Slashdot Mirror
The Snoop Next Door Is Posting to YouTube
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Your most trivial missteps are increasingly ripe for exposure online, reports the Wall Street Journal, thanks to cheap cameras and entrepreneurs hoping to profit from websites devoted to the exposure. From the article: 'The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure as well. There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking and leering to littering and general bad behavior. One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs. Capturing newspaper-stealing neighbors on video is also an emerging genre. Helping drive the exposés are a crop of entrepreneurs who hope to sell advertising and subscriptions.' But other factors are at work, including a return to shame as a check on social behavior, says an MIT professor."
I don't see a problem. You can either forgoe shameful behavior or keep it hidden. If you're doing something you would be ashamed of then you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you're doing something that you feel you shouldn't be ashamed of but that others might want to shame you for, then keep it private. I call that civilization. For those that say they are entitled or should have the right, if most people agree then there is no reason to be ashamed. If most people don't agree then maybe you need to reassess whether or not you should be ashamed.
I'm betting some will disagree with me. If you can provide me an example of where I might be wrong I'm certainly willing to think about it. Offhand, I couldn't think of an example on my own where my logic wouldn't work.
First post?
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Ceiling cat is watching you MASTURBATE.
the best way to get ppl to stop doing something that's wrong or bad or undesirable or innapropriate is to have millions of people laugh at them or get pissed at them after putting it on the internet. My neighbors are freakin weirdos and I'm pretty sure I've heard them burying dead bodies in the backyard at night like on The Burbs so I am so getting out my camera!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
But please, for the survival of the human race... get a real job!
Everyone wants to cash in on the latest gold rush, but isn't it time we rewarded excellence instead of stupidity? Although there must be some form of corrective benefit for being exposed as a petty thief. (although eventually we'll be living in the society where you can't misstep once or you become suddenly exiled from your own life)
Balance? Complacency? A lack of appropriate countermeasures? Who knows how this is going to play out, but many of us will watch it nonetheless!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs.
Awesome. I've been waiting for just such a service for years.
I was one step removed from actually mailing the stuff to my fellow apartment dwellers in the mid 1990s. I was so tired of slogging through it on my way down to my car which I could never park in my assigned spot because they took it from us.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
For too long, society in large part has not been focussed on what other people think, rather it has been several decades of the ME generation. If I had already installed my X10 motion activated cameras, perhaps I could have caught the little fscks that egged my car within a week of moving to a very nice new neighborhood.
:)
I really don't think that there is anything wrong with someone physical, and personally filming people doing bad things and posting them to the web. Its little to no different than them telling their friends, or passing the gossip around the local grocery store... just a little more convincing
The point here is simple; its a bit of advice: if you don't want to have people on youtube seeing you pee off the back patio, don't pee off the back patio.
Sure, there are other cases where things seem to be exaggerated, but for most of this, its not, and it is good to see the community cleaning up in their own back yards.
Now, if this is from police cameras that are perusing neighborhoods on a regular basis, I'm going to shout out against that. But if your neighbor catches you doing something bad, sorry, you shouldn't have been doing that... 'you plays, you pays' as the saying goes.
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First of all, I get something to laugh at. Entertainment is good. And secondly people might actually start acting more civilized? GREAT! Shame SHOULD be a check on social behavior. If you're ashamed, that's your brain telling you that you're "actin' a fool" and you should probably correct the behavior.
If you're doing it in public, you either don't care, or you deserve to look like a jackass/moron. Not to mention I'd love to find out who's stealing my newspaper.
My rantings, only longer and with better spelling..
...that it's fairly simple to avoid becoming a target of these websites:
Pick up after your dog.
Park correctly.
Don't take things that don't belong to you.
I know that if people in my apartment complex did this, we could all live happier lives, particularly the picking up after dogs bit.
Don't want to have a video of you stealing your neighbor's paper show up on YouTube? Don't steal your neighbor's paper.
"I don't see a problem. You can either forgoe shameful behavior or keep it hidden. If you're doing something you would be ashamed of then you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you're doing something that you feel you shouldn't be ashamed of but that others might want to shame you for, then keep it private. I call that civilization."
Hey everyone! I illegally download from Sealand.
