“The energy and explosiveness of today’s fragmented and group communications is extremely powerful. The scariest part is that anyone can pull the trigger. “
Making a case
Five months after being secretly filmed, Wu Siqi finally got a notice of case filing from Hangzhou Yuhang Court in December 2020. That day, she waited from noon 1 o’clock until 5:30 pm. She couldn’t remember how many times she read the notice of filing, repeatedly checking whether it was accepted or rejected, and grabbed her boyfriend’s arm several times. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public.
Five months ago, wearing a short floral skirt, Wu Siqi in front of the community station waiting to pick up the courier, was in the same station in the community convenience store owner secretly photographed. Subsequently, the convenience store owner and friends with this video, fabricated a “female owners lonely cheating” dialogue, and with a hotel photo, and secretly filmed video together with sent to a local group of car enthusiasts. The pictures and videos were packaged into a group chat record and kept spreading. The “conclusive evidence” of the graphic and textual The “peachy” city story spread online and even made it to the same city’s hot search on Weibo.
On October 26, 2020, Wu Siqi filed a criminal complaint with the Hangzhou Yuhang District People’s Court, requesting that Lang Jian, the owner of the convenience store, and his friend He Kai be held criminally liable for defamation, and on December 14, the Yuhang District People’s Court accepted Wu Siqi’s criminal complaint. disturbing the network social public order, causing insecurity to the general public and seriously endangering the social order, according to the public prosecution procedure to be prosecuted.
Wu Siqi told reporters that the day waiting for the results of the case is “the most tormented, apprehensive, anxious” day, but also I received the best news of 2020. She was sitting at the table in the living room, wearing plush pajamas, glasses, hair randomly scattered, fair skin, no makeup, but in recent months has lost weight, cheekbones slightly prominent. From time to time, the cat leaps up from the chair onto the table, she rubs the cat’s back, pretending to scold it, and carries it off the table – after switching from Beijing to Hangzhou in 2020, she adopted the stray cat, naming it “Radiant She named him “Radiant”.
In the last two weeks, there were 50 to 60 media and self-publishers contacting her for interviews, and she drew a schedule on paper to record the appointment times. The results of the case made her relax a lot during the interview, talking about the weather in Hangzhou, her fat cat, and even willing to take off her mask to face the camera – in the previous months, she tried to avoid going out in the daytime. If you really want to go out, no matter what the occasion, hot and sweaty, but also do not take off the mask. Wu Siqi says she doesn’t care how the court will sentence the two next, and filing a case is already the result she wants. “This is enough to prove that Lang Jian and He Kai’s behavior is suspected of breaking the law, not the so-called joke. “The video with its own image was only nine seconds long, and Wu Siqi saw it in the middle of the night on August 7. She had fallen asleep and in a daze heard what seemed to be someone calling her name from the hallway. She didn’t get up until a good friend who lived in the same neighborhood opened the door with a spare key and told her, “You’ve been secretly filmed, and the video has spread all over the Internet, and even her friends in Beijing have seen it. Wu Siqi’s first reaction was “confused”. She is still a stranger in this city, just arrived in Hangzhou from Beijing last March, planning to start a new life in this “warm city”. I don’t even litter outside, and I don’t wear very revealing clothes, so what can I be photographed? She looked through the group chat records sent by a friend, the video was shot in front of the community courier station, wearing a pink floral dress, standing next to a shelf full of packages waiting to pick up the courier. But with the chat screenshot, but a “peach story” – she became the opposite neighborhood The female owner, who was alone at home with her children every day, became acquainted with the other party because she was secretly photographed at the courier station, and then their chat was gradually ambiguous and explicit. The woman owner eventually took the initiative to send the hotel address “dating”. The actual video is actually not much of an emotion,” Wu Siqi pursed her lips, eyes slightly wide, and gave me a recovery of her own demeanor at the time. “Pretty much this expression, there is no aggression, fear, nor anger, at that time is completely unknown to this thing. She found the video content a bit boring and could not connect herself with the chat records – the avatar of the female owner in the peach story, the community address, married with children and various other conditions are not consistent with their own. