Human Flesh Search Engine
RUNNING HEAD: HUMAN FLESH SEARCH ENGINE IN CYBERSPACE
Globalization, Multitude and Grassroots Democracy:
A Case Study of HFSE in Chinese Online Bulletin Board
For IPSA World Congress 2009
Yuan Yuan
Human Flesh Search Engine
Abstract
This paper examines an increasingly significant online phenomenon, namely
“human flesh search engine” (HFSE) in Chinese cyberspace, by highlighting the active
role of internet users in forming this specific virtual community and regarding it as grassroots democracy. Hardt and Negri’s Empire, associated resistance, biopower and
immaterial labor are used to build the theoretical framework to explain how HFSE
emerges as a power from the perspective of globalization and how this intangible virtual
system steadily and continuously works? This paper attempts to understand the
emergence of "human flesh search engine" as the resistance within Empire and interpret
these highly collective actions as innovations and reflections of immaterial labor and
affective production in a cyber environment.
1 Human Flesh Search Engine
The Emergence of HFSE
On June 3, 2006, New York Times journalist Howard French used "internet hunting"
to describe an emerging phenomenon in Chinese cyberspace. He told a story of a
university student who had been investigated by tens of thousands of online users
because of being suspected of having an affair with a married woman. All his private
information including home address, names of his parents, and photos has been posted
online. Phonecalls and visits coming in every day forced him to keep posting statements
and explanations in various online forums and accept interviews conducted by the
mainstream media. Later, the literal translation - "human flesh search engine” given by
the netizens themselves first appeared in Roland Soong's English blog
"EastSouthWestNorth"1 on Feb 21, 2008, where he translated a story published on
Tianya2, an extremely popular online bulletin board in China. The angry Chinese netizens
who tried to use all possible resources including search engines, social networks and
personal relationship to find out "the beastly uncle" who allowed his dog in heat to attack
his little niece were called "human flesh search engine"(HFSE). Soong further defined it
as "a physical action brought on by a call to arms in chatrooms and online forums”. The
2008 Olympic torch relay eventually made HFSE well-known to the western media but
as a nationalist action among Chinese cyber communities. Its target this time is a Chinese
student in Duke University who joined a group of pro-Tibet activists during a gathering
for Olympics. Being cursed as traitors and all their personal information exposed online,
her parents in China were reported to have moved out of their apartment to avoid possible
attack from net mob.3. We may draw a simple conclusion through these reports that the
new phrase "human flesh search engine" refers to a specific search engine that runs on
people power, and this "human-powered” search engine turned Chinese netizens into a
collective cyber-vigilantism for certain cases. However, HFSE is not a meteoric or
occasional phenomenon caused by the indignation of the public. Instead, over the past
1
http://zonaeuropa.com/200802c.brief.htm
2
http://www.tianya.cn/
3
New Freedom, and Peril, in Online Criticism of China, Ariana Eunjung Cha and Jill Drew, Washington
Post, Thursday, April 17, 2008 2 Human Flesh Search Engine
few years there are tendencies that the HFSE has become more organized, targeted and
sophisticated and that this “search engine” has been used to uncover a broader range of
social and political problems or to accelerate the investigation of those issues. The name
“human flesh search engine” becomes a common language among netizens, which
signifies a movement of grassroots democracy in Chinese cyberspace.
Current Studies on HFSE
The academic criticism on the nature of this phenomenon has been equally
contradictory. Indeed, different from many democracy behaviors promoted by internet
such as online voting for a television show or a presidential election, HFSE is formed and
organized by the grassroots themselves and cannot be predicted and governed by the
political power mechanism. Being a spontaneous, voluntary and autonomous form of
grassroots democracy, HFSE empower the mass people to exercise their rights, but on the
other hand its vitality and legitimacy are destined to become controversial for researchers.
Some of the domestic scholars in China emphasized the potential power of the
unprecedented freedom of speech that was controlled by the government promoted by the
virtual technologies and its facilitation on forming this human-powered search engine
(Gong, 2008; Liu, 2008). Others, however, focused on the absence of the restriction of
behavior in cyberspace either from the national legislative system or the inherent netizen
psychology (Chen, 2008; Huang 2007; Meng, 2008). While many considered this
phenomenon as a promising future of democracy that comes from the grassroots in China,
some insisted that it is necessary to be concerned about the violent side of this collective
activity and to implement strict internet censorship.
