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.
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.
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!