On cyberbullying part 2

I wrote about cyberbullying in my previous entry and this rant is a continuation of that

There seems to be this recent trend of mainstream publications trying to incite a lynch mob by publicly shaming ordinary people for what wouldn't even be considered misdemeanor offenses.

The video below was shared on top gear and went viral shortly afterwards. It’s a video of two young women in a car trying to ruthlessly awaken a commuter from his deep slumber by viciously blowing their horn. Watch the video below to see the very face of evil (/sarcasm) Seriously, who hasn't tried waking up a friend for the Lulz. Maybe the guy thought that it was mildly annoying but i doubt that he was seriously offended by it. He probably slept again and moved on with his life unlike majority of the commenters on the site. I seriously think that if you replace the two attractive women with two ordinary looking commuters there wouldn’t be as much hate. But because they were driving a car, they looked like arrogant, rich bitches and therefore deserving of the vilest insults.

Top gear is especially fond of this practice. It’s one thing if it’s a random internet nerd posting this story on facebook for his or her friends to see. It’s an entirely different thing if it’s a mainstream publication with magazines that you see in newstands that’s supposedly manned by adults. When you have more than a million followers and you ask the masses to lynch somebody, they will do it with relentless passion. The owner of a maseratti who punched an LTO officer in the face. He was publicly insulted, along with his family without waiting for his side to be aired. Later on it was discovered that the LTO officer was notorious for being an A-hole. Not enough reason to be punched in the face, maybe (?). but at least if there had to be lynching, it shouldn’t have been as one sided as it initially was. Or just leave out the lynching altogether and let the parties involved settle it among themselves. Then there was the beast mode guy, cars parked incorrectly with their plate numbers in full display –also lynched online

I specifically like the comment about not "murdered-ing" the english language. What's most disturbing about this story is not the prank itself but the fact that there are more than 11,000 comments and i'd say more than 90% of them are at least this brutal

I understand the need of these websites to generate traffic but at the very least blur faces out or plate numbers, especially if there’s no illegal offense involved.  There's a reason why plate numbers on cars are usually blurred in photos. You can find out a lot of information about the owner of the car by displaying its plate number, including his or her home address.

Some of these viral stories can be pretty funny and worthy of ridicule. I do laugh at them sometimes but I move on shortly afterwards. I don’t feel the need to dig out more private info about them and then make them public, I don’t feel the need to start facebook pages shaming the people involved in the videos. I don’t feel like raising pitchforks and inviting my comrades to do the same until we receive a groveling apology from the person whose life we have practically destroyed. I hope I’m not the only one who thinks that this lynchmob mentality is getting way out of hand