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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.
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."
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 :-)
There's a book that covers this. It's a science fiction book that explores a society that emerges when a freely available, perfectly portable surveillance technology emerges. It's based on projections of light-transmitting wormholes that can be put up *anywhere*, even in your house. Now, of course the initial usages are obvious, but once the novelty of "hee, I can look at people in their bathroom" wears off, the society becomes increasingly uncaring about the old social stigmas and shames. The technology also extends into time, letting people see what real history is like, rather than the history people accept, filtered through thousands of years of alterations.
Though it destroys many people's faiths of famous figures of the past, it also constructs a society where the shames have shifted from transient things like sexuality.
It's called "The Light of Other Days", and it was a collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.
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).
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."
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!
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.