Guarding your good name on online
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Recent years have seen a rash of scandals in China involving risque video clips and pictures posted online as revenge by rejected lovers. Oftentimes this is what happens: a relationship fails and the man, outraged at being dumped, decides to destroy his ex-girlfriend's reputation by spreading photos of their sexual intimacies.
In an era when Internet users are bombarded by a plethora of information, these malicious online sensations attract unsophisticated masses of viewers for a relatively long period of time.
Worse still, such episodes expose the hypocrisy of some Netizens. While they take pleasure in viewing steamy video clips and images, they have no qualms about castigating the "debauchery" of the sexual orgies depicted.
Hunger for more lewd detail even drives some people to probe and publicize the identities of female victims of these exposures.
Although police could track down the original disseminators of obscene images and bring them to justice, they often do not. Those who spread vulgar content can hide behind a wall of anonymity, secure in the knowledge that they often get off the hook in the virtual "Wild West."
In their book "Wild West 2.0," Michael Fertik and David Thompson begin by saying that the Internet has become the biggest battlefield after the courtroom where people clash with slanderers to safeguard their reputations.
Whatever the motives of those attacking reputations online, be they personal grudges or cynical attempts to undercut a business rival, one thing is certain: unsubstantiated claims litter the Internet.
Yet, though many of us are keenly aware of how far removed online information could be from reality, we may still be deceived by unscientific reputation ratings if we don't know how online reputation can be "shaped," Fertik and Thompson say.
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