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. “I think it may just happen that someone posted in that group, and he happened to see it”. She sent her friend away with the intention of going to the police station the next morning. But the next morning, Wu Siqi felt the “power of communication”. She picked up her phone on the table to call the police when she found that the owners’ group she was in had also forwarded this set of graphic records. Some owners in the group said “the surrounding area has gone crazy”, and some said “The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. She sent a WeChat to a female colleague who lives in the same neighborhood, reminding her that “there may be a problem with the courier station, do not go alone to pick up the courier recently”, and the female colleague replied to her. The company has been discussing this matter privately for two days. The company has been discussing the matter privately for two days. Wu Siqi called the police in a panic, and her boyfriend Li Wenbo found Lang Jian, the owner of the convenience store next door, through the staff of the express post. Lang Jian quickly admitted to the surreptitious filming, claiming he was just trying to “make a joke”. On August 13, the Yuhang Branch of Hangzhou Public Security Bureau issued an administrative penalty: “It was found that Lang and He used the information network to publicly insult and defame others, which is a serious case. The administrative penalty was issued on August 8. Lang Jian and He Kai were administratively detained for nine days. But Wu Siqi’s life is hardly back to the way it was before the accident.
“Is it her?”
Recalling her experience in August last year, Wu Siqi sat up a little straighter and kept twisting a napkin in her hands. In the week between the police and the arrest of the rumor-monger, she slowly felt the stirring of this so-called “joke” on her own life. A long-unconnected friend from abroad sent a private message to Weibo, “you cheated on me with someone else, everyone knows, advise you to try not to go out, I watched the video “. At that time she was collecting evidence for a lawsuit, and through her circle of friends and Weibo, she asked people to send her screenshots of the rumor messages they saw. But this message from her friend caused her to have her first emotional breakdown. Wu Siqi could not understand at all why the other party was willing to believe the rumor even when they knew she was unmarried and childless, based only on a few screenshots of the chat and a common video of picking up a delivery. She sat at her desk, unable to continue organizing the information, and just kept shedding tears. It was also during those days that many people who had barely crossed paths suddenly popped up, sending WeChats to Wu Siqi to gossip and ask for news. “They should know that the person in the story is not me, but they want to ‘eat the melon’. ‘What if it is?’ “Wu Siqi recalled that she was also secretly photographed by a new colleague in the company during that time. She deleted all her cell phone contacts, and deleted her WeChat friends from 700 to 500, and also tried to cut back on her daily life. Wu Siqi and her boyfriend rented a newly developed neighborhood, about 20 kilometers from the center of town, the last stop on the subway line. The community is huge, with nearly 2,000 households in Wu Siqi’s neighborhood, and it is only one of three neighborhoods. It has a large foreign population and the surrounding infrastructure is not yet fully supported, but the advantage is that the property is newer and the rent is not too high. She rented a three-room house, the living room with a cotton sofa, a painting folder and a cat nest. In the past, she used to record her daily life in her circle of friends: birthday parties, hitting different food restaurants, flowers she received, and certificates of blood stem cell donation. Every year on her birthday, she celebrated her birthday with a trip to a nearby city with her friends, and many photos of her and her boyfriend on their trip were posted on the fridge at home. In the photos, Wu Siqi is all paired with bright clothes, exquisite makeup and star-colored and red manicures on her hands.