Good. The more people that realize they may be being filmed in public, the less likely they will be to act in a reckless manner. If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide? The line does get drawn at the borders of my property, though... that's another story.
...a camera can be there. As long as it's a public area and a police officer can be there without warrant, or a private area where the owner consents, I don't see the problem. Only when it's somewhere where the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy should there be any question as to whether it should be tolerated.
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Furthermore, there is the issue of a mistaken act. Think of Seinfield where Jerry's girlfriend sees him scratching his nose in his car. From her angle it looks like he's picking his nose. Should that go on these sites?
Finally, even with shameful acts, there is the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. What if you stumble home drunk, piss on your car, and collapse in your doorway. Now, first of all, that's pretty pathetic, and you probably deserve ridicule. But that ridicule should come from friends and neighbours. Should that video go online, where your employer might see it? Does it have your name on it? What if it affects future employment opportunities?
I don't think it's as clear cut as "don't do something you'd be ashamed to do."
* This bikini cam brought to you by the Ft. Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce. Visit scenic South Florida!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's interesting that so far, most of the posts here are saying "What's the problem? Don't do stupid and shameful things, no problems", yet wherever the issue of CCTV Brit style comes up, it's nothing but outrage. What's the difference?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
including a return to shame as a check on social behavior
My local newspaper does this, they have people send in pictures of local eyesores. My neighbors never sent in pics of me, but they did call the police to complain about my unregistered vehicle. Its illegal to have an unregistered vehicle, unless its in a garage or you a cop(can you say class warfare, apparently cause registered cars look much better... Anyway, someone should start a list of noisy neighbors who should mind their own fucking business.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
"Are you saying the majority is always in the right? I can think of a few examples where the majority would deem an act "shameful" that shouldn't really be. Stealing a newspaper is (in most cases) shameful, as is not cleaning up after your dog. But what about, for example, getting rejected when asking someone out? "
Why would getting rejected when asking someone out be shameful? That strikes me as a self image problem. So that's one attempt at an example, do you have others?
"Finally, even with shameful acts, there is the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. What if you stumble home drunk, piss on your car, and collapse in your doorway. Now, first of all, that's pretty pathetic, and you probably deserve ridicule. But that ridicule should come from friends and neighbours. Should that video go online, where your employer might see it? Does it have your name on it? What if it affects future employment opportunities? "
I'll agree with pathetic but I can't agree with the part about deserving ridicule. Deserving empathy, sympathy, and HELP come to mind first. If it affects future employment opportunities then maybe it will promote a change in behavior. Realistically, it's unlikely an interviewer would assume anything other than "hey, this guy kinda looks like the guy in that drunken video I saw in the web".
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
"... and Jehovah's Witnesses going door-to-door distrbing the peace ..."
Annoying as they are, they pale in comparison to billboards and the likes. Get rid of the big and permanent stuff, and then focus on the more minor and transient nuisances.
Well said.
There is another angle to the "punishment should fit the crime" point, and that is this: the internet's memory is too long. The old-fashioned kind of shame was visited upon the offender by eyewitnesses, and after a while the incident would be forgotten. Nor could their memories of the incident be accurately spread to non-witnesses. And that was usually sufficient.
Not so with YouTube.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
...but then you had to go and call "first post." THAT is something to be ashamed of. The typing of those two words made your entire post seem more contrived and less intellectually significant.
When people make an intelligent first post without pointing out that it is first post, they seem thoughtful and genuine. Once people call first post, they seem like dorks who just want attention.
Keep that one private.
Unfortunately, the Jehovah's Witnesses are covered under the First Amendment. But in communities where all door-to-door activity is banned (hey, that may be a predator working the doors!), they can posted and shamed right along with the Amway reps, Avon ladies, and Girl Scouts.
Disclaimer: I don't like Jehovah's Witnesses. I do like Avon ladies and Girl Scouts.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
If your neighbour is doing something antisocial you can talk to them and sort it out. It's depressing that so many people here think it's an acceptable response to publicly humiliate them.
I was in an unfortunate scenario a while back, I had to move back in with my parents for a month or two. And my teenage little sister is quite disgusting, doesn't flush the toilet, leaves trash all over the house, etc, and expects everyone else to clean it for her, it was getting to me. My attempts using normal avenues of compromise to remedy the situation were thawrted.
