What makes people publicly shame others on social media? What if the joke you once said online completely ruined your life? Or what if the only things you hear about yourself are aggressive and negative. These questions are directly connected to psychological behavior and fortunately there are the answers. To begin, the social media is a composition of online platforms which are rapidly growing of late in the 21st century. Notably, it includes sites such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat among several others. The main idea behind the creation and invention of the social media was to improve or rather enhance social interaction of people from all walks of life. Particularly, it can be said that social media has greatly changed and transformed …show more content…
Specifically, the essay will seek to answer the question; “What makes people publicly shame others on social media?” The idea of publicly shaming others has received positive accreditation and criticisms from social media users, psychologists, sociologists, and scientists as well. Even though people find it rather hard to explain why people publicly shame others, differing opinions have always been given to the same. Despite the efforts by the owners of these sites to clearly indicate the guidelines and rules which protect and promote health behavior and interactions, we still find individuals going against these terms and user …show more content…
This paper has explored a case that resulted to public shaming of Justice Sacco. Moreover, it has featured some of the reasons why people shame others publicly, with the main reasons being invisibility, anonymity, ambiguity, irritating comments and caution to people posting unethical photos and comments in the social media sites. Even though most people oppose public shaming at all terms and cost it proves to be very helpful in curbing irritating behaviors among social media users. Works Cited Balick, Aaron. "Shifting paradigms—psychotherapy, neuroscience, and a changing world: the seventh professional conference of the UK council for psychotherapy." (2001): 289-295. Roberta L., & Stephanie U. “Social Media Impacts Behavior Norms” (2016): 1-15. Ronson, Jon. ''How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.'' (2014):
People have become more brave in posting offensive comments and harshly critiquing the beliefs of others as long as others do the same. In response to Sacco’s tweet, people posted repulsive insults and death threats about her, all from comfort of behind a screen. Most of the people who replied to Justine’s comment would never confront Sacco face to face much less comment on the post if it had not been for the thousands of others who did. Social media has given people the opportunity to ruin people’s life from the comfort of their home and face no guilt, making it one of the most powerful weapons in the
He says “A shaming can be like a distorting mirror at a funfair, taking human nature and making it look monstrous.” (Page 238), Ronsons explains that the reason for public shaming is that it makes those who are accused feel as if what they have done can never be fixed. But Ronsons reasoning is that many times we can assume that the person who is being publicly shamed deserves it, and that their choices should be made public for everyone to see. However, he says that these shamings does not give the person the chance to change or be forgiven of whatever they may have
In America, people are able to get shamed in different multiple ways but the most common way to be able to get shamed is social media. For example, there is a show called MTV which they started to name a new show called “NEW MTV SHOW PUBLICLY SHAMES WHITE PEOPLE FOR “WHAT THEY’VE DONE IN AMERICA” by Paul Joseph Watson which he goes and
“The Flip Side of Internet Fame,” an article written by Jessica Bennett, warns readers of the harmful and often ignored side of internet fame. Using many examples from real life, she discusses how internet hate can affect the jobs, relationships, and overall well-being of those in the spotlight. She told the story of a boy being relentlessly teased for a video of him dancing, and explained that it was a constant source of shame for an already insecure teenager. Using the Romans as an example, Bennett explained that public humiliation has been used as a punishment technique throughout history, even before it was as simple as sharing a funny photo or video of a stranger. There are certain aspects of Bennett’s article that I agree with.
Sacco “thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it [the tweet] was literal” (Ronson 6) but she doubted herself as social justice advocates started to torment Sacco over her naive statement. Instead of informing Sacco of her mistake, which would have been more appropriate, others continued to watch the advancement of the situation. This is where the mistake of fighting for a social change and bullying is often misinterpreted as the individuals online do not correctly inform the individual of their crime resulting in a harsh punishment of public shaming. This need for others to provoke the victim to a traumatized state may originate that “the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective” (Ronson 3), in such a way that the perpetrator feels as if they are providing a homage to our society and that “justice were being democratized” (Ronson 3).
