Topic: Behold the power of pure boredom!

[gpw11]

Ok, I've been following this story over the last few days and it's kind of interesting;

Some dude arrives home one day to see that his house has been robbed.  He calls the police, but as we all know, police are pretty useless when it comes to robberies.  So he calls some pawn shops looking for his 360, Laptop, and/or television.  He gets a hit on the laptop, goes down to the pawn shop, takes a picture of the CCTV image of the kid trying to sell it, tries to get back in touch with the police and has no luck.  Damn.

So, his very nice co-workers all chip in and buy him a new 360.  He's pumped, and when he logs in he gets a message....from the kid who either stole his 360 or bought it off the guy who did.  and that's when the internet struck back

[Quemaqua]

I don't get it.  I can't seem to find what happened that's interesting, just the aftermath.  I'm too tired and lazy to look for the rest right now.

[gpw11]

Hmmmm.....interesting how things change. 

To sum it up after the guy posted his story it hit the Digg.com front page.  Someone found out the kid with the Xbox's Live! name and an IRC room was set up with the goal of tracking this kid down (I checked it out and there were hundreds of people in there if not more).  Someone tracked down his youtube account and it snowballed from there.  Within a few hours they had the kid's myspace, email, home address, landlord's information, his girlfriend's email, his phone numbers, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  He's getting harassed on the phone and through the internet, but still claims he bought the xbox off of someone else.  Eventually, that turns out to be true and both guys are "busted" in that they give the xbox back to the original owner because they know there's no way they're getting away from all the attention unless they do.  Problem solved.

Or is it?  I don't find what actually happens here all that interesting on it's own.  I find the mob mentality to be whats; interesting here.  Think about it; the chain of evidence was pretty weak, but it was also broken at at least one point.  They had the kid's xbox live account, found his youtube account, and then gathered all the information from that and his myspace.  He always claimed it wasn't him in the picture from the pawn shop, but every single internet detective 'knew better'.  In fact, it wasn't him.

And that's the problem, the mob discounted what didn't justify it's actions.  The full power of anominity and easily accessed information was unleashed on a petty theif.  Well, actually, it was unleashed on a kid who had the misfortion of buying an xbox from a petty thief. 

Don't get me wrong, the outcome was good, but this all could have very easily been a  huge fuck up and the wrong family could very easily have been harassed.  It's not that the mob wasn't aware of this, it's that they were too busy patting themselves on the back and thinking about how great it would be to be internet vigilantes to pay heed to the voice of reason in their own heads.  That aspect scares me a bit more than the thought of having my goods ripped off.

 

[Ghandi]

/smack

And to think that one day this guy will reproduce...

Someone needs to take him out for the good of the human race.

[Quemaqua]

I'll agree with you, gpw.  That's pretty scary.  Weird story, but certainly interesting.  Makes you feel a bit less safe to know that a few hundred people could get it in their heads to fuck with you and then just sort of do it without you having any way to retaliate or defend yourself.

[Pugnate]

Hmmmm.....interesting how things change. 

To sum it up after the guy posted his story it hit the Digg.com front page.  Someone found out the kid with the Xbox's Live! name and an IRC room was set up with the goal of tracking this kid down (I checked it out and there were hundreds of people in there if not more).  Someone tracked down his youtube account and it snowballed from there.  Within a few hours they had the kid's myspace, email, home address, landlord's information, his girlfriend's email, his phone numbers, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  He's getting harassed on the phone and through the internet, but still claims he bought the xbox off of someone else.  Eventually, that turns out to be true and both guys are "busted" in that they give the xbox back to the original owner because they know there's no way they're getting away from all the attention unless they do.  Problem solved.

Or is it?  I don't find what actually happens here all that interesting on it's own.  I find the mob mentality to be whats; interesting here.  Think about it; the chain of evidence was pretty weak, but it was also broken at at least one point.  They had the kid's xbox live account, found his youtube account, and then gathered all the information from that and his myspace.  He always claimed it wasn't him in the picture from the pawn shop, but every single internet detective 'knew better'.  In fact, it wasn't him.

And that's the problem, the mob discounted what didn't justify it's actions.  The full power of anominity and easily accessed information was unleashed on a petty theif.  Well, actually, it was unleashed on a kid who had the misfortion of buying an xbox from a petty thief. 

Don't get me wrong, the outcome was good, but this all could have very easily been a  huge fuck up and the wrong family could very easily have been harassed.  It's not that the mob wasn't aware of this, it's that they were too busy patting themselves on the back and thinking about how great it would be to be internet vigilantes to pay heed to the voice of reason in their own heads.  That aspect scares me a bit more than the thought of having my goods ripped off.

 

That is scary.

[poomcgoo]

This actually happened to my roommate about 2 years ago.  He made a thread about cheating on his girlfriend on some forum and after a day people were harassing him on the phone, had pictures of our apartment in the thread, pictures of him from facebook, etc...  It was hilarious.  After about two weeks it stopped completely.