Final Essay

The Advantages of Human Flesh Search

Alison Chu

National Central University

Author Note

Alison Chu, Department of English, National Central University.

Contact: pinchingchu@gmail.com

Abstract

Human flesh search has been a controversial issue. The biggest reason why human flesh search is unacceptable for most of people is that it violates the law. However, there are still advantages. It can be used for cracking down the Internet crimes, for citizen journalism and for the lower classes to voice for themselves. In This paper, I want to introduce human flesh search and provide other perspectives of human flesh search to change people’s first impression of it.

The Advantages of Human Flesh Search

Users’ personal information is easily found on the search results from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc. Human flesh search is not an official search engine. It is a term created by the Chinese netizens. It means that netizens voluntarily to investigate and share the information to find out someone’s real-life identity like his real name, age and picture.

Internet creates a virtual world where anyone can publish his ideas anonymously.

According to Jacob Palme, a professor of computer science at Stockholm University, anonymity can be used to protect a criminal performing many different crimes, for example slander, illegal threats, racial agitation, fraud, intentional damage such as distribution of computer viruses, etc. Even when the act is not illegal, anonymity can be used for offensive or disruptive communication. For example, some people use anonymity in order to say nasty things about other people. (Palme, 2002)

Some people think they will not be caught on the Internet. Human flesh search can be used to find the people who are hiding behind the computer screen. It is a warning to prevent the Internet crime from happening.

It is very common that people use blogs nowadays. They are amateur reporters, show what they found on the Internet such as something illegal or immoral. In their blog, they make their arranged articles look like a piece of News and keep update the contents. The amateur reports are Citizen Journalist (公民記者). Published on the Internet, which is a online platform, the reports are examined publicly. Other netizens see their reports and reply. They may provide other evidence they found or give corrections about the contents. The person involved can also clean up the misunderstanding in the comments of the amateur reports. Take bully in Xsinchu for example the On March,2011, a video was spread quickly on the Inter net. In the video, a girl was bullied by a group of people. With human flesh search, netizens became Journalist to analyze the video. They found that the video was shot in Zaoan park. And the bullies were the Guangfu senior high school students. Though there was a misidentification, the netizens provided the information to the police, help found out the mastermind and also made the Ministry of Education understand how serious the problem of school bullying is.

A search warrant is a court order issued by magistrate, judge or Supreme Court official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found.However, human flesh search does not have the official approval.Sometimes people human flesh search some just for the curiosity, for fun. Maybe they just want to know a beautiful girl’s name. It easily invades one’s privacy. 

But if the human flesh search is used for the public, why it can be a formal investigation method? For example, the human flesh search find the cat-killer in the video. It also help us to catch the venal officials’ corruption. In 2010, the Legislature pass the amendments of the Personal Data Protection Law(個人資料保護法修正案). It said that for the public interest, collecting personal information on the Internet is legal.

An English political theorist Margaret Canovan stated that populism puts emphasis on the masses’ thoughts and that the society can be reformed by the group power. The Chinese government is on the top of the social status and controls all the distribution of profit which also increases the poverty gap. Tthe common people, who have complaints about the upper classes of society, the Internet provides a good way to speak for themselves. (Ho & Tsai, 2013)Human flesh search provides a stage for the common people to voice for their idea. It is like a carnival on the internet. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s The Carnivalesque, everyone can join the carnival which has no boundary and anyone whether his social status is high or low can play a part in. (Pan,2007) Carnival is not an official activity. It stands for the civil. In the carnival, the differences between status, property, family background and age do not exist. People share everything with each other.

Conclusion

        Human flesh is still controversial but we can not ignore its contribution for our society. It can be used for citizen journalism to maintain the publiv morality and order. It provide a way for the lower classes to convey their ideas. If we use it well, human flesh search will be a good investigation method to make our society better.

References

Ho,Z.N. & Tsai,Z.Z. (2013) Exploratory study of the cyber culture under the strict    control in China: The view of cyber populism and carnivalization phenomena. From Chinese Communication Society website: http://ccs.nccu.edu.tw/history_paper_content.php?P_ID=1487&P_YEAR=2013

Lin,S.h. & Wang,B.L. (2010) Amendments of the Personal Data Protection Law :For the public interest, human flesh search is legal. The Liberty Times

http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2010/new/apr/28/today-t2.htm

Palme.J (2002) Anonymity on the Internet http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html

Pan,J.F. (2007) Bakhtin’s The Carnivalesque and its effects.
http://panjunfeng2000.blog.163.com/blog/static/135457882007243517494/