Call it witch hunt 2.0. The “human-flesh” search engine, an online phenomenon in which internet users collaborate to track down certain individuals, reflects China’s unique internet culture. The term, which originates from the Chinese phrase, renrou sousuo yinqing, describes a powerful yet informal vigilante justice system, capable of locating corrupt officials, cheating spouses, unpatriotic citizens, and the like–all in hopes of punishing them. Often, the targets get fired from jobs, shamed in front of neighbors, or even run out of town. “The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans,” writes the NY Times. “It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.”
It all started in 2006 when a horrifying online video went viral. In the video, Chinese woman stands by a riverbank, holding a kitten and smiling into the camera. Then, she places the kitten on the ground and starts stomping on the kitten, crushing the animal to death with the point of her heels.
Furious Chinese Netizens responded with a flurry of comments. One wrote, “Find her and kick her to death like she did to the kitten.” But then the comments started to get more practical: “Is there a front-facing photo so we can see her more clearly?” And right then, as the NY Times put it, “The human-flesh search had begun.”
Netizens tracked down her email address, which traced her hometown, Luobei, in Heilongjiang Province. They discovered she was a nurse, found her phone number and employer, and, finally, her name: Wang Jiao. Before long, the woman, along with the cameraman who filmed the video, were fired from their jobs.
“Wang Jiao was affected a lot,” a Luobei resident known online as Longjiangbaby told the NY Times. “She left town and went somewhere else. Li Yuejun, the cameraman, used to be core staff of the local press. He left Luobei, too.”
It’s crazy to think how something like this could go viral–in the US, the things that go viral are silly videos, like bus fights in SF. But there’s nothing even close to the (almost scary) level of collaboration required for China’s human-flesh search engine. While most of the news on China’s online world revolves around censorship — the most recent being the departure of Google — few people outside of China realize that there’s a whole other side to China’s online culture that is unique and totally fascinating.
Read the full NY Times article on China’s human-flesh search engine here.
(Thanks, Ed!)
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Oh cool, I was actually a part of the Wang Jiao hunt. I helped a petitioner, and spread the word about her. Nothing as far as directly getting her fired, but I did help stoke the flames of internet anger. I hope she’s still ruined to this day, wherever she is. Rot in hell.