Revenge used to be so beautifully analog.

A jilted lover storms out of her boyfriend’s Bahamas hotel, flies back to New York, sprinkles his entire apartment with seeds, activates his emergency sprinkler system and turns the heating to max. The scene when he returns home ten days later can be well imagined.

Today, if you want get revenge on a thoughtless lover, a crooked retailer or a myopic service organization you simply log on to Facebook or MySpace, and spread the word.

They say it started with a cool new add-on to Facebook. Called Enemybook it let you list your enemies on Facebook, then tell the world why you hate them. Initially limited to specific individuals (Bush became the first ‘most hated’) it is now extended to companies and government departments – it has become the sweetest revenge – get everyone to agree with you that Ford, Barclays or whoever sucks!

The occasions of social revenge have sometimes made front-page news, to the delight of the mass media, and prompting unusual reactions from ‘the revengers’.

“Can’t a girl publicly humiliate her boyfriend by dumping him via Facebook anymore without getting harassed by a horde of social news paparazzi and readers?” asks one targeted revenger.

No you can’t. This is the age of digital revenge.