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Document Type

Article

Abstract

[First paragraph]

This article takes its inspiration from two separate news items that appeared in the first half of 2012.[2] In January that year, a photo was widely circulated across online forums and Facebook. It showed that two male teenagers were turning their back to the camera while exposing their buttocks by slightly pulling down the pants at the ground exit of Mong Kok MTR station. Another male teenager, standing closer to the camera, was grinning from ear to ear and holding a can of beer while thumbing up towards those two men with exposed buttocks one or two arm's lengths away from himself. The photo is one of the many self-mocking acts common to teenagers. However, no sooner had the photo was posted online than a series of criticisms was provoked. A few condemned it in a contemptuous way by intentionally misunderstanding it to be a "silent protest against the hegemony of the government or developers." Many other condemnations were made on moral ground and dubbed those teenagers in the photo "useless youth." Meanwhile, some netizens launched a cyber manhunt and disclosed the true identity of the teenagers who raised this thumb up in appreciation of his friends' exposure. A number of media outlets responded to the incident in an orchestrated manner. Dozens of comments, primarily negative and condemnatory, were quoted, and solicitors and the Police were invited to advise the general public not to follow suit, for nudity in public is a criminal offense. In February 2012, the Police, following the disclosed information on the Internet, arrested two men, who are seventeen and eighteen-years-old, respectively, on the ground that they were suspected to have committed indecency in public.[3] It is these two young adults who exposed their buttock. Fortunately, the Secretary for Justice dropped the case on the condition that one of them had to take part in the Superintendent's Discretion Scheme while the other was released on bail.[4]

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