Slashdot Mirror
Korea's Online Aggression a Taste of the Future?
DerGeist writes "Imagine your life ruined by an organized mob that convicts with scant, unreliable evidence. Fueled only by hearsay and rumors, an invisible horde of your fellow citizens begins bombarding your snailbox, email, phone, work, school and family with threats, insults and general harassment. You are forced to drop out of school and quit your job as a result of constant attacks. You are shunned and ridiculed in public as anywhere you go, you are instantly recognized. Although it may seem to be just a second-rate Hollywood nightmare scenario reminiscent of "The Net," this sort of "organized mob" justice is being dealt out freely in South Korea where net usage is booming. So freely, in fact, that almost 1 in 10 of 13-65 year-olds has felt its sting. Could this trend hit the U.S.? Will policing net behavior eventually become necessary?"
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame. What in South Korea gets you ostracized, in the U.S. get you on "Entertainment Tonight".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Could this trend hit the U.S.?
No, because every smart admin trys to block all IPs from Korea!
Oh do you mean could rumors and shit started by people in the US hit hard here? They already do. People are always into drama, especially online. They are hiding behind their computers and believe they are anonymous.
There's really nothing better than receiving threatening e-mails at work and home as well as subscriptions to gay magazines, threats of violence against your home, family, and dog just because you locked a thread on a forum.
It really makes the Internet fun.
If they are issuing "real" threats or abusing services, they should face the consequences of those abuses. It shouldn't require any new Internet Police(tm) or anything like that, the e--mailer/ISP/local rules for harassment, etc, or abuse of service should do it.
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Who needs the net to ruin lives when you have the traditional media? Ask the parents of JonBenet Ramsey or Richard Jewel about having your life ruined by false accusations. Do you think CNN will ever have to pay for either spectacle?
an ill wind that blows no good
It's just a larger scope than it used to be.
Small towns used to be this way (and still are) where every small little thing get talked about and blown out of proportion.
In the town I grew up in merely having a young males car parked outside a young females house while he goes and visits another young male across the street will spawn all kinds of rumors and anger.
Television has been doing this for quite a while, just take the recent developments in the Jon Benet Ramsey case. I can't even remember at this point why everyone threw so much anger at the parents.
Until people stop hating at first site this won't go away.
The nannies, values police,and the do-gooders will do anything to get the cops policing our wild-west network into some surburbaned picket-fenced wasteland. This excuse seems as useful as all the "for the children" excuses.
Harassment is harassment, whether it takes place in person or over the net. Stalking is stalking, online or not. The laws we have are already adequate to cover these scenarios. The only problem, of course, is identification, but no law will help solve that.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame. What in South Korea gets you ostracized, in the U.S. get you on "Entertainment Tonight".
I can think of several examples where spammers' personal info was posted to Slashdot, and the (alleged) spammer was subjected to harassment in virtually all of the ways described in the article.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I'm an American with a Korean wife. I speak Korean, and my wife, kids and I watch Korean TV shows together. We especially like the game shows. The game shows mostly have popular stars as participants.
Certain participants are so popular, that if a not-so-popular star insults a popular one (even during a game called "Dangyon Haji", or "Of Course", where the OBJECT of the game is to insult the other person until they quit), that not-so-popular one will get bombarded with hate e-mail, hate-posts, and sometimes they even get bombarded by physical objects! Their popularity drops dramatically. Some stars have been known to lose intentionally to avoid earning the wrath and ire of the "fans."
I don't think this has anything to do with the fact that they "teched-up" rapidly before online etiquette was formed. This has more to do with emotion-driven Korean culture. The word "fan" comes from "fanatic," and that is what some of the "fans" really are!
For instance, you can get on places like MySpace or USENET, pose as your victim, and start saying crazy things that will eventually find its way to future employers.
Or you can pose as other people saying nasty things about that person and make it sound like a large number of people hate this person.
Using anonymous proxies (or remailers on USENET) will make you increasingly resistant to being discovered and punished; but even if you are, that person will still have to clear their name with employers and such that don't know the "rest" of the story (such as, it's all a lie and perhaps their attacker is now in jail). The thing is, employers would rather not hire people mired in that kind of drama; so even if God tells them the truth, that only bolsters their decision not to hire the victim of such online malevolence.
This has all the elements it needs to be the next wave of domestic terrorism in America: anyone can do it, and the damage can be overwhelming. Plus, law enforcement is typically too slow and unconcerned with dealing with people who do this, and when this wave of terrorism hits its stride, civil courts will be crushed by all the thousands - or millions - of court cases, as every Tom Dick and Harry in the world takes advantage of what will be seen as the most powerful weapon of mass defamation in history.
I say "in history" because it's super cheap (free), super easy, super effective and super devastating, if the harasser knows how to do it right in the correct forums where information will propagate far and wide.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Last year my uncle has been the subject of his ex-lover's efforts to destroy his reputation on TV, Philippine newspapers & local blogosphere in a bid to get their child back, win in the court of popular opinion & for money. His ex-lover used her media & political connection to go on live TV to accuse my uncle of being a murderer, land grabber, gangster, etc (basically making him out as a Hannibal Lector if he was a lawyer) and told people to look him up on the Internet. Seeming she couldnt mention his name due to legal reasons she had to mention a Philippine Army General who harassed our family 15 years ago as a key word so people would know who he was.
You see my uncle is a lawyer who is a giant question mark in the mainstream media & the general public and it doesnt help his name shows up in a lot of court decisions posted on our government's Supreme Court website. For the curious by-stander who just happened to have a casual interest you would automically assume my uncle was truelly that "evil" seeming he was mentioned in so many contraversial Supreme Court cases. I do not blame people making such brash assumptions seeming court documents are long, wordy & use very legalistic terms that would cause any non-lawyer to scratch his head and make wild guesses. It is far easier to trust a female celebrity guesting on the local equivalent of the Oprah who bashes my uncle as the devil than to make the effort to get the whole unvarnished truth through court documents.
Because of these lengthy legal papers people automatically think all the things the ex-lover said was true, that he was a real monster.
If only people took the time to read the legal papers they'd see that the ex-lover was manipulating them. It pisses me off that the ex-lover had to dredge up our family feud & shame that legally ended with a Philippine Supreme Court decision back in 1991. I will probably never forgive her for that.
I can relate to the Korean fellow whose reputation was tarnished because of very malicious rumors & half truths spread by those who make assumptions.
I know a lot of people dont like lawyers but please, no taste-less jokes that lawyers deserve this kind of flack. I also know by not including links my post doesnt pack the punch that would really make the discussion & I apologize.
Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business. Several members did not approve of her extra-curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.
She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one afternoon.
She emphatically told George and several others that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing. George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing.
Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house ... and left it there all night.