Today’s technology has given us the ability to rapidly gather and post information online. Along with information it is extremely easy to also post things that bother you. For example, if I encounter an ignorant person on the street I can quickly record and post online for others to see. Although this doesn’t seem like a bad thing, this has become much more than just public shaming. There are many people who hide behind a keyboard and spew hateful things toward individuals. At times its easy to believe that these individuals deserve the shaming but often this leads to an intrusion of privacy. Many ‘Keyboard Warriors’ go out of their way to send death threats to individuals and their family members and this crosses the line of public shaming.
Social media has introduced a new type of social policing into society. Where before ones actions would not be publicized, today everything can and will be posted publicly for other to see. In most situations the publisher will encounter something in his or her life that offended them and they will post the situation in hopes of reaching a similar audience. This creates a cycle of constant sharing that can then lead to keyboard warriors. Keyboard warriors are individuals who act upon their outrage and at times they tend to go to far.
Situations such as the BBQ Becky one made public shaming acceptable. This situation arose when a white woman harassed a group of black men who were having a BBQ in an Oakland park. The woman claimed that the men were not allowed to BBQ at the park although that was not true, later the woman would call the police and claim she was the victim. The video that surfaced proved that the woman was in the wrong and it sparked anger in viewers because she faced no consequences after falsely claiming to the police that she was the victim. This anger would spark the arrival of ‘keyboard warriors’. These people actively searched the internet to find out who BBQ Becky was and once they found her employer they inquired their alignment. This would lead to her getting fired and in this was keyboard warriors were relieved that ‘BBQ Becky’ faced consequences.
Along with shining a light on the systemic racism that still exists this situation brought together the community of Oakland. The community decided to stand together and host a #BBQWhileBlack and this has become an annual event (Holson, Laura, Hundreds in Oakland Turn Out to BBQ While Black, The New York Times,2018).
Public Shaming takes a horrible turn in situations such as with Justine Sacco who posted a tweet on her flight to Africa where she stated “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just Kidding I’m White!”. This tweet quickly became viral and it reached so may people that one Twitter user from Africa went to the airport to see if he could find Sacco. This situation was extremely damaging to Sacco’s reputation and she stated in her interview with Jon Ronson, from The New York Times, that the whole situation ruined her. She was fired from her job and shunned by friends. In her case, she never got the chance to learn and as she says in the interview “her punishment simply didn’t fit the crime.” ( Ronson, Jon, How One Stupid Tweet Blew up Justine Sacco’s life, The New York Times, 2015)
Not only does public shaming leave no room for growth we can also see how this can interfere with the actual justice system such as in the case of the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing. NPR dives deeper into how social media wrongly accused a missing college student of being a Boston Marathon Bomber. After a twitter user wrongly identified him as the bomber his family was bombarded with reporters and journalist. When the police came out with the actual suspects the reporters ignored the family’s pleas for help, sadly later they found out that he had committed suicide days before the bombing. His name is still associated with the bombing and its not hard to see the damage this did to his family and to the investigation (How Social Media Smeared A Missing Student as a Terrorism Suspect,Npr.org
By social media taking on these functions of judge, jury and sentencing, we not only leave ourselves open to having our lives ruined by being misidentified as a perpetrator
Scott Thompson, “Beware of Mob Justice in the Age of Social Media.” Toronto Star (Canada), 11 Oct. 2016.
This Mob Justice will not go away simply because some people have been harmed but I do think there should be some consideration when posting things online. There are real consequences to everything we do and one day you could become the target of these videos.
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Social Media Mob Justice:Good or Bad? 