Introduction
When growing up, my mother always insisted that I should always THINK before speaking. You may think that I have poor grammar due to the fact that I have capitalized every word in ‘think’ but far from it, it is correct. I am grammatically correct. You see THINK is an acronym. My mother always insisted that my words should always inspire and motivate and not discourage people. She therefore used the acronym THINK to gauge my sentiments. Are my words truthful, helpful, inspiring, necessary and kind? However, it seems that very people have forgotten this acronym as most of us do not put any thought into our words before uttering them. With the growth of social media platforms, this trend of not exercising our mental faculties while talking has been shifted over there with people sharing bigoted posts regardless of what others think or feel.
An example of such a post is a racist tweet shared Justine Sacco that trended worldwide for all the wrong reasons. Sacco tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” which eleven hours later was going to trigger the beginning of her downfall as she got fired from her PR job and publicly humiliated. It is after going through Sacco’s Twitter profile you begin to question oneself. What is the rationale behind these insensitive posts? What do people seek to achieve from sharing them? Also, why are we as the general public bent on rejoicing from the downfalls of people like Sacco by further shaming and humiliating them? In an editorial response to an article published in the New York Times, this essay presents a critique of the article.
In his article, Ronson (2015), in a subtle manner, givess the idea that we post what we post on social media so that we connect to our friends and our followers. We want to share our experiences and interests with people who can relate to them and feel connected. Ronson (2015) asserts that Sacco wanted to reach to other Americans like her who have never been to third world countries and as such cannot relate to horrors of the other side of the coin. Sacco wanted to reach to her followers who still “naively believe in white privilege and their immunity to the horrors of life’ that is why she “sporadically kept checking her phone” to see if there are other people out there who share the same sentiments.
What Ronson (2015) fails to capture is the world is slowly but steadily becoming a global village with the grim tales of one side of the world being empathized by the whole world. We no longer have to walk in the shoes of the victims of terror to experience their plight. Therefore, some long-held perceptions such as “white privilege” and “immunity to the horrors of life” should be discarded and should not be an excuse for bigoted posts.
Ronson (2015) also argues that the punishment that Sacco received was too severe for her ‘crime’. I, on the other hand beg to differ. In a single tweet, Sacco took us to the periods of slavery and apartheid which should be noted that her family in South Africa was against. In less than 140 characters she reminded us that the struggles for equality was all in vain and that black people are still vulnerable not only mistreatment from white people but also suffer exclusively from the horrors of nature itself.
With this backwardation of time and slap of ‘reality’ that Sacco gave us, I do not believe that the punishment was enough. Sacco did not get enough penance. Legal action should have been taken against her. People get trolled on the internet every day for every other reason but when it comes to upending our strides towards equality, I believe more should be done other than trolling (Thompson, 2016). The Justice System should have taken matters into its own hand and pursued the matter through legal channels.
I, however, concur with Ronson (2015) on the need for such punishments accorded to people like Sacco and Lynch. The behavior can be traced back to Declaration of Independence during the era of public shaming. The practice has thus been passed down through generations and incorporated into social media trolling. But unlike the olden days, modern day public shaming is done by people hiding their true identity behind pseudonyms and avatars that do not resemble them. But just as how pillory, whippings and other form of public shaming was abolished by the law, similar steps should be taken to criminalize internet shaming.
Yes, people do make mistakes but internet shaming and trolling does not do any good to salvage the situation. Internet shaming upends someone’s life shredding any dignity left in them and may even lead to suicide by victims of internet. Therefore, public shaming is not the answer, reasonable measures should institutionalized to ensure people get penance for their mistakes and begin to rebuild their lives.
Conclusion
In conclusion, just as speaking, what we post online should be subject to the THINK acronym. Our posts should not be mere extensions of our internal thoughts and soliloquys. We should be considerate of how they will affect other people. Why should we share posts that will not further any good but only bring hate and humiliation to ourselves?
References
Ronson, J. (2015). How One Stupid Tweet Blew up Justine Sacco’s Life. Nytimes.com. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined- justine-saccos-life.html?smid=fb-&_r=0
Thompson, N. (2016). Can anything be done about online trolling? - CNN.com. CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/internet-trolling/
