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Vigilantism
Apr. 21st, 2006 03:24 pmIn case any of you missed the post that's been doing the rounds the last few days, brief summary: an LJer at Convergence was assaulted by an acquaintance, who injured her badly and nearly killed her before fleeing, and various other LJers have been spreading the story and photos around. You can find it via this post, if you're curious (does not include images, but links to pages that do).
It's a repulsive story, and I'm all in favour of catching the guy and bringing him to justice. But there are several things about this that bug me.
The first is that several people decided to share this story with the rest of LJ by posting pictures of the assault victim all over the place, so people were exposed to them without any warning. It's a very effective way to get people's attention (more on that later)... and it's also a very effective way to trigger flashbacks and associated nastiness in people who've previously been exposed to violence. So don't do this. (Yeah, I know, I post stuff that squicks people from time to time, but I try to avoid anything that's really upsetting.)
The second is the number of people who wanted to find this guy before the police did, and beat the crap out of him. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I still think the trial should happen before the punishment; I have no particular reason to doubt the victim's story or the accompanying photo. But given that hoaxes on LJ are not unknown (anybody else remember the burned kitten scam?), it seems to me like it would be prudent to let the guy tell his side of things before the lynching begins. (And, yeah, he ran; guilt is a common explanation for that, but it's not the only reason.)
( And the third... )
It's a repulsive story, and I'm all in favour of catching the guy and bringing him to justice. But there are several things about this that bug me.
The first is that several people decided to share this story with the rest of LJ by posting pictures of the assault victim all over the place, so people were exposed to them without any warning. It's a very effective way to get people's attention (more on that later)... and it's also a very effective way to trigger flashbacks and associated nastiness in people who've previously been exposed to violence. So don't do this. (Yeah, I know, I post stuff that squicks people from time to time, but I try to avoid anything that's really upsetting.)
The second is the number of people who wanted to find this guy before the police did, and beat the crap out of him. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I still think the trial should happen before the punishment; I have no particular reason to doubt the victim's story or the accompanying photo. But given that hoaxes on LJ are not unknown (anybody else remember the burned kitten scam?), it seems to me like it would be prudent to let the guy tell his side of things before the lynching begins. (And, yeah, he ran; guilt is a common explanation for that, but it's not the only reason.)
( And the third... )
