Some of you may have seen this viral video “Taipei MRT Racist” of a man who was living in Taiwan where he happens to be a foreigner in the country. Because of this, as it turns out he received some pretty racist hate over this where one person was blunt about it. Even though everything was captured on video the guy didn’t care and continued to throw out racist remarks. You can see the video here:
While the person tried to get the police involved to handle it the proper way, he simply got the run around to the point where nothing got solved. As a result, he decided to publish the video online where millions of people saw the story. From what I read in the comments, the person throwing out the racist remark was then held accountable for his actions as the public began to research into it instead.
This is still what I think people in BC and Canada in general need to do when it comes to trying to fix the justice system. For the most part, you need to try and publish your stories to the general public like this. Like how this guy tried to go to the police station, I can just imagine trying to get like a chief judge or court official to actually take your concern seriously would probably go on deaf ears. Maybe one day it won’t be like that, but at this moment that is how it seems like.
This story is going to be very awkward for those who don’t exactly follow online media sources. But it demonstrated almost exactly on how I feel using social media and regular people can flush out the truth way more efficiently for standard cases rather than say a judge in a court room. At least the ones here in BC Canada. Fortunately, since this social media story was mostly told through videos I am hoping you will simply watch them to get the full details as I relate them back to the court process I experienced.
In a nutshell, a lady named Jennifer Keller who goes under the alias of “Laughing Witch” disagrees pretty passionately with the views of a man named Phil Mason who is identified online as “Thunderf00t.” The topic revolved about feminism and as you can imagine that usually generates angry debates if the two sides don’t see eye to eye. Keller decided to write a letter to Mason’s employer in hopes that the institution would see how his behavior is unacceptable where she at first denied writing the letter. For one reason or another, she thought he got fired over this and many of her supporters seemed like they were celebrating over this fact.
However, with Internet research it was exposed pretty quickly that she was indeed the writer of the letter. Now Mason didn’t get fired over this too as some assumed. As a result, he released these facts on the Internet and the online audience began to research out of curiosity.
Keller also spoke in a video how essentially no one can do anything to her if they say wrote a letter to her boss as that is her husband since they run a business. Boy was she wrong though. People started to take initiative and expose to the world factually on her actions to educate others on what the owner’s of the business have done.
As a result of this, it appeared that they started a campaign of sort to demonstrate how they are being targeted by a vicious hate mob with no merit.
They even created a funding campaign asking for $25,000 to help circumvent this whole incident.
As well, it appeared they got the local media to do a report on it which you can see here:
A different Internet user decided to investigate into the business and its dealings. There was some interesting discovery as you can see here:
The saga continues it seems, but from what I read Mason seems to be winning factually. That media report of the incident in essence reminded me exactly like how the BC court process was. It’s almost like saying, it becomes more of a game on trying to create a story narrative and hoping the right people will believe it. This is as opposed to simply throwing the facts and focusing on getting the truth. Like the media example too, depending on which journalist you get the facts can be ignored.
Now what happened when the story got out to the general public to research about the issue? While it may not exactly be the most politically correct way of handling it, enormous pressure was placed on people to find out the truth. While I don’t think it is right to leave say fake negative or positive comments to a business to get attention, this is kind of a classic example on how if one party feels that the repercussions to telling a false story is nonexistent then why would people bother to say tell the truth?
In this case, the pressure came from the public that was insistent in pushing until the truth came out. The repercussion, while unfortunate, was that Keller and her business will never hear the end of it until people feel they got the whole truth out. As well, every false story or fact presented was archived, scrutinized and taken seriously where the perpetrator will for sure see a repercussion to it. So reflecting this back to the courts in Canada, why is there not a mandatory law of sort that effectively punishes people for telling false stories in court? Is it not obvious like here on how immediate repercussions of actions like these help to flush out the truth faster?
I can imagine if this dispute went to court we would basically be trapped in a situation where it is simply watching news reports and trying to determine who is telling the truth that way. You may think I am exaggerating, but if you have not already you can read all of the documents I submitted about my experience in taking a person to court. Just makes me think more that a truly open public courtroom of sort is way more cost effective and efficient for simple cases. It doesn’t need to be super complicated or expensive as ordinary people can be just as good if not better in compiling the facts.
I am pretty sure almost everyone has heard on the news about Bill Cosby being accused of allegedly sexually assaulting a lot of women. They say a picture speaks a thousand words and for this magazine cover it showed a picture of 35 women who have been trying to tell their story about it only to have it individually dismissed for the most part. A the same time, that empty chair in the picture to me kind of symbolized how there may be more who simply don’t bother telling their story due to the fear of not being believed or possible retaliation.
When you put everyone together though it sure makes a more powerful statement huh? There was then one quote from the magazine by Tamara Green that stated ““People often these days say, ‘Well, why didn’t you take it to the police?’ Andrea Constand went to the police in 2005 — how’d it work out for her? Not at all. In 2005, Bill Cosby still had control of the media. In 2015, we have social media. We can’t be disappeared. It’s online and can never go away.”
That line definitely resonated with me as it made me think on how I created this site to share my story to hopefully promote change. Now of course my situation is probably not as fascinating to the general public due to the topic. But it did make me think of the suppression to be able to fully tell my story to help others as I am more of a facts person. Example, as you all know there is so much I am essentially not allowed to say due to nothing being documented in the pre-trial. A person suggested to me that legally courts must keep a record the conversations in pre-trial but even reading literatures like this say otherwise:
But overall, it still made me think to my original thought that these types of stories require an enormous amount of people to essentially package their stories together as opposed to people trying to go all in by themselves.