But throughout August, she avoided going out in the daytime. If you have to go out, you will deliberately choose clothes that are “as inconspicuous as possible”: no shorts, no skirts, just long jeans or sweatpants; wear a solid-colored loose top The heat of Hangzhou in August, but this tight dress will make Wu Siqi feel slightly more secure. She became sensitive to all cameras, and even dragged a man who was secretly filming her on the road, and called her boyfriend to delete the secretly filmed video on his phone before she gave up. Only after 10 p.m. would she walk around the neighborhood, still insisting on wearing a mask. Once, she heard two people passing by whispering, “Is that her? Another person lowered his voice and replied, “I think it is. “
Wu Siqi said that she would be sad to hear people talking about themselves, but she never responded to such comments, “or else all the time was spent on scolding with some netizens”. She always speaks in a calm and steady tone, no big mood swings, just no longer pay attention to the cat who jumped on the table, and the napkin in her hand was twisted to some broken. Collecting and organizing the evidence took a lot of time, and Wu Siqi could not balance her work. She previously did eight years of design work in Beijing, before the incident of theft in Hangzhou, a company as an assistant to the general manager. A certificate issued by the company states that Wu Siqi “physical and mental state is very weak, has a serious impact on the company’s business development, while the case also has a certain negative impact on the company’s reputation … decided to dissuade her from the process “. Her mental state was really bad, and in September, she often kept walking back and forth in the house, “when she stopped, she felt like she was going to collapse”, and was finally diagnosed as depressed by the hospital. The state. Her boyfriend, Li Wenbo, whose job required him to travel extensively, did not feel comfortable with Wu Siqi at home alone and left to accompany her to focus on her rights. She insisted on filing a private criminal complaint from the beginning. But during the nine days the perpetrator was detained, Wu Siqi faltered. The wife of convenience store owner Lang Jian had taken the initiative to contact her, she realized that Lang Jian has a two or three year old child, “if pursued for criminal responsibility, it may have an impact on the future of the child “. She proposed settlement terms: that the other party record a video to publicly tell the story of the incident and apologize, and bear the financial losses caused to her. She wanted to end the matter in a more relaxed way, “in fact, also want to reconcile with themselves, the rights process is too long, things do not end one day, I will never get out in the “.
rumor monger
Lang Jian, the owner of the convenience store at the entrance of the district, is 27 years old and about one meter seventy-five years old. The store just opened less than six months, there are two layers, each with an area of about 20 square meters, the second floor placed food, freezers, tobacco and alcohol, the second floor is rice, oil, noodles and daily necessities. The entire kiosk is mostly run by Lang Jian, who spends almost all of his time taking care of the store, staying busy behind a counter of less than 2 square meters. The convenience store is open from 12:00 noon to 12:00 p.m. After closing the store, Lang Jian continues to take care of the goods and returns home around 2:00 a.m.
The traffic in the convenience store is so heavy that it starts to get busy at 4:00 or 5:00 in the evening and gradually stops after 11:00 at night. Children from school, housewives buying rice and oil, office workers returning home late, and workers from nearby construction sites step into the convenience store one after another and ask Lang Jian “Where is the instant noodle?” Some elderly people also came back after buying fancy lollipops for their grandchildren and asked him “How to eat this kind of candy”. Lang Jian answered one by one, walking back and forth behind the counter, checking out customers, getting cigarettes and packing food. He helps old people tear off lollipop wrappers, reminds workers who buy liquor of its alcohol content, and chats with acquaintances about new instant noodle flavors, looking like just a hardworking small business owner, not like the maker of a rumor that stirred up the Internet.
