“Internet hunting”
Crazy muslims? Wacky Christian fundamentalists?
“Let’s use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons,” one person wrote, “to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband.”
Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.
It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.
Nope… Chinese internet mobs.
“What we Internet users are doing is fulfilling our social obligations,” said one man who posted a lengthy attack on the college student and his alleged affair. “We cannot let our society fall into such a low state.”
Asked how he would react if people began publishing online allegations about his private life, he answered, “I believe strongly in the traditional saying that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t fear the knock on your door at midnight.”
The problem is when your neighbor incites the mob against you!
The main thing that strikes me about this story is the strength of the morality claims being made, without any references to a god of any sort. It’s as if the offences which are happening are offenses against the Chinese people themselves. This is not good news for my humanist friends, who claim that throwing off the shackles of oppressive religion will free our society to realize its full potential. People are perfectly capable of being oppressive by themselves, without any deity leading the way.
This story also reminds me of some of the viligante actions which were undertaken against the first usenet spammers back in 1994.
One last thing: dig those crazy Chinese internet names:
The affair of the cuckolded husband first came to public attention in mid-April, after the man, who goes by the Web name Freezing Blade, discovered online correspondence between his wife, Quiet Moon, and a college student, Bronze Mustache. After an initial conversation, in which he forgave his wife, the man discovered messages on his wife’s computer that confirmed to him that the liaison was continuing. He then posted the letter denouncing Bronze Mustache, and identifying him by his real name.