So I installed a keystroke logger on her laptop while she was at school, and waited til it captured her myspace password. I then proceeded to post bulletins in her name on her own profile with attached pictures of the disgusting messes. Oh man she was pissed, but guess what, a lot of the annoying stuff stopped, probably for fear of the repercussions. I know, its kind of an evil thing to do, but myspace is the only thing your average highschoolers care about these days.
The point of this is to make people uncomfortable.
If you're in public - and, in the case of most of these problems, not even on your own property - your expectation of privacy is zero. Zilch. Therefore, act as if people were watching you because, odds are, they are.
Maybe we could use some more shame in our society. Anything to silence the Britney Spears and Paris Hiltons of the world.
Our apartment parking lot was crowded. People used to squeeze into a gap that wasn't intended for car parking ... and would make it extremely difficult for me to get my car out. I started leaving an uncracked egg sitting on the hood of their car. The message was clear: "I could easily break this on your car, but I'm being nice and just warning you."
There were no fingerprints and no witnesses (it was an underground garage).
Worked like a charm. They were blocking more than one parking space, so it wasn't clear who was mad at them.
Who remembers I See You by Damon Knight? I still remember that little story from a Daw anthology. Creeped me out.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I might rephrase it as "anybody can refresh their memory if they want to", for you don't have to watch it repeatedly on youtube. But regardless, I think there is a good side to this. Some of what is considered shameful by the majority of our population should not be so, and continued exposure to it may cause some rethinking of the issue. We may end up with a better common definition of shame.
The most prominent examples are things in the sexual area. Nudity is often considered shameful; IMHO it should not be. Necking in public is often considered worse than fighting in public; IMHO it should be love not war.
On the other hand, shame may increase for some things. For certain activities like lying - which IMHO is undershamed - that would also be a good thing.
The end result of all this is forced conformity.
There is nothing shameful about sitting at a restaurant and remembering that you need to call your doctor.
Some asshat posting that information online - along with your personal info - is just trying to bully you into behaving the way they want you to, for no good reason.
You're now watching your back and altering your behavior not just to serve the arbitrary and wildly capricious standard of "normalness" to avoid being ridiculed, but in fact you're held hostage to anyone's momentary whims that may have nothing to do with enforcing normalcy.
If they see you stumbling at a bus stop they can post it and cause your equally immature and whimsical customers who might have seen you on youtube, to refuse to do business. That's damaging.
We have already reached the end game of the surveillance state. Rejoice - a great reckoning is due very soon and I'm not kidding.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"Mostly my worry would not be documenting "shameful" behavior in itself, but being inaccurate about it, and essentially punishing people that have not actually done anything wrong."
You mean like how slashdot does it? Deciding on the rightness or wrongness based on the "documented shameful" behaviour? Even stooping so far as to give out personal (or not so personal) info and telling others to "/." their phones, E-mail, and (in one case their mail box with phony magazine subscriptions).
"And of course that greatly helps the small minority of people that really do have something to be shameful about; nobody's going to care if a possible pornographer (or rapist, or pedophile) moves into the neighbourhood since any such accusations more than likely are false, and you'd find the same kind of misinformation on two-thirds of all residents anyway."
The boy who cried wolf...one too many times. Keep that in mind slashdot, next time you convene the court of public opinion.
"Noise is not just useless data, it degrades the real data as well. In this case, I think it is a good thing since it effectively restores privacy again."
Alright everyone, go back to whatever petty crimes you were engaged in. Cover has been restored.
How about this one.
One guy comes up on you and starts trash talking you for no reason, and you get pissed off and cuss back at them. Someone else, their teammate, is filming you.
Tomorrow, the part where you cussed back at them, is put on Youtube, but not the part where they provoked you.
Now those millions of people you mentioned, believe that you're wrong or bad or undesirable or innapropriate.
I know. I did this to an obnoxious jock way back in college before youtube was a twinkle in God's eye. Back then USENET was youtube.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
To what sense is shame still an effective deterrent? To feel shame requires that one sense that in some way his actions are socially unacceptable. As the boundaries of our culture seemed to have been stretched further and further, what was once unacceptable is now acceptable. For example, once homosexual behavior was deemed unacceptable. Now, it seems at times, homosexuality is almost a "status symbol." Increasingly, rudeness seems to be tolerated. Right wing and Left wing political figures and commentators insult one another with abandon. It seems to me that there are an increasing number of people who seem unable to sense when they have crossed the boundaries (or else they don't care).
