Political Topics No One is Really Talking About: Cybershaming

--by Sebastian

I was reviewing old posts and I came across this on cybershaming

It is also the topic of a recent Black Mirror Episode (which is a series that I'm enjoying quite a bit).

Ten years have passed since I published that original article, and experience with the topic has suggested to me that the issue is worse than I guessed at the time.  I think I'd like to get to a norm where most outside-of-work behavior doesn't cause problems for most jobs, and a situation where we can stop crazy shame storms from whipping across the internet.  I think those two ideas are related.  But I have no idea how to get there.

Consider this an open post on the problems  (or not if you think it isn't a big deal) of cyber shaming OR on Black Mirror. 

 

 

 

Comments

[Nombrilisme Vide]

I agree it's gotten worse. We love acceptable targets, we hate delayed gratification, and an awful damned lot of us are pretty hostile to due process as well. I don't see this improving any time soon.

[wj]

It certainly hasn't proven to be a passing fad (as one of the comments back in 2005 suggested).

I, too, don't see it getting better any time soon. We've gotten way too enamored of "straight talk", and way too dismissive of good manners.

[liberal japonicus]

The story in the post is about a Korean girl, and there is a difference between how this works in Asia and in the West, though it is difficult to explain. The best I can do is to suggest that there is an authentic tension in the West between privacy and publicity and a recognition, weak as it may be, that people are entitled to a certain amount of privacy. That doesn't really apply in Asia, so the application of privacy is fitting something that was developed somewhere else and taken up here, so there is notion of doing it without understanding the actual reason that one does it.

There's also this discussion of Justine Sacco from last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html

[Countme-In]

Here's some cyber shaming:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hackers-ready-hit-back-if-russia-disrupts-election-n677936

No doubt the Russian hacking grid is hooked up intimately with Trump's and the RNC's and the Giuliani New York FBI branches' interf*cks, so I hope Obama orders the frying of the lot, and then on Wednesday morning, regardless of who wins, he orders the rounding up and the killing of the domestic enemies of my country.

It would be a Lincolnesque move. Kill.

[wonkie]

Cyber shaming happens in dog rescue. Someone wil take a picture of a dog, post the owner's name and address, and ask the world to call the local police.

Sometimes the info about the owner is wrong causing a innocetn person to be pilloried. Sometimes the situation for the dog is not neglectful or abusive.

Sometimes the cyber shaming is the only available route to justice. I am working on a non-fiction book right now about the rescue of 124 dogs and a snake from a houarding situation that claimed to be a sanctuary. The animals were rescued by a facebook campaign against the will of the local prosecutor

[wonkie]

I have been trying to post some of the pictures that were used to put the sanctuary out of busiess, unsuccessfully. Picture a small old unheated warehouse, the interior dep in uring saturated straw, with dogs in crates stacked up everywhere and dead dogs in a cooler. Picure this warehouse inside city limits, a block from the mayor's house. It took about a year of on-line shaming to free the dogs. The city government never acted to enforce eithr their own laws or the state laws.

[wonkie]

It's ice to hear from you , Sebastian, and it was also very nice to read the names of old commenters. Made we feel nostalgic.

[JanieM]

Here's an ongoing case that I've seen highlighted in several news sources lately.

What most appals me about it is that it is being framed everywhere as a "body shaming" case. My reaction is basically: Never mind the body shaming, wtf is wrong with someone who posts a picture of a naked stranger on the internet? I don't care if the naked stranger is Miss America, wtf? WTF? *WTF*?

As long as it's not revenge porn, and as long as it's not body-shaming, then it's okay?

Srsly, WTF?

[JanieM]

Ah, what I wouldn't give for an edit button. I know, I should preview. Maybe next time.

[byomtov]

Hi Janie,

wtf is wrong with someone who posts a picture of a naked stranger on the internet?

I'd say the person doing it is a total a$$hole, who has probably been indulged for a long time because she happens to be very attractive. Thirty or ninety days in jail might do her some good.

[Countme-In]

Between the hacking phenomenon and this shaming crap on social media, I could see deciding to go off the grid, or blowing up the grid altogether.

You wanna shame me, write it out in longhand and place it in a self-addressed stamped envelope so I can find you and we can discuss your actions right up in your personal space.

But dangerous, murderous evil is looming in the more conventional communication byways in this country, as always.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rolls-out-anti-semitic-closing-ad

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/critical-profile-melania-trump-unleashes-flood-anti-semitic-abuse-reporter

The solution to these malignant hate attacks by fascist, right wing subhumans who are within a hair of leading the country, as of today, is unremitting, savage violence against the perpetrators.