My contention here is that neither view reveals the nature of this specific HFSE
phenomenon. Both the obvious subject power embedded in HFSE and the collective
crusade towards the immoral or the corrupt act are exemplary of what is increasingly
known as a popular and feasible approach for Chinese virtual communities to investigate
the truth for a story, a video or a picture, attempting to substitute for the traditional way
that the investigation is only conducted by the relative government departments and the
information is usually not disclose to the public. In this sense, HFSE can be regarded as a
necessary result brought on by globalization and a representation of many aspects of the
3 Human Flesh Search Engine
"Empire", in which as Hardt and Negri interpreted, the resistances from multitude
motivated the mass movements, and the immaterial labor and the affective production
constitute the basic form of these activities.
In this paper, my interest is to link this growing phenomenon in China to several
important concepts within globalization, and the primary goals will be to explore two
fundamental questions: In what situation does HFSE emerge as a grassroots democracy
movement and how does this intangible virtual system steadily and continuously work?
In detail, I will firstly briefly explore the way in which China is being taken up within the
course of contemporary globalization indicated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and
the two current dimensions of resistance it confronts. Then an introduction of the
characteristics of HFSE and several cases will be addressed to distinguish it from other
search engines l to prepare for the subsequent analysis. In the third part, within the
theoretical framework built under Hardt and Negri's Empire, I will highlight three
components of this HFSE, the motivation to be a powerful subject, the immaterial labor,
and affect including affective labor and affective production. I am greatly interested in
how immaterial labor and affect together produce such a virtual community without
concrete support from any organization and make every case significantly noticed by the
public, regarding them as essential conditions to realize the grassroots democracy. Finally,
the recent development of HFSE and related questions will be raised as a possible future
direction of research.
Globalization, Empire and Democracy
"Because of its specific experience, China will be in a favorable position in any
strategy aiming to struggle against the imperial rule and striving for the global
democracy". -----Hardt, a lecture inTsinghua University, Beijing, 20044
The essence of Hardt and Negri's hypothesis is the emergence of a new sovereignty,
which is distinctly different from the Imperialism in our early modern history and
“relatively autonomous from the sovereign nation-states" (p.14). Considering this new
4
Translated from the Chinese version lecture. 4 Human Flesh Search Engine
world order - the Empire as a supranational system, Hardt and Negri bring forward the
concept of biopower and regard Empire as a discursive non-center network of this power.
The dominant nation-states, the huge transnational corporations, and non-governmental
organizations construct the "fundamental connective fabric of the biopolitical world in
certain important respects"(p.31). What has to be emphasized is that although the
sovereign nation-states are no longer the base of Empire as in the Imperialism era, it does
not mean that nation-states are not important in this network. On the contrary, since the
empire is only predicted as the trend of globalization, nation-states still work as a
dominant place during this process. In other words, when we realize the reconstruction of
a new world order in the global level, another reconstruction inside the nation-state
aiming to adjust the social system and allocate the resource will occur at the same time
(Hardt & Negri, 2000).
A transition also happened in the production process, that is "the central role
previously occupied by the labor power of mass factory workers...is today increasingly
filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labor power" (p.29). Taking the
place of industrial production, immaterial production constitutes a new hegemony among
all forms of production. This hegemony is not based on the superiority of the quantity of
the labor, but instead, is based on the production's capability to convert other forms of
production. In his lecture in Tsinghua University (Beijing, 2004), Hardt concluded two
influences with which the immaterial labor affects the socialist economy. First, due to the
high capability to convert the other forms of production to immaterial production, the
strategy of socialist economic modernization that is based on stage and time is no longer
in force. Second, the change of economic foundation gradually demolished the base of
the economy centrally controlled by the national government. In this respect, the socialist
countries should consider the shift from centralized and authoritarian economy to the
autonomous economy. This trend implied a requirement of new democratic pattern and
the problem of equality for socialist countries. In his book "China's New Order", Wang
Hui, a professor of Tsinghua University illuminated clearly that from the history of
socialism, the demand for democracy was always associated with the struggle for the
social equality. He also suggested that Mao's strategy of eliminating the three major
differences in China - namely the difference between industrial workers and peasants, the
5 Human Flesh Search Engine
difference between urban and rural areas, and the difference between mental labor and
manual labor - as well as the struggle to eliminate the social status difference between
men and women, and among various ethnic groups and religions - is still significant in
current Chinese society. Recognizing that the subject of labor and the associated
composition of proletariat have changed profoundly, Hardt and Negri use multitude to
describe the new proletariat as the alternatives and resistant power within empire.
