The social media shame ship and our new bully culture

We’ve all seen the posts…dog owners sharing seemingly remorseful pictures and videos of their precious pooches, often with accompanying captions relating to their misdemeanors after they’ve been “caught in the act”. According to the victims, it doesn’t take very long for these fur babies to take advantage of an empty room or house, tear into the suede sofa and create havoc for their human parents. Despite the costly damage these troublemakers can cause, large numbers of social media users have managed to capitalise on their “misfortunes” by posting evidence of the accused appearing guilty, much to the entertainment of the online community. The popularity of these posts quickly garnered global media attention, and before long a new trend was born.

Dog shaming.

Just in case you’ve been “living under a rock”, here’s a sneak peak about this latest movement that’s taking social media by storm.

As can be seen from the video, the culprit in question appears guilty whilst the owner jokingly reprimands him. Having watched a number of similar videos it would seem that the premise for these posts is for the accuser to pretend to apprehend the accused. The result: humorous and entertaining content for all to enjoy. As would be expected, many dog fanatics are avidly supporting this trend, although they’re not the only ones. After rummaging through dog-shaming posts on Facebook, I found that animal aid organisations are also contributing to this growing movement.

In fact, even some of my Facebook friends have hopped aboard the trend. As a pooch-less puppy stalker, these posts provide me with my daily doggy fix. Honestly, this trend is becoming a guilty viewing pleasure of mine. Could these dogs look any cuter?!

Despite the fact that this trend has grown exponentially, not everyone is so onboard the shame ship. According to both animal welfare experts and veterinary scientists, dogs don’t feel guilt. Instead, people are misinterpreting their pets’ body language and confusing fear and distress for guilt. Furthermore, through uploading and sharing shaming photos of dogs, we as both consumers and producers are undermining the dignity of our furry friends.

Unfortunately, dog shaming isn’t the only form of social media vilification occurring within current online media platforms. Other humiliating and discrediting trends such as body shaming, racial shaming and slut shaming are also growing amongst pop culture, and are using sites such as Twitter and Facebook to pursue these movements. That isn’t to say that these trends aren’t new (with the exception of dog shaming). We’ve seen it all before. Jon Ronson, author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed gave his thoughts on social media vilification at a recent TED Talk:

“In the early days of Twitter, it was like a place of radical de-shaming. People would admit shameful secrets about themselves, and other people would say, “Oh my God, I’m exactly the same.” Voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent.”

Let’s flash back to December, 2013. Former PR consultant, Justine Sacco, was on a flight from London to South Africa. Sacco made the fundamental mistake of posting the following tweet as she was boarding her plane.

At the time the tweet was posted, Sacco had a mere 170 followers. Despite this, Sacco’s tweet was found and retweeted by Gawker blogger Sam Biddle, who had a substantially larger following. By the time Sacco finally landed in Cape Town, her tweet had been viewed and shared by hundreds of thousands of Twitter users. Naturally, people were appalled and highly offended by this woman’s blatant racism, lack of respect towards those suffering with this disease as well as her ignorance with the issue. As a result of this publicity Sacco lost her job, was disowned by family members and dealt with death threats, all the while being vilified, humiliated and shamed for her moment of misjudgment.

This then begs the question: is social media enabling a ‘bully culture’ through online public shaming?

Furthermore, how do we protect ourselves from these virtual worlds that were initially designed to give consumers voices, but have since led us to becoming voiceless out of fear for persecution and ridicule?

Well, it would appear that we are disconnecting our ability for compassion via our actions. That is, in instances where we’ve previousy empathised with victims over their slip-ups, we now switch off our sympathetic desires and act on this new impulse to contribute toward hate-fuelled debates. We’re not connecting the fact that our actions could permanently impact a person’s life. Fellow ‘shamee’, Monica Lewinsky gave her thoughts on the progression of internet bullying following the Sacco scandal:

“What’s happened with the Internet is that we lose context for a story, but mainly we lose context for a person.”

Parents are now publicly shaming their children as punishment in a supposed effort to discourage the ‘bad’ behavior through humiliation. Humiliation is being used as a tool for bullies to lower a person’s sense of pride, in this case through psychological mistreatment. Similarly with dog shaming, public humiliation undermines the dignity of the accused.

In the words of Ronson:

“Maybe there’s two types of people in the world: those people who favour humans over ideology, and those people who favour ideology over humans.”

Now, all this might seem a far cry from this notion of dog shaming; however, there are in fact similarities, as ABC reader Andi Colt points out:

“’Dog shaming’ is there for the amusement of humans.”

In all cases of shaming it would appear that there is an enjoyment factor for certain parties involved. In my opinion, this enjoyment stems from our lust for power. Through publically shaming others, we place ourselves upon a pedestal as if we are somehow superior, thus placing our understanding of self-worth above others.

Also, and maybe more crucially, there appears to be a sense of relief amongst those perpetrating these trends. This relief seemingly acknowledging the fact that on this particular occasion, you weren’t targeted as a victim.

Someone else was.