That on shaming touches on so much. Summed up short and sweet: "High school never ends." The cruelty, viciousness, insane rumors, dehumanization all reminds me of school. (And that's not the only thing.)
I wonder how many who tore into Justine were far worse than Justine was, but wanting to fit in (like how some gay guys will tear into anyone openly gay or seem "too feminine" be they straight or gay). I recall 2 girls that got destroyed at my high school. One left, and I don't know what happened to her, and shortly before that the other tried suicide (I hope she didn't get put into a certain mental hospital in the area, or she'll wish her suicide had worked). The cheerleaders, known to be nasty (and with lots of privilege) were always picking out targets, and this time those 2 girls were the targets. They were supposedly "making out in the shower." I said I didn't believe it because it would be such a stupid thing to do, and they're always coming up with stupid stuff to say about people but people go along with it to not be next, and because it feels good to be brutal--at least after someone is dehumanized or "deserves it" (and people a lot more sexually active than someone else could get away with shaming someone else's sexual behavior, real and otherwise, regardless of their own, just as people were getting away with some of the horrid things said about Justine).
My BFF joined in the taunting of those 2 girls (who separated when they needed each other the most in the vain hope of making the savagery stop) and given that she and I made out a lot I asked her why she did (it actually hurt my feelings that she would treat it as something bad). She got uncomfortable and said what we did "didn't count" because "it's just practice (for boys)" (and that hurt even more). But I did realize she was making sure she was not the next to be targeted by the school, and also because as someone who faced a lot of harsh criticisms for her sexually licentious lifestyle (itself a more complicated story than it sounds) it probably felt good to finally be the one dishing it out rather than taking it, even if she was becoming just like the people she loathed and hated in the process. (More to it than that, but that's all I'll say on it now.)
Social media is like high school, and it has other aspects as well. And that's not the first time I've heard of Google finding a way to profit from hate and shaming. Of course plenty of the lynch mobbers are themselves useless for the causes they claim to care for.
And that was a good observation about how some people care about people over ideology while others care more for ideology than people (the latter loving to make heroes or demonize people in their political mythos). Calling that guy a racist for talking about it reminds me of 2 people when I was a teen. Long story short, I was called a "right wing extremist" (by someone trying to get Al Gore elected in 2000) and a "leftist looney" (by a guy who called himself a Rush Limbaugh "dittohead" with pride) for saying almost the same exact thing to both of them...but by calling me that they didn't have to deal with my argument (which is pretty sad when they felt intimidated by what I asserted as a teen, though maybe they were just lazy as a rule) so rather than say what they disagreed with in my argument, they instead attacked me as a person.
And that seems to be how most political debates work these days, by name calling and attacking the person rather than debating the policies and ideology. And unfortunately, politics in the US gets darker with each cycle, and makes me think of that old Twilight Zone ep of a world growing literally darker as the hate rises (and it's not just one side doing it), which strikes me as metaphorically accurate of our society.
And as he said, the ideologues are winning, and creating a stage for artificial high dramas.
And I loved his comment on on how we, as a species, are both clever and stupid, and how social media gave us a voice, but it has been warped into a surveillance society in which the best survival strategy is to go back being voiceless.
And most of all, "This isn't social justice, it's a cathartic alternative." (But it's not just those promoting "social justice" that get this vicious and ridiculous.)
Here's a good follow up, btw:
It's not just about her experience, but of those that came after her which is what inspired her to come forward. And after mentioning how the internet has helped, she also talks about how the darkness, cyber-bullying, and slut-shaming she endured back in the 1990s has mushroomed through the internet. She also talks about how a marketplace has emerged that has turned public shaming into a commodity and shame an industry (which goes back to Google flagging Justine on the internet which them hundreds of thousands in profits). "The more shame, the more clicks, the more clicks, the more advertising dollars." Though lest it be lost, it's not just the big corporations that are behind this, they're merely pandering to our dark sides, facilitating our evil sides...which makes them a lot like Wolfram & Hart (and as Holland Manners says, the world "works with us").