Multitude is the origin of the resistance and the subversion to the imperial constitution on
one side, and on the other side, it created and "called Empire into being"(p.43). Today,
we can find abundance of such struggles all over the world. "Each struggle, though firmly
rooted in local conditions"(p.56), completes the constitution of global democracy, or at
least is facilitating this process. In other words, every struggle challenged the nondemocratic institutions in all nations from different perspectives, and every struggle
delivered the cry against inequality, as well as the requirement of democracy and social
equality.
In later sections I will argue that certain cases of HFSE directly contribute to these
processes of democratization and social equality. Considered as a form of multitude
resistance inside the Chinese society responding to the requirement of structuring a new
world order, this struggle pointed unhesitatingly to the current social moral standard and
the national legal system. For instance, in the cases related to family affairs, people's
concern is the equality of men and women in the marriage relationship in China; in the
case "Cat-crushing", people appeal to a law about the protection of other creatures; and in
the case "South China Tiger", Chinese internet users challenged the authority of the state
organs, which is barely common before. Within this theoretical frame, the following
analysis will emphasize the concrete format and the process of forming a HFSE, and
focus on concepts raised in Hardt and Negri's Empire, including the immaterial labor and
affective production. But before that, I will interpret some of the characteristics of this
unique "search engine" first.
Search Engine + Human Hunting = Human Flesh Search Engine?
Technologically speaking, the search engine is an information retrieval system
designed to help find information stored on a computer system. With the continuous
6 Human Flesh Search Engine
development of the technology, the speed of searching has increased dramatically. On the
other hand, the disadvantage of this computer-based search engine is still obvious.
Usually, the machine could not distinguish between the fake information and the real
information, or between the outdated news and the latest one. In this sense, adding the
human hunting process into the machine search process as an integrated system could
make the search more effective and more accurate. Such a search system includes
currently widely used Yahoo Answer, Google Answers5, and Baidu Known6, where as
one user raises a question, various people or the "expert" designated by the website will
find the answer for him or her. This answer could be information copied from internet
directly, a combination of several searching results, or opinions drawn from responders’
own experiences. HFSE is a somewhat similar search system but goes further in many
aspects. There are several features of HFSE:
First, the base of "human flesh search engine" is the so-called bulletin board system
(BBS) where internet users need to register to become the member of the community and
then post topics on relevant boards. Research shows that BBS is the most dominant
online communication approach in China rather than email, instant messaging, or social
network websites, which could be the reason that “human flesh” always gathers quickly
and this “search engine” can affect the public opinion and mainstream media to a certain
degree. According to data from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC),
until 2008, the total number of the registered BBS users in China has amounted to 3
billion (one person can register at different BBSs and thus counted multiple times), and
98 percent of these registered users have posted, replied, or voted on these BBSs; 80
percent of Chinese websites have their own BBS system, and every day some 10 million
new posts will be generated; 15.1 percent of Chinese internet users will spend over 8
hours on BBS each day. In short, BBS in China offers a broader social network than any
other online communication system.
5
Google Answers is no longer accepting new questions.
6
Baidu is the leading search engine in China and the website is www.baidu.com. Baidu Known is the
similar community as the previous Google Answer, and Chinese is the only language used for this search
engine.
