You
laugh
now....
personally,
I
don't
see
what
is
so
funny
Have you read the comments? While most people are content to gleefully point the finger and post mocking photoshop alterations, some reactions are worryingly going a lot further than what is called for. For example:
I just thought it was a shame that further details were not recorded to the where-abouts of Amir - because whilst he has created superb entertainment for me and my friends by his own stupidity and foolishness, there is nothing i'd like to do more than cave his face in !!!!! and any of his family who wish speak up for him in his defence. According to the Daily Mail, his family (who, we can agree, are innocent) has already received numerous "threatening and racist phonecalls".
Imagine the following horrifying scenario will play out in the next few days: the humiliation and persecution is escalated on popular gossip websites until suddenly someone posts the location of a real life spotting of Amir. Soon after, Amir's body is found at the back of an alley, where he was savagely beaten to death with bare fists while the neighbours ignored the screams.
Will you still be laughing then, robwood?
Aside from demanding this disproportionate punishment of human sacrifice, there is the irony of masses of people blindly trusting a stranger because he caught out another stranger abusing that trust.
Perhaps because of their own fears and frustration, people are too eager to jump to the defence of anyone crying wolf without critically examining the evidence presented. I, for one, would like to see something more concrete before I make a judgement.
A simple receipt of repairs or official statement from a computer store confirming that the computer was indeed broken during an examination soon after the delivery (and not of a nature that could have been inflicted by mere physical trauma) could have this supposed scammer hung, quartered and drawn; but what's truly frightening is how happily people will carry out the sentence after hearing nothing but circumstancial evidence.
Some view the fact that the laptop contained personal details as proof in and of itself. Even government bodies have made worse mistakes - in the most recent such news item, a hdd sold on ebay turned out to originate from a german police station and contained sensitive classified information, passwords, contact names and phonenumbers. One source even cites a test in which 7 out of 10 professional attempts on a variety of second-hand ebay disks have managed to restore carefully wiped data. Better make sure you erase that disk at least 8 times before you pass it on to a stranger. They might recover something juicy and try to extort money from you, making the information publically available until the relentless defamation forces you to return the payment.... free hdd for the callous, tech savvy griefer.
That Amir artificially inflated his seller status and recieved a vaguely similar complaint from another ebay user (who stepped forward after the story appeared in newspapers) may or may not be relevant, but is hardly directly connected to this case (especially since we're not presented with any support of their validity either - what if the ipod was lost or stolen in the mail? We'll probably never know).
Amir's statements that some of the pictures posted are not of his authoring is confidently batted aside by Mr Victim with electronic date stamps (which are said to be available to the police should they wish to inspect it, but as far as I can tell have yet to be confirmed under scrutiny). Bravo, this proves that he's too embarrassed to admit to his fetisches.
All this clearly makes for a very poor character reference, but since when has a court of law condemned a man based solely on his past actions? Yet the stories that reach us beyond the internet is spinning the tale of the righteous vigilante defeating the boogeyman and the lynch mob is steadily growing, viciously chanting for blood.
The moral cliché of this case: two wrongs don't make a right.
