Or hi-tech mob? I saw this story in three different places now.
It began in a subway train with a girl whose dog made a mess on the train floor. When nearby elders told her to clean up the mess, she basically told them to fuck off. A nearby enraged netizen then took pictures of her and posted it, without any masking, on a popular website which started a nationwide witchhunt.
Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture. All mentions of privacy invasion were shouted down with accusations of being related to the girl. The common excuse for their behavior was that the girl doesn’t deserve privacy.
Before I go any further, I have to admit that I have a big “pet peeve” when it comes to people who don’t pick up after their pets, leaving their pooch’s excrement for someone else to discover (usually after stepping in it). And that’s outside. This woman’s dog did its business on the train. Anyone whose been on even a moderately crowded subway can imagine how unpleasant that must have been. And she refused to clean it up?
OK. So let’s just assume she was wrong for that. But what about what happened afterwards? Was it wrong for someoen to take pictures of the whole event? Was it wrong for them to post them on the web? Without masking?
Think about it for a second. We all have probably had moments when we behaved in a way we later regreted. Most of those moments were, thankfully, shared only with those individuals unfortunate enough to have witnessed them. But with the ubiquitous nature of gadgets capable of taking pictures, recording video, and posting on the internet almost instantly, anyone who has a momentary lapse of propriety, or whatever, could be internationally infamous before the end of the day. Anybody can be the next “Dog Shit Girl.” Or Paris Hilton. Or Eve.
Are things now being taken a bit too far? Or is this just part of the new reality of living in a t”ransparent society”?
Since I haven’t heard about this story, I am basing my comments solely on the information provided here. That being said, I draw a distinction between what happened to Paris Hilton and Eve and what happened to this girl.
Paris and Eve were filmed in private, by and with a person they had reason to trust and that person betrayed that trust by taking a private act and private moment and making it public.
This girl, if we believe what has been written, decided to act in an obnoxious way in a very public place. She may not have realized the extent of the possible repurcussions, but so what? Someone could have taken a Polaroid and passed it around to friends, too. She chose to show out in public and got burned for it. If she were some kind of refugee from a place where camera phones and Internet connections and their modern applications are currently unknown, then she may be diserving of some sympathy. Other than that, I say, ‘Let this be a lesson, dogs–t girl.’