1000 words 15 minutes unedited donch read

I did something naughty last night, and I do regret it. I think. I was surfing EDMW and I found a thread about emergency contraceptives. Some guy had been having unprotected sex with his girlfriend, and was worried that she might be pregnant. The people on EDMW are a little merciless, and will exploit such situations for laughs- jokes like “Happy Father’s Day” and “quick, make use of the current christmas and end-of-year sales to buy baby clothes and other necessities” are quick to pop up. There’s some decent advice, too. The TS (thread starter) should have known this in advance- he has been an EDMW member for 6 years, and he should know very well what to expect.

So I joined in the fun, mocking him for his ignorance, suggesting that he get married quickly while he’s still in NS, so that he can get the $300 hamper that the SAF provides. I then noticed that he had a blog URL in his signature. I went there, and I saw his name, his school and his course of choice. Ctrl C, Ctrl V into the searchbar, and I immediately find his personal blog. On his personal blog I find out that he’s an Officer of the SAF. There is a link to his Facebook page, and and on his Facebook page is a photo of him and his girlfriend- and he tags his girlfriend, so I have a link to her page, too. I infer from her URL that she’s born in 1994, and I can tell from my mutual friends with her that she’s from YJC.

I could figure out all of this in a matter of seconds, because all of the data was right there. I didn’t have to think at all about how to obtain it, it came to me almost on its own. Without a second thought, I posted the information in the thread, “for the lulz”. It was senseless and mean of me. I took down the information a while later. To the credit of the guys on EDMW, they didn’t publicize or sensationalize the issue. I think most of them were just curious to know who the TS was, and what his girlfriend looked like, but from what I see, there is no harrassment. (Then and again, perhaps there are some people who harrass behind the scenes. I don’t know the TS personally).

That said, the guy is pretty damn stupid. He posted some very personal information on the forums themselves- I won’t go into the specific details while writing this, but let’s just say he posted some really stupid stuff that he shouldn’t post lah. Surely, if I hadn’t posted his (freely available) information in the thread, someone else would have done it.

But as I read his blog, I thought to myself- this guy is a human being, not a bundle of data. He’s a real guy with a real life going through real struggles and difficulties, dealing with NS, spending too much money. He likes Mass Effect too. I would’ve liked to be his friend. He’s smart but stupid, you know? I like thoughtful and articulate people in general. I would’ve liked to be his friend.

A part of me thinks- this isn’t heroism, Visa, this is villainy. You didn’t have to do this. You were seeking cheap approval from the mob, that just wants to see people being torn down. Your curiosity for information and gossip was satiated when you saw the pictures of the couple, why did you have to share it?

I realize, from contemplating the issue afterwards, that there was a superior alternative to the path I took. What I should have done is- I should have PMed him personally to warn him. I should have told him about my findings, and how easily I found them, and how he ought to protect himself and his loved ones by being a little more careful with his data, by not throwing around his username and his real name so easily. (Well- I personally use my real name everywhere on the internet, and everything is traceable back to me, but I don’t write about anything that might potentially get me or my loved ones in trouble. I think. Haha.)

So there’s two things to talk about here. The first is- how should I carry myself on the internet? The second is, what should I do with other people’s data on the internet?

This isn’t the first time this happened. There was a girl from VJC (now NTU)- a pretty, articulate girl who made a YouTube video to communicate her linguistic abilities, as a potential tutor. She had the quintessential “good girl” vibe about her- prim, proper, etc. I watched the video (which is in the public domain). I can’t remember how I found it- I think someone else was sharing it on Facebook, but the focus was just on “wah, this tutor pretty ah” or something like that. I noticed she made a quip about “emphasizing the oral skill”, and I went to town with that, making innuendos all over the place. Somehow it just sort of caught fire from there- I got tonnes of Likes and Shares, and views on her video were skyrocketing.

I then received a PM from a friend of hers about what an asshole I was for doing what I did. I agreed with her assessment, apologized, wrote an apology to the girl herself, took down the link to the video (she took down the video altogether).

As I think about it months later- what should I have done? The two of us have a lot of mutual friends, though we’ve never met and we don’t know each other directly. It’s an inherently political situation- and political situations have to be dealt with. If I may, I do think both the girl and her friend were full of shit- I didn’t TECHNICALLY do anything wrong, and she was pleading a sort of ignorance that was inconsistent with the sort of media-savvy life she lives in (pretty girl in classy, sexy dresses pretending she doesn’t know anything about sexual innuendos- really?), and her friend was attacking me with such vigor and fervour that I was tempted to retaliate- but I will acknowledge this- whether or not I had any right to do or say whatever I did, responding like a little bitch to claims of hurt and injustice would make me the asshole they insinuated I was. So I swallowed my pride and did the right thing- I gave the sincerest apology I could muster. And I am genuinely sorry if she felt any pain or suffering or received any harassment because of my actions- causing hurt is the last thing I would ever want to do.

Both with this girl and the previous guy, in both cases, their information is publicly available, it’s just that nobody prior to me seemed to have bothered to really pounce on it and extract the maximum lulz value out of it. I honestly thought, in both cases, that it would be lots of good-hearted fun. Naturally, in both cases, it could potentially lead to some horrible harassment and objectification. My “defense is”- I personally try my best to avoid harassing or objectifying people, but I don’t really owe you anything. You put your stuff in the public domain, I have every right to do whatever I like with it, no? As long as I don’t defame you, tell lies about you, etc.

BASICALLY– I respect you as a human being but at the same time if you’re posting stuff that I find silly, stupid or questionable, I feel like I ought to have the right to call you out for it, at your expense. I’m personally consistent about this- I have had people call me out on my bullshit, and I’ve been insulted and attacked for my mistakes. I don’t want to turn into an abusive person who abuses because he/she was abused. I don’t want to be abusive, period. But I don’t want to have to be saccharine-sweet-nice, either. I want to be real. I guess it’s a matter of degree, and tact. I ought to take people down to the mat in a friendly, respectful and supportive way, and help them up after- instead of giving them a brutal takedown and then teabagging them afterwards so that “they learn”.

I do understand and acknowledge that the honourable high road to take is to speak to you privately about it, and I do realize that a lot of the people I respect and admire publicly frown upon such “calling out”, and so I think I have had my behaviour adjusted through socialization, whether I like it or not.

So my question to myself is- while I’m aware of a “more honourable path” or a “more noble path”, should I take it simply because it’s more noble, simply because it’s the right thing to do, because I want to be perceived as lofty and ideal rather than base and corrupt? But what if base and corrupt IS to some degree what I am? Going through the trouble to be some sort of noble white knight- that seems to be somehow pretentious, false, overly political.

I haven’t made up my mind about all of this. I want to be honest and true, without pretending to be someone I’m not. At the same time, I do want to take a noble and honourable path- but I want to take it because I believe I should, not because of social or political pressure to do so.

Honestly, I can never pretend to be apathetic. I care too much about everything. The most I can do is to choose to focus on the things that I consider most important of all, and then the rest will have to be displaced out of necessity.

OH YEAH- privacy is a fucking illusion and we should stop pretending we have any of it whatsoever. People WILL know everything about us, if they don’t already. This is the reality of the situation. Lots of people don’t seem to acknowledge this, and the people who do acknowledge this have to make concessions for the people who don’t.

The political game remains what it always has been. We’ll just have to learn to play it better. I will do it, but I sincerely refuse to compromise my personal integrity.