While poking my brains about what quizzical piece of info to share with you this time, I came across (no pun intended) an article on Gawker on how the members of an Internet image board called 4chan managed to track down a person who threw her neighbour's cat into her trash can. For those of you who lack savvy, 4chan is a notorious community of people who exchange pictures and comments in an anonymous fashion. As we all know anonymity is a breeding ground for trolls. And 4chan is probably the biggest of them all. So in a nutshell this Internet hive mind managed to track her down and bring her to justice (sort of, she apologized publicly at least).
"They found Bale's employer (The Bank of Coventry), the number of her boss, her address and Facebook profile. As with Jessi Slaughter, they sent death threats and other anonymous mischief her way and Bale was eventually forced into hiding."
-Gawker.com
Of course animal lovers are now shouting "Serves her right!" however it's not so simple. 4chan onslaught of Internet terrorism against this person and may have left a permanent mark on her psyche. Of course some of you still are thinking "Serves her even righter! She threw a cat in the trash FFS!". Well to be fair you do have a slight point. In the end cruelty gets repaid with cruelty. But to what end? And what happens if you get caught at the end of the flaming stick just because someone can do it?
One might think that 4chan is the Internet animal cruelty police and they certainly have a reputation to stake their claim towards the title. The random image board of 4chan /b/ has quite a lot of cutesy animal pics floating around (apart from other way more nastier things), and has busted numerous animal abusers. Famous examples include a morbidly obese women who chocked a cat using her 'bulk' and a woman who drowned several puppies in a river. Interesting fact about the latter: According to Gawker, the director Michael Bay "is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the woman in the red sweatshirt and the person who shot this act of cruelty" . The blog post has now been deleted, but rest assured this is no hoax. According to recent updates the woman has apologized via YouTube, although her face did not seem to reflect guilt.
However do not think that 4chan is a force for good. Their exploits are both numerous and disturbing at the same time. While they have brought animal mistreating miscreants in the past, their other 'achievements' aren't so noble. One example is flooding YouTube with pr0n. This attack had been in planning for quite some time now and known to those people that browse 4chan and it's surprising how companies like Google who gather massive amounts of data could have overlooked such an outspoken attack. At the very least the info could have been leaked back to YouTube. Another well known exploit is "Project Chanology" which I probably can't cover better than the folks at KnowYourMeme. And last but not least, worth mentioning are the "Send Justin Bieber to North Korea" and "The Jessica Slaughter scandal" incidents. Won't go into any detail on these. You know how to use Google and if not, go bug CaptainEE about it.
Other 4chan trolling
The point here is that the Internet is rapidly becoming a place where anonymity exists only when no one cares enough to dig up the info on you. 4chan has proved that time and time again.The troll virus is spreading rapidly from 4chan to other sites like Tumblr, ED and Chatroulette. Is the Internet becoming a place where it's no longer safe to be? Very likely, as our lives seem to always be one foot in the virtual world. Facebook & Twitter accounts seem to able too easy to trace and hold too much easily accessible information about the user. Of course if the community would be aware of the dangers that lurk around the dark corners of the WWW maybe they would watch their backs and profiles a bit more. Or perhaps we are simply witnessing Internet evolution. Adapt or get trolled trying.
On a final note I would like to comment about the targeting method of the anonymous hive mind of the Internet. They are at the most basic level outlashes against society. Since Anon is composed mainly of people who are social rejects, they see this as a way of payback. 4chan is prevalent in gore and sex because these things, like it or not, manage to evoke some reaction or emotion in otherwise people who think they can't feel anything and allow the people to revel in their misery. Yet an outburst like someone throwing a cat down a trash can gather such immense hate because they can connect to it. Beiber and other prominent social figures are constantly targeted because, Anon wants to make It's voice heard on the crap they hate about society. 4chan might be the asshole of the Internet, but It's we who tore the Net a new one.
P.S I wont post all of the source material because frankly, some of the footage would make robots crap oil. Google it if you want.
-Postall out
On a final note I would like to comment about the targeting method of the anonymous hive mind of the Internet. They are at the most basic level outlashes against society. Since Anon is composed mainly of people who are social rejects, they see this as a way of payback. 4chan is prevalent in gore and sex because these things, like it or not, manage to evoke some reaction or emotion in otherwise people who think they can't feel anything and allow the people to revel in their misery. Yet an outburst like someone throwing a cat down a trash can gather such immense hate because they can connect to it. Beiber and other prominent social figures are constantly targeted because, Anon wants to make It's voice heard on the crap they hate about society. 4chan might be the asshole of the Internet, but It's we who tore the Net a new one.
P.S I wont post all of the source material because frankly, some of the footage would make robots crap oil. Google it if you want.
-Postall out
