Online public shaming mobilizes the unconstrained collective power of mass social media to punish perceived norm violators by pummeling their reputations and poisoning their relationships. Online shaming often seeks to ostracize its targets - that is, to invite others to ignore or exclude them. But there are degrees of ostracism and the nature of online shaming is such that we have a new word to describe its punitive consequence: being cancelled.

To be cancelled is an extreme form of ostracism, one that permits no defense or remedy. Those who are cancelled become persona non grata just about everywhere and with no end in sight. And there is little they can do about it. The verdict is in and there is no appeal. Once condemned, a person is forever tainted. That’s the power of online public shaming.

What is it about online shaming that is so excessive?  

For one thing, there is no way to control the timeline and reputational damage of online shaming. Information “can be globally disseminated instantaneously so that a specific transgression has the potential to escalate into a massive digital pile-on in a matter of minutes and to remain in the online record for a long time”, no matter how minor the transgression (Aitchison and Meckled-Garcia, 2020).  A shadow of uncertainty hangs over the targeted individual, who never knows when the online onslaught and offline consequences will stop.

That’s because the timeline of online punishment is inherently uncertain.  When does an individual have the right for the shaming to stop, and how is this even possible when the shaming is recorded on the internet? If the shaming does not stop, how can the shamed ever repair their reputations and relationships? Convicted criminals do their time and pay their dues - but there are no parallel concepts in the world of online shaming. Even if the online chatter subsides for a while, there’s no telling when it might come roaring back. It may not even matter if the perceived transgression turns out to have been a misunderstanding and one is vindicated (see Chipotle girl), not everyone gets the memo or maybe they just don’t care. It’s easy to be callous when you don’t know your victim. Besides, showing compassion for the possibly wicked may very well make oneself a target of online shaming. It’s a shame-or-be-shamed world out there.

Targets of online shaming are often depicted as bad moral characters who will never deserve to be happy again. The focus is on what they are, not what they did. And what they are doesn’t change.

This tendency to essentialize norm violators as morally deficient is actually a cultural trend not specific to online shaming. But the internet has amplified the trend by being a vehicle for social surveillance: everyone’s watching and ready to post commentary. Hence, we get shaming as performance, something one must do to stay within the good graces of the online collective. And with shaming as performance, we get the expanding circle of ostracism, as the online world invites “employers, schools, universities, political parties and other civic organisations to performatively cut ties with or denounce the shamed person” (Aitchison and Meckled-Garcia, 2020). No wonder we’re all walking on eggshells.

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References:

Aitchison, G. and Meckled-Garcia, S. (2020) Against Online Public Shaming: Ethical Problems with Mass Social Media. Social Theory and Practice  https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract20201117109

Vorderer, P. and F. Schneider (2016). Social media and ostracism.  In: Ostracism, exclusion, and rejection (Frontiers of Social Psychology); Eds. Kipling D. Williams, Steve A. Nida; (pp. 240–257). New York, NY: Psychology Press