have anything to showcase, I wouldn’t have nothing.”
Hackett released his first bottle in 1996. He dates each bottle before he sends them off - and sometimes doesn’t receive a response until more than a decade later.
This hobby has made Hackett somewhat of a legend. His home town paper, The Guardian, says...
“He even has a display at Ripley's [Ripley’s Believe It Or Not] in Cavendish. That happened after the Ripley's owner found one of Hackett's bottles at his cottage in Florida. Some of the letters and souvenirs he received are included in the display.”
But some people think Hacketts hobby make him a polluter, rather than a legend. Comments from readers of the article on MSNBC read...
“So this is the guy who created that giant island of garbage in the Sargasso Sea...”
and...
“Where are his 4,800 fines for littering?”
Hackett still hasn’t received a reply from his very first message in a bottle he released in 1996. He has a feeling this year may be the year.
Transcript by Newsy
