A Flickr user, "friendly_chic407", posted a cell pic of a guy exposing himself on a NY subway car (see pervert081805 on Flickr - Photo Sharing! -- beware: shows his penis), and the story was picked up by Boing Boing, and then hit the papers.

The story could be just another day in the life, since life in the metropolis is full of annoying bullshit like this, but find the outpouring of emotions in the comments at the Flickr post amazing: ranging from outright skeptisicm of the validity of the picture, to those actively promoting this sort of odd (if not sick) sexual behavior, to feminist-tinged support for friendly_chic, to those clamoring for mob violence if and when the prep is ever found.

One of the real social impacts of sousveillance -- when we, as individuals, are actively monitoring what is going on around us -- is pushback: those who stand up will be smacked down. I am not taking a side on this specific case -- I don't have the chops to determine if the photo is real or not, or whether friendly_girl is just another victim of the insane crap going on or some sort of attention-starved phoney -- but I know that even if she is just a plain vanilla victim, all of these cultural archetypes will be dragged out of mothballs immediately. All the litany will be mustered -- "she must have sent the wrong signals", "she's a lesbian", "how do we know that it's not faked", and so on -- attempting to discredit the person making the claim.

[Update: In a New York Daily News story, friendly_chick reveals herself to be Thao Nguyen, a 22 year-old New Yorker, who said "I saw him massaging himself and then he unzipped and pulled it out. I thought, 'I can't believe he's doing this in the middle of the day!' " -- but it really wouldn't make a difference if it was after midnight, would it?]

[Update: The perp may have been found.]