Kara S Alaimo, Columnist

Social-Media Shaming Is Good (in Moderation)

Done wrong, it destroys lives. Done right, it benefits almost everyone.

December 4, 2017 at 9:20 PM UTC

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is the author of “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — and How We Can Take It Back.”

Mocking Martin Shkreli is practically a civic duty.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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Have you ever lost your temper with a customer service representative, or argued with your partner in a restaurant? If so, you could become a YouTube celebrity.

That’s because a cottage industry has grown up around humiliating people and organizations by exposing their bad behavior online -- otherwise known as public shaming. As Sue Scheff and Melissa Schorr report in their recent book “Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate,” now anyone can record your worst moments and sell the video evidence to one of several companies which buy the rights to embarrassing clips. (Those companies then make money from YouTube ad sales and fees from television shows that replay the videos.) In other words, there’s now a financial incentive for strangers to publicly shame you.