(I wrote this some time back, but never published it. Part 2 will follow with an additional analysis)
The world can be a scary place. It’s populated, in part, by scary people with nothing better to do then harass and scare others. The internet multiplies that by adding the ability to almost completely anonymize yourself and also expose yourself to the millions of others who are part of the networld.
duclod man is representative of the first, an individual that terrorizes people by mail, keeping “himself” anonymous through the postal service. He hasn’t done anything physically, instead using the mail to terrorize people. He may be one person, or many. Who he is hasn’t been know. Until now.
The Advocate is currently running an article called Chasing the duclod man. It’s a fascinating read of one persons obsession to track down the duclod man, started when she received a letter from him. Her tracking culminated with the identification who who she thinks to be the duclod man. The article details how she came to this conclusion and how she found his website. And she published her findings. And then it got picked up by sites like Digg and Reddit. That’s when all Hell broke loose for the poor guy.
Using information the information from the article, I found the website that contained the articles duclod man’s name, real-world address, and phone number. The information has been taken down, but the damage was already done. A flood of people have deluged his guest book with obscene and threatening posts. They have suggested that he’s sick and should kill himself. He is guilty in their eyes and deserves to be killed. They represent the second group, the Internet anonymous who can attack and threaten because they feel like it. They are as equally cowardice as those that anonymize via the post office.
And here’s the kicker, the author of the article could be wrong. She admits her conclusion is circumstantial and that there’s nothing directly linking the man to duclod. But the damage is done. He’s been “outed” as the duclod man and is being punished for it, regardless of whether he is or isn’t. People will continue to inundate him with insults and attacks until the site goes down. He will be destroyed because someone else wrote a convincing article connecting him to ducloud.
And that’s just sad.