7 Human Flesh Search Engine
The first base of HFSE is Mop - a popular Chinese youth BBS where lived a
community named "bounty hunter". When a Mop user posted a question on the
discussion board, the "bounty hunters" would search and try to answer it. Usually, only
one answer considered as the best answer would be eligible for the reward7. The
competition among hunters forced many of them to look for unique answers beyond the
capability of the technology, such as an empirical suggestion dictated by a friend specific
to the question. This system became the origin of HFSE in Chinese cyberspace, and the
first HFSE case - "Cat-crushing" is disseminated and supported by this BBS8.
Second, rather than an individual person, "human flesh search engine" refers to a
collective virtual community in which hundreds or even thousands of people voluntarily
unite for the same purpose for a period of time. These people are not professional
journalists or hackers, but they purposely use all possible resources, in particular, their
social networks to look for a person, a company, or the truth behind a story.
Third, different from Yahoo Answer, HFSE usually begins with an uncovered picture,
video, or writing document posted by victims or discovered somewhere by a rightminded netizen, and questions are continuously produced during the process of gathering
attention and searching. People usually ask for the identity of the person and the location
first and then turn to his background of social relations or working experiences relevant
to the case. Some netizens employ their talents to detect particular points, such as a
deliberate partner who never appears in the picture or video. Lastly, "face to face"
interaction became the key stage of the whole search process of HFSE. After confirming
the telephone number, home address, or company name, people may try to contact the
target and chat to get first-hand information in terms of his/her reaction and opinion about
the case involved. In short, in this searching process, the body of a human instead of the
computer system becomes the basic labor, and the power of the subject constitutes this
intangible system.
7
Reward is the virtual money circulated on Mop
8
The reward for the information of the “Cat-crushing" video is 5000 Mop money comparing to the regular
price 100 Mop money.
8 Human Flesh Search Engine
Figure 1 A figure is developed to indicate the working process of HFSE. Not every case
will exactly follow this procedure, but it involves all basic elements of a HFSE.
BBS
After that a
picture/video/news is
posted in a BBS, people
gather to raise
questions and decide
whether HFSE should
be used for this case.
Search behavior begins
with internet. Key
persons of the case are
investigated and their
personal information is
disclosed online.
Personal contacts emerge
through phone calls and
visits, which cause pressures
to key persons. At the same
time, topics about this case
become the headlines of
most Chinese BBSs.
Journalists from mainstream media are involved to develop news stories, and
the corresponding people/officials/organizations /government departments
are forced to make statement publicly.
Biopower
"Let's call for the human flesh search engine all over the world to find out the
truth!” -----Anonymous User
This first "wanted poster" appeared on Feb 28, 2006 on Mop. An online ID named
"broken glasses" posted a group of pictures cut from a video, in which a kitten was
tortured by a woman using her high-heel shoes. During the next 6 days, Chinese internet
users became the most effective detectives and cops, rapidly locked three suspects, and
forced the woman who directly caused the death of the kitten to be fired by her employer
without breaking the law. "
Here, let us take a step back from the particularities of HFSE to consider the
implications of this new composition of bodies. I have concluded this composition as the
power of the subject and would like to claim further that the immaterial labor exercised
therein is the manifestation of biopower, and moreover, this biopower is situated on both
virtual space and reality.
9 Human Flesh Search Engine
In their book Empire, Hardt and Negri claimed that the conception of biopower
described the essence of the Empire sovereignty, and this biopower is also the principal
architect and the motive force of this supranational machine. Different from imperialism
rule, the form of rule in Empire is a power "that regulates social life from its interior,
following it, interpreting it, absorbing it"(p.23), whose primary task is to administer
social life. Biopower thus could refer to a situation in which "what is directly at stake in
power is the production and reproduction of life itself "(p.24). Another important
conception is Foucault's disciplinary society, society of control and the "epochal passage
in social forms from disciplinary society to the society of control" (p.22).
