Recently, I’ve been becoming more interested in matters of online identity and social networking – and this latest discovery, by Andy Baio, is huge:
Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, Jason Fortuny, posted an explicit ad to Craigslist Seattle; capturing all received emails and re-posting them to the web. The result is highly controversial and extremely Not Safe For Work.
Many peoples lives have been ruined by this single action – posing a lot of questions concerning anonymity and Internet law. If nothing else, this is certainly an interesting read and is excellently surmised by Andy. I wonder what the implications will be against Craigslist Personal ads as a whole. I imagine that if there are more copy cats of this original prank, something will have to give.
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Adam Lindsay (September 8, 2006 at 8:23 am)
The internet simply exaggerates something that is meerly embarassing. If it is more then that, and it ruined lives, well who is at fault? Should the responders been posting what they did to complete strangers?
Scenario on smaller scale:
Your in a movie theater, and you see a cute girl across the isle. You lean over and start chatting with her. Annoyed she blurts out “You like it up the a**.” Just then everyone in the theater turns and stares at you. Sure it sucks, but are you going to press charges against this girl? :)
Someone (September 10, 2006 at 3:09 am)
The curious can find the full experiment of RFJason on Encyclopedia Dramatica, at the RFJason CL Experiment.
Someone (September 10, 2006 at 3:41 pm)
Adam,
Your analogy doesn’t quite fit. The real analogy would be if you saw a cute girl in the movie theater who said “Wow, I’d love to take it up the a** right now” and when you replied that you’d like to help, then blurts out “You like it up the a**.” Pretty different scenarios. And even my scenario doesn’t fit, because it does not lead to the pontential damages that having your personal sexual life broadcast all over the Internet by a sociopath does. So maybe she’d have to stalk you and tell all your friends and co-workers the information. And then tell your boss you did this on company time, etc.
Yes, it’s not the safest thing to do with your personal info, but considering there have been 1000′s of personal exchanges on CL where this didn’t happen, there is a realistic expectation that this information would be kept private. And he specifically targeted personal info, asking for face pictures and telling responders not to be paranoid. Lack of judgement does not make you at fault if someone takes advantage of you. If I was a small, attractive drunk girl who stumbled into an alley and was sexually assaulted, would it be my fault for not exercising lack of judgement? Would the rape be my fault and not the fault of a sick rapist? I dare you to say yes.
I would never give out info like some of these responders did, but does that make the responders any less of a victim? If this were a different scenario (say men trolling for women’s information, or a less sexually kinky ad) you’d have a different attitude, and not be so quick to judge. A lot of people defend this by passing moral judgement on the responders, some of whom may have been cheating on a significant other. But a lot of those men weren’t cheating on anyone. And even if they were, who made Jason Fortuny the guy in charge of outing cheaters? He wasn’t even interested in making some moral judgement anyway, he was being a bastard who likes to screw with people for fun. Anyone with half a brain that reads this bastards LJ can see that.
People who back this guy have this messed up worldview that no one should be trusted and to assume that everyone is an a**hole like they (and Jason Fortuny) are. Nice way to live people. And I’m sure none of you has ever done anything stupid for sex, right?
On a somewhat bright side, I think this has gone even farther than he wanted it to and I really hope this guy gets sued and has his ass handed to him on a plate.
Another Someone (November 10, 2006 at 9:08 am)
The entire US political system is based on “outing” someone for screwing up (i.e. making poor judgements). Listen to the ads last week…..do I need to say, “Foley”? I havent been able to find a working link to the full details, but it sounds to me that anyone who makes an effort to engage in illegal acts, or even morally objectionable ones should be prepared to pay the price. Outing them publicly sounds good to me. The example above is morally objectionable and in many places, illegal.
The whole Jason Fortuny thing is far from sociopath activity, but again I havent seen the original details.
Take charge of your actions people…make better decisions!
kkkkk (January 18, 2007 at 8:00 am)
sind sex