Crowdsourced police work - catch the cat abuser

If you haven't seen the video on youtube that was posted by two mentally unstable (surely?) teens in the USA then best you watch the news report below.I am not mad about pets, they just aren't my cup of tea, however i am well aware of animal abuse and it sickens me. I don't understand how the abuse of an animal aids or assists the assailants in any way, shape or form. It's ridiculous and uncalled for.But the thing about the video above that absolutely intrigues me is how anti-animal-abuse people online who saw the video banded together and figured out exactly who was behind the mask in the video.Watch the video again and notice how people jumped online, searched for the youtube users name and aliases online, gather images from the web relating to the user and pieced them together to factually define who the person was and where they were in the country.Now this is a chicken and egg situation. Sure if there was no YouTube then the video wouldn't have been online and one could argue that the act of abuse wouldn't have taken place. But let's assume that these unstable cowards are just that, unstable. Chances are they would be abusing animals with or without a platform to display their barbarous behaviour. So without the internet these animals (not the cat) would still be abusive. With the internet they were caught thanks to the dedication and keen eye of a few social media users and the tools at their disposal.The future of social media is endless, the applications of the technology are endless and the potential to use these tools effectively is endless.