From cyberbullying to group think

A couple of days ago, a former student of mine sent me this in an attempt to keep me abreast of what’s hot in Hong Kong as if I had nothing better to do. She was also kind enough to educate me about the brief history of the whole media frenzy which turned out to be pathetically entertaining. It seems that the society has already gone past the teenage-booby-model phase and is now going through a post-Kanye West bully-the-villain phase.

It all started with a youtube video posted by a college student with a seemingly wicked intention to tarnish the reputation of a shop which, she believed, cheated its customer by pricing the same product differently in its chain store. In the video she kept bombarding the store manager with her arguments with an air of social justice (just in case you wonder, there’re no F-words) while the store manager tried to pacify her and explained the company policies patiently. Still feeling self-righteous, she posted the video on youtube. To be frank, what’s a better place than the Internet to bully someone – it’s anonymous and with a few clicks hatred spreads faster than flu virus.

How such a boring video caught others’ attention in the first place is beyond normal human intelligence to understand but somehow someone with a seemingly far more boring life stumbled upon it and found it staggeringly offensive and so publicized it with provocative comments on different discussion boards. The snowball rolled from there.

Our binary, dichotomous mind concluded that the bitchy girl in the video is indeed a bitch and villain while the even-tempered manager is the victim. Like pitiful innocent Taylor Swift who was gobsmacked by Kanye’s sudden comment on stage or the tear-stained students from Christian Zheng Sheng College, the store manager quickly has the netizens on his side. Resentment towards the college student’s ruthless behaviours quickly sets in and hatred sprawls in light speed. That’s how karma bounces back and now she’s become the new prey.

Her personal life—her almost complete biography, educational history, her boyfriend’s full name, her pictures chronicled from childhood to the present, etc.—was unfolded on the Internet thanks to a bunch of netizens who care much enough to trace every bit of her personal details on the Internet. She was tracked down by paparazzi and her personal life was covered in full by newspapers. She even made the cover story of a tabloid magazine. Actually, I can’t remember any rapists or pedophiles having attracted such intense hatred. All of a sudden, the society regresses to a gang of nasty, judgmental teenagers who pull out all the means to bully anyone they happen to hate.

That sort of collective, irrational and almost mindless gall scares me. What scares me more, many others find the massive anonymous bullying fun and just drop by and join the party by taking the offense on behalf of a third party and spreading the girl’s personal details and those online pricks with a few clicks; some even leave a few lines of hateful comments as if they themselves were the store manager who was confronted by the college student. And now, even the mainstream media who are supposed to give the voice to the voiceless join in. A corrupted mass media signify the fall of social conscience.

Bullying is a cowardly act and massive anonymous bullying even more so. However, when it is disguised in the name of social justice, people seem to be more than willing to engage in it. This is how groupthink becomes so overwhelming that it dominates our mentality and suppresses individuality.

In an instance, I was confused who is the villain and who is the victim.

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Why am I updating my blog while I should be concentrating on my work? Geeezzzz, I can’t concentrate, not even at night now… I hate that :(