Although this is mostly seen with incredibly outspoken adolescents, this type of shaming isn’t just reserved for that demographic. From celebrities to everyday people, older adults are beginning to join the social media platform of their choice whether it be to strengthen their brand or to connect and keep up with family and friends they don’t get to see as often as they would like. This new age of intriguing media has the same implications for all, public shaming is a real and can happen to any user at any
“I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time –Betty White (“Betty White Quotes,” 2014, para. 1).” This quote can be interpreted to fit with several of the social media avenues that many people spend their time on. Day in and day out people post, tweet, share, and pin countless times throughout the world. These different forms of communication were first created for an easier way for people to connect with others. Yet now, so much time is spent on these social sites that it has warped the interactive part and is causing more damage than good. Many are growing a desire and are living for the amount of “likes” they can receive on a post or how many re-tweets they can generate. Instead of going to these outlets to participate in a partial portion of their social lives, people are filling that time with the technological aspect of communication. As White said, this can become an inordinate amount of wasted time and can ultimately grow into further damaging circumstances. These different social media channels can cause emotional harm through disparaging the relationship between friends, conjuring of a narcissistic personality, and the retrogradation of ones self-esteem.
Many people constantly compare themselves to others’ post online creating higher levels of depression, eating disorders, and lack of social skills. B. Tie to Audience
The security it provides through anonymity gives people the power to take shaming to a whole ‘nother level. Because social media serves as a platform for people to voice their opinions, it makes it near impossible to prevent public shaming on the internet. However, by bringing awareness to the issue, it may make some people rethink their behaviour on social media. Tauriq Moosa’s article, “Why Justine Sacco wasn’t the biggest problem during her Twitter storm,” is a great example of how to effectively convince readers of the futility of social media shaming because of the strong credibility, emotion, and logic he
Social media has taken over the world of communication and has changed the ways in which we communicate on a daily basis. It is extremely influential on our lives because of how easily we are able to access these mediums of communication. I’m intrigued by the effects that social media has on people’s perceptions of their self-worth. Almost all of the social networking sites seem to measure, at least to some extent, the popularity level or status of its users. All have a number of ‘followers’ or ‘friends’ which if there’s a high number of followers or friends that seems to elevate a person’s popularity level or their online status. This in turn could make their self-esteem or ego rise, whereas if their follower level is low it may disappoint or aggravate that user. All of these sites also offer areas where followers can ‘like’ pictures or posts, ‘comment’ on these pictures/posts, ‘share’ the post, and what have you. How important are ‘likes’ and whatnot to our actual self-esteem? Do we value online popularity the same way or more than we value real-life interactions? How could this affect the mental health of those who use these networking sites? Is this kind of online community promoting more narcissistic persons in the community? So many questions… I’m not alone in asking these questions. I’m convinced that social media has a negative influence on the self-esteem of its users.
"How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror. " Time. Time, 19 Aug. 2017. Web.
These things have become so common that not having them almost makes it seem like there is something missing. Because of features such as these, it is incredibly easy to share every aspect of what we are reading, doing, eating and listening to with everyone in our social networks. While this has meant incredible advances in the way we interact with our world, it has also fundamentally changed the way our social relationships are created and sustained. Social medial led users to have false impression of others and changed our feelings. Because social media users tend to only show the most positive aspects of their lives, social media users have a false sense of reality when it comes to how they seem themselves, how others see them and how they see other people. “It is not difficult to say that social media effect our perception of others” (Goshgarian213).
Social Media means the use of web-based and mobile technologies to make communication an interactive dialogue. It takes on many different forms including social blogs, Internet forums, magazines, micro blogging, photographs or pictures, wikis, videos, podcasts, rating and social bookmarking. With the world in the midst of a social media revolution, it is very obvious that social media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc., are used extensively for the purpose of communication. This form of communication can be done with a person or a group of persons. Today most of the people working in the organizations, especially the young generation are hooked on to the different social media for keeping in contact with their peers. It is media for the social interaction as a superset beyond the social communication. There are both advantages and the disadvantages of using social media. One very important advantage is online sharing of knowledge and distributing information among the different groups of people. And this online sharing of information also promotes the increase in communication skills among the people. There are also disadvantages of
In the end, social media provide a way of keeping in relations with friends, also allow many companies to reach a large number of costumers and to be more productivity. At the same time, media are changing the ways in which we communicate and interact with others. Social media is a very interesting thing in our life. It was made for the free exchange of lots of information all around the world without boundaries but we have to know well how and why to use these media.
Social media is the fruit of the current Web 2.0 technology. It is a series of organized applications which need to have internet connection to realize their functions of producing and interchanging of the contents generated by users (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). To be clearer, the social media is what we use to exchange information in daily life through internet. The implementation of social media can be found all around us, especially with the development of portable devices, and easier internet access. With constant upgrading on mobile platform, and the efforts of internet suppliers, more and more people can now enjoy the social media applications and media web sites with a relatively lower constraint by time and space. Through using social media tools, people can receive or deliver information quicker and more effectively. The implementation of social media has made the earth smaller. Thus, it may bring about many impacts which may significantly change people’s lives.