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Misleading title shows need to police web
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THE crackdown on online rumors has claimed its latest victim.
A man in Shishi County, Fujian Province, has been taken under 10-day police custody on charges of spreading rumors about a homicide that left 34 dead, which turned out to be mice.
The man, identified in news reports only by his surname Wu, posted a scare story about this “homicide” in his WeChat services early this year. Curious readers expected graphic, gory details but instead found a picture of the carcasses of 34 mice, big and small, neatly spread out in three lines.
However, before the picture emerged at the end of the story, viewers had to read a caption up front, saying that “a family of 34 had been brutally murdered in Shishi in the early hours of January 10, and one of them was pregnant. The homicide took place some 30 kilometers away from the downtown areas.”
Wu went on, “According to preliminary police conjecture, the ‘homicide’ is a likely result of a community fracas. The victims had been a neighbor of the suspect, and were caught in the act when sneaking into the latter’s home for a stolen meal of instant noodles.”
In spite of initial skepticism about the number of victims — for in modern China there are few extended families of that size — one would probably believe the story until the grisly picture emerged.
The instant reaction of most people would be to curse, and then burst out laughing, not just at the somewhat gruesome joke, but at their own gullibility.
However, what provoked a good laugh among most has proved too much for local police in Shishi, and on January 17 Wu was detained.
Adverse social impacts
In a post aimed at clarifying police rationale for detaining Wu, a local police officer said the picture was a file photo, first published by someone else as early as September, with a less sensational bent. It’s likely that action was taken against Wu, not the original publisher, because of the tactlessness with which he wrote the damning caption.
The association with police is perhaps viewed as an insult by the police, but it is not a compelling cause for overreacting, many Internet users say, adding that police in Shishi lack “a sense of humor.” Whether police have overreacted is debatable, especially at a time when online antics could cause unintended consequences. According to police, the original scare story has been re-tweeted more than 100 times online, with even more misleading variations that went without the picture of dead mice.
While it’s hard to assess the rumor’s debilitating effect on society, police were right to cite the law on public security, which subjects to punishment those suspected of deliberately creating chaos by spreading rumors about hazards, plagues or police activities and so on.
Given that Wu reportedly was detained twice last year for rumor-mongering, his plight is actually one of his own making, and police surely cannot be blamed for sticking to the letter of the law.
An underlying reason for the groundswell of sympathy Wu received is the worry that similar things could happen to anyone for merely airing an off-hand remark or cracking a bad joke that runs afoul of police, or any other authority for that matter. In defending Wu, many have exhibited an irritating naivete about the nature of his joke, crafted not merely for fun, but with a seedy motive.
Were it not for the distraction of police action and the controversy that followed, his plight could have only elicited glee, instead of sympathy, because of his status as a member of the notorious “headline clan.”
It’s about money
For anyone clueless about Chinese Internet terminology, headline clans refer to people who do their best to draw attention — and in the web age, attention is measured by clicks — by peppering headlines of mundane stories with intrigue, drama and hyperbole.
Wu’s dalliance with headline sensationalism is inspired purely by the desire to impress advertisers with his knack for eliciting the most clicks. Xinhua reported that he could make as much as 200,000 yuan (US$32,164) a month by publishing unverified “insider’s stories” that generate clicks. It proves to be an increasingly risky business amid a heightened cleanup of cyberspace.
In his statement delivered at a recent conference on fighting pornography and illegal publications, Liu Qibao, minister of publicity, said the Internet will be the main battlefield, where authorities are to step up oversight and sternly probe major cases to create a cleaner cultural space, both online and offline.
One would presumably cherish Liu’s ideal of a “cleaner cultural space,” since we have grown sick of being bombarded with online smut and dirt every now and then. Some may think that online jesters like Wu can be left alone in this battle, since the harm they can do is limited.
But tolerance would only abet their seditious tendency, emboldening them to be engaged in more willful demagoguery than just headline sensationalism.
As the People’s Liberation Army newspaper observed recently, a few digital publications circulated via WeChat have been more subtle and systemic in fabricating historical facts, which will eventually blindfold readers and undermine a nation’s ethos.
The case in Fujian has again highlighted the need to get tough on rumor mongers plaguing our cyberspace. Let it be known that antics are not without consequences, whatever their motives.
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