Tag Archives: shame

Revenge of the herd

I’ve been noticing a new trend on social media. Some ‘Karen’ acts out and does something inappropriate on video. That video goes viral. Someone with a large following asks their audience to identify the person, or they dig into what the ‘Karen’ thinks is an anonymous profile they posted on, and their real identity is discovered. Then the viral video or mean/racist/rude comment is shared with their boss or the company they work for, and the person is fired. Then the person that did this gloats, often going viral with the news of the person losing their job.

There is no doubt that some of these people deserve this. If you are choosing, in this day and age, to be blatantly racist, or to ridicule someone handicapped or less fortunate than you… and you work representing a company who does not (and should not) share the same lack of values… well then that company should be able to say they no longer wish to have you work for/represent them.

That’s the power of living in a connected world. When enough people are involved in looking for you, you can’t be anonymous on the internet. Act poorly in public, and that behaviour can be traced back to you, even if you don’t share your name or any other personal information.

Some behaviour is truly deserving of this. For example, someone spewing racial slurs, or physically abusing a store employee for getting an order wrong. However this trend concerns me a bit. It is about revenge rather than restitution. Where is the line? If a person says something in anger should their entire livelihood be destroyed? How bad does the transgression need to be? Who decides?

When it comes to issues like this, I’m not sure the herd mentality is always appropriate? When does the herd become a mob? At what point does a bad decision equate to someone being a bad person? And again, who decides?

Are many of these people deserving of the consequences? Probably. Maybe not all of them though. Furthermore, I don’t think this kind of retribution necessarily changes attitudes and behaviours.

The trend often ends with the line, “Enjoy the day you deserve.” But the aftermath of losing a job, and trying to support a family, and social ridicule, and embarrassment seems like it could be worse than a short term prison sentence. How big a transgression should it be to go through this? Again, I think some people act in a truly reprehensible way and deserve to have consequences, but I worry that some people will suffer far more than they deserve. When this happens the point seems to be more about inflicting suffering rather than creating an opportunity for forgiveness and restitution. I don’t want to live in a world where revenge is the first form of conflict resolution.

The size of your digital footprint doesn’t matter when it comes to viral social media shaming

When I started building my digital footprint, I saw a positive side-effect. If I googled David Truss, the first few pages belonged to me, or were about me. It got to the point where I actually felt bad for someone who shared my name. I mean, if you share the same name as someone famous, it makes sense that you will search your name and see that famous person. But if you are a young David Truss, you don’t expect to be inundated with information about a Canadian educator that no one has ever really heard of.

This gave me an illusion of ownership of my digital footprint that no longer exists. I used to tell students and educators that if you created a long tail of good things on your digital footprint, that would protect you from negative attention. For example, if someone wrote a blog post that said something mean about me, unless they were famous, or unless it was a major news publication, that article might end up on the 5th or 10th page of a Google search of my name. Essentially, it would be buried behind a trail of positive things I’ve done. That illusion no longer exists thanks to social media and #hashtags.

The reality is that everyone is one public, stupid mistake, one careless tweet, or one embarrassing Facebook post away from public humiliation that can last for years. And with respect to the public mistake, it might not be something recent, but could also be something that is dug up from the past. I didn’t grow up with cell phones and ubiquitous access to digital photos, but I’m sure that there are some embarrassing photos of me in my youth, sitting in photo boxes, in other people’s photo albums, or stored in basements or garages. I’m also sure that at least a few of my 30,000 tweets and several hundred blog posts, over 13+ years, have not aged well and can be seen as either rude, condescending, or even embarrassing.

Nowadays, it’s all too easy to be publicly shamed by something in a way that can go viral and absolutely overshadow your digital footprint, no matter how big it is. Viral videos and hashtags can create a storm of unwelcome attacks to you and any digital footprint you might have built. This is horrible. Imagine only being judged by you worst indiscretion. Imagine trying to escape that indiscretion a decade or more later, but that’s what comes up when your name is Google searched. Is this the kind of society we want to live in? A person can commit a crime, serve time, and move on… but a single tweet can haunt someone for years afterwards.

I really enjoyed this piece on Public Shaming on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’: (*Language/Profanity Warning)

Which led me to watch this TedTalk by Monica Lewinsky on The Price of Shame:

“The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars.”

This one quote from Monica Lewinsky underlies how systematic this issue is. It’s not just about a bunch of individuals deciding to bully and shame someone, it’s an entire media industry that feeds off of it. But as she later says, quoting Brené Brown, “Shame can’t survive empathy.”

We have the power to be good and positive in our actions. Not feeding the clicks of scandalous headlines and not sharing in the bullying and shaming of others. We can block and report negative people who focus on attacking others. We can be kind and forgiving.

Our online actions can feed a system that rewards the shaming of others, or our actions can reflect the same sort of empathy we would want others to give us if our worst indiscretions (past or future) ever became publicly viral.