When the right goes wrong: Human Flesh Search phenomenon

Human Flesh Search Engine is originally a way of searching that bases on not only search engine but combines with human effort, which allows it to begin with limited information, a picture, a user ID, for example, but eventually discovers more as more people are mobilized to help identifying, unmasking and tracking down the target, which is usually a person.

Surely, there’s no particular search engine for this kind of service, or, namely any search engine can be used to perform the task. The method is simple: to reach all tools and humans you can find through all kind of channel, mostly internet, since that’s where everything one has even done can be traced back by certain means, and with the help of human, the mechanism can be even more resourceful.

However, what drew the attention of the public is not only how efficiently the search can be done, but the “punishment” accompanied by searching. Once tracked, all the target’s personal information will be post on-line to inform the participants that it is hunted down successfully. With one’s phone number, email, blog, address, workplace or even family exposed and whole bunch of people hating him or her, it is quite usual that the defendant accused for moral deviation ended up a victim of countless harassing calls and threats.

The term “Human Flesh Search Engine” is most likely derived from Chinese on-line forum with a founding activity in 2006 known as “everyone knows that you’re a dog” , challenging the anonymity of internet suggested by a cartoon by Peter Steiner published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993

One of the key elements for a Human Flesh Search activity to come into effect is the participation of active internet users who can zealously provide information and intelligence needed for further searching. As one may wonder why on earth anyone would put much hard work in it, what drives people to become the human flesh part of the engine could be just the same reason for those to edit a Wikipedia page or to upload a video on YouTube: the ideas that everyone can contribute, that everyone can make themselves recognized by the peers and that they have the equal right to make their voice heard. To give a relatively familiar, simple argument, it is the need for self-actualization that leads them to the path of Human Flesh Search where they do the detective work free of charge. In this sense, Human Flesh Search could also be a practice of collective intelligence, with a weird common goal such as hunting someone down.

In addition to self-actualization, a significant factor is the moral intention that usually involved in the activity. Indeed, a Human Flesh Search Engine could be triggered by anything, a request from a post, for enmity, jealousy or purely curiosity, but for the most famous or infamous cases, it is always fired up by the wrath of the masses toward the immorality.

That truth is that Human Flesh Search Engine became a top issue in China in 2006 with a couple of classic movements carried out which made it seemingly a praiseworthy achievement in the age of collective internet work at that time.
One of them, for example, tracked down a mid-age woman who uploaded a video of herself stomping a cat to death with her high heel. Six days after she was listed as wanted in a forum post, her name, age, place she lived and worked and all other personal information were exposed on-line and got her fired from her job as a nurse.
Later, Human Flesh Search Engine performed tasks one after another, such as exposing paramours in love affairs, making a girl who insulted victims of Sichuan earthquake arrested.
Huge victories of crowd-sourced detective movement had proved themselves comparable to police in the efficiency. At the moment, it became a legend that whenever there’s unjust in the world, the Human Flesh Search Engine will be started up, with the excelliance of millions of anonymous heroes fighting against it. In fact, till today, many of Human Flesh Search participants are still convinced that they are doing something that “rights wrongs,” that they are on a mission.

While in pursue of a supposedly “good” purpose, such practice of justice is yet largely questionable. The netizens in the mass hunting movement apparently had taken charge in every process from promulgating, exposing, arresting, and bringing to trail to conviction or execution, granted themselves as the police, the judiciary, the jury and the headsman in the same time, and administered the right on behalf of the people.

Written by Yunshan Hsieh