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.
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.
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.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
...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.
...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.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
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.
Why not cure both problems - pick up the dog shit they didn't pick up (use a plastic bag) and "fill up" the door handles of their car that they so inconsiderately parked in your spot.
If they "discover" this at night when its dark, so much the better ... shit happens ...
Just remember to post the video :-)
"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.
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
The difference is that in this case the public has access to this material, which causes much less concentration of power (bad in my books) than it being restricted to one centralized organization such as the government. Like it or not, as technology progresses, physical privacy is on the way out. I'd much rather lose my privacy to everyone than lose it only to the government.
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
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.
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).
Not to mention the fact that far too many employers have fairly extensive checks done on potential employees now.
That "harmless" video could impact your career for the rest of your life.
The fact that businesses need to realize that a person's personal life is just that - personal - and they have no business basing their hiring decisions on perfectly normal, legal activities that are done outside of the workplace is a whole other matter.
Remember, boys and girls, things on the internet never really go away.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
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? These people, by definition of their behavior, are crazy enough to do that. Or, should I use the more accurate word... fanatical... dictatorial... stodgy, hateful, spiteful, mean spirited, utterly lacking a life of their own... People who expose you online for making/taking a call in a restaurant need themselves to be checked in somewhere for their own good.. and ours.
As for some videos being ignored... no, not really. I'm a top manager at a really big small business (yes, contradiction there) and I know all about investigating applicants. I know my underling managers and I'd be hard pressed to hire someone who would see someone being humiliated online over some minor shit and not laugh at it and then see this person as a total joke and not a potential employee. It happens everywhere. Almost everyone is mentally at the point of doing that now.
They were actually set up for it by Reality TV.
Come back and visit this post in 5 years. You'll be shocked and awed by how much worse things have gotten by then than my dire predictions today. 5 years.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The Chicago solution to that problem is a hose and cold weather. People rarely park in the same place after they've had to chip through 3" of ice to get into the car.
-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.
Shame SHOULD be a check on social behavior.
Exactly!
People tend to forget that there are all kinds of ways to bring pressure to bear when someone is behaving badly or stupidly, and that leads to stupid shit like state legislators trying to outlaw teenager's fashion choices. The law is a very blunt instrument.
Incidentally, I would very much like to see shame used to regulate even more egregious examples of legislators wasting our money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I see your point, but not *all* forced conformity is eeeevil.
When I see some asshat park his Beamer diagonally across 4 prime spots in a crowded parking lot, or change lanes into a lane that's ending just to force his way into a gapless line of traffic ¼ mile up, I'd like him to conform to my notion of civilized behavior. I'm too lazy to actually film him myself & Tube the video, but I'd defend someone else's prerogative to do so.
On the other hand, the goofy, perpetually drunk & shirtless dude that lives in the building next to me & roams the complex talking to whoever will listen... well, he'd look goofy & probably amusing on YouTube, and I could post it & then have a good laugh over it with all my sensible neighbors, but I don't consider his odd behavior worthy of something like that.
Although some people find it impolite and annoying, I personally could give a rats ass if you talk on your cell phone at the next table at some restaurant. If you were pissing in the coffee pot at work, though, well... I guess conformance in and of itself is neutral, and must be judged according to the thing that is being conformed to.
Pi Ran Out
"So is it safe to say then that if you are in a restaurant and need to have an important conversation the polite thing to do is get up and go to the restroom lobby or outside to have the conversation? It is perfectly legitimate to make a phone call at normal conversational volume anywhere that a normal conversation could be held. I think what ticks of most of the cellphone bigots is that they can no longer hear both sides of the conversation. It has very little to do with the actual noise involved."
I think the problem is a little different than that. Normal conversation with other folks at the table is fine. Cell phone conversation at the table all too often entails the "CAN YOU HEAR ME KNOW" type of conversation due to background noise. Not to mention the fact that I usually don't eat at a restaurant by myself so I would choose to make that call away from the table so as not to be rude to the folks I'm eating with. I would normally say "excuse me, forgot I need make a short, important call" and then leave the table for a minute or two. Of course there are exceptions but my preferred way to make the call would be to excuse myself and leave the table. As to the cellphone bigots...fuck them. I'll be as polite as I can but I am the one who determines how important the call is. If I need take or make a call, I will. But, I'll always also do my best to minimize my call's impact on others.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Well, I do have a heart. I have been to business seminars and have lectured other employers about the evils of googling their employees. I was talking about the past when I talked about being hard pressed. You see, I go to networking events via meetup.com. The last 2 times I've included a 10 minute mini seminar on online defamation and the dangers of googling applicants.
My tools are a PDF file about Joe Applicant, and a projector.
Joe has all kinds of outrageous comments on USENET and MySpace and even drops some personally identifying things so you know which Joe this really is.
The audience, some of whom are actually employers, after about the 3rd or 4th page, all unanimously decide this guy shouldn't be hired.
Then the next shoe drops.
The next slide is John Doe and his anonymous remailers that he uses to post to USENET, and his use of http://boxofprox.com/ to view the web (MySpace included), and his http://myway.com/ or http://10minutemail.com/ account that he uses to register his MySpace account. They see the details of how he poses as Joe and says all kinds of plausibly crazy crap to make the guy unlikeable.
Unanimously unhireable quickly turns to unanimous "oops, we fucked up" and "WTF OMFG, can we somehow be sued for this somewhere down the line?"
One time one of these guys came back and told me he googled himself and found that someone had did something like this to him. The next seminar I will have him as a witness that this did in fact actually happen and that I'm not just scaremongering.
Now we're going to include youtube education, too.
I plan on taking this public service announcement nationwide, because while you and I feel these Grinches should be fired, the reality is, they rule corporate America. I know. I rub elbows with these people, which is why I started doing these 10 minute presentations.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
How do we shame people who post on YouTube?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Me too. Yesterday I downloaded a mermaid. Should I be ashamed?
... and then they built the supercollider.
There's also the huge issue of mistaken identity. Most of this video is going to be crap quality and at best [...] that's a pretty big assumption on your part to say that the guy you're interviewing is the SAME guy you saw online.
Very good point. I myself have been told several times that I have "dopplegangers" out there, despite the fact that I have always considered my appearance "unique".
A friend of mine has the misfortune of sharing a name with a gay porn star. The irony is, he is one of the most traditional, conservative people I know, and currently in law school.
Prejudice is prejudice. There's not a person alive who hasn't suffered embarassing moments. If nothing else, we ought to show some empathy for the human condition.
barack to the future?
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.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME KNOW"
;)
I feel your pain. God damn but it pisses me off when someone's shouting on a cell phone and they can't even spell right
.evom ton seod gis eht
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.
Thank you. I'm really glad you expanded on your original comment and responded gently and intelligently to my somewhat flamish post. I think I may have looked at your comment from the wrong angle. Could have been the spitting in my food comment. :) I'll blame it on one beer too many. It doesn't surprise me that there are folks out there who will try and wreck another's reputation. It's a shame but goes to show that there are some really nasty people out there. I've helped in the hiring process before and definitely made sure that what I find on the web about an applicant is considered with a grain of salt. I make sure people know that John Doe's post may not actually have been made by John Doe or may have been made by a completely different John Doe. References and interview results hold a lot more weight for me.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
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?