Facebook Panopticon

    There was a website called Cyworld. It is very similar to Facebook, and it was extremely popular in Korea before Facebook took over the social network market. I would argue that Cyworld was more popular than Facebook, at least in Korea. South Korea is a very populated country, and about half its population (which would be 20 million people) live in Seoul or its suburbs. So high speed internet and wireless internet is very common. Everyone was on Cyworld, and I really mean everyone.
    The first incident (that I remember of) related to the idea of Panopticon was in 2005. A young woman got into an argument with an older lady for not cleaning after her pet dog. The right and wrong of this incidence was clear. Dogs were not allowed on trains, and a dog owner should always carry a doggy bad to clean after her dog. Someone in that train recorded the argument on his cellphone and posted the video clip on Cyworld. Millions saw that video, and of those millions there were people who could identify the young woman. They found her Cyworld page, and its link was posted on different websites, and thousands of people visited the young woman’s page, leaving terrible messages on her wall. Her identity was soon posted: her name, age, the school she went to, and even where she lived. All for not cleaning up after her dog, and arguing with an elderly about it.
    What she did in the train was wrong, especially in Korean culture, to yell at an elder. However, she probably had to recreate her identity, move to a different city if not a different country. I don’t think she deserved that.
    These happenings of thousands of internet users attacking a single person became more and more frequent. At its peak, there were incidents like that every other week or so, and I am not the most wired person. Each of those incidents had its reason: someone did something wrong. But it was clearly getting out of control, to the degree that I didn’t feel safe. What if I had a bad day, and did something mean to someone? There was a possibility that it would be recorded and posted online. I could say something offensive to someone, and that phrase could be online, without the context in which it was spoken. It is easy to be politically wrong, if you record only a segment of a speech.
    When Foucault talks about the Panopticon, one of the important aspects of it is that it is an economic way to control the people. Now, how is this Cyworld panopticon a way to control the people? I would propose that it is a form of horizontal violence.
    Horizontal violence is when members of a lower social class turn their aggression towards another subgroup in the same class, rather than the ruling class. It is a term first used by Frantz Fanon who used it to explain colonial exploitation.
    I have noticed that Cyworld panopticon is unreasonably violent, and its victims are almost always young women. I would argue that such aggression is a form of horizontal violence where young males from lower middle class Korean society, turn their aggression towards women. It makes sense in the time and culture of early 21st century Korea.
    Women are competing with men in the job market at a more equal status, and the economy is not blossoming as we expected it to during the 90s. It makes sense to deduce that young men who spent ten or more years in education, entered the job market and felt disappointed. Add a little bit of psychoanalytic to the sociological phenomenon, and we have a textbook case of collective Vagina Dentata.
    I am interested in this because this is a timeless phenomenon. It happened in politics historically: politicians have been known to create public enemies or even create war in order to diverge hostility. However, it is becoming harder with the social media to create a targeted enemy amongst people. Yet the social media were able to conform to the ruling class need and lock the people in their own panopticon. It revealed to be in a form of Cyworld panopticon I talked about, but with the changing media, I am curious as to who and how will this manifest in the future.