[Plasma Shield]

[UPDATE] Here’s a comment from a Blog called Sillis Bang

McFearsome eventually found out that the fool wasn’t the thief, but had bought it off him. Too late to stop people leaving more than 500 messages warning the kid of his impending rape in prison, and those were just the polite ones. Nice to see people happily abusing the anonymity they ripped away from him. As pretty much only one person was sensible enough to point out, it’s straight up harassment.

There were a few digg users that shared my view that it might have gone too far and it’s bordering on serious harassment, and people really should stop telling the kid he’s gonna get raped.

[UPDATE] McPherson has now had his laptop returned by the kid who was caught on camera trying to sell it. (Link)

Well, it’s gonna be a long time before this kid buys anything that connects to the internet off the streets again, I wonder what kind of trauma will result from being beaten senseless on the internet. What’s it called when you’re afraid of the internet(s)?

As many of you guy have seen, the internet can be pretty powerful, just ask the Scientologists. And to quote a the uncle of a great red and blue tights-wearing figure from (comicbook) history, “With great power come great responsibility”. In this case people rose up to take revenge on a thief, who’s arrogance, criminal antics and stupidity has now gained him global, and perhaps ever lasting, infamy. Years from now, people will occasionally ask each other, “Hey, do you remember that moron who stole an Xbox?”, or if they’re lazy or not entirely sober “Remember that Xbox moron?”.

Right now it’s not actually clear what the kid did, from what he tells Jesse McPherson(guy who had his property, among them a Xbox, stolen) he just bought the Xbox off the street (for $200). Either he really just bought it or he’s just lying and he did steal the xbox, you can’t really be sure of. Considering the time frame of him going online with the xbox and the time it was stolen, which was around a week, it’s possible. Mostly likely, he bought it off one of his buddies. Who really should be the butt of such internet abuse, not him. Most people (well, yesterday atleast) were under the impression that the kid who every one was linking to stole the xbox, at the time of writing it’s still unclear of the word has gotten around yet.

The mob mentality that people showed was a bit unnerving, within of about an 3 hours of the digg post becoming popular, digg users scoured the internet and found his Myspace, Youtube, AIM, Facebook, girlfriend, girlfriend’s Myspace, girlfriend’s phone number(which has since been removed, but still viewable in history), email and forum postings. Now that in itself isn’t very surprising, most of those account link to each other,but then people found and posted his address, phone number, parents’ names, property information, a link to Google Maps of his location, ip address, and his possible high school location (which probably is his high school).

Depending on who you ask, such actions are considered either too much, not enough or lulz. But seriously, the backlash was a bit too much. I mean insulting him on his various accounts, is you know, meh, who cares? He fully deserves that, the way he rapes the English language.

☆TaBbiThA’s A bOsS☆JoJoE☆D.T.F☆ LOOKING FOR A WIFEY JAWN

That would be his Myspace status. His myspace is closed to the public now. If you consider the writing in his his status to be bad, you don’t want to see his myspace page. The horror would drive many a English teachers to madness.

However, posting his address, property information his girlfriend’s information and to a lesser extent, his parents’ names, is a bit too much. I mean, this guy isn’t a serial rapist(not literally, anyway) or anything. People who has written lists on the internet compiling private information on this guy should perhaps remove them now. I mean, he’s just a kid, and he did contact the guy who he stole the xbox from (I presume to apologise), people really should lay off him now. He’s not a criminal, he’s just a kid who bought a xbox off the street. Some people blames the mother for giving the kid the money, maybe she didn’t know it was stolen and probably just thought it was a cheap Xbox.

When something like this happens, it reminds you that the internet is a free-for-all, and you should never post anything private on the internet. Once something is on the internet, it’s not going away, nothing short of a word-wide destruction of servers would get that information back, the proverbial genie is out of it’s bottle. Oppositions of Social networking and Privacy advocates are gonna point out to you, that this is why you shouldn’t trust social networking sites with your private information. There’s overwhelming evidence to take heed of their advice.

The kid should just count himself lucky that he didn’t steal from people like Leo Laporte or Veronica Belmont, if he did he’ll probably wake up to find that everything that he has connected to the internet has exploded and people are planning raids on his house on 4chan.

As a side note, some of the comments on his various pages are pretty funny:

persaudkevin | March 23, 2008

You are going to be fucked so fucking hard. Fucker-fuck motherfucker FUCK!

ChinezePanda March 23, 2008

Btw… I wouldnt stick my dick in “your girl” even if I was standing on Neptune.

Woaw, his dick must be pretty big if it stretches all the way from Neptune.

[UPDATE] So far, it appears that McPherson has been approached by Goons(still don’t know who sent them), the kid who stole the xbox tried to lure him out of the house, McPherson made a roll call complain and then had a 3 way (chat) with the moms of both the kid involved.

[UPDATE] Hey, McPherson got his xbox back!(Link) But why was it left in a white trash bag at the door step? I mean, everyone already knows what the kid looks like and where he lives, he should’ve been there to give it back in person. But how did the kid know where McPherson lived, I doubt McPherson would’ve told the kid where he lived, that’s a pretty big security risk. Now it really looks like the kid did stole the Xbox.

The Xbox is the Halo edition too, aww, mine’s just the normal toothpaste coloured xbox. Anyway, I’m glad nobody got hurt in the process, and if I was McPherson I’ll write down the kid’s address, because since he already knows your address, you probably should remember his too.

From McPerson’s Website:

So 2 out of 3 aint bad everyone, bravo! The cops have a lead on the actual robber and seem to be doing their job. I never expected to get anything back, so this awesome. I would like to thank everyone at work who pitched in to get me the new XBOX(spare?) which lead to all this and then everyone who dugg the story and effectively forced the issue onto the people with the stolen goods.

Thank You Anon and Digg.

[UPDATE] The XboxMoron post also received quite bit of coverage:

The laptop was eventually returned. Looks like the Xbox also eventually made its way home too. I see a note there asking that the wiki be taken down so that may soon be a dead link. The victim is now trying to get un-famous. The story is made a little confusing because the stolen Xbox was sold and it was the purchaser who contacted the victim. The “internet justice” was not particularly discriminating about that detail. The whole thing is covered well here and here.

No Justice Like Web Justice > Clicked [MSNBC.com]

The victim calls the cops and while waiting around gets two more messages from the thief…who is playing Call of Duty 4 all thw while, fyi.

Finally the kid sees his face on the internet, panics and returns the laptop.

Now that is sweet justice!
(Read the alleged transcription of the Xbox Live chat here.)

Xbox Live Crime Ring? > The Feed [G4 TV]

Then he bought a new xbox 360 and found that someone left him a voicemail bragging that he had stolen his stuff and that he could pay to get it back. Because they used an xbox live account, he had all the kid’s contact information AND a voicemail confessing to the crime. He called the Philadelphia cops again…and they hung up on him.

Here is the owner’s website.
HERE is a much more interesting link to people from the blogosphere harassing the kid into pleading with the owner for them to stop.

Faced with voicemail, home address… > There He is

and also various forum posts.