Online Bullying Leads to Suicide

This story is nearly half a year old already, but I wanted to share it before I lost the page. A high school girl who had visited a shop was later labeled a thief by the shop-owner who posted surveillance photos online of the girl in her store and urged the online public to "hunt for her." However, the article does make it clear whether or not the allegations were true. Soon, web users found her identity and posted her personal information, address, and school details on the Internet. Online abuse followed and the girl committed suicide by jumping into a river.

The story greatly mirrors the trials and hardships faced by many western teens who experience cyber-bullying, a phenomenon that is becoming commonplace. Laws and regulations are slow to catch up the quick pace of technology. In the case of this Chinese girl, the Internet was used as a platform for judgement and targeting someone deemed beneath the norms of society. As with many of these Human Flesh cases where identity is searched and verified through the Internet, the consequences can be extremely dire.

The girl's family has brought a lawsuit against the shop-owner - I will have to dig up some news on this story and see whether or not there was/or will be any success on this front.

Cultural Revolution Memory

The New York Times recently ran an op-ed piece titled, Confessions of the Cultural Revolution which ties in greatly with my Master's research on the subject of the social memory of the Cultural Revolution in present-day China.

Within the piece, writer Xiao Han reflects that due to the country's strict censorship of Cultural Revolution material and research and reflection into the subject matter, the period's memory is gradually receding from public memory, creating nostalgia by those who contrast the decade with China's rapid, capitalist rise.

The article mentions one woman who recently came forward and apologized for witnessing an attack on her vice principal during the height of violence, and not doing anything to stop it. After her apology spread through the internet, netizens were quick to target her as "grandstanding" and called her apology "insincere." Xiao Han comments on this and wonders how any other former violent individuals will be encouraged to come forward and apologize for past actions when facing the backlash and criticism of the internet, and calls for the younger netizens to reflect on the apologizes of their elders (see the third excerpt below).


Some excerpts:

Attempts by intellectuals to publicly address the Cultural Revolution have been suppressed; only a smattering of research by state-funded scholars has seen the light of day. The result has been a gradual receding of memory. The economic surge of the past 30 years has even led some deluded souls to look back on the period with nostalgia. But given the authoritarian nature of today’s leadership, many people fear the prospect of a return of the terror that marked the Cultural Revolution.

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Can China continue the momentum and create a framework for wider public acknowledgement? Are the Chinese people ready for such a mass reckoning?

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We Chinese need to build an appropriate environment for the wrongdoers to come forward. First and foremost, this requires that people who were fortunate enough not to experience the Cultural Revolution put themselves in the place of the perpetrators. While they have a right to criticize perpetrators of past crimes, they should repress the impulse to harshly condemn those who come forward. We should not be making excessive demands on this process. Chinese people should try to consider what they themselves might have done under similar circumstances.

Anonymity on Yelp

Yelp.com, a website where users can review businesses, restaurants, and services, is popular among American web users. Typically the website is the go-to place for finding new places to eat, reviewing businesses and home services, and for netizens to vent their frustration on bad dining experiences to the online public.

However, after a recent court case which found that many negative reviews are posted by users who were not real customers of a service, the US judicial system has ruled that users who post negative reviews must be identified. This news runs parallel to initiatives taken by the Chinese government to identify online netizens by requiring real-name registration for use on popular websites, social media networks, and web forums.

Posting fake or falsifying information on Yelp can be immensely damaging to small business owners. Yelp reviewers are quick to point out poor service, poor products, and bad dining experiences. Bad reviews (and poor media attention on a popular TV program) led to the closure of one American bakery. Similarly, other shops have seen negative hits taken on Yelp after their refusal to serve the LGBT community (although the negative reviews were later taken down).