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Tag: shaming

Shame Cannot Survive Empathy

Over the years I have written many posts about the negative impact of online public shaming and cyber-bullying, as well as the major downsides to the global democratization and sharing of content. I’ve also read countless books (most recently Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed“) and discussed this topic extensively with others. Nothing I’ve come across has ever packaged and actioned this important topic quite so well as this TED talk I just watched by Monica Lewinsky (embedded below).

Social Media Vigilantism – Have We Gone Too Far?

Over the course of the last few weeks there has been significant discussion about the very disturbing, derogatory and blatantly sexist #FHRITP trend. Let me point out from the get-go that I personally believe there is nothing about this trend that is excusable. It is wrong, period. I would however, like to discuss a hidden story here within the larger issue of sexual harassment.

Last Thursday, in the course of reading about the Hydro One employee being fired from his $100K+ job for participating in this sad trend, I tweeted about how this was yet another example of the need for education on personal digital footprints (something I have written extensively on). A few people took offense to my tweet in that they thought it was the wrong lesson and that “to not sexually harass women” should be the only conversation here.  I clarified my position, realizing that it was being misinterpreted and removed the original tweet to avoid any further confusion. I have rarely done this, but in this case I felt it was necessary given another rising trend occurring these days, social media vigilantism,  which I will discuss in a moment. Coincidentally, CBC actually released a documentary on Social Media Shaming as this event was unfolding (video screenshot at the top of this post).