My 2-Cents
The Return of Public Shaming – Justified or Not?
The Pillory– you have seen it popularized in all sorts of media. A town square public shamming, the guilty party unable to run away or hide. It was a method used to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior, to police our social norms. Outlawed 1815 and abolished by 1837, but thanks to the Internet a new form of the pillory has emerged. A person goes from invisible to infamous thanks to public outrage on social media and there is no place to run. With the shame army dancing deftly across the web, the real question becomes: are the consequences justified?
Here are varying degrees of recent public shaming campaigns directed at people that did something stupid. They will give you the transgression and the outcome. Give your 2 Cents if you believe the outcome, or even the act of shaming, was justified.
*Warning – some of these topics deal with issues of violence, race, and sexuality – images and detailed stories are available through the links in each example*
The Pilloried: Lindsey Stone, Age 30
Transgression: Stupid Photograph
Arlington National Cemetery – Silence and Respect Sign. Lindsey took a photo mocking the sign, middle finger raised and pretending to yell. View the photo here: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–fgQQbgS2–/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1864ftfcbplunjpg.jpg (links to Gawker article)
Outcome: Four weeks after the photo was uploaded, just after her birthday, her social media profiles were bombarded with shame comments. Ranging from general tarnishing to acts of violence. “Lindsey Stone hates the military and hates soldiers who have died in foreign wars”, “You should rot in hell”, “Just pure Evil”, “Spoke with an employee from Life who has told me there are veterans on the board and that she will be fired”
The next day a “Fire Lindsey” facebook page was created, attracting 30,000 member. Camera crews stocked her family, and portrayed them as hillbillies. Her employer received thousands of emails demanding her job. Lindsey was fired without being let into the building. Her Boss met her in the parking lot, asking for her keys. Lindsey could not get another job for almost a year.
http://gawker.com/5962796/happy-now-good-employee-lindsey-stone-fired-over-facebook-photo
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson
__________
The Pilloried: Justine Sacco
Transgression: Stupid Tweet
Justine Sacco, 30, was going on a trip to South Africa to visit family. During a Layover in Heathrow, to her 170 followers she tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Justine claims the tweet was a social comment on the white privilege, something like you would watch on South Park. She boarded the plane and fell asleep.
Outcome: When Justine landed and turned off airplane mode she had a text from someone she hadn’t spoken to since high school “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening”. Justine was the No.1 worldwide trending topic on twitter. Not just were people outraged at the tweet, others were excited to view her reaction.
“How did @JustineSacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!”
“I’m an IAC employee and I don’t want @JustineSacco doing any communications on our behalf ever again. Ever.”
“All I want for Christmas is to see @JustineSacco’s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail”
“We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In REAL time. Before she even KNOWS she’s getting fired.”
When Justine arrived at the family home from the airport, her aunt said: “This is not what our family stands for. And now, by association, you’ve almost tarnished the family.”
Justine was fired from her current job. After getting a new job, 6 months later, her new employer was bombarded with emails demanding her firing. She was let go within a month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
__________
The Pilloried: Un-named male developer at Pycon Conference & Adria Richards a Software Evangelist for Send Grid (PR & comms position)
Transgression: A stupid joke (un-named) & perceived malicious passive-aggressive tweet (Adria)
This one got really messy, with people shaming both parties, so I have included many sources. During a developer conference two men were joking about “big dongles” and “forking”, (a dongle is hardware that plugs into a computer – a fork in computer science is copying source code and developing something new from it). Lewd jokes that Adria Richards overheard. Adria Richards stood up and pretended to take a photo of the crowd, but actually of the two men, and tweeted their comments.
Outcome: Both men were confronted by conference organizers and apologized to Adria about their inappropriate jokes. By that time the tweet was trending, and the next day one of the men in the photo was fired. He posted on the internet, both apologizing and defending Adria Richards right to report his behavior, but maligned the fact she took to the internet before confronting him or conference staff. Some agreed with his sentiment, but took a much more hateful approach.
Adria Richards was also fired, several hours later, from her different employer. Her employer stated they supported her right to report the incident but not in the manner she did so, and that she stepped outside her role of “bringing the software community together”. Richards was also the recipient of several shaming attempts: showcasing her own lewd jokes online, combined with much more hateful and violent comments.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tweet-dongle-leads-firings-death-threats/story?id=18794130
http://www.dailydot.com/society/pycon-dongle-joke-misogyny-sexism-adria-richards/
https://twitter.com/SendGrid/status/314768776577036288
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/
http://www.businessinsider.com/adria-richards-dongle-and-forking-jokes-2013-3