Except in this case, Big Brother is not the government, a corporation or even the producers of a television game show. No, Big Brother is the collective –it’s everyone –at least everyone who has something to share with internet speed.
The latest example of why you should think before you act is The Cat Bin Lady. Go to YouTube and you can watch the security footage of a woman who pets a cat, then drops it into a garbage can and closes the lid.
The cat’s owners found their pet the next morning, and calculate the poor thing was trapped in there for about 15 hours, but luckily was otherwise unharmed. They then checked the footage on the security camera they use to monitor activity in front of their home and uploaded the video to YouTube to get help in identifying the woman.
Gawker reports that the video “went viral, eventually ending up on 4chan’s anarchic /b/ board. It was there that 4chan managed to identify the cat tosser ‘within a few hours …The culprit? A 45-year-old woman named Mary Bale of Coventry.”
Mashable explains that once she was identified, the full force of the internet came down upon her.
“Subsequently, Bale received death threats, and information like her address and her boss’s phone number were spread around the web….
Bale was placed under police protection (due to the aforementioned death threats)…Facebook was forced to take down a group titled “Death to Mary Bale.”
Bale is currently being investigated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but that’s not enough for many Internet lurkers. No, Bale is currently subject to that most severe of modern punishments/forms of praise: Memeification.”
You have been warned!