Disciplinary society refers to a network constituted by disciplinary institutions such
as the prison, the factory, the hospital, and the university to structure social terrain,
including regulations, customs, habits, and productive practices, while the society of
control refers to a more dynamic and broader form of social governing, which is the
democratic mechanism distributed through the bodies and the brains of citizens. In this
respect, "biopower is thus expressed as a control that extends throughout the depths of
consciousness and bodies of the population and at the same time across the entirety of
social relations"(p.24). The transition from disciplinary society to the society of control
does not mean the elimination of the disciplinary institutions, but instead, predicts a
process in which the static relationship - "the disciplinary invasion of power
corresponded to the resistance of the individual" (p.24) - is gradually substituted by an
activity exercised by biopower from below. Virtual communities such as Chinese BBS
can become an ideal place where internet users create life and produce collective
subjectivities. As the statistic data shows that 61.7 percent of Chinese internet users
reported that they would ask for suggestions from familiar BBSs before conducting any
activities such as shopping and travelling. BBS has become an integral part of Chinese
internet users' life and thus continuously evolved into something that significantly
changes social life. "Human flesh search engine" is one form of the collective
subjectivities produced during this process by biopower. After establishing a case on one
bulletin board, the whole cyberspace will be informed immediately by multiusers of
various forums and the topic is spreaded among different communities. Netizens chat and
discuss it online, in workplace, and during family dinner, show fantastic enthusiasm to
10 Human Flesh Search Engine
form informal groups focusing on information collections and exchange clues both online
and offline. Moreover, the epithet given by netizens to the person in the case usually
becomes a new word pointing to the similar characteristic in daily life afterward.
Realizing the powerful role that an individual plays in this process, we may also ask
what facilitates his or her action and what is the basic strategy? Two aspects can be
considered: first, HFSE expressed through rules backed by sanctions, it ... "often
dependent on material or technological means of enforcement". (Boyle, 1997) In
Foucault's society of control, the body, as the active biopower will actively seek out
alternative routes when some paths are blocked. As the current legislation and
government system limited the discourse power of the civilian to some extent, the
collective has been disciplined in institutional ways, and as the technology of internet
changed the spatial and temporal conception of surveillance and discipline, cyberspace is
a place that provides a specific forum for the people to struggle for democracy and
equality by seeking to expand its powers through online practices. Besides the inherent
calls for struggle within Empire, pursuing the power of subject and the increasingly more
recognition of subjectivity is also the motivation of HFSE. Second, according to Foucault,
the struggle usually does not "look for the 'chief enemy' but for the immediate
enemy"(Foucault, p.330), and the exercise of power is "something that is elaborated,
transformed, organized... and are more or less adjusted to the situation "(p.345). This
could explain the reason why HFSE always aims at certain people or certain
organizations instead of the governing power that have cultivated these contradictions for
a long time. For example, in the case of “South China Tiger”, while netizens were
suspicious of the validity of the photo, which had been published in Science9 as the
evidence of an extinct animal, and were criticizing the credit of the photographer – an
uneducated peasant, most people neglected the officials in the provincial Bureau of
Forestry who manipulated the truth and framed the peasant as a local hero in interviews.
Though the peasant was sentenced to two years in prison in a later court trial, officials
who insisted the truth of the photo and influenced the public opinion for several months
did not get legal punishment.
9
Science Nov 9, 2007 313:893 11 Human Flesh Search Engine
Immaterial Labor
"(March 3, 2006, two days after watching the pictures of the mistreated kitten )
When I realized that the background of these photos was very similar to a place nearby, I
went there immediately and took photos from same angles, and then posted them online "
-- Anonymous ID in the case "Cat-crushing"
Last summer when I as usual logged onto Tianya10, the largest Chinese Bulletin
Board, the homepage story "Do not say goodbye" attracted my attention. I clicked on the
topic and found that there were already hundreds of pages of discussions linking to this
topic. After reading in detail, I realized that this topic was borrowed from a girl's last
entry of her blog, and she just made away with herself two days ago. She told a story
about how she was desperate as a result of being deceived many times by her husband
who had an affair with his colleague. The second day a letter from her sister had been
posted, in which she stated that the funeral of this girl might be cancelled because of her
husband's noncooperation. The discussion following it became emotional and angry.
People began to call for "human flesh search engine" to find out who this guy was and
where he was. Shortly, some people who read the girl's blog posted a few possible names
of this guy. Following their hints, I used Google to search similar pronunciations of the
name and shared my findings in a post where I also stated that it was not worth to die for
such a man. Subsequently I came to understand that my involvement actually was a type
of “immaterial labor” although I did not realize it at the time of posting.
