A study in how we troll and shame each other–with a real-life example

I’ve never thought consciously about public shaming, but I’ve seen its effects on the internet, and seen an alarming increase in the incidents occurring. One actually came to my university campus. I won’t mention names, but you can probably get a result via Google. A doctoral student in a humanities department (not mine) teaching a freshman-level gen-ed course was discussing the Rawles principle and current social issues that violated it. A student brought up bans on gay marriage, and she affirmed the student for the proficiency of the example. A different student came up to her to express his concerns about not getting a chance to dissent. When she explained that it was not a debated exercise and proceeded to engage the student, she noticed that he was taping her—with his phone. She asked him to stop, and he did. About a week later, a tenured professor in a different department from hers and mine and no actual professional relationship with her proceeded to name her and shame her on his personal blog, calling her a homosexual-lover and liberal and defier of university values (hint: I graduated from a not-secular university). And that’s when the trolls came out in droves.

This woman received death threats on her blog, on her professional email address, and in her physical mailbox. She was told that she should be raped, tortured, murdered, and other sorts of graphic details I shudder to think about. My university took a long time to respond. She eventually transferred to a university that had a previous issue with sexual harassment (oh, the irony). The professor was relieved of his teaching duties and told he could only come to campus when he notified the university and could be escorted by campus safety. He is suing the university citing “freedom of speech” on his personal blog. Of course, he failed to mention in one of the emails that he sent to the provost or dean (I forget now) that the male student who recorded the teacher was his advisee. And he is claiming that he is the victim of a liberal agenda. Of course. I’ll be highly interested to see how this turns out.

So it was with great fascination and horror that I read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Ronson begins with a theft of his Twitter identity and the shaming of the thieves, and he discusses incidents in which social media has been used to shame individuals for seeming wrongs, whistle-blowing incidents, or evidence of fraud. How and why shaming has been occurring is of great interest to Ronson’s study. The incidents he describes in great detail are all too familiar: a plagiarized article; a photo posted on Facebook that leads to a public shaming and loss of job, reputation, and life; and a Twitter-fueled shaming in which there is no recovering a public persona. Ronson concludes that at the moment, there is no conclusion—we’re in the middle of a vigilante society, and that vigilante is the Internet.

I greatly enjoyed this read. I was horrified by what I read. And it got me to thinking about my own life on social media. I’ve been rethinking my public persona carefully. What do my profile pictures say about me? Do I swear on my Facebook feed? (actually, no, or my mother would get on my case about it) Will an employer not hire me for wearing earrings? (yes, that thought *has* crossed my mind) I’ll tell you this, though: ain’t no way I’m getting on Twitter. Ever.