Lang Jian is a native of Hangzhou. There are rumors on the Internet that he is a “wealthy evictionist”. He doesn’t deny his status as a demolition worker, but asks me: “If I’m rich, do I need to watch the store by myself until this late? Sometimes, a good friend would accompany him in the store and sit behind the counter playing hand games together. They seldom talked about Wu Siqi, but when faced with the topic of demolition it was easy to open up the conversation. They talked in the local Hangzhou language about how the compensation for demolition in other districts was higher and what the standard was. When I asked about the lawsuit, my friend told me that after the fermentation, everyone called him “stupid x”. -Not only did he make up the rumor out of thin air and get into so much trouble, but he also set himself up as the object of cheating on the “lonely female owner” in the rumor. It’s a “stupid” thing to do. The company’s main goal is to provide a good solution to the problem. The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. Subsequently, the same in the group of friends He Kai proposed “a joke”. “The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. The two of them made up a conversation. In the dialogue, “ELIAUK” is the opposite district alone at home with children “The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. As the location of the secretly filmed video was in the courier post, Lang Jian also took the initiative to mention helping the female owner to deliver the courier to her door, which was interpreted by the public as “the female owner cheating on the courier boy” in the subsequent spread. “On July 8, 2020, Lang Jian sent the chat records that he and He Kai had forged together to this local group of car enthusiasts. There are 275 people in the group, ranging from a town under the jurisdiction of West Lake District. The majority of the group of friends met in reality, the male Internet users, three days to put some beauty video, make some jokes. This time, for the sake of realism, Lang Jian even attached a video of himself walking into the cell door, hotel room photos, pornographic audio, “live” in the group according to the content of the conversation The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The reporter saw from the group chat screenshot, Lang Jian issued the above content, the group members responded enthusiastically, the conversation box jumped a bunch of messages: “really exciting ah”. The first thing you need to do is to take a shower. “”Then you go shoot! Almost every media outlet that came to the interview asked Lang Jian: Why did you do this? Lang Jian has mentioned “joking” several times, a statement that has been criticized and attacked on the Internet. Now Lang Jian was a bit wary and reminded me seriously that “you should not hold on to the word joke”. But in the subsequent chat, Lang mentioned again: “At that time, I didn’t know it was illegal. I just thought I was joking around with the people in the group and bragging about it. “What he did not expect is that on August 4, the car friends group of Tao will own and He Kai fabricated dialogue screenshots and surreptitious video packet forwarded to other groups,” lonely The story of the female owner who cheated on the courier began to spread gradually from the local group in Hangzhou and spread online. The story of the lonely woman who cheated on the courier began to spread from the local group in Hangzhou and became popular online. Lang Jian, like Wu Siqi, felt the power of communication. In the screenshot of the chat, he used his large WeChat number, and he started receiving messages from many friends asking if it was true or not, and even his sister at home knew about it. Lang Jian immediately clarified in the group, and called He Kai and Tao to explain in various groups. “I said, I still have to open a store, besides, I have a family and a home. But the direction of things is no longer in Lang Jian’s control, “all at once spread out, can not control The company’s main goal is to provide a solution to the problem. I asked Lang Jian: “Did you feel scared then? He sat on a short soft cloth folding chair behind the counter, leaned back, smiled a little and lowered his voice in reply, “I’m sure I was scared “. He asked me again, “Even now I still can’t understand why this thing spread so much in August. “Zhou Kui, an associate professor at the Communication University of China, analyzed to this reporter that the story made up by Lang Jian and his friends could attract such widespread attention, first of all, because the plot alludes to the narrative text common on the Internet. “The narrative template of ordinary men getting rich women is very much in evidence, as are many advertisements for microloans and low-end online games. “Although the duo had no marketing purpose and were more motivated by a show-off mentality and wanted to use this as their social capital, it “alludes to this particularly unhealthy mentality on the Internet “. Unlike the general story, Lang Jian, who spread the news, also appears in it as a party, which also alludes to the onlooker mentality. “The onlooker mentality is to ‘eat melon’, especially from people you know The ‘melon’. In fact, many times people eat ‘fake melon’, but no one ever cares. “Zhou Kui said that packaged chat records can be forwarded with one click, reducing the difficulty of forwarding, and people have a voyeuristic desire to look at other people’s WeChat chat records for hunting,” The power of this form of communication is actually underestimated”. The whole incident is wrapped in a variety of social elements such as disinformation, personal privacy, legal responsibility, media literacy and social death, each individual element is enough to cause a discussion online. “The energy and explosiveness of today’s fragmented and group communication is extremely strong. The scariest part is that anyone can pull the trigger. “After a failed settlement
As the person who pulled the trigger, Lang Jian is now also in the whirlwind of public opinion he created, more or less experiencing the same feelings Wu Siqi felt when she was scrutinized by public opinion in August last year. Media interviews came one after another. Now he can tell whether it’s a customer or a journalist the moment they walk through the door. “Customers are looking at what’s in the store, and journalists’ eyes are on this side of the counter as soon as they enter. “Lang Jian keeps his guard up, careful not to let himself say much in relation to the matter, though he never loses his temper or throws people out. His personal information was also searched out by people, and he often had people calling to question and abuse him. At first, he tried to explain that he meant no harm and had apologized, but now he just gets through and listens to a sentence and hangs up immediately. “Millions and millions of netizens are cursing me, and when people send me text messages, I look at them and don’t even reply. When I call, I answer and just hang up. I also have to live, I can’t turn off my phone and cut off contact with the outside world. “Lang Jian often mentions the phrase, “I also want to live “.