[wj]

I expect that it will take the usual decade or two for our society to adapt to the social media phenomena.

After the kids who blithely put their whole lives out on the Internet have discovered what that can do to their careers, they will be real diligent about teaching their children about discretion. But for now, everybody gets to learn the hard way.

[Countme-In]

"After the kids who blithely put their whole lives out on the Internet have discovered what that can do to their careers, they will be real diligent about teaching their children about discretion. But for now, everybody gets to learn the hard way."

Well, two things need to happen. Yes, discretion in this new media we swim in. But society, as in the employer class, needs to lighten up a bit on kids who reveal their fannies on Facebook when 14 and then apply to medical school at age 23, or want to go to work at Wells Fargo at age 35 and open up customer credit accounts without customer permission.

I'll bet the top brass of Wells Fargo, drum majors and squeaky-clean cheerleaders all when kids, except for the fraternity keg stands, which incentivized (forced) that practice on their employees never bared their tits on social media, and still, look how THEY behaved once given the reins.

What in THEIR remote pasts was an indicator of such rancid business behavior, I mean, besides the fact that they went to business school and told more power to ya by the Milton Friedman ethos.

This career ruining is a little like the drug wars, wherein people are put in jail for years for possessing moderate amounts of dope and then screwed for life.

Society, that church lady, needs to adjust a bit too. I'm sure it is in the process.

I mean, if Keith Richards can become an icon, then anything is possible.

[wj]

And photos of wet T-shirt contests tended to be posted in a single location, far from the eyes of HR departments.

I'd agree that employers also need to figure out what is reasonable to do in researching potential employees on the Internet. And what is ridiculous. This, too, is likely to take a while.

[Countme-In]

Frankly, I look forward to the day when a young J. Edgar Hoover can show up for his job interview at the FBI outfitted in full Vivian Vance regalia right down to the girdle, and the interviewer will not bat an eye at THAT, but might want to ask the kid, "So, tell me, young man, which domestic enemies among the American citizenry you would be eager to surveil and harass if we hired you on. I see right here on your social media accounts you have stated you would go after all liberals, minorities, and those in government you hate.

I've got to tell you I like that frock you are wearing, and we can certainly arrange the bathrooms to accommodate you, but those other stuff goes straight up against what we do here and raises some red flags."

Hoover: "Red, you say? Well, you will be the first guy I go after."

[cleek]

it's not going to be enough for employers to learn to ignore the things that people post about themselves; as Wikileaks is demonstrating, there are going to be deliberately malicious false things posted about people on the internet, and employers are going to have to deal with that.

[Countme-In]

"there are going to be deliberately malicious false things posted about people on the internet, and employers are going to have to deal with that."

Gee, what a fun world we've made for ourselves.

Nevertheless, this is an absolutely true conversation that was recorded and posted to YouTube. Just as true as what Trump, Putin, and Marty believe is in Clinton's deleted emails that proves she should be hung, shot, and groped, in that order:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J87y3DOL11g

[Countme-In]

Everyone will have their own Breitbart/Drudge Twitter account to malign their enemies.

Wait, we're already there.

In two years, the packed Trump Supreme Court will declare, in an 11 to 3 decision, that bullets flying through the air are protected speech, but only for Republicans.

Liberals and the other Others accused of ducking that speech will be prosecuted for violating conservatives' First Amendment religious rights and forced to stand still as conservatives deny us cake and then shoot us.

[Countme-In]

Gene Simmons of Kiss can eat a bat in front of millions who throw money at him, and then pontificate, like an evangelical religious leader, about how Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, is good for the political system, but a 14-year old eats a bat on a dare to impress his girlfriend and posts it to his Twitter account and he's fated to be a janitor all his life, or a Trump Republican, whichever soothes his feelings the most.

America is full of it.

[Countme-In]

The alt-media shamer in chief has his Twitter account taken away from him by staff, whose Twitter accounts are cesspools unto themselves:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/11/06/sunday-afternoon-open-thread-chickenshit-candidate/

Click on the link in the post to learn how Breitbartian Jew-burner and bullet-magnet Steve Bannon's pants actually, for-realsies, catch on fire at one point.

As I've pointed out, the apocalypse will be preceded by a little soft shoe and a thrown Soupy Sales pie in the face and then poof, the universe will have to do without our services.

There's got be a good-sized asteroid in Earth's near vicinity that can be steered to hit us on Tuesday and soothe all of our tender feelings.

Surely that wouldn't hurt as much as Trump's rabid dogs' fleas are hurting the country.

[Girl from the North Country]

Sebastian, I assume you've seen this, which I gather was on the NYT bestsellers' list, and was much publicised in the US:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/1594487138