Immaterial labor is not new, and actually it has existed for a long time. The servant
girl in ancient Chinese palaces, the travelling story- tellers who preserved the history as
sagas- legends and Japanese geisha all can be categorized as various forms of immaterial
labor. However, the recognition of this laboring practice can only be tracked down to the
capitalism theory by Marx. To him, there are two forms of capital subsumption for
laboring work - formal subsumption and real subsumption. Formal subsumption is based
on absolute surplus value, which is determined by the workers and resources, while real
10
The address of the website is cache.tianya.cn
12 Human Flesh Search Engine
subsumption is manipulated by relative surplus value. Due to the gradually reduced
global resources and the limitation of physical labor, real subsumption started to play the
major role in capitalist subsumption, echoing Hardt and Negri 's third hypothesis of the
mystery of capital’s continuing health that is "today capital continues to accumulate
subsumption in a cycle of expanded reproduction, but that increasingly it subsumes not
the noncapitalist environment but its own capitalist terrain—that is, that the subsumption
is no longer formal but real" (Negri & Hardt, 2000, p.271-272). In modern society, the
real subsumption not only points to the laboring work, but also permeates all aspects of
social life; not only production, but also consumption, affecting consumers' affection,
body, consciousness, culture, and social relations; not only governing working time, but
also leisure time. In short, "capital suffuses the entire form of life" and in this respect,
"the central role previously occupied by the labor power of mass factory workers in the
production of surplus value is today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and
communicative labor power"(Negri & Hardt,2000, p.29). This "intellectual, immaterial,
and communicative labor" is generally defined as immaterial labor, producing immaterial
production, such as knowledge, information, communication, interpersonal relationship
or affective reactions. Lazzarato (1996) has described the formation of immaterial labor
as “transformation of working-class labor into a labor of control, of handling information,
into a decision-making capacity"(p.134). Three types of immaterial labor are
distinguished by Hardt and Negri: first, immaterial labor involved in industrial
production that "has been informationalized and has incorporated communication
technologies in a way that transforms the production process itself"; second, "immaterial
labor of analytical and symbolic tasks, which itself breaks down into creative and
intelligent manipulation on the one hand and routine symbolic tasks on the other"; and at
last, "the production and manipulation of affect and requires (virtual or actual) human
contact, labor in the bodily mode" (Empire, p.293). As the traditional capitalist industry,
the first category of immaterial labor laid the theoretical foundation for the next two, and
the category of immaterial labor based on the computer and communication technologies
leads to a more complex division of labor. Referring to the specific phenomenon of
HFSE, instead of fitting it into any categories above, I will combine different characters
13 Human Flesh Search Engine
from all of them to analyze the way in which the immaterial labor works and interacts
with its production.
The word "immaterial" here does not mean that all the elements involved in the
laboring work process are immaterial, instead, it only refers to the production, and
moreover, the production produced directly by this labor. Let’s return to the previous
example of HFSE (page 14). In order to inform other members on the board that the place
where the video of "Cat-crushing" was shot had been found, the Anonymous ID
physically worked as immaterial labor. For most people involved in HFSE, they usually
need to sacrifice their "leisure time" for this immaterial labor because they do not have
easier channels to gain information as nonprofessionals, do not have regular working
time frame as volunteers, and even cannot log onto BBS during work time. In point, the
labor for HFSE can be also named free labor, which is not only in the sense of being
unpaid but also of being impossible to command (Terranova, 2004). This new form of
production strengthens immaterial labor's role as an active subject.
A crucial question is what the products of immaterial labor in HFSE are. To answer
this question, we should first consider the unit of immaterial labor. Lazzarato(1996)
claims that although "immaterial labor constitutes itself in forms that are immediately
collective, and ... exists only in the form of networks and flows", "small and sometimes
very small "productive units" (often consisting of only one individual) are organized for
specific ad hoc projects"(P.138). From the perspective of individual, the labor creates all
these things - "knowledge, information, communication, interpersonal relationship or
affective reactions". However, if we examine the case of HFSE from a collective
viewpoint, series of activities involved in this phenomenon are actually "defining and
fixing… strategically, public opinion" (Lazzarato, 1996, P.133). In most cases of HFSE,
Chinese internet users are clearly aware that the virtual space is not a practical place to
exercise the punishment to those immoral acts and corruptions. Towards the target who
may not even know or may not respond to the "wanted poster", some people prefer to talk
to him or her face to face or through phonecalls. Usually, these phonecalls and visits are
overwhelming enough to make the target visible and known in the real local community.