Short hop from that to using Google to see if any available videos/images/etc on the potential employee. Something you and others have ignored is the complete frameup. Lots of ways to accomplish such, from creative editing to spiking your drink. "Hey everyone, check out this shot of alshithead in bed with a 12 year old." Remember now, you shouldn't have been doing that to get caught!
Ask your elders what they would have thought of this if it had existed when their 57 Chevy was just a rockin with the windows all steamed up. Well, they shouldn't have been doing that you say? You have any idea how easy it would be to make that happen without anyone in the care? The world is too full of pratical jokers and vindicative people to rate this kind of a thing as not a problem.
Videos can go both ways, they can persecute someone or even save them. Google for how Larry Flynt saved John Delorean with some video he got hold of with evidence that the FBI forced Delorean to smuggle cocaine into the US and then arrested him for it. Now think about this, what if only video of Delorean actually committing the crime had existed? He shouldn't have cooperated and done it? Read the history better, they told him they were going to kill his daughter if he didn't do it. What would you do?
How about I sit within surveillance distance of any party and start filming drunken behavior and post out of context clips.
Dude throws up whenever he's around a woman (hello, Dna2?), news on Youtube @11, oh yeah I forgot to mention - he was drunk at a party, and no one knows who I (the cameraman) am because I thoroughly washed and scrubbed all potential personal details from the video and posted it using some future high bandwidth version of http://www.boxofprox.com./ So much for a libel suit.
Good one about the nose scratching thing.
The devastating plans that can come from exploiting youtube this way are just in their infancy. In a year you will see terrors that will freeze your soul and make you a friggin hermit.
Stock up on red utility tape now.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Jehovah's Witnesses are covered under the First Amendment.
Well, yes and no. Saying what they want to say is their right, but coming onto my property is not. So, if I post a "no soliciting" sign, and a prosyltute comes up to my door to try to recruit me, they are told in no uncertain terms to leave and never come back. To date, I haven't even had to raise my voice to get rid of them. If one of them were to persist, then a call to the police and a restraining order would likely follow.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What people do in public becomes public property.
If someone acts like an arse in public, should not be surprised to find it posted on a website.
If they don't want anyone to post them doing disgraceful things in public, they should either refrain from doing something which people would find offensive... or if they are a true sociopath, they can always murder all the witnesses before they can post it online.
I would so dearly like to attach a video camera to my car, perhaps with a 30 second buffer, so that when I press the button to record an event, everything up to 30 seconds before the event is also recorded. Would much prefer a good quality video camera so that license plates are clearly visible.
I seem to recall that a few years ago, a man in Japan was fined for speeding based upon video evidence posted online...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Of course someone will disagree with you; you got first post.
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To a certain degree humiliation could be used as deterrent to commit crimes. One way to curb corruption in public offices is to install hidden cameras. -Lance - http://www.treo700.org/
In most municipalities cats are allowed to run loose. They don't form packs and eat small children like dogs do.
thanks, i'm already a shy-antisocial-recluse-hermit, now i have more reason to be a paranoid-shy-antisocial-recluse-hermit..
I followed some of the links in TFA, and for the most part have come to the conclusion that the article is spreading a bit of FUD.
There isn't all that much stuff here - pictures of bad driving, and not picking up your dogs poop sure, but a lot of them are "look at her wearing sweatpants in a dance floor", and "she didn't even try to understand baseball and is an elitist Ivy league bitch", stupid or misspelt signs, people who cut in line. Whatever. Its happened to all of us, and we've all done it occasionally and you let it slip. Virtually no one is actually identified.
The article makes it seem like there is a new generation of social vigilantes watching for your every misstep. In reality its just a bunch of whiny bitches with a camera and an internet connection. Theres no "return to shame as a check on social behavior" here.
That says nothing about the potential for things to go that way. I doubt that will happen - I think most people are reasonable and have better things to do with their time. IMHO, social conformity is more of an issue in some Asian societies, but not really here. So I think you are safe wearing your sweatpants to the dance club (she got past the bouncers... ) and most of the time all that will happen is people will laugh at you and forget.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
I, for one, welcome our new McCarthyistic videotaping overlords!
