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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."
and "Anonymous is not your personal army" seems to have held up pretty well against gaming.
This is 4Chan made in China.... or dare I say ChinChan...
Also known as Mature Bullying
any in flesh searches that is not approved by the government would be as successful as the one to hunt down the moderate Tibet journalist.
At least over here the internet mob justice is willing to affirm that it's not anyone's personal army.
Sounds like mob rule to me.
Well, as H.L. Mencken once said - the purist form of democracy is the lynch mob. True enough. Ironic that China should be criticized for becoming too democratic.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Agreed, this sounds like perfect expression of the Tyranny of the Majority. Thankfully they cannot organize into a political party, with all the problems that causes, ie Nazi Germany. Oh and Godwin
While the public might be a good detective, it certainly is a bad judge. Given the current technology (need I say photoshop?) a picture or a video can be faked by e.g. a malicious stalker who is after destroying a persons reputation. Posting the results of such a witch hunt without the accused having the possibility to respond to the accusation and defend hirself violates a basic human right.
...... 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
This is the online version of denouncing people to the Thought Police in 1984. Just a reminder that China is still very much a totalitarian state.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
It's more than that, It's the people _becoming_ the Thought Police.
sounds pretty anti-authoritarian-mob justice to me...
totalitarian states usually want the monopoly on exacting punishments.
Hyperbole much? /b/tards. Bord teens to 30 somethings, who still live with their parents, as is the norm in China, going after very VERY soft targets.
This is nothing but Chinese
Nationalism is a disease not at all unique to China.
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Ministry of misuse and overuse of Orwell's novels.
Searches have also been directed against amateur pornography makers
This thing should be banned immediately
Seems more like those lynch mobs.
It looks to me like modern mass gathering. We all know what a charismatic leader and with a few pugilistic punch lines can do to the mass mob. You are innocent until proven guilty and this is a one sided witch hunt and strongly against peoples right to privacy. It is a good thing in some cases, but bad in most.
Great - the Cultural Revolution 2.0 - along with vigilantism, denouncements & public humiliation. Awesome, just what everyone needed; yay China. Sigh.
Skinner: Oh, there's no justice like angry-mob justice.
Lenny: I'm gonna burn all the historic memorabilia.
Moe: I'm gonna take me home a toilet.
Willy: Well, there'd better be two.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F06.html
"She's a witch!!"
...and it's nothing new, even if the tools and techniques are modern.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Not exactly. This appears not to be an action of the Chinese government but of its citizens. The attacks on 'unpatriotic' people are probably unintended side-effects of government propaganda, just as right-wing 'patriots' in the US killing people is an unintended side-effect of Fox News. I think you can be damn sure the Chinese government has no desire to kick off another cultural revolution.
This just makes it more scary in a way.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Then so is the UK (making the assumption you're from there based on username) which has its fair share of witch hunts organized by the tabloids (Jade Goody, the anti-vaccination insanity, the pediatrician assaulted by confused pedophile hunters, etc...) In fact it might be more totalitarian since the Chinese incidents aren't guided by a central authority like the UK ones but are grass roots initiatives.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Nothing new in concept here, although the implementation is updated :-), The Chinese have been using similar systems of group responsibility as far back as the Qin dynasty (200BC or so). Bao Jia is a later (~1000AD) derivation that might be considered related to what's going on here too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baojia_system)
Odd that you just happen to leave out the corrupt goverment employees being hunted. Showing that this is a citizens effort, not a government one.
In the west, we the people just let the bankers get away with the hardship they caused. Like in Iceland. Not one of the bankers has been arrested.
No, this has nothing to do with dicatorship. And americans love this idea, it is the basis of the superhero.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
re-read the book if you think that is a valid statement.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
After the March 2008 Tibetan uprising across the three provinces of Chinese-occupied Tibet during which a few Chinese (both uniformed and settlers) were killed and a dozen more died while hiding when Chinese-owned shops were set alight and over two hundred Tibetans were killed by the Chinese army and paramilitary and over two thousand Tibetans simply went missing (dead or kept in horrendous secret prison camps) there were demonstrations across the world featuring mostly freedom-supporting foreign nationals and occasionally angry Chinese Communist Party-organized "fen qing" defending Chinese imperialism and colonialism in Tibet.
During one rare demonstration at the Duke University featuring both sets of campaigners, a young Chinese student Grace Wang, who also had Tibetan and Western friends and who had mastered the art of respectful debate, tried in vain to mediate between the two groups of protesters. Here is a quote from the Washington Post article ("Caught in the Middle, Called a Traitor") on what happened next:
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Another unintended effect of Fox News, is left-wing 'bleeding-hearts' assuming all those right-wing 'patriots' are influenced by Fox News.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
You don't even need a plurality to lynch someone.
What we're seeing here isn't really all that surprising. Public response not mediated by the traditional media? That's a direct result of not having a free press. Vigilantism? That's a direct result of people feeling that the rules don't secure them from a threat.
Lynch mobs are all about people taking matters into their own hands when the government can't. In the US, local authorities often turned a blind eye to lynchings because they were in sympathy with the mob, and covered up the crime later, but weren't ready to dirty their own hands. Lynchings didn't happen in the antebellum days when blacks were officially slaves.