Journalists from mainstream newspaper and television stations became the key people to
bring these cases into a broader public sphere. In the case of "Cat-crushing", though it
14 Human Flesh Search Engine
did not seem necessary, the local government was involved in the investigation and
announced the results on its official website. Then, Chinese Central Television (CCTV)
broadcasted a talk-show and several short programs, in which it invited some internet
users who were involved as "human flesh search engine" to discuss the social implication
of this case. An unofficial union of animal protection emerged online during the
following month, urging the law of protecting small animals, and at the same time, the
problem of psychological health of Chinese people came under observation11.
Not every case succeeded as people hoped. The pressure came from outside
including the current moral standard, the existing legislative system of the nation, and the
disciplinary institutions, which were just what this searching system attempted to
challenge, would always exist. Sometimes, topics were deleted by BBS administrators
because of the link to some senior government officials or to some sensitive topics in
China. This situation reflected Lazzarato's description of the relation between factory
workers and managers, that is, when individuals are encouraged to find out their subject
in labor, the result actually "re-poses the antagonism at a higher level" in a more
straightforward manner.
Affect
"A lot of net friends join the investigation, making the internet powerful in these
issues. We don't know who they are, but we can feel a sense of justice and responsibility
of everyone。Human flesh search engine enhances our strength when facing these
disgusting people and matters. “--- Tianya administrator "Moon"
"You will find everyone is like Holmes - they can find evidence from an email
address, the logo of the dress in a picture cut from the video, and any scenic location.
This process is interesting and exciting." -- Tianya ID "Little 7"
The third category of immaterial labor -affective labor is Hardt and Negri's creation
and plays a dominant role in the contemporary informational economy. Affective labor is
driven by knowledge, information, communication, or affect and its major production is
11
The woman who crushed the kitten was reported having serious psychological problem after her divorce.
15 Human Flesh Search Engine
"intangible, a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion - or even a
sense of connectedness or community"(Hardt, 1999, p96). In other words, produced by
affective labor, affect exists as both the production and the important agent of immaterial
labor.
As the other face of immaterial labor, affective labor can be "embedded in the
moments of human contact and interaction"(Hardt, 1999, p96). This interaction
relationship is two-way: when purchasing a brand, the brand sells the service and at the
same time the customer provides valuable idea voluntarily to improve the service. This
affective production associated with human contact, communication, and interaction,
"can be with the actual presence of another or virtual". In the HFSE system, the
interaction has several aspects of meaning. First, it could be the communication between
internet users to discuss the search work so as to share the information and avoid the
duplication of labor. Second, it points to the contact between those "hunters" and the
target. Third, both these two interactions produce affect.
At the very beginning of the emergence of HFSE, the affect that could drive the
immaterial labor is mainly from the feeling of passion to start a "just war" online
struggling against the immoral acts and corruptions. This feeling is also associated with
the eagerness to be the active subject. Responsibility and justice as highly used words in
these virtual spaces attracted and united internet users from different BBSs to form a
temporary community for a certain purpose. When the searching work begins, sometimes,
the dominant affect transfers to a feeling of excitement that the process to find out truth
from every evidence makes people feel like Sherlock Holmes, and moreover, a feeling of
achievement.
The opposite instance is about how affect is produced by affective labor. After
locating the home address and phone number of the target, the internet users in the
neighborhood will become extremely active. Some people visit the exact place, and
others will try to call to chat - most of the calls are made to ask for the target's
explanation of the case, or invite him or her to join the discussion online to answer more
questions. They usually report with feeling of satisfaction and excitement described as
"we did it!" or "Today, I become the member of the HFSE”. Of course, the more exciting
situation is that the person is just your neighbor. In fact, it is impossible to separate the
16 Human Flesh Search Engine
affect produced by affective labor and the affect used to drive affective labor, just as the
feeling of excitement mentioned above. It could be created by the prior labor working on
searching, but at the same time works as motivations for the next labor working.