How do we shame people who post on YouTube?
... and then they built the supercollider.
What are the odds that, even if someone does catch you on camera not picking up your dog-doo, that anyone you care about will ever see it on YouTube? I certainly don't browse YouTube assembling a hit-list of people who don't pick up their dog poo! If this phenomenon ever becomes widespread, there will be way too many of this videos to wade through, and people won't watch them.
Did anyone else think that this was about Snoop Dogg?
Someone tape a person whose dog shits in a public place and they don't pick it up. Then I want to see the videomaker pick it up and smash it in the face of the dog owner.
That would be funny.
You don't have to be caught on video to have snoopers ruin your day. Spare a thought for the guys who kept a mannequin (named Lucy) in their apartment "to keep the place tidy", and then got raided by the cops because someone thought they spotted a body..
Perhaps not, but cats are more likely to get rabies, especially stray or feral cats.
Also cats carry a rather nasty brain parasite, spread in their crap, which can cause miscarriage and mental retardation in the case of a pregnant woman getting infected. It also has some interesting behavior modification effects. It's estimated that at least half of the people in the world are infected. Got a sandbox for your kids to play in? A garden you like to work in? You're also providing all those roaming cats with a toilet and most likely you and your kids are infected.
Not to mention spreading fleas and ticks all over the neighborhood until your kids can't play in the yard either because of the infestation or because of the spraying you had to do to try to get rid of it.
Have you NEVER done something that could be seen as shamefull? Have you NEVER been drunk as a student? Have you NEVER behaved as an asshole when young? Have you NEVER wore stoopid clothes where people laughed at you? Never ever in your whole life did something you are ashamed of?
Seriously? Are you a bot?
I know I have. It is called learning and living.
It amazes me that so many see no problem in this. It all sounds like: if you don't do anything wrong, there should not be a problem.
This is just a modern version of a pillory without the basic justice even the people in the middle ages had.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sounds to me like someone doesn't like cats.
One little benefit of cats that people seem to forget is that they are extremely good at rodent control. Small farmers keep cats around the farm for a reason. Works perfectly well in town too. Woe betide the community that forgets this little tidbit.
My community quite a few years ago enacted a "leash law" for cats. Now there are far fewer cats running around. A few years after this (combined with construction that leveled a lot of wooded areas adjacent to town) there was a noticable increase in the amount of rodents in places where there had been next to no rodent problems for years.
By noticable increase I mean: Discovering rat nests outside in places where rats had never been seen before. Finding a rat's nest in my barbeque grill. Actually seeing rats. Having rats find their way into my house (boy that was fun... NOT.)
I'll take cats running around outside, shitting wherever they please, over rats anyday. As for fleas and ticks, rats carry those as well. You can bathe and dip and powder cats and dogs. I don't expect rats would be very cooperative in this regards.
Couldn't this backfire? What I mean is that the subjects of these videos might see their activity as even more 'amusing' because it is on YouTube. Like a medal of honour or something. Just like what has happened to Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) here in the UK.
Not so much a contradiction, but rather another case: social "civil disobediance", such as a gay couple kissing in public. This will force one of two reactions: tolerance, and intolerance. Accordingly, shame can be turned around. I believe that this is called "political correctness".
Hmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Intolerance of intolerance, and people having to force things in our faces in order to retain the right privately. I think that I prefer old-fashioned liberalism.
Wikileaks, no DNS
This type of activity has been happening to celebs and famous/known people since the dawn of time. Now, finally, everyone gets their chance to to be under the microscope and judged, so things can go two ways: people stop doing anything for fear of ridicule, or people are more accepting of other people's activities.
Although I don't like it, I suspect that people will just stop doing anything, since the acceptance of others seems beyond the capabilities of the majority of society.
Listen to my music.
This is worrying. I see a lot of comments along the lines of "If you don't want to be shamed on camera, simply don't do whatever it is they're filming you for!"
I hate to be the guy to Godwin a thread, but well, I have to be that guy today. Think about how well you folks would have fit in with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia... "Well, if you don't want us filming you and posting it, STOP BEING SO DAMN JEWISH IN PUBLIC!!!" or "Well, if you don't want us turning you in, comrade, stop talking about how great capitalism is!"
