Update December 2018: I was doing a little more research on Izabel Laxamana and need to fix an error. It seems that the video made by Izabel’s father was posted by a friend AFTER she had jumped off the bridge, not by her father beforehand. That certainly changes what we can infer about this tragic story. Here is a link to the updated story which provides additional insight.

Police reveal reason girl jumped from bridge, no charges expected

http s://fox2now.com/2015/06/10/police-reveal-reason-girl-jumped-from-bridge-no-charges-expected/

National news outlets just picked up a tragic story about 13 year old girl, Izabel Laxamana, in Tacoma, WA who jumped off an overpass bridge to her death just days after her father posted an online video publicly shaming her for some unknown offense.  In the video, as the camera panned from her face to a pile of her freshly shorn black hair on the floor, a man’s voice is heard saying, “The consequences of getting messed up! Man, you lost all that beautiful hair!” He then asked her if it was worth it and asked her how many times he had warned her. The nature of her transgression is irrelevant, but it is clear her father thought that shaming her with the haircut and then sharing it with the world might somehow reform her. Perhaps he had seen the viral video of another father who was frustrated with the actions of his teenage daughter and posted a video of himself shooting her laptop with his handgun. Despite overwhelming positive and negative responses from the public, the father and daughter in the laptop shooting incident reconciled and seem to be doing ok.

This tragic suicide comes on the heels of two incidents on United Airlines flights that have also gone viral on social media in the last week. On Wednesday May 27, 2015 a plane taxiing for departure returned to the terminal to remove a pregnant woman (Sarah Blackwood, a singer in the band Walk Off The Earth) and her sleeping child from the plane for “safety” reasons. Two days later a Muslim woman (prominent Muslim chaplain Tahera Ahmad) wearing a hijab was discriminated against by a flight attendant and a fellow passenger when her request for an unopened can of Diet Coke was refused because of fear she would use it as a weapon. Insult was added to injury when the man next to her was handed an unopened can of beer.

Both women felt that they had been treated unfairly, and in both cases the unfair treatment persisted throughout their subsequent interactions within the hierarchies of the organization. Consequently, they both turned to social media (and their extensive networks of fans and followers) to explain their situations to the world. They hoped to raise awareness that can lead to facilitating systemic institutional change at United Airlines so future passengers won’t have to experience similar humiliating experiences. These stories are not unique. People are flocking to social media as a tool to promote social justice or retaliation against people or organizations that they feel have harmed them.

When it comes to escalations in interpersonal conflict, the idea of “an eye for an eye” seems just as prevalent today as it was in Biblical times. When we feel like we’ve been attacked or harmed in some way we often feel justified in retaliating against the individual or group who harmed us because they harmed us first. Given that nations go to war over the deplorable actions of a few individuals, of course it would seem reasonable for a bullied or disrespected individual to feel justified in publically airing their grievances against the person or entity they feel harmed them. On the surface, both of these actions can feel justified, especially since the actions fall under the purview of righting a wrong and/or shedding light on issues of social importance. But there are also some fundamental flaws in this approach. First, as I hope we’ve learned from #DressGate, people don’t always see the world in the same way, and our perceptions of situations (especially where conflict is involved) are often different from the people around us. Second, when you choose to fight fire with fire, you just might burn yourself.

When it comes to retaliation/revenge via social media I see two common threads in all of the stories I’ve encountered. First is the notion that we collectively (but unfortunately not individually) tend to eschew brazen acts of racism, bullying, taunting, making fun of people with special needs, and other forms of inflicting harm on people. When it comes to morality, we tend to hold tight to what Shweder calls the ethic of autonomy (a code of ethics and morality that protects justice and individual rights) and the ethic of community (a code of ethics and morality that is connected to interpersonal social obligations). The world doesn’t seem fair when insensitive individuals or organizations take advantage of others, and social media seems like a reasonable place to attempt to right the wrongs of the world.

Second, I believe there has been an element of surprise at just how quickly retaliatory posts and videos can spread through social media. I don’t think any of the individuals who posted or shared the content in recently viral stories expected them to go viral or expected the notoriety and very real (and sometimes devastating) consequences of their actions. As more and more people are turning to social media to air their grievances (often with the naive expectations that somehow it will make things right), it is becoming increasingly clear that when something goes viral it can take on a life of its own.
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Looking back on the events of the last week, in the case of the teenage suicide, regardless of the reasons this dad posted the video, the outcome has led to general public outrage that a father would publicly shame his daughter on YouTube. But the public has been very supportive of using social media to publicly humiliate United Airlines for its seemingly systemic institutional customer service blunders of last week and the past. So when is posting our grievances on social media a good idea, and when does it just make the situation worse? My analysis of recent events leads me to believe that it often depends on whether the grievance is directed toward an individual or whether it is directed toward an institution (something I address in more depth in another article).

