NYT: Online throngs impose a stern morality in China

[pnwmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/world/asia/03china.html?hp&ex=1149393600&en=c5a6a199726aab29&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"SHANGHAI, June 2 — It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country's most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.

"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," one person wrote, "to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband."

"Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.

"It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined."

SNIP

-- The wonders of the Internets. What will we think of next?

[truthisfreedom]

1. thongs? puhleeze, people!

kidding. sorry, didn't even read the post. just having fun. never mind the man caught in the rice curtain.

[pnwmom]

2. You got me. I thought I must have made another stupid typo.

[izzie]

3. That was an odd story. Like our Puritans with an A

Or that is what it made me think of. I love reading some of the very old papers when they take these women to court and what they do to them for sex out side of marriage. Dunking was a good one. Makes one think of water boarding.

[ixion]

4. ah yes... humans seem to love a good lynching

:sarcasm:

Will we ever grow beyond the mob mentality? The world may never know. :cry: