Demons

Here’s an email I got last night:

Delivered-To: info@humansatwork.com
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:03:26 +0800
From: “Alice.Yang”
To: “info”
Subject: humansatwork Domain name Registration

Dear humansatwork,

We are Beijing Himense Technology Co.,Ltd, a domain name register organization in china. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register” humansatwork ” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Dec 17，2008. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first. Please contact us within 7 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the their application unconditionally.

Kind Regards,

Alice.Yang
Auditing Department
Tel:+86-10-81128599
Fax:+86-10-81493938
Email:alice.yang@himenon.cn
Beijing Himense Technology Co.,Ltd

http://www.himense.cn

It only took a second on Google to confirm that this is a fraud, and that domain name slamming by organizations on China is on the rise. Here’s a more in-depth article about the legitimate registration process.

I’ve sent an email to the Chinese authorities about it. I expect it will go nowhere, and that’s fair enough: I’m sure the Chinese government has enough on its plate right now without worrying too much about the status of one woman’s domain name. We all have our priorities, and sometimes they do not meet.

But the incident has me thinking about how much easier the internet makes this kind of anonymous, faceless crime. I think that for many humans it’s easier to bully, to steal, to lie, to harm someone we don’t think of as real. To the people who sign themselves “Alice.Yang,” I’m not real. I’m just a domain name with a bank account at the end of it.

But I am real. And so are you. Neither of us is a gear or a cog: we are human. We won’t always agree. We may not always like each other. But we are here together, and we much more the same than we are different, no matter how different we may appear. Even those people in China, whether they will ever acknowledge it or not.

It’s a small step, in a different direction, from “not real” to “bad.” It’s tempting to demonize people who threaten us. And maybe sometimes it’s right to do so: I’m still thinking that one through. But it shouldn’t be so easy, and it shouldn’t be our first line of defense. Otherwise, we end up demonizing the person in the next cubicle because she plays her iPod too loud. We demonize the bad manager who actually wants to do a good job but has no idea how, and who is so busy protecting himself from his own insecurity that he’s demonizing us right back.

When do you demonize people? And what do you do about it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.