“Righting” someone else’s “Wrong”

As noted above, when we’ve been bullied, disrespected, or hurt by another individual in some way, it is common to feel the need to retaliate against that person. A deplorable example of this phenomenon in the digital age has come in the form of ex-boyfriends “getting back” at their ex-girlfriends on revenge porn sites. Last month, Kevin Bollaert, who extorted women whose nude photos had been anonymously posted on his revenge porn sites, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Clearly the courts and the general public eschew this deplorable behavior, and when it comes to finding an archetype for how social media can magnify antisocial behaviors, I think retaliation via revenge porn would be near the top of the list.

Another unfortunate phenomenon is publicly shaming individuals via social media for off color comments or jokes or making stupid mistakes. By now I think most of us have heard about Justine Sacco and how her flippant tweet about white privilege and AIDS literally derailed her life and her career. As Jon Ronson (a reformed social media shamer and best-selling author) put it, public punitive shaming has historically been considered a cruel punishment that destroys self-respect and can ruin individuals’ lives. He added that “well-meaning people, in a crowd, often take punishment too far.” Social media has exponentially increased the size of the crowd available for public shaming, and the crowd dynamics have remained the same. When it comes to publicly shaming people for relatively minor social media transgressions, it is clear that the severity of the punishment from the crowd typically far outweighs the crime.

But what about when people turn to social media to attempt to right the seemingly legitimate wrongs of the world? Brad Knudson, a Caucasian man from Prior Lake, MN found out his adopted African American teenage daughter had been bullied by some teen boys via Snapchat. They had repeatedly insulted her using racial epithets.  Mr. Knudson did what many protective fathers would do: he tried to contact the boys’ parents. When they didn’t respond he called the police. At this point, the boys’ father, Deron Puro, felt compelled to talk on the phone with Mr. Knudson, but he made it clear that he had no problem with what his boys had done. After calling Knudson crazy for being overly concerned, he hung up. Mr. Puro then repeatedly called back and left taunting and racially charged voicemails for Mr. Knudson. When Knudson threatened to put it all on YouTube, Puro told him to go ahead. 3 million views (and a Twitter account with Puro’s phone number) later, Puro’s children had been moved out of state “because of threats from nitwits purporting to rally against racism and bullying,” Puro lost his job, and then Knudson’s righteous indignation was called into question when he realized his daughter had previously used the same racial epithets on Snapchat thinking it was funny. As Jon Tevlin of their local newspaper put it, “The Internet had won,” and everyone else involved in the situation had lost in a major way with significant negative future ramifications.

Another recent viral incident of retaliation via social media involved Ashley Brady, an amputee who lobbied extensively to get a handicapped parking spot in front of her apartment only to have a neighbor keep illegally parking there. On one occasion she left a note on the neighbor’s car explaining her situation and requesting that the neighbor refrain from parking in her designated parking spot. The note ended with a threat to tow the neighbor’s car if she failed to comply with the parking request. The neighbor then retaliated with a nasty note calling Ms. Brady a “cry baby one leg” and threatening to “cause trouble” if she ever touched her car again. Ms. Brady’s sister then posted a photograph of the note (along with the text of Ms. Brady’s initial note) to the Facebook page of the Amputee Coalition of America. Although the note is rude and insensitive, and there seems to be justification and vindication in posting it in that forum, I wonder if either Ms. Brady or her sister realized the potential this had to get completely out of hand to their detriment. To date Ms. Brady seems to be getting an outpouring of support, but that doesn’t mean the possibility of it coming back to bite her isn’t still frightfully real.

For Both Mr. Knudson and Ms. Brady’s sister, posting that content seemed justified given the injustices they had perceived against his daughter and her sister, and in both cases their stated intention was to raise awareness of these sensitive and socially detrimental issues. But both cases also seemed to be fueled by frustration, retaliation, and revenge.

I must concede that sometimes people are just mean, but even if that is the case it is usually better to try to communicate in empathetic ways and choose to give others the benefit of the doubt. It may be that they see the situation very differently and may even perceive you as the instigator rather than the individual being harmed. The author’s perspective in Valerie Cox’s The Cookie Thief is a classic example of what psychologists call mirror-image perceptions in conflict: people tend to view themselves as moral and peace-loving and the other party as evil and aggressive. Examining the parking conflict from this perspective, it is conceivable that the nasty note left on Ms. Brady’s car was written in retaliation for the threat of being towed if the neighbor didn’t park elsewhere.  In the YouTube bullying incident, after the damage had already been done, Mr. Puro’s family issued an apology where they explained that he was under the influence of pills and alcohol and didn’t even remember the phone calls. In both