Internet Shaming

Remember Monica Lewinsky? Long, long ago, she was the White House intern who almost brought down Bill Clinton. A while back, she gave a TED talk titled The Price of Shame. Her “crime”? At age 22, she fell in love with the President of the US. As a result, she got sucked into “the eye of a political, legal and media maelstrom like we had never seen before”.

Really, you wonder? Haven't there been so many other stories/scandals? Lewinsky explains what was different, but first remember this happened in 1998:

“Remember, just a few years earlier, news was consumed from just three places: reading a newspaper or magazine, listening to the radio, or watching television. That was it. But that wasn't my fate. Instead, this scandal was brought to you by the digital revolution. That meant we could access all the information we wanted, when we wanted it, anytime, anywhere, and when the story broke in January 1998, it broke online. It was the first time the traditional news was usurped by the Internet for a major news story, a click that reverberated around the world.”

And so:

“I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously...This rush to judgment, enabled by technology, led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers. Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and, of course, email cruel jokes.”

Today, we have a term for all that: cyberbullying or online harassment:

“Cruelty to others is nothing new, but online, technologically enhanced shaming is amplified, uncontained, and permanently accessible.”

Even more ominously, Lewinsky says:

“A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. How is the money made? Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars. We're in a dangerous cycle.”

Marc V. Calderaro agrees. He writes:

“I cannot stand social shaming, specifically against private individuals...(because in) social shaming, as distinguished from legal punishment...There is no trier of fact; there is no requirement for context, clarity, non-bias; there is only pure gut reaction.”

(I wrote a blog a couple of years back on one such specific instance of social shaming).

Haven't we all done something bad, stupid or immoral, asks Calderaro? And if that went on the Net, the additional problem is that the Internet never forgets:

“You are always who you were; You are your worst mistake.”