January 15, 2007
The Snoop Next Door. Outing fellow citizens
The WSJ published an interesting story last Friday on the US turning into a shame culture, pointing "an internet finger " on any citizens' wrong doings.
"Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cell phone and booked a date. Almost immediately, she started receiving “weird and creepy” calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting “Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!” her name, cell phone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor’s office were posted, along with the admonition “next time, you might take your business outside.”
It used to be the worst you could get for a petty wrong in public was a rude look. Now, it's not just brutal police officers, panty-free celebrities and wayward politicians who are being outed online.
The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure as well. There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking (Caughtya.org) and leering (HollaBackNYC.com) to littering (LitterButt.com) and general bad behavior (RudePeople.com). One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs.
Capturing newspaper-stealing neighbors on video is also an emerging genre." ...
Related:
-- "dog-sh..-girl" a test of the Internet's Power to Shame
-- "Now it's 15 minutes of shame not fame
-- RottenDriver.com Shames the Maniacs by SMS
-- MS campaign appeal for informants - to single out polluters
-- Snap a picture of a traffic offender
-- Framed! Photos taken by general public net errant motorists in Malaysia
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