So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed summary

We sometimes feel powerless in the face of injustice. We discover that mega-corporations exploit their employees or that a politician goes back on their election promises, but there’s not much we can do, despite our feelings of outrage.

Social networks, however, have begun to change this.

In the past, public shaming was dictated by some authority figure, be they a judge or a religious leader. Today’s digital shaming, in contrast, emerges out of the midst of the online community. That’s no coincidence.

Today, many people feel that (offline) public space has been taken away from them. They feel that the process of gentrification is pushing them out of the areas where they used to live and spend their time.

It’s a familiar scenario: a Twitter user tweets something stupid, and then suddenly they’re accosted by an angry, anonymous mob intent on their destruction. But what are the psychological mechanisms that set the gears of this kind of online public shaming in motion?

Individuals behave differently in crowds than they do on their own. In his seminal work The Crowd, Gustave Le Bon, a nineteenth century French physician, described the phenomenon thus:

In the days after posting that harmless (though quite tasteless) photo of herself posing by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Lindsey Stone saw many posts on social media wishing on her either death or sexual violence or both. She was so traumatized by this massive public shaming that she rarely left her home for a year.

Indeed, public shaming is very harmful to its victims. The abuse makes them feel attacked and humiliated, which can be so traumatic that it leads to depression or even PTSD.

For more than 20 years the notorious Texan Judge Ted Poe has tried to restore order in Houston by publicly shaming defendants convicted in his court. But did his strategy work?

As it turns out, public shaming is indeed an effective deterrent to crime. Consider the case of a notorious young shoplifter who was sentenced to parading around a store while carrying a sign that read, “I stole from this store. Don’t be a thief or this could be you.”

How is it that some celebrities can commit heinous acts and yet, after three years, the scandal has magically vanished from Google search results? Well, it’s not magic – but it is expensive.

There are agencies out there, such as Metal Rabbit Media and reputation.com, that offer restitution services for a damaged internet reputation. In essence, their job is to make sure that the first pages of a Google search on their clients will yield only harmless information or – even better – flattering trivia about their charitable work, their passion for marathons, and so forth.