That's what you need for a lynching. You need enough people to give each other cover, and you need official indifference. Local government is notoriously corrupt and lax in China.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
what's impressive to me is that even in china, where they pretty much eat anything "everything with 4 legs except the table" they are repulsed by simple cruelty
in other words, animal rights activists: there is a code, understandable by all meat eaters, that eating meat is not cruelty, its simple sustenance. meanwhile, the divide between that understanding, and the simple understanding that needless cruelty to animals is disgusting is stark, clear, and universally understood. common chinese repulsion to that video, the same people famous for eating dogs, civet cats, whatever, they are equally repulsed at that video as your average morrisey listening mopey animal rights activist in the west
animal rights activists: people are repulsed by cruelty, universally and fundamentally, and they understand the difference between the need for sustenance and unnecessary vile behavior. and they genuinely are two different things. sorry: meat is not murder
and frankly, hound that fucking bitch and the cameraman too
if you've seen that video, even the most law and order obsessed amongst us would be grabbing the pitchfork and letting out a throaty cry for some mob vigilante justice on that bitch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1984, orwell, big brother: it would all make sense if the state had a monopoly on technological advance. it doesn't. as such, 1984, orwell, big brother: failed, dead meme, useless way of thinking about your world.
Thanks. Here I was thinking that 1984 was a commentary on the human condition. I completely missed the point that unless all the conditions and technology were exactly the same, my world and Orwell's world had zero in common.
I guess I can discrd all the insights into human behaviours in the Iliad and the Odyssey because people don't carry swords anymore.
And my copy of Herodotus is right out.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
as religious fundamentalist documents that color your every impression of what happens in your society and are you obsessed with cramming every development in society into the mold of what happens in those stories?
if no, then you completely understand my point, and your sarcasm is off target
because there really are people posting here, and that you meet in real life, who think of orwell as some sort of religious prophet about the coming armageddeon. that every sign and signal and portent of news from real life is merely evidence of the coming state of big brother and 1984 as reality. the same as any other idiotic apocalyptic cult
and don't even get me started on the ayn rand libertarian morons
look, along with l ron hubbard, these 3 writers from the 20th century have become posthumous cult leaders of a sort of pseudoreligious fan boy delusional confusion of reality and fantasy. if you understand why bible thumping christian fundamentalists and quran thumping muslim fundamentalists are retarded and dangerous, then you also understand why those who have to cram in and see every bit of the human condition as a twist on orwell, as the same sort of cretinous fundamentalist thinking
its perfectly normal and useful to use the iliad and the odyssey, or the bible, or the quran, or orwell, or rand, or even l ron hubbard, as useful commentary and insight and stories about humanity. its NOT useful to be so obsessed with one particular tale that it colors your every perception of reality
so if the iliad and the odyssey is the prism from which you view all of human condition, does that make you a homerian fundamentalist? ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it is imperfect
but it is clearly ideologically superior to societies that are not democratic, at least according to me, not you apparently
there are limits on my freedom in a democracy. some are stupid, and i fight them, some limits are natural and i accept them. but i would like to know why these limits are in any way comparable to the limits on someone's freedom living in north korea or cuba
i call them totalitarian societies. you say there are no totalitarian socities. i would like you to tell me how the rulers of cuba, iran, north korea, or china came to power. i would like you to tell me how barack obama or gordon brown came to power. and finally i would like to know according to what amazing logic you equivocate these two (very different) paths to power
xenophobia is an interesting topic. i would like to know what the hell that has to do with totalitarianism in your mind. all societies are xenophobic to some degree or another. and it seems to me, that the more totalitarian a society, the more the xenophobia. you apparently see nothing but the same totalitarianism and xenophobia everywhere
frankly, you're a fucking moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and democracy is obviously not the same as mob rule
and democracy is obviously superior to totalitarianism, autocracy, military juntas, theocracies, monarchies, etc. democracy is not perfect. its simply BETTER than all other alternatives
everyone in the world deserves the rights and freedoms and self-determination of living in a democracy
do you not agree with that?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The subtle difference in these two case, is that the Chinese are genuine vigilantes - carrying the punishment themselves.
Whereas, in Dusty's case, the citizen merry helped the police finding the necessary elements, in order to let the police conduct a full investigation and the guilty abuser having a fair trial.
In one case the system is circumvented and could lead to arbitrary abuses - vigilantes attacking people doing things that they just dislike based on their own personal distastes.
In the other case a fair system is working as it should, just receiving help from motivated people.
Crowd sourcing some help for a normally functioning Police and Justice: Ok.
An entirely autonomous vigilantes system which also work as jury, judge and executioner: Not Ok.
Well, of course, TFA's example being China, one could argue that they lack a *non-corrupt* police and a *fair* trial. The State would also have persecuted people merely suspected of doing things as reprehensible as
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.
It's basically just crowd-sourcing the State-Approved Though Police (and throwing in a story about animal abuse, just to shed some positive light on the whole activity).
But translate it to western world to get my point :
- I just don't want to be beaten to death by a group of vigilantes composed of a high number of Christian Fundamentalists who thinks that pre-marital sex is one of vilest sins.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Because justifiable indignation is just where it *starts*. Vigilantism always starts out with noble motives, but ends up with witch hunts. The mass molestation witch hunts of the 1980's are a great example. They started out well-intentioned, but quickly devolved into a mass hysteria that destroyed a LOT of lifes (there are innocent people still in prison to this day because of what happened during that time).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.