The Dog Poop Seen Around The World
A Korean woman's dog pooped on the train, and she refused to clean it up -- and even got belligerent. And then blog hell broke loose. Here are the photos.

Don Park has the skinny on the poop, but his take on it being an injustice by the bloggers is all wrong.

Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture. All mentions of privacy invasion were shouted down with accusations of being related to the girl. The common excuse for their behavior was that the girl doesn't deserve privacy.

While the girl clearly behaved badly, those Korean netizens' behavior is even worse and inexcusably so. Abuse by the mob is indistinguishable from abuse by dictators yet they just don't see it in the heat of righteousness. Are they wary of ruining her life or hounding her into suicide? I doubt it. To quote some of them: her life deserves to be ruined and she won't kill herself because she is a thick-skinned bitch.

Well, no, but just like my hit-and-run driver (who was just prosecuted, and whose butt I'm now either going to drag to small claims court or Judge Judy), just because you think you can get away with behaving like an uncivilized asshole -- doesn't mean you should!

I think, in the age of cell phone cameras and loads of other listening and watching devices everywhere, you should probably listen to what your mother surely told you: When you put something in writing, assume it's going to end up on the front page of The New York Times. (You should also extrapolate that to audio and videotape.)

Now, don't get me wrong: I do think people -- even movie stars -- have a right to privacy. That is, for example, why I did not photograph anyone (even though I had the opportunity several times) for my recent blog entry on all the couples making out on the streets of Paris.

But, just do something wrong, and you stop being a private citizen and become news -- thus forfeiting your right to privacy. That's why I think this citizen's blog-arrest humiliation is a very good thing -- especially in light of my own experience of how little "the proper authorities" do, even when you hand them all the evidence (including, say, videotape of a hit-and-run!) they need to bring in some ethically bankrupt old coot -- or some car-boosting creep. In the case of the hit-and-run guy, Judge Kamins, in Santa Monica Criminal Court, said the guy never would have been brought to justice but for me.

And then there are "lesser" offenses -- rather mundane day-to-day crimes against humanity, like buttwads shouting into cell phones everywhere from restaurants to lingerie department dressing rooms. Maybe if you feel free to be an inconsiderate jerk for all to see and hear...all should really see and hear it.

In evolutionary psychology, it's thought that the disapproval of the group led to our social controls; ie, don't steal, be civil, etc. Group disapproval was a serious thing, back in the Pleistocene, because it could mean being outcast -- which, in a world without refrigerators and heating pads, was likely to mean death.

In a society where people, upon reaching adulthood, often leave their small towns and their families, and are, essentially, strangers to many people they encounter during their day, these group disapproval constraints have been removed. Or, they were removed until recently -- until bloggers shrank the Global Village down to size. Shout into a cell phone? Change your baby in public? Endanger my life by driving like an asshole (whose cell phone call is more important than anyone or anything on the planet)? Well, then I'm going to blogslap you.

And again, despite the contention of self-interested prissies like David Shaw (wonderfully bitchslapped here by Matt Welch), who think, to be considered a journalist, you need some official gold star and official suede elbow patches from Columbia's J-school -- the constitutional freedom of the press extends even to the pajama-clad whose blogs reach an audience of one or two -- one of whom might be their cat.

Thanks to Cathy Seipp for the poop on the poop.

Posted by aalkon at July 8, 2005 7:34 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Radwaste at July 8, 2005 6:39 AM

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