The minimum etiquette

The news nowadays are full of negative articles. The biggies are the BBK fraud issue, oil-ship crash, a murderer who killed a solidier and ran away with weapons, the election, etc.

I understand the tension among the people, the sense of nervousness of the uncertain future, but I still think that it is going too far. Korean netizens (combined word for internet users) are well known for their short replies at the end of an article. It is often true that people are more interested in the replies than the actual article. The problem is, that many of the netizens are at their young age, and some of them are totally perssimistic about the world around them. They thoughtlessly make a one-line reply, never thinking about the possible reactions or consequences it might bring.

There were many fatal consequences. One typical example is the suicide of entertainers. A mistake or wrong news about entertainers that raged the netizens resulted furious replies, most of them being too personal. Since entertainers are humans, too, they seriously reflected themselves on the thoughtless replies and unfortunately, they decided they were not worth living.

Such unbelivable consequence alerted the Koreans and reminded of how an impulsive act can harm (and ultimately, kill) others. Nowadays, the portal websites where millions of people surf everyday, the reply system is being watched by the netizens themselves. There is this 'report' button next to every replies, so that any potentially dangerous comment can be reported and of course, deleted. There even were cases where people got arrested under the name of 'disguising one's reputation'.

It is a scarely world now, where everyone is watching everyone.