Public Shaming

For the New Trier News, our school newspaper, I was assigned an opinion piece on how public shaming is an awful thing, and how it is occurring during this time of quarantine. Now, this is mostly seen through the social forum app Nextdoor, where people are openly taking pictures of others or just describing people and how they’re violating social distancing. As evidence to show the power of public shaming I looked into the cases of Steve Bartman and Monica Lewinsky. Both made decisions that were accidents and mistakes, yet the cruelty of human nature was unleashed upon them and their lives were ruined forever. All over the media and the United States Lewinsky was slut-shamed for her sexual actions with Bill Clinton, and Steve Bartman had death threats against him and barely could show his face in public for trying to catch a baseball. While looking over these cases, I was appalled how mean people can be and learned that either people don’t know how hurtful their words can be or they’re just blatantly cruel. This also occurs at a local level, where if someone at school does something idiotic or embarrassing, the entire school will know about it within hours and the culprit’s name may never be cleaned. Overall, it saddens me that the human race can push people beyond such boundaries, to something a point where people take their own lives. If everyone just treated each other how we wanted to be treated, and learn to forget and forgive, the world wouldn’t only be happier, but it would be safer and overall a better place to live.