By: Reach For The Sky
There are some things that just shouldn't be done. Insulting football in Texas, Going to Antarctica in a bathing suit, But if you really want to submerge yourself in hot water, the best thing to do is tempt the wrath of the internet1. Allow me to summarize the events surrounding this delightful story I happened upon.
-Random Internet Boy (call him RIB) goes to a forum and posts a link to his "friend's" ongoing book. In the original post, as well as subsequent replies, RIB says some rather rude things about her and her skills as a writer. I personally will not say anything about it, I feel sorry for her enough already.
-Someone else decided to put up a link to a comments page2 on the website where she is hosting her book. It is almost instantly filled with insults and profanity.
-Internet detectives use clues in the book (it is semi-autobiographical) to find out where she lives and what school she goes to, her facebook is discovered, and pictures of her are spread on the forum.
-Around this point, image-hosting giant 4Chan is brought into the picture. For those that don't know, 4Chan is home to some of the sickest, most terrifyingly resourceful lurkers in the world. More information is dug up on the girl and RIB.
-Eventually the principle of the school gets a call; It's the internet. it gives him all sorts of interesting info about the thread. While at this point, RIB has cunningly edited the rude things he wrote, the other forum members were more than happy to provide backups of his original posts.
-The usual amount of internet mischief is enacted on RIB. Crank calls to local pizza places, vulgar mail, hilarious photoshopped pictures of RIB are spread, etc. The whole debacle is eventually lost in the depths of the internet. RIB and the writer are most likely still feeling the effects locally.
Why am I writing about this? quite frankly, the whole thing terrifies me. A huge amount of personal information about this girl was unleashed, all because someone else posted her info. With the smallest details, a few forum lurkers discovered incredible amounts of personal information, which then spread like wildfire. Scarier still, this sort of thing happens all the time. Just consider this a cautionary tale, Don't ever, ever expose yourself to the will of the internet. People use pseudonyms for a reason.
The following links lead to pages where users can freely respond, so you can expect the usual amount of profanity that comes with that. They are posted here for reference purposes only.
1 http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=911688
2 http://finallyeamfb.webs.com/apps/guestbook/
If you are so terrified, then why are you going about breaking Rules 1 and 2?
ReplyDeleteYou say people use pseudonyms for a reason, yet you risk this information knowing full well of the possible harm it could do, to you. People hand out information as though it were nothing via social networking. And beyond popular belief, if it's on the internet (regardless of privacy settings), there IS a way to reach any information stored within said beast. Also, RIB would probably be better named Troll, since the majority of dwellers at said get together are there for said reason.
ReplyDeleteThat does raise an interesting problem. There's plenty of people who carelessly throw their info into the void of the internet(s). RIB was much more difficult to trace than, say, someone who ignores the privacy setting on facebook. Why was he so strongly antagonized? I'm not entirely sure. Some actions seem to strike a chord with internet detectives/griefers. I'm sure there's some fatal clues somewhere on this blog that would allow someone to track me down, and yet I am still nazi-pizza free. Maybe it's because he went to a popular internet forum, whereas this domain has yet to even show up on Google search yet. Also, to be fair, I didn't exactly break rules 1 and 2.
ReplyDelete