Commit adultery in China, Web vigilantes will hunt you

A man cheats on his wife and after learning of the affair the woman leaps from her 24th-floor balcony. Before committing suicide, the wife blames her husband and his mistress for her death in a blog post.

The woman was a 31-year-old Beijing resident who has since become the face of what the Chinese call "human flesh search engines." The term is used to describe cybermobs banding together online to hunt down people who have committed perceived wrongdoings.

There's a fascinating story about these Web vigilantes from Beijing-based freelance journalist Chris O'Brien at Forbes.com. He writes that after becoming the target of a human flesh search engine, Wang Fei, the suicide victim's husband, was disgraced, lost his job, and was physically threatened.

No trial, no jury.

"Within days, photographs of Wang appeared on numerous Internet forums alongside his phone numbers, address, and national ID number," O'Brien wrote. "Slogans were painted on his front door. One read: 'A blood debt must be repaid with blood.'"

Another story from New America Media from April said that the targets of human flesh search engines include "a man who had an illicit sexual relationship, a woman who wore high-heel sandals and stepped on a kitten's head, and a 'foreigner' who slept with many Chinese women."

The story explains China's new Web vigilantism this way: "An information expert thinks large-scale human flesh search engines are unique to China, a claim that appears to be true. This is understandable as a consequence of China's ubiquitous manpower and ingrained tradition of 'people's war' tracing back to Mao. On the other hand, because China's laws are imperfect, the Internet is seen as a way to seek justice."

[dragonbite]

Frightening.

[ducttape36]

sounds pretty dangerous. imagine how easy it would be to frame someone using the internet and get these people after them.

[rolegp]

good for them.

[myles taylor]

Not the kind of vigilante I want running around. If they start following "The code of Harry" I might go for this.

[renGek]

Oh this will get soooo out of hand. Want to destroy someone you don't like, just post their pic online and create a nice believable story.

There are plenty of sites like that already. I've seen ones where you "describe/rate" your neighbors and neighborhood and ones warning others about people looking to date online and how evil they are. Some are just hilarious.

[bigpicture]

I'm not a sociology scholar but this seems like a tribal or a herd type practice. To be ostracized from being a tribe member for a wrong doing, real or imagined, and then have to live alone without any social participation or support. Seems that I have read about this practice among tribal cultures.

Also in herds of horses, an individual horse can be driven out of the herd for wrong doing. This causes extreme vulnerability and anxiety for the horse, and it is only let back into the herd after displaying a sufficient level of remorse.

This tribal tendency is probably alien to the American individualistic culture. But I wonder does it work both ways, if someone is in distress does this same Chinese tribal tendency rush in to help as well as condemn?

[Joe_Netter]

Wow bigpicture! I am a sociologist and find your comment fascinating...it reminds me that Orientalism is not some outdated concept, but is alive and well today. It's funny how you attribute the Chinese with a "tribal tendency" (and liken it with animal behaviour) while saying this mentality is foreign to American culture.

The Salem witch trials aside, and urban gangs aside, and the Ku Klux Klan aside, and many Christian churches aside, and the hunt for "Communists" during the Cold War aside (etc.), I think that you should take your sociology to an American school ground and see how people who break social norms are treated by their peers.

[Akiba]

This is also pretty big in Japan as well as Korea. You can think good for them but most of these cases are driven by nationalist with a few loose screws in their head. Essentially these are the people who in their society who are known for bullying and they just found a new medium. You see cheating but its usually some model who revealed too much of her shoulder and made the country look bad.

There is a similar problem in the states but nowhere near as extreme and the motives are different. In the states they do it for the thrill of trolling and not because some foreigner gets more attention from ladies than they do.

[jaxstephens]

Well, that's one more reason why I'm glad I don't live in China and why it is a country to fear as it rises in influence.

[Jack K1]

Wow! Imagine what would happen if they turned this energy onto the politicians responsible for crummy civil rights enforcement!

[thehog2]

Where can I join up and harass that evil b^tch that stepped on a kitten's head. Seriously, people who kill kittens are evil. Hope kitty karma comes back with a vengeance.

[sandonet]

It gets worse. Look at the Forbes story. It wasn't an accident. The woman uploaded a video of her crushing the cat's head with her high heels. Was that some sick piece of performance art? She became known as the "Kitten Killer of Hangzhou," and people traced the woman partly by tracking her high heels to a shoe sale off eBay. No joke, read the story.