Hyper Advocacy
In China, there are bands of online citizens who seek out those they think have done wrong. These online vigilantes described in The Economist (half advocates and half badvocates I presume or perhaps it’s impossible to distinguish between them) are on the look out for “renrou sousuo” or “human-flesh searches.” A fairly well-known situation in China was an online photo of a young woman hurting a kitten with her stiletto heels. Once Internet mobs outed her identity, the woman’s name as well as other people’s were posted online and jobs were lost. Maybe she deserved to be found out, but these bands of outraged individuals can strike hard and deep. These Internet gangs can be doing the right thing by identifying wrongdoing but can also get carried away with their net-citizenry. Since this vigilantism has gotten out of hand at times, China has several amendments in proposal stages to inpose fines or jail sentences.
These incidents can happen anywhere. Wonder if the term “human-flesh searches” comes from the expression of extracting a pound of human flesh from people you think have done something wrong. Maybe it is the same no matter the language. However, interesting insights on advocacy or badvocacy on steroids.
The shear number of people with camera-armed cell phones combined with population density make the Chinese Internet the world’s largest user-sourced closed-circuit television!