The world would be a lot nicer place if people would worry about themselves and their own lives, and stop worrying about what other people are doing. This advice scales all the way from global politics down to you and your neighbor's dog crap.
From http://www.webvideozone.com/public/88.cfm
If you plan to use a person's image for commercial purposes, you need to get a signed video release form from that individual.
There are some exceptions to this rule. For example, if you shoot a crowd scene of people in a public area, you generally do not need a video release form from every person in the crowd. By being in a public area, we all give up our 'reasonable expectation of privacy.'
However, this does not mean you can go out and shoot images of identifiable people in public, and then sell those images for commercial use (e.g., in a clip art library). If you do, this could be considered an invasion of privacy (in some states), and you could be opening yourself up to an expensive lawsuit.
So,
you disagree with a woman who's holding 24 items in the 13 item checkout line. You tell her, politely, 'Please use another line'.
She tells you to mind your own business.
You see no point in arguing further, so you let it go.
NOT HER. SHe flips out the camera phone, and before you know it, YOU are the pervery who grabbed her ass in public.
(It could also be that she does not like your skin color and does not appreciate taking advice from a darker shade, Hey, happens!)
boo hoo. poor her.
So, there you are. judged guilty without even a trial.
A day later, your boss reads a posting about the holla sites and decides out of sheer curiosity to check it out.
WHat does he find there? (Your review is coming up btw, and the company just rewrote its policy on harassment etc)
Oh, pray to godalmightly that some local DA does not use use the opportunity as a PR to show how he is cracking down on this sort of thing by making an example of you. with some bad luck, you might even be accused of 'terrorising' the lady in questions.
This is america, where there's NO concept of a persons trustworthiness, reputation, or standing in society. No matter how good a gentleman you are, no matter how fugly the woman who accused you is, no matter how satisfying a married life you have, you are instantly accused and judged to be an assgrabber. IN america, no matter how good a person you are, you are jusst a criminal wiating to be accused.
Ofcourse, you have the option of
trying to hire a lawyer, ruining yourself financially and salvaging your reputation (she's just a 15$/hr admin asst, fat chance you will recover the cost even if you win). Even if you win, and have the site pull your story, no way will you recover your reputation. People will always wonder why the story came up, if things are actualy okay with yoru wife and you, etc etc.
To add insult to Injury, the judge might say something like ' while this is regrettable, the ruining of a few people's lives is justified because of the greater good these websites do' etc etc. yeah right.
So be nice to the nasty women. And guys too! Be nice to anyone who can take your picture!
I think this is funny. It's ok for other people to video tape you and record everything you do, but it's bad for the government to do it. Of course, the government doesn't go posting your embarassing moments to YouTube either. It is very ironic that the people who condemn the government for wanting to put cameras up everywhere somehow think this is ok based on the same arguments that the pro-public camera people use. "If you're doing nothing wrong, there is nothing to be afraid of.". We have seen the enemy... and he is us.
Sometimes if you have the right contacts, you can find out everything you need to know.
For example, someone was harassing my friends girlfriend. I have access to certain data where I can get a persons location. Another friend has access to criminal history data, and so on. From just a first name, last name and approximate YOB, we located the puke. Had to pull data from a bunch of places but it all clicked.
We just used the tools available to every law enforcement agency in the U.S.
Just when the TV industry is loosing the young ones to the "internet", 2 nerds create a technically mediocre video sharing site that becomes popular amazingly quickly, manages to keep up with the surging bandwidth demand somehow, escapes copyright and inappropriate content concerns remarkably easily, gets folded under the mighty Google umbrella before long and even gets a ringing endorsement in Time magazine's "Person of the Year is YOU!" stunt.
It looks a lot like an underhanded attempt to lure the viewer demographics lost to scattered internet content back to one easily controlled and monitored marketing channel.
He didn't do anything even the most conservative shop owner would think was wrong, or think his customers would think was wrong, so there is no way the video is going to hurt the kids jobs prospects directly.
But there is a lot of kids who got famous in an early age that have emotional problems from it (Michael Jackson would be an extreme example), and many kids who are ridiculed by their peers also get various kind of problems. And this kid was ridiculed by the whole world.