Affective labor has characteristics of forming “the social networks and forms of
community" during work. This network is maintained and managed by affect. There are
basically two communities formed in HFSE. The most active community is a group of
people who was physically involved in the affective labor of "hunting" work, just as what
I did in the case “Girl Suicide". They are strongly influenced by affective laboring work
in terms of whether valuable information has been found or if the result has revealed
more stories than expected and represent more responsibility than others. A broader
community involves both the netizens who do not do the searching work but disseminate
the message to other BBSs or the real world and the people outside the virtual space who
hear about the story from media and other social connections. Considering the role the
affective labor works to form these two communities is also a way to understand the
process from immaterial labor to public opinion.
The successful spreading and development of HFSE also result in the change of
marketing strategies of many Chinese online bulletin boards. For instance, Tianya, being
the largest cyber community for Chinese internet users, changed its marketing model
from not-for-profit to for-profit by promoting an intellective and creative online
community, which encourages netizens to explore radical topics and debates each other.
Although these bulletin board sites are pleased to see their boards become the battlefield
of HFSE, no one would claim it as the major way to earn money. The reason is
complicated but partially relevant to the nature of HFSE - the resistance power within
Empire.
The Future Study of HFSE
I have discussed how HFSE is organized by immaterial labor and how this search
engine is used and maintained by affect and biopower. Besides the purpose to theorize
this phenomenon in Hardt and Negri’s framework of Empire, I also considered this study
as an exploration of the conditions in which the grassroots democracy can be stably
developed by itself and can have long-term affect in the society. In other words, HFSE, as
17 Human Flesh Search Engine
an approach for the grassroots to exercise their rights, needs components other than
“human flesh” to maintain its vitality. Otherwise, the vulnerability of grassroots and the
decentralized form of resistance will reduce the power of HFSE and finally make it
disappear. Biopower, immaterial labor and affect production in this sense provide a
possible interpretation to the success and the prosperity of this cyber-movement.
After analyzing the mechanism of this phenomenon, several important questions still
remain unsolved. For instance, should the current government intervene with this
unexpected resistance, and should the target and the strategy of HFSE be adjusted in this
situation? In fact, people involved in HFSE are constantly seeking better techniques and
the use of HFSE has become legitimate through interaction and “negotiation” with the
government. For instance, the city Xuzhou12 has passed a regulation in January 2009,
which restricts the exposure of personal information online by HFSE unless it is related
to corruption of government officials as a compromise to the online communities.
Another possible development of HFSE was brought by the global torch relay for the
2008 Beijing Olympics. For Chinese internet users, their dream came true - “Let's call for
the human flesh search engine all over the world to find out the truth “. The target in this
case was not a Chinese citizen living in China but an ethnic Tibetan living outside of
China, who was suspected of attacking a Chinese handicapped female torch bearer during
the Olympic torch relay. We can see the effectiveness of HFSE from the timeline in this
case:
On April 7, in Paris, France, an ethnic Tibetan man attacked the torch bearer.
On April 13, in the Chinese Tianya community, a message was posted, “The braindead stupid cunt is named Lobsang Gandan and he resides in Salt Lake City, USA" - ID
"Fracken"
On April 13, in Utah, USA "Utah man receiving threats after case of mistaken
identity" according to News from KSL13
It turned out a mistake since a wrong guy ended up in the hunt, however, the power
of this HFSE already exceeded the boundary of nation, which supports the supranational
12
A city in Jiangsu Province, which is in the east coast of China. The news was retrieved from
http://news.163.com/09/0119/03/50095QPM0001124J.html
13
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3074908
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conception of Empire from a physical perspective. Hardt and Negri's prediction of
localized resistance does not seem to consider this situation. Will HFSE become global?
Will the philosophy of HFSE as a form of grassroots democracy be accepted globally?
What is the role of this "global resistance" in the process of globalization? All of those
might also be interesting topics for future studies.
19 Human Flesh Search Engine
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