I'm not the least bit interested in defending this guy. Anyone can see that he's a tool through and through. What we're seeing here is clearly a tool getting his comeuppance, and it's fun to watch. That said, though, what we're watching is an angry mob exacting its "justice." Having been on the receiving end of mob "justice" I can say without equivocation that punishment is 99.999% of it and "equivalency and fairness" are in the noise. This isn't a bunch of people assessing the situation and meting out a punishment they feel appropriate as a dispassionate observer. This is every person who has ever suffered at the hands of customer service finding a handy punching bag and piling on. Realistically speaking, how much of your day should some tool who sucks at customer service and the one guy who wrote in about it take up? How does it affect your life? What impact will it have? Yet Reddit is full of nothing but this story, Kotaku picked it up, it landed at Penny Arcade and "oceanmarketing" gives you 46 hits on Google News. The Internet magnifies little things for our entertainment in a handy-dandy interactive format. Ever gotten shafted on a Comcast phone tree? Not gotten a refund you were owed? Had a coupon that wasn't honored by a business you trusted? This story's for you. We feel commonality with it so we unleash our rage and we move on. The people close to it, on the other hand, are the ones who can truly see the flood - "Dave" posted on Kotaku's site asking people to calm down but by then it's too late, of course. Nobody ever expects The Internet to be as big and as angry as it is. I think a healthy fear of The Consumerist and its ilk is a useful thing for the everyday consumer. It helps keep businesses in line. At the same time, I've never seen The Internet pile on to sing praises when a merchant does something right. Whenever we celebrate things like this, we're celebrating the fact that The Internet is a place of torches and pitchforks without noticing that it is not a place of building. Maybe you like entropy. Maybe you recognize it as a force for good. To me, it's just a force. I'm not sure it should be encouraged.
I think it goes beyond the crowd venting their collective frustration. I think Paul was elevating himself to almost an archetype of a comic book villain, complete with the comedy, ignorance, stubbornness, and malice that goes with that. The reason people reacted that strongly is only because his behavior was that bad. I dunno. I can't pretend that the Internet is some fantasy land where everybody takes the high road. It is a place where we build things up, as well as tear them down. It's a mirror, and I know if I saw someone treat someone else like that IRL I wouldn't be able to hold my tongue. I would hope I wouldn't be the only one quite honestly. Just because things can go viral on the internet quite easily doesn't mean that the individual reactions to the stimulus aren't valid, it just means there are more of them. At the same time, this type of piling on could easily be directed at the wrong person with just the twist or absence of one or more key facts. Then what? I think it's completely sane and valid to cast a suspicious eye on mob justice. In this case though, I can't really say that I have a problem with what unfolded. >Realistically speaking, how much of your day should some tool who sucks at customer service and the one guy who wrote in about it take up? How does it affect your life? What impact will it have? This particular situation, I'd put on par with watching a funny movie or some comedy clips on youtube. It's right in line with some fairly innocuous and enjoyable media consumption activities in my book.
My basic point is this: if you see someone acting poorly in real life, you can say "hey, buddy, cut it out." But if you see someone acting poorly on the internet, you can do the same... without the benefit of first-hand knowledge of the situation. Worse, if you want to say "die nigger die" but social mores prevent you from doing so in person, the internet gives you all the cover you could possibly want.
The viral megaphone trait of the Internet is a function of the technology itself, and has facilitated tremendous good an ill. Much like technology itself it is neither good nor bad, it just is, and the way we employ it says a lot about us rather than the tool itself I think.
The more I look at it, the more I recognize that anonymity is used far more for doing the things we aren't proud of than the things we are.