The Sidekick Incident

So, there's this interesting event that is making some waves in the internet community, what will inevitably become known as the 'Sidekick Incident' in the future. Apparently some girl found a sidekick in a taxi, and rather than return it to the owner, who sent many text messages, even offering a reward, she just replied with intransigent threats and illiterate attempts to justify keeping the phone that was now 'hers.' Because of the sidekick's ability to record the aol screen name and other info on the people using the phone, which information is then stored on T-Mobile's central servers, when the owner got a new sidekick, she was able to see everyhting the thieves had been doing with the stolen one, thus giving quite a few clues as to their identities.

A friend of the owner posted a blog about this event, at http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/ and has been getting a lot of attention. The myspace pages of thieves were posted, the fake address they gave, as well as a bunch of really shitty photos they took with the stolen phone. Also, a link to a video that the girl who stole the phone had put up on myspace about a month before the phone was stolen was posted.

This video link is actually the topic of this little diatribe of mine. THe video, located at http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=743388586&Mytoken=8DCE707B-C335-14D8-099AEAB2528135642754597 is fairly mindane little bit of bad ass-shaking by the 16 year old thief and her 14 year old friend, all set to bad music and occasionally complimented with their bad english. The video itself is unremarkable--hundreds like it must exist all over myspace. But the comment log is itself something rather amazing. At the start of it, are just 4 or 5 comments from the thief's friends at around the time the video was first posted. As of 6-07-06, when the blog went up detailing the sidekick theft, an avalanche of comments begins. Starting with many pleas for the phone's return, evolving into all kinds of ad hominem attacks on the girtls themselves, comments like "I think i threw up in my mouth a little," to glee at the immense trouble the thief will be in soon(the blog noted that the police have been notified and are instructing him how to proceed), such as 'Hahaha you're going to get soooooo much shit soooooooo quickly.' There were an assortment of absolutely revolting pornographic images, mostly posted 15-20 at a time so they took up an entire page of comments: one, a syphilitic penis and the sores all over it, another, the infamous goatse. There was pride that a stupid thief was being caught and outsmarted by a savvy nerd: 'internet > you' THere were even plenty of racial epithets: from latinos or hispanics telling the girl she was making them all look bad, to comments about how they are a couple of 'dumbinicans', to 'DEPORT THESE ILLITERATE ILLEGAL ALIENS BACK TO THE SHANTYTOWN SHITHOLE IN MEXICO THAT THEY CAME FROM.'

In short, a video posted well before the theft, and really having no connection to it other than that one of the girls in it is allegedly the thief(I say allegedly, as there seems to be discussion as to whether it really is her, and the original blog only provides a link; no evidence), has become a sort of modern-day pillory. This is really somewhat of a unique phenomenon. Besides disregarding the fact that there hasn't been any sort of trial and that in America criminals are innocent until proven guilty, the commentors seem to have taken it into their own hands to dish out the punishment as well. To some extent this is sparked on by the orginal blog itself, whose stated goal is to make the perpetrators feel so ashamed that they are forced to return the phone, but even the blog's author asks that people be at least somewhat respectful, to leave race out of it, and has also asked that people not 'run by' the thieve's home in NYC, as has been suggested by some of his readers.

Is this wrong or right? There is no phenomenon like the pillory in today's society. Punishment is for the large part meted out in silence, time is served behind bars away from the eyes of the public. True, there are certain parallels between the internet response and the media circus that sometimes surrounds high-profile cases. But there's nothing high-profile about this--people find and keep expensive things in the back of cabs all the time. The only unique thing here is that the technology allowed the thief to be identified.

The vitriol springing up against the thieves is astounding. From the sounds of the blogs, they really do deserve our contempt, but for hundreds of non-involved parties to go out of their way to mock and deride the hapless crooks seems all out of proportion to the crime committed. Beyond being a testament to the ease of communication over the internet, this is seemingly a proof of the sense of justice that really pervades our society. What is happening here is not the justice of the courts, the justice of the law, but rather the mob imposed justice of ridicule and shame that had heretefore gone the way of the true pillories of dark ages europe.