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Public Humiliation in the Digital Age

By September 4, 2013Blog
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Have you ever made a mistake? For all of us, the answer is “yes.” What if the mistake you made is captured on film and goes viral? That is a very real possibility in today’s day and age. Cell phone cameras are ubiquitous.

A 17-year-old girl in Ireland is learning a very difficult lesson about bad judgment and public humiliation. According to a U.K. Daily Mail article, the girl was photographed performing oral sex on two men at an Eminem concert at Slane Castle. Whoever took these photos posted them online, and they wound up on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Accounts that shared the photos are being taken down.

However, the damage is already done and will never completely go away, because it is on the Internet.

According to the Daily Mail story, commenters on those social networking sites were brutal towards the girl and hailed the “men” receiving oral sex as heroes. While the girl’s error in judgment is colossal, the decisions made by the two men to allow her to do it and to be photographed were arrogant.

These two men were zeros, not heroes. They allowed a girl to humiliate herself in front of onlookers so they could be sexually satisfied. These two men are disgusting. They used a teenager and the one pictured in the Daily Mail looks extremely proud of himself.

Not being familiar with Irish law, there were probably also several laws broken. If the girl is a minor, photographing her and posting the pictures may constitute making and distributing child pornography. If the girl is under the age of consent, perhaps it’s statutory rape in Ireland? Are there laws against public exposure and sex in public? Did one or both of the men give the girl drugs?

Wonder what the men’s parents must think of their behavior? That’s the kind of picture you want hanging in the entryway, right?

“Say, here’s the photo of my doofus son getting oral sex from a total stranger in front of a bunch of people. I just could not be more proud of the way he can convince a girl to humiliate herself in order to pleasure him. He’s going to go far in this world, I can tell.”

For those individuals who take pride and pleasure in being cyber-bullies, this type of incident makes perfect fodder. Everyone needs to think about what they are doing in public. If it was filmed and posted online, would you be okay with it or mortified? You might just be humiliated and bullied to the point of being hospitalized, as the girl in the story was.

Think before you act, because cameras are everywhere now, and you could become infamous online. If you are doing something in public that you wouldn’t do in front of your parents, clergyman, or boss, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

Let’s pray the girl in this story can learn from her mistake and move forward with her life. Let’s pray the men in this story learn to respect themselves and others.