The self confidence he used to have might be crushed, and if so, that is likely to cost him jobs, friends, and romance. That is, it can very well ruin his life. It doesn't have to, he might be of the "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger type". The "what doesn't kill me, cripple me" reaction to abuse is more common though.
I have just drafted an article focusing on the lack of available data when people conduct this kind of vigilantism. http://sidragon.net/weblog/2007/01/video-vigilanti sm/ Opinions would be appreciated.
Why bother.
I believe anti-social behaviour happens because of the failure of the modern family to pass certain social norms to children. Maybe this has to do with the large populations of modern nations and therefore with the loss of the psychological sense of community in our societies.
In a small community people who fall in anti-social behaviour would get either ridiculed or mentored by a friend or parent. Perhaps this is what happens with the Internet now: Internet users feel like being in a world community and therefore tend to correct others. However, I believe that they do this in the wrong way, as a person who gets ridiculed online may loss their job or be forced to leave their university.
People who video anti-social behaviour may feel like little police officers doing something good for society, or they may do this just for fun. The bad thing is, the filmed people are humans just like us but their identity is not known to the video posters, and it is very easy to objectify a stranger, especially when you know that they will have difficulty finding you after you say or post something bad about them online.
Perhaps schools instead of educating the children should educate their parents, first.
> And how do you know that the idiot close enough to film you for that minor infraction is not
> psychopathic enough to lean over and spit in your food while you're gone?
If you are paranoid enough to worry that the person at the next table will spit in your food while you are at the restroom, you probably shouldn't eat out anyway. Even if you watch over the food from the moment it is served, it doesn't rule out the possibility that the person who made the food, or who served the food, might have spit it as well.
Better stay at home, lock the door, at eat only vegetables you have grown yourself in artificial light.
The issue about someone being a jerk and being shamed for it is something that happens with or without the internet, it is just a matter of degree I suppose. The issues that I do see with it though are veracity and personal information.
;)
First of all, we all watch tv and movies and we know how good special effects are getting. Now that technology is getting to the point that most people with a computer and time on their hands could generate some very believable things. So if you've ever made someone mad who is to say that they wouldn't want to 'get revenge'. I see this as probably rare and unlikely, but at the outside scope of possibility. The people that post are anonymous, so you have absolutely no way to know your 'accuser'.
The second issue though is that people are starting to go from public humiliation to being vigilantes. They are posting people's information and they are showing up at people's houses to redress what they see as issues from the bad behavior. The idea of completely short circuiting the justice system and having the average citizen (or groups of them) become judge and jury is a scary thought.
Example: Your neighbor borrows your car and runs someone off the road - possibly even injuring them. They get a snapshot with your license plate, post your information online and people come to hunt YOU down. What can you do to clear yourself? Nothing, and this information is going to be out there for life.
We've already been here in a lot of ways though, because if you get accused of a crime and it hits the news - the public sees you accused. If they find you innocent it might not be interesting enough to hit the news again.
So the scary part is not about where the trend is now, but where people are going to take it. Like any tool (or weapon) the good or bad of it depends on the user. So as long as you trust every person on the internet, or at least every person you run into in your life - it's all fine and good.
At the very least don't piss off artists that are good with Photoshop and have a YouTube account
How about movies of women visiting abortion clinics? Men visiting brothels?
Or, where I live, you could risk the life of some Muslim high-school girls by publishing photographs of them kissing non-Muslim boys.
Should two men be allowed to walk hand in hand in a public park, without getting their picture on www.godhategays.com?
Or what about people who aren't doing anything ethically wrong (even by the fanatics who would consider any of the above examples morally evil), like people who are overweight, mentally ill, bad dressers, clumsy, plain ugly, or otherwise doesn't live up to the norm of society?
But by pointing out the stupidity of others, don't fall in the trap of becoming a 'snot'. For, as Larry Wall said, "There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over"
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Being Jewish has nothing to do with being a dumbass. A dumbass that possesses a purpose modified, noisy exhaust system and guns the motor up and down residential streets. A dumbass whom blares his subwoofers at midnight. A dumbass whom does both of the above and reaches 45 mph in a populated school zone with kids all over the narrow road.
I have ZERO problem with videos of things that would be crimes (or will be crimes when law catches up with the lack of common sense) if directly viewed by an officer of the law are posted to such web sites.
