Anonymous online violence
Another such incident began on the popular message board PTT. PTT has over 1.5 million registered users, with as many as 150,000 people online at peak times, and with such numbers, a simple interface, and a huge amount of data online, any given topic can explode with astonishing speed. As a result, PTT has effectively become the "base camp" for Taiwan's Internet vigilantes.
In October 2009, on a PTT discussion board about sexual issues, one female user wrote about her sexual experience, but was uncomfortable with posting it under her personal account, posting instead to an online mailbox from which the board's moderator would then collect and publish the posts.
A graduate student from National Taiwan University, unfamiliar with the system, mistook the public account for the woman's personal account, sending to her a private invitation for a one-night stand, and ended up being the target of mockery and ridicule when the moderator made the letter public. This caused a tremendous stir, and the man concerned quickly got online and posted an explanation and apology.
But some users refused to let it go and continued to agitate for vigilante action, not only digging up his personal information, but even targeting the man's girlfriend. This drove Mr. Zhou, the man involved, who had previously claimed his account had been hijacked, to once again get online and profusely apologize and come clean.
The next day, the story hit the mass media, and continued to generate discussion. Some online, wanting to keep the show rolling, said that his trying to "get a bit on the side" and having claimed his account had been hijacked meant he deserved what he was getting, and continued to post updates. Another, more sympathetic group of users felt that although he had been in the wrong, the actions of those other users were over the top and unfair.
"DearJohn," a blogger and long-term observer of online communities, has asked what crime the aforementioned Mr. Zhou has committed that some online can't seem to let go of him? A man privately inviting someone for a one-night stand is nothing new, and all he is really guilty of is a momentary indiscretion and sending an email to the wrong address. But this one slip seems to have ignited a fuse that has blown up in his face, doing damage that will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair."Nothing is secret on the Internet, and people will always be able to dig up this man's past and use it against his future," notes DearJohn.
Similarly, veteran"villager" (a term used on PTT to refer to users drawn to more active topics, adopted from the Stephen Chow movie Hail to the Judge), 13-year message-board veteran and animation director Lin Shih-yong has taken his observations and reflections on online culture to create a 3D animated film entitled Woodman Movie Edition: War of BBS World.
Says Lin, throughout much of his membership of PTT, he was just a lurker, silently watching the excitement, but as more and more incidents blew up from the board, whether the activities of Internet vigilantes, the media lifting stories from the boards, the tyranny of the majority, or whatever else, the growing amount of"cyberbullying"got him thinking: what really constitutes"online justice"?
Woodman Movie Edition: War of BBS World, Taiwan's first message-board-themed film, takes its inspiration from real-life events. It also includes a number of in-jokes and jargon familiar only to avid message-board users, earning it much acclaim from that particular demographic.