Before this incident, he was a “provincial person” in the eyes of his family, never causing trouble. In college, Lang Jian studied cooking, worked as a chef, and reportedly went to the Great Hall of the People to participate in an industry competition. After graduating from college, because of his mother’s poor health, he returned to work locally as his family had hoped, and soon married and had children. Talking about the distress caused to the family, Lang Jian rubbed his eyes, a little tired, his voice became lower, and a little embarrassed, “my wife also scolded me, she also felt ashamed ah! “
Lang Jian has also tried to save and make amends. He showed me his chat records with Wu Siqi’s boyfriend Li Wenbo. After the criminal detention ended, he sent a WeChat to the other party that the matter was wrong and he was willing to cooperate with the other party’s apology request. in late August, Li Wenbo sent him the content of the apology letter and the recording request, and offered that they could wear a mask and sunglasses to record the video. Lang Jian replied with a sentence: “Anyway, the video should be coded, clarity does not have to be required too high. “It was this sentence that completely angered Wu Siqi. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. “Lang Jian is also a little aggrieved. He told me that he is indeed the party at fault, in the nine days of detention, “think about how to come out and apologize, to solve this matter a little better. He sent a video of his apology as requested, but the other party “felt like I was reading from a script, not sincere. So long, I and He Kai can not memorize the content ah. In the settlement plan, Wu Siqi had proposed that Lang Jian and He Kai each pay 58,000 yuan in compensation. Lang Jian said he did not bargain, but only needed Wu Siqi to provide bank flow as proof of compensation. “If it is a reasonable price, I can compensate. But she has been only a salary certificate, what if the salary certificate says her monthly salary is 100,000? Do we also need to compensate for the loss of Li Wenbo’s job? “Now, Lang Jian has also appointed a lawyer and is waiting for the upcoming judicial proceedings. When I asked if he was afraid of the possible penalties, Lang Jian stretched his legs and replied with his usual careless tone: “Of course I am. If you lose the lawsuit, you go in, what else can you do? I asked him if he would be willing to stop bothering with the salary vouchers if he now had the opportunity to ask the other side to withdraw the case by apologizing and paying compensation. Lang Jian once again showed an embarrassed smile and said softly: “Of course, why not? “
And Wu Siqi no longer intend to talk about settlement, she hired a lawyer, to the court to file a criminal private prosecution. “I just want everyone to know that this is not a joke, it is illegal. I don’t want to keep myself in the image of a victim, and taking off the mask is also to prove that it’s not something to be ashamed of, and to encourage those who have been disinformed to be brave enough to come forward and defend their rights. “But behind the courage, she fell into another kind of fear – “the fear of unknown possibilities “. In November 2020, she had tried to re-enter the work, interviewing five or six companies without results. She analyzed that the process of filing a lawsuit in the future would be long, perhaps because companies were worried that the case was not yet finished, or that she had not yet come out of her depression.
Wu Siqi also worried that the Internet has a memory, the thought of searching for her name on the Internet may be forever tied to such a not-so-positive news, “I wonder how long this situation will last, whether it will get better, whether it will get better, whether I will always be the mouth of others the subject of discussion, for better or worse. This sense of uncertainty is frightening.”
All characters in this article are pseudonyms
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