Are you anti-Semitic? If not, quit comparing the horrendous experience of the Jews to that of dumbasses with no common sense.
Oh I get it. They got him.
r bate%E2%80%A6_God_kills_a_kitten
Here are some of my favorite moments involving ceiling cat.
"Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate."
And who can forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_time_you_mastu
Oh Noes!!!!
Ceiling cat, I pine for you!!!
And I'll have you know that just because we own three small dogs (two shitzus and a tibetan terrier) doesn't mean we let them crap just anywhere and don't pick it up. It's not a size-of-the-dog issue, it's an irresponsible owner issue.
John
Unlike a billboard, both the mormons and the jehovah's witnesses will try to ring my doorbell. And its never at a good time ... how would they like it if we all went to their meeting places and started ringing their doorbells while they're busy doing their sh*t?
The local SPCA gets 2,000 dogs and 25,000 cats a year. Most of the dogs find homes. Most of the cats get put down. Why so many cats? Because cats are allowed to run loose.
Leash laws for cats would change this.
I agree that its not the size of the dog ... but I've seen a LOT of small dogs on those 25' retractable leashes, where the dog is far enough away that the owner can "pretend" not to see "precious" taking a dump.
Or other times, people trying to "nudge" the turd off the sidewalk and onto the road rather than pick it up. You really can't get away with that when its a 5-pound log from a St-Bernard even if you wanted to, but enough people try it with smaller dogs.
And then there's the ones that "walk" their dog behind their bike ... the dog has to take a dump "on the run" and the owner doesn't even look ... I wish I had taken a video of that. Its just plain cruel.
My situation is not very close to your examples, but since shame is a major factor, I'll discuss it, to see what you think.
My wife was an unwed mother. Maybe no one here recalls, but in the 1980s, shame was a popular public policy response to single motherhood. Before the discussion tilts to what people think of out-of-wedlock births, let me just say that my wife and I see both sides of that, and we're certainly not "pro single parenthood". That seems to be one of the popular "liberal" responses to "conservative" shame. Trust me; it's not that simple.
My point is simply that shame in this context is not particularly useful and certainly not simple. Consider just for a second the impact that shame has on the children of single parents. Believe me, it can be devastating. I don't think that's the effect the "pro shame" crowd has in mind, but it's real, and I doubt that this is the only issue where that's true. Consider the wife and kids of the drunken pisser discussed elsewhere in this thread.
I do sympathize, but I think shame has to have limits. I also believe that a lot of shame-mongers would not want the cameras turned on their own personal demons. I've never managed to finish the The Scarlet Letter (four separate attempts), but I'm sure it's relevant here.
Thank you, sir, you do a service to us all.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
When is the last time you've gone to church during a service and found the door locked? I imagine that the doors are open during service times for Mormon tabernacles and Jehovah's Witness Halls. You can go and pester them inside--assuming you can get a word in edgewise...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I wrote it too ambiguously. You had every right to reply like you did.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Actually, some of my friends and I did that ... we "infiltrated" a Jehovah's Witness group, and it turns out that most of them don't really believe ... they just go there because if they don't their spouse/parent/whoever will make their life miserable (ok, MORE miserable).
Memories are meant to fade, Lenny! They're designed that way! -- Strange Days
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
The original blog posting mentioned in the first part of the WSJ story, is here:
_ burgess_is_1.html
l _street_jou.html
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2006/12/eva
A later response to being featured in the WSJ story is here:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2007/01/wal
The debate is getting quite heated. Also, there is an interesting legal argument that has to do with the number-shouter's potential privacy claims, and potentially many more: the expectation of limited privacy.
Pop on over and have a look, if you can be bothered - the postings are getting quite long.
I think you understand where some of this could potentially go. I think it's a matter of getting people to conform to how other people think things should be and it can go too far. The other problem is what about when these people are wrong, or it's mistaken identity? Then you can't take it back.
Stop being human, start being a mindless sheeple like the rest of these people, who would be too lacking in personality to ever do anything out of line in public or priviate.
The sheeple of the world rule, and the rest of us better watch out.
There are some people who deserve to maybe be outed for stupid behaviour, but making a call to the doctors office, should not get someone put on some stupid blog, where the world get's their name and phone number, and the potential to be stalked.