Vigilantism

[lederhosen]

In 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...

There are a lot of deserving causes out there. Children starving in Africa, AIDS patients dying in the USA, entire species being wiped out in South America, freedom of expression being stifled in Asia, take your pick. There is enough evil in the world that you could dedicate your entire life to fighting it, and you still wouldn't begin to cover it all. So you have to make a decision about what you're going to tackle and what you'll leave to somebody else.

As I see it, there are two different questions you can use to make that decision: "Which option does the most good?" and "Which option makes me feel good?"

IMHO, way too many people make that call based on the second of those instead of the first. Altruism turns into a sneaky sort of selfishness, and the feel-good acts of 'charity' crowd out the ones that really do good.

As one commenter on cleolinda's journal put it, after seeing the before-and-after pictures of the victim: "I was so sad when I read that, she's such a pretty girl."

I have friends who've been on the receiving end of violence. Some of them are photogenic, and some of them are not... and if their looks have any bearing on how we respond to that violence, something is deeply fucked up somewhere, and I'm not just talking about the perpetrator.

Yes, I will be happy if & when the guy is caught and brought up on charges, and if the LJ feeding frenzy helps that happen, so be it. But I don't think that everything that has good consequences is in itself good. When we turn 'altruism' into a way to make ourselves feel good, the end result is that less good is done.

And it becomes really tempting to use an altruistic side-effect as an excuse to do something else that might make us feel good.

Like, say, beating the crap out of somebody. And isn't that where this started?

Comments

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

I like the law, I like living in a country that has a good legal system, I really don't want to go outside it unless there are very good reasons for doing that. I totally understand the feeling that people have in wanting to inact revenge but I very scared by the idea that those reaction could become more than a fantasy

[hasimir.livejournal.com]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who saw the lynch mob cometh, even only after reading a bit via flemco (since deleted due to most of the responses) and niamhstar (the victim).

I don't know, maybe it's age or maybe experience (I remember getting to my feet when I saw a pair of boots because I thought they might be used against me), but my only real reaction was along the lines of "how could someone do that to a 19-year-old girl?" (Yes, it was rhetorical.)

Or maybe listening to Brothers In Arms so much recently makes me less inclined towards that type of red-blooded response. ;)

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I've had links to the situation from a few friends who went to the convention, and when the smells-too-much-like-vigilantism posts started, I stayed quiet. Helping him be caught is one thing, but as you pointed out...

[cavalaxis]

I still am enamored of the idea of getting this guy's face out and around so that a) he can be picked up on the arrest warrant and b) so that people know his face and know that he's violent. How they decide to deal with him after that fact is their own ethical dilema.

I also think that the possibility of getting your face spread all over the internet and getting your ass kicked by total strangers might be an effective deterrent.

Then again, probably not.

[anwar-jones.livejournal.com]

i'm glad that you wrote this and i think that you are wise for putting things this way. when i had a friend who underwent severe horrible trauma once years ago, all we (her friends) thought about was ways to kill, maim and otherwise cause vengeance to the perpetrator but none of us knew anything to do to take care of our friend, to let her know it wasn't her fault or really comfort her (she was against the violence.) and so i appreciate your calm voice.