Slacktivism

How Public Shaming can Make the World a Better Place

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People love to hate. Whether it’s hating on the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, or Tony Abbott, it’s the glue that unites humanity and brings us together. So when there’s fresh fodder thrown at us in the form of someone so sinister and wicked, they wouldn’t even be cast as a villain in a Disney movie, the internet will jump at the opportunity to band together and bring them to justice. That’s right jerks, the keyboard warriors are out to get you.

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Recently the internet has seen its fair share of public outrage, with the most hated man in the world, Walter Palmer aka Cecil the Lion killer going back to work earlier this month. There was also fat-shaming Nicole Arbour whose solidified her title as Most Unemployable Person Alive with another controversial video released today about abortion. But today’s flavour of Absolute Terrible Human is brought to you by Martin Shkreli: The Big Pharma CEO who inflated the price of a lifesaving drug by 4000%.

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The head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who understandably might be mistaken for evil Spiderman in Spider-Man 3, hiked the $18 pill known as Daraprim, used by people suffering from AIDs or weakened immune systems, to an exorbitant $750 earlier this week. The outrageous price jump received an instant and brutal backlash from social media, people in the medical community, and even Hillary Clinton.

After receiving hundreds of angry tweets – the modern man’s pitchforks and stakes – Shkreli sent out a scumbag retaliation to the haters, tweeting Eminem’s ‘The Way I Am’ lyrics: 

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before taking the cowards approach and setting his Twitter feed to private. Just short of stealing the moon and kicking orphans, he had the audacity to say the media overstated the price increase. Shkreli said the real original price was $US18 per tablet, not $13.50 as some news outlets have claimed, making it merely a 4000% increase in price, not a 5500% increase. WELL THANK HEAVENS FOR THAT! Ya hear that, folks? We should all put out our torches and go home because what’s a 4000% increase, anyway?

Fortunately, the internet are here to put Scrooge McDuck in his place. The face of capitalist greed has bowed down to the pressures of the people and stated in an interview he’d be lowering the costs of the the drug saying, “We’ve agreed to lower the price on Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit”. And this change probably wouldn’t have happened without the power of public shaming.

Mob mentality is easy. There isn’t really any personal repercussions other than the offhand social commentary on Facebook of someone complaining about how everyone’s a sheep. Being part of the herd is a uniting pat on the back for contributing to the movement, a thumbs up of approval, while removing yourself from the responsibility of having your opinion attacked. Along with the option to cloak yourself in anonymity, the internet is the ideal place to lose social restraints and get as angry as you want.

On the other hand, we live in a time where we expect each other to hold the powerful accountable. If we stay silent, it can be argued we’re perpetuating the problem by not speaking out. It’s almost like we owe it to those being oppressed to fight for their rights, whether its their right to be whatever weight they want without being victimised and discriminated against for it, or their right to affordable health care.

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The web has turned people into ideological crusaders, everyday heroes making the world better one tweet at a time. Whether it be voicing disgust at the lack of humanity someone has to shoot an oversized cat, or blasting a guy who likes money more than people. 

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But this is where it can get messy. At what point does the line between public shaming to enforce change through accountability cross the line to blatantly cruel cyber-bullying. And at what point do we decide whether someone is deserving of such scathing attacks. It’s certainly not easy to have much sympathy for someone who tweets shit like this:

It’s the whole ‘do two wrongs make a right’ debate. An increasingly frustrating moral debate when all we want to do is bring the fuckers down and relish in their demise. Especially in the case of Shkreli, who has the lives of those in the US living with HIV/AIDs in his hands. At what point do we reign back the attack?

There’s a huge grey area between calling someone out, public shaming, and cyber-bullying. When do our collective actions move from being righteous and effective to just being a gleeful lynch mob? To what extent do people who do bad things have to be punished?

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There’s no hard and fast answer, but if we look at the severity of the crime in comparison to the savagery of the repercussions, perhaps this is how we can either forgive ourselves for our harsh words, or recognise when we need to take a step back. A public roast can easily spiral into an all-out witch hunt with repercussions far more extreme than we would’ve imagined. Just think of Justine Sacco whose tweet led to her losing her job, family, friends, any possibly at a relationship, as well as a generous dose of humiliation. Did the punishment really fit the crime?

Justine Sacco

Public shaming can be for the greater good in some cases; but if we let it get out of control, we might lose sight of when we become the villain ourselves.