China's Human Flesh Search Engine

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an interesting article about Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — that have become a phenomenon in China: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, or run out of town. It's crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results. 'In the United States, traditional media are still playing the key role in setting the agenda for the public,' says Jin Liwen. 'But in China, you will see that a lot of hot topics, hot news or events actually originate from online discussions.' In one well known case, when a video appeared in China of a woman stomping a cat to death with the sharp point of her high heel, the human flesh search engine tracked the kitten killer's home to the town of Luobei in Heilongjiang Province, in the far northeast, and her name — Wang Jiao — was made public, as were her phone number and her employer. 'Wang Jiao was affected a lot,' says one Luobei resident. 'She left town and went somewhere else.' The kitten-killer case didn't just provide revenge; it helped turn the human-flesh search engine into a national phenomenon. Searches have also been directed against cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system."

Comments

again

[circletimessquare]

i would like you to appreciate that the term "democracy" is not so narrow as you understand

the usa is a democracy, it is called a democracy by many people in the usa and abroad, both common and influential, since it was founded. for every practical purpose, to call the usa a democracy is perfectly valid, reasonable, appropriate, and correct

at the very best, you are only speaking as some sort of asperger's syndrome sufferer with a mediocre death grip on a completely pointless triviality about technical versus common language

go froth pointlessly over there with the grammar nazis or kindly shut the fuck up