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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."
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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...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.
You don't see a problem? The problem is How long does someone have to be ashamed for, and in front of how many people? You put something on the internet and potentially it's there forever and can be seen by millions, like with Star Wars Kid. I believe forgiveness is necessary in society - being allowed to learn from your mistakes and move on to become a better person - but we seem to have a culture where nobody forgives and nobody is allowed to forget. The people doing the uploading, who feel the need to shame and humliate someone this much, must be pretty unpleasant themselves.
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."
Well, there are those situations where society is wrong, and needs to be called on it.
Will society be responsive? That's the question.
If society is not responsive when society is wrong, then this is horrific and terrible and should be opposed.
If society is responsive, then we should welcome our new neighborly overlords.
Example: "Women shouldn't be allowed to vote." Suppose we had this high technology, and it's early 1900's. You and your subversive friend are having a discussion, and whisper that you think women should be able to vote. Obviously, you are trying to create a subversive cell movement; And unfortunately for you, someone with a microphone and a camera caught it, and posted it online. You are visibly and painfully ostracized from society. Anyone who thought at least some bit of sympathy for your way of thinking either changes their mind (against you,) or decides to stay quiet. Because a critical mass of people are able to express their opinion, society is incapable of changing, and the passages of perspective are blocked.
Will society be responsive in our future environment? We do not know. It seems reasonable to believe that the future may resemble a panopticon, but that piece of evidence alone doesn't tell us enough; We don't know what balancing forces may exist.
But, anyways: There's an example of how the system you described might be flawed.
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).
I guess I don't think like you, not anymore.
A few years ago one warm summer day, I got fuming mad at some woman who was going rather slow, worrying about something inside her station wagon and could not decide on a lane. I remember this vividly. Latter, honest to god, I saw her checking out at K-Mart. She was buying gatoraide for some reason and chatting with the clerk. She started crying. It turns out she had just moved to the city where I live, someone had stolen her pocket book, she could not find it in here car and she was having a really bad day. I made it a point to apologize for my behavior when we were both driving, cause you see, I was the real asshole.
You don't walk in these peoples shoes, please don't arbitrarily demonize them. Nobody ever gets to know anyone these days. I guess we are to busy hiding behind our gadgets. Really, how well do you know your neighbor? It's easy to judge someone badly, it's a little harder to get to know your fellow humans and see them for what the are, human. People are not just an inconvenience in your self-absorbed little world. Yea, I know, it's scary to say "hello, how are you, I'm such-and-such..." but you'll feel better if you truly live and let live.
*masturbates even more furiously*
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.