Heather du Plessis-Allan: No place for knickers on the net

Women have a drink at Flemington racecourse on Melbourne Cup day. Photo / Getty Images

A young woman in a blue dress is lying on the ground with her legs splayed. Everyone can see her knickers. She has already tried to get up twice, but she can't.

She tries again and she is up, swaying on her platform heels.

Suddenly she is rushing at a bloke a couple of metres away. Her arm swings. She nails him on the side of the head. She's on the ground again.

The video from the 2012 Melbourne Cup goes on for 2 minutes.

The woman changes target and decks a woman in a pink dress, falls over again, is held down by strangers, yells obscenities at a security guard and warns the crowd she comes from a wealthy family.

There are similar scenes from this year. It's something of a tradition now to film drunk girls - sometimes guys - at the Melbourne Cup and upload them for others to laugh at.

There's an entire Instagram account dedicated to drunkenness.

You can view a young man in a top hat with certain parts dangling out the side of his stubbies, a girl pole-dancing with a garden umbrella, numerous women flashing their bits after taking tumbles and one lad sleeping in a position only an acrobat could perform and only for short periods of time.

The photos are hilarious.

They're also very sad.

As the girl in the blue dress stumbles around on her high heels, you can hear an onlooker say, "She's terrible." The crowd erupts every time she further embarrasses herself.

You get the sense this video has been posted to make an example of this girl.

And of the kids in all the photos. They're drunk. They're dressed like hookers. They're asking for it.

Uploading the faces and crotches of these young people is the modern-day equivalent of locking someone's head and wrists in stocks in the public square: public humiliation for perceived crimes.

Clicking on the photos and videos is like walking past the stocks and spitting on the offender.

Warning: video contains offensive language

It's a wonder we don't strip off their shoes and beat their soles while they're passed out on Flemington's grass.

It may be hard to feel sorry for a horde of drunk Australian youths, but what about a dying man?

A week ago, rubberneckers filmed a young man dying in his car on a road next to the Hutt River.

Rescue workers formed a human chain to block the cellphones and give him dignity. They were worried the videos would end up on Facebook or YouTube. They were worried his family might see his last moments.

It's not the filming that is the problem. It's the sharing. We share everything: the gourmet burger we're about to chow down on, the naughty nurse Halloween costume we dressed up in, the dead guy we came across on the way home.

There's no easy way to stop people sharing this content. The internet is too big to police. It crosses too many international borders. Too many people use it.

Young people will get drunk and embarrass themselves. That will never stop.

People will lose their lives in front of us. That will also never stop.

The responsibility is on the rest of us to think about what we put online and what we click on.

As it turns out, the girl in the blue dress says what we saw in the video was out of character. She says she was drugged.

Yeah, right.

But what if it is true?

Too late. She has already been humiliated.