The Sad Case of “Dog Poop Girl”

Reuters has an article about how South Korea is becoming an internet vigilante zone:

Dog poop girl is infamous in South Korea.

The young woman was riding on the subway with her small dog. The dog defecated and she did not clean up after her pet.

Someone caught the incident in pictures shot with a mobile phone. The photos were posted on the Internet with a brief description of what took place and shortly thereafter “dog poop girl” became the most-searched phrase among South Korean Internet users…

In the case of dog poop girl, which took place last year, the Internet site of one university crashed when it was flooded with angry emails demanding the school take action against the young woman who had outraged so many.

The only problem was, the offender did not go to that school

.

They go on to talk about the number of suicides and incidents of people leaving the county because of stuff discovered or alleged on the Internet. They’re some pretty staggering figures:

According to the Cyber Defamation and Sexual Violence Counselling Center, the number of victims of Internet harassment more than doubled in 2005 to 8,406, from 3,913 in 2004. Defamation cases tripled and sexual abuse over the Internet nearly doubled during the same period.

Its a huge number. Broadband is almost universal in South Korea, which is a big part of the problem. That plus it has the world’s 4th highest population density.

In America, we’ve got a lot more space to be jerks. Think about this. You can be a jerk in Twin Falls, and no one will know about it in Boise or know it was you. Maybe the use of Camera phones and the like to capture people acting like jerks isn’t something that we do.

Private citizens should be immune from this type of issue in the US, because its just not part of our culture to do it. Polticians, though need to watch out. Every national politician has stories about personal interactions gone wrong on the Internet. Though, with stories like this, it becomes clearer that anyone who aspires to office anywhere had better be squeaky clean perfect at all times, lest something randomly embarassing comes back to haunt them.

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