Internet Shaming Culture (food for thought)

[Itse]

This is a topic that's been a lot on my mind in the last year, as I feel that I've seen it more and more at least on my own Facebook feed. Or maybe I'm just paying more attention to it? These kinds of comments have occasionally been popping up in the discussion over "Social Justice Warriors", but this article I think has the best view on the issue I've seen so far. Because obviously it's not really just about SJW:s.

The article itself is pretty long, and has other examples of the same phenomenon.

How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco's Life

Still, in those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective. It felt as if hierarchies were being dismantled, as if justice were being democratized. As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment.

So for the past two years, I’ve been interviewing individuals like Justine Sacco: everyday people pilloried brutally, most often for posting some poorly considered joke on social media. Whenever possible, I have met them in person, to truly grasp the emotional toll at the other end of our screens. The people I met were mostly unemployed, fired for their transgressions, and they seemed broken somehow — deeply confused and traumatized.

“I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.”

“It was incredibly traumatic. You don’t sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night forgetting where you are.” She released an apology statement and cut short her vacation. Workers were threatening to strike at the hotels she had booked if she showed up. She was told no one could guarantee her safety.

It’s possible that Sacco’s fate would have been different had an anonymous tip not led a writer named Sam Biddle to the offending tweet.

In January 2014, I received an email from Biddle, explaining his reasoning. “The fact that she was a P.R. chief made it delicious,” he wrote. “It’s satisfying to be able to say, ‘O.K., let’s make a racist tweet by a senior IAC employee count this time.’ And it did. I’d do it again.” Biddle said he was surprised to see how quickly her life was upended, however. “I never wake up and hope I [get someone fired] that day — and certainly never hope to ruin anyone’s life.” Still, he ended his email by saying that he had a feeling she’d be “fine eventually, if not already.”

“Well, I’m not fine yet,” Sacco said to me. “I had a great career, and I loved my job, and it was taken away from me, and there was a lot of glory in that. Everybody else was very happy about that.”

Sacco pushed her food around on her plate, and let me in on one of the hidden costs of her experience. “I’m single; so it’s not like I can date, because we Google everyone we might date,” she said. “That’s been taken away from me too.”

Biddle wrote a Valleywag post after she returned to the work force: “Sacco, who apparently spent the last month hiding in Ethiopia after infuriating our species with an idiotic AIDS joke, is now a ‘marketing and promotion’ director at Hot or Not.”

“How perfect!” he wrote. “Two lousy has-beens, gunning for a comeback together.”

[EldrickOnIce]

I never read the article, so apologies if I am off point.
If I'm EldrickOnIce, and post something inappropriate on Calgary Puck, who cares - I'm just another Internet ahole who can be warned, suspended or banned to protect the site's public image.
If I'm Bingo, it's entirely different.
I can be an ahole, he can't.
It's my opinion that people who are a public face of something, and aren't smart enough to understand what is and is not appropriate to broadcast, probably should not be in that position anyway.
Harsh but true.

[troutman]

There is a chapter about Sacco and other cases in Dataclysm. Interesting book about data gathered from social media.

http://dataclysm.org/

[Tiger]

The problem is people try to ruin someone reputation over something so meaningless. And do these SJW even care, or do they just jump on the bandwagon to get popular themselves. It is just cyber bullying, but because it is on such a grand scale everybody thinks they did the right thing.

[psyang]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

I never read the article, so apologies if I am off point.
If I'm EldrickOnIce, and post something inappropriate on Calgary Puck, who cares - I'm just another Internet ahole who can be warned, suspended or banned to protect the site's public image.
If I'm Bingo, it's entirely different.
I can be an ahole, he can't.
It's my opinion that people who are a public face of something, and aren't smart enough to understand what is and is not appropriate to broadcast, probably should not be in that position anyway.
Harsh but true.

I think one issue is that it goes both ways. Those that shame are often so far removed from the the person they are shaming that there is no sense of knowing when they've gone too far. Maybe someone should lose their job for what they did. But should they suffer constant ridicule, loss of friends, loss of job prospects? Mob mentality can easily get out of hand.

There is an education component - people are learning that what is shared on the internet can have ramifications several orders of magnitude larger than what a common person is used to. It is still a relatively new medium.

