Yesterday, I was served an article online about an acquaintance of mine who was being accused of doing something inappropriate. I don’t know the person well, but as I read it, my initial thought was that it was such an incomplete depiction of who this person is. Over the past few years, I have witnessed several friends endure the life altering power of a public allegation. The moment their accusation hit the press, it promptly ruined their careers and reputations, well before anything went to trial.
When someone is publicly accused of doing or saying something inappropriate or of a crime, there’s a ripple of shame that erupts through their families and network of friends. The accused is silenced, waiting sometimes years for the investigation to take place, waiting as the public determines their guilt regardless of whether a jury of their peers ever has the opportunity to give them a fair trial. Once an accusation hits the internet, the consequences of a trial will be meaningless to the lives of the accused, because they’re guilty in the court of the internet the moment their names are associated with the claim.
The culture of shame we live in is bloodthirsty and everyone is at risk. The moment someone missteps, is accused of doing something wrong, says something publicly that we disagree with or posts something controversial online, we’re so quick to jump into the comments and crucify them. We crave a world without nuance, categorizing everything into the binary of good or bad rather than wading into the messy humanness of situations that can’t be so neatly defined.
Last week, there was an Instagram challenge where women were encouraged to post a black and white selfie of themselves and tag other women they supported. It went quickly viral and, naturally, in a few days all the women who posted as a part were shamed for not knowing that the challenge had originated in Turkey and was meant to increase awareness about femicide. Others shamed those who posted because some people never got tagged and felt left out. Others shamed those for posting because they were crowding the algorithm that could be devoted to other important social justice posts.
Days before the social shaming happened, we could have all predicted it. It’s a vicious cycle our entire culture is in: there’s literally nothing of consequence that you can say or do on the internet that someone will not call you out for. Your stance on masks or race or religion or politics or parenting or gender or the economy is enough to position you for public shaming based on the current popular opinion. If you don’t take a stance, you’re not doing enough, if you do, you’re wrong.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
Today, as I scrolled through my own social media feed, I saw a post from someone I know well that I disagreed with and instantly felt a spark of anger for their wrong opinion posted so publicly. I saw who had liked the post and got even more angry. I thought about what I might comment on the post, then I considered unfollowing the person, and then I checked myself: why did it matter so much to me that we disagreed? Was I threatened by our disagreement? Or was I just simply unable to understand how someone could come to a different conclusion than mine?
The world we’re living in extends zero grace for others. If you don’t conform to the popular opinion, you don’t belong, and you risk not having the life you want. If you buy into it, you can so quickly believe the lie that your one mistake gets to define you because the internet lives forever.
But, here’s the thing: it isn’t true. Our worst moments only get to define us if we let them. When I talk to my friends who have survived public shaming, they’ve found happiness and wholeness on the other side. They’ve discovered truer versions of themselves, they’ve found new jobs that they love, they have found love, they know who their friends are, and they know who not to trust. These people who have been through the fire of public shaming realize that the temporal nature of public opinion doesn’t really matter in the end. Maybe if we all knew that, we could instead turn our energy towards spreading radical grace for others and sharing constructive dialogue with people with whom we disagree.
