《卫报》的这篇原文找到了,从作者的名字来看,应该是个华裔。这也很好地解释了为什么她对“顶”和“牛”这样的字眼在中国网络中的使用如此熟悉。
Human flesh search engines? Niu!
Alice Xin Liu guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 2 2008 13.00GMT
About 253m Chinese are now online, the biggest internetpopulation in the world. Seventy percent of those are under 30.Although the figure only represents 19% of the totalpopulation,
western journalists, scholars and even PR companies have taken totrolling through China's internet forums looking for comments andreactions on everything from current affairs to stockmarkettakeovers.
But how much do "netizens" know about these issues? Do they reallyhave insightful opinions? Just because Chinese youth can access theinternet does not mean they are given the information they need tomake critical judgments and evaluations. There is a danger thatcomments on Chinese forums will be taken as free thinking orautonomous. In fact, they indicate the opposite. Chinese netizens,partly because of the so-called Great Firewall of China, fall intoa herd mentality.
This is exemplified on one famous Chinese site: WangXiaofeng.net,which belows to the journalist and blogger of the same name. Wangactively discourages visitors from commenting on his blog.Presumably he does not want to clutter up his site, but he alsoknows that commenters often have nothing meaningful to say.Comments on the Chinese internet are often monosyllabic and short,and rarely thought-provoking. Often, they are simply "Ding" ("up",which means to support a post) or "Niu!" (awesome). On westernblogs there are just as many shallow comments, but a cross-sectionof differing opinions tends to prevail.
A good way to illustrate this kind of ignorance is a bizarrephenomenon that has recently struck China: the "human flesh searchengine" ("Ren rou sou suo ying qing" in Chinese). It refers to aninternet mob that hunts down real people online, then verballyabuses them and publishes the victim's private information. In2007, when Jiang Yan, the wife of Wang Fei, a Beijing resident,jumped to her death from her flat's window after finding out thather husband was having an affair, she left behind her blog. Thecontents of this "death blog" were quickly posted online. Anotherwebsite, "Migrating bird flying north", was set up by a relativeand dedicated to Jiang Yan's "injustice". Many netizens vehementlyabused Wang Fei after reading posts copied from that website. Thenthey traced Wang Fei's home address and other private information,and continued the harassment in real life. Wang subsequently suedthe portals that disseminated posts about the "death blog".
This kind of mob effect has occurred again and again online inChina, and it shows just how easily led the cyber population canbe. Anyone can become a target. The anti-foreign media furorefollowing the Tibetan riots last March is an example.
Fortunately, human flesh search engines have not yet done reallyserious harm. But the stupidity of the people who perpetrate themshouldn't be ignored or forgiven.
Chinese language blogs, where the writer is often more informed andbetter read, are often more intelligent. Plenty of people don'tcomment intelligently. But in China, opinions can easily slip intothe extreme and the abusive, because of people's fear of beingsingled out and scapegoated by the crowd, or the government. In theocean of seemingly identical opinions, there are many independentand well-thought out views to be found. The problem for foreignobservers is that these opinions are in Chinese and have to betranslated. But they are well worth the effort.