Also, consider Justine's situation - the article says she only had 170 twitter followers when she made her ill-fated tweet. From her perspective, she wasn't sharing something as the face of her company, she was sharing a joke amongst family and friends. Someone forwarded the tweet anonymously to Biddle which then caused the furour. I'm not condoning what she said, only saying that twitter is a new medium, and it's easy to see that Justine could have thought her tweets were in a more private, informal setting.

Never before has the everyday person had access to a global audience so easily. What's worse is, what you put on the internet has a permanence that we aren't used to in normal social settings.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

I never read the article, so apologies if I am off point.
If I'm EldrickOnIce, and post something inappropriate on Calgary Puck, who cares - I'm just another Internet ahole who can be warned, suspended or banned to protect the site's public image.
If I'm Bingo, it's entirely different.
I can be an ahole, he can't.
It's my opinion that people who are a public face of something, and aren't smart enough to understand what is and is not appropriate to broadcast, probably should not be in that position anyway.
Harsh but true.

That's kind of dodging the question, isn't it?

I mean, do you think it's okay to publicly shame someone over minor mistakes, even if it might mean they end up traumatized, unemployed and alone? Do you participate in it? Do you notice it? If you do, do you ever just say something simple like "isn't that kind of harsh?"

(Personally I've started to confront a few of my friends about this kind of behavior and asked them to think about it. As I said, the topic has started to bother me. I also noticed that a few people on my regular feeds constantly posted links telling me who I should hate today.)


In my opinion this is whole phenomenon is pretty much just internet bullying. It's the old schoolyard mentality, where somebody who makes a good target slips up in some usually very minor way, and then things just escalate.

Besides, the joke she made wasn't actually that stupid IMO.

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

“Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.”

I actually thought it was kind of funny.

[troutman]

Thank you OP for this timely topic. It is something I have been reading and thinking about.

For some reason, women especially seem to be the targets of hateful trolling. I know a number of women that have deleted their profiles because of unwanted or hostile attention (from men and women). I can only imagine the hateful messages Danielle Smith received. I'm not her biggest fan, but no one deserves personal, sexist and abusive attacks. Vani Hari (the Food Babe) is a quack, but does not deserve the hateful messages she receives:

http://foodbabe.com/2014/12/06/food-babe-critics/

Instead of focusing on the issues at hand I’ve raised about the food industry, their go-to criticisms are ad hominem personal attacks: they’ve attacked me, as a woman, in ways they’d never attack my male colleagues. I am personally being subjected to hate speech, harassment and cyber-bullying on a daily basis. I won’t dignify these immature, and often misogynist, remarks with a response. Here are a few examples of the disturbing and graphic recent remarks. Warning: These are extremely offensive.

Here is the story of a female blogger that turned the tables on her troll:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...oll-lindy-west

There’s a term for this brand of gratuitous online cruelty: we call it internet trolling. Trolling is recreational abuse – usually anonymous – intended to waste the subject’s time or get a rise out of them or frustrate or frighten them into silence. Sometimes it’s relatively innocuous (like asking contrarian questions just to start an argument) or juvenile (like making fun of my weight or my intelligence), but – particularly when the subject is a young woman – it frequently crosses the line into bona fide, dangerous stalking and harassment.

And even “innocuous” harassment, when it’s coming at you en masse from hundreds or even thousands of users a day, stops feeling innocuous very quickly. It’s a silencing tactic. The message is: you are outnumbered. The message is: we’ll stop when you’re gone. The volume and intensity of harassment is vastly magnified for women of colour and trans women and disabled women and fat women and sex workers and other intersecting identities. Who gets trolled has a direct impact on who gets to talk; in my personal experience, the fiercest trolling has come from traditionally white, male-dominated communities (comedy, video games, atheism) whose members would like to keep it that way.


And the troll apologized:

I have e-mailed you through 2 other gmail accounts just to send you idiotic insults.
I apologize for that.
I created the PaulWestDunzo@gmail.com account & Twitter account. (I have deleted both.)
I can’t say sorry enough.
It was the lowest thing I had ever done. When you included it in your latest Jezebel article it finally hit me. There is a living, breathing human being who is reading this ####. I am attacking someone who never harmed me in any way. And for no reason whatsoever.
I’m done being a troll.
Again I apologize.

I'm sure I have been rude in the past, but now I pause to consider what I'm saying before I click "reply". Why can't we communicate in the same way we would to people who are across the table from us?

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Tiger

The problem is people try to ruin someone reputation over something so meaningless. And do these SJW even care, or do they just jump on the bandwagon to get popular themselves. It is just cyber bullying, but because it is on such a grand scale everybody thinks they did the right thing.

In the world of social media, that's what it comes down to. I personally hate facebook, twitter and other social media outlets for reasons like this. I never post pictures or status updates on facebook. I've never tweeted in my life and never will. I think instagram is stupid. Things you say and do on the internet can come back to bite you in the ass later. Is it fair? No probably not. But that's the reality of it.

I read that article on Justine's situation yesterday and while I don't think it's fair what happened to her, I would hope that others learn from it and it sets them straight. It might seem harmless to post some pictures of yourself topless or tweet what's on your mind, but in the world we live in now everyone is connected and you have to be vigilant about what you say/do. The world is full of predators and exploiters and all social media has done is make it easier for them to get that much closer to you. And it's especially bad if you're a woman. Let's face it, tons of guys are perverts and any outlet that gives them a chance to say what's on their mind from behind the safety of a computer monitor in an aggressive way to a woman, their going to do.

[FireFly]

I find it ironic that in a world in which bullying has been such an important topic as of late, where adults are encouraging children to stand up and speak out against bullying, adults are doing it in greater numbers than ever. I find it to be a symptom of our societal dissatisfaction.

I know that this topic is about internet shaming in particular but I find it ridiculous that society accepts bullying in some forms but not others, especially when it comes to children. Practice what you preach and perhaps the lessons will hold.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by FireFly

I find it ironic that in a world in which bullying has been such an important topic as of late, where adults are encouraging children to stand up and speak out against bullying, adults are doing it in greater numbers than ever. I find it to be a symptom of our societal dissatisfaction.

I know that this topic is about internet shaming in particular but I find it ridiculous that society accepts bullying in some forms but not others, especially when it comes to children. Practice what you preach and perhaps the lessons will hold.

The Troll I mentioned above, explained his motivations when he apologized:

And then, there I was in a studio with a phone – and the troll on the other end.

We talked for two-and-a-half hours. He was shockingly self-aware. He told me that he didn’t hate me because of rape jokes – the timing was just a coincidence – he hated me because, to put it simply, I don’t hate myself. Hearing him explain his choices in his own words, in his own voice, was heartbreaking and fascinating.He said that, at the time, he felt fat, unloved, “passionless” and purposeless. For some reason, he found it “easy” to take that out on women online.


If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...it-in-all-caps

It’s safe to say whatever you want on the Internet; nobody will know it’s you. But that same anonymity makes it possible for people to say all the awful things that make the Internet such an annoying and sometimes frightening place. This week: what happens when the Internet turns on you?

[chemgear]

I've posted this before but it still holds:

[WhiteTiger]

This is an interesting topic, as I find that it's a good thing to be more aware of what you are saying and the consequences of such (such as the Sacco case). You generally can't just blithely toss out racist/sexist/ignorant stuff anymore and not get called on it. Which is good.

But does the 'punishment' fit the 'crime'? Not by a long shot. The 'internet' doesn't know when to stop, and doesn't tend to until someone's a crater in ground. Which is bad.

[troutman]

Is shaming a group (ex. anti-vaxxers) different than shaming an individual, because it is not personal?

[Bagor]

Good old self righteous anger and indignation. I (like most people) have been guilty of it in the past over the silliest things (e.g. other people's driving), but the fact of the matter is, it's absolutely self defeating. At the end of the day it serves absolutely no purpose except to wind me up and give me an useless false sense of superiority.

Originally Posted by troutman

Why can't we communicate in the same way we would to people who are across the table from us?

I suppose because there is not and never will be that same connection with an unknown stranger and who they really are.

Was interesting that Biddle continued to self righteously troll, stalk, taunt and torment Sacco long after the tweet but suddenly found it within himself to publicly apologize to her after he himself had become a victim of shaming.

Thanks Itse. That was a great read.

[tvp2003]

Thanks OP -- interesting topic, fascinating article.

I think the danger is that people don't know (or appreciate) that power of social media. Obviously not condoning what can happen (especially at the extreme ends), but I'll make the analogy to a car. You need to be 16 and follow a set of rules (speed limit, traffic laws) before you can drive. Why, because cars are dangerous and can cause injury and death if not used properly. There are no such rules for social media so its like (i) people can drive without following any rules, and (ii) nobody else has to follow any rules. No surprise that chaos ensues.

Should people be losing their jobs for posting stupid tweets that blow up? Should people be harassed for doing stupid things and posting them online? I think the majority of people will say no, but at what point does the answer become yes? If the answer is yes, does that make us better off as a global, interconnected community?

[Erick Estrada]

It is something I find extremely frustrating as there seems to be no grey area anymore as you can't do anything in light humor or general speak without people jumping of the deep end making you out to be some sort of villain and cancer on society. I was a victim here a few weeks ago when I made a general statement that a poster considered racist which hijacked the entire thread with me being described as a bigot and racist despite that being totally untrue.

However I do believe if you are tweeting with followers you do have to be careful about what you say and that African AIDS joke while harmless was probably not in good taste. In that case I can see the case for her firing unfortunately given her position. That said you hate to see people lose their livelihoods because two guys were talking privately about a dongle and a female who is not part of the conversation nor a referred to in the conversation overhears it and gets him fired. To me that's complete garbage.

This leads back to a discussion I believe a few days ago in the hockey forums where people nowadays seem to have a hunger to be outraged about anything and look for any excuse to justify being outraged about a person, company, etc for even the smallest reason. It seems like people are so overly focused on the negatives in society now that you almost feel like you can't breathe and say or write anything that hasn't been proof read by numerous people and passed a screen test first.

I'm not making excuses for the real racists, bigots, etc but there has to be some middle ground where life isn't serious 24/7, 365 days a year. It's getting exhausting as part of being human is making mistakes and it's like nothing other than 100% perfect behavior 24/7 is acceptable which simply isn't possible.

[GGG]

She problaby should lose her job for the tweet. I think that is reasonable for a public person.

Shaming to conform to social norms was maybe is and important part of our evolutionary make up. How do things like racisim, homophobia and others get changed. The first step is usually logic and converstaion but when that fails what are societies options to further in act positive change? Refusing to tolerate and objecting to the offending behaviour is the only way to stop it.

The problem with the internet is it goes to far. The guy repearting the tweet and here getting fiired from her job is probably a reasonable consequence. The long term shame associated with it is not. So maybe the issue is when people pile on. Bringing it out into the open for all to see is valuable and can create positive change but shaming a person into submission and changing the way someone has to live is not.

[Cappy]

Great article. and thanks to Troutman for the book recommendation, I already ordered it on amazon.

I agree with most here. Social media is still fairly new to most people and many are still unaware of the dangers. As time goes on, I think the "wild west" mentality will subside.

I always think, would I say that to someone's face? no. Then why would I say it online. Too much at stake in life to blow it on a simple tweet.

[Language]

Originally Posted by GGG

She problaby should lose her job for the tweet. I think that is reasonable for a public person.

Shaming to conform to social norms was maybe is and important part of our evolutionary make up. How do things like racisim, homophobia and others get changed. The first step is usually logic and converstaion but when that fails what are societies options to further in act positive change? Refusing to tolerate and objecting to the offending behaviour is the only way to stop it.

The problem with the internet is it goes to far. The guy repearting the tweet and here getting fiired from her job is probably a reasonable consequence. The long term shame associated with it is not. So maybe the issue is when people pile on. Bringing it out into the open for all to see is valuable and can create positive change but shaming a person into submission and changing the way someone has to live is not.

Was she really that public of a person, any more so than you or I? So she was senior director of communications at some firm. Is that any different than any senior geoscientist or senior financial analyst in the multitude of companies worldwide? She's just another employee...not a celebrity or public sports figure. She had 170 followers for crying out loud. Someone (in this case Biddle), chose to make an example of her.

I don't disagree with you regarding the fact that the long term shame went too far. At the end of the day, maybe she should have just made her account private. But again, with 170 followers, you don't expect it to blow up like that.

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Great article. and thanks to Troutman for the book recommendation, I already ordered it on amazon.

I agree with most here. Social media is still fairly new to most people and many are still unaware of the dangers. As time goes on, I think the "wild west" mentality will subside.

I always think, would I say that to someone's face? no. Then why would I say it online. Too much at stake in life to blow it on a simple tweet.

Is that because people will smarten up and (i) stop posting dumb things and/or (ii) stop harassing people who post dumb things? I don't see how something like that can be regulated externally (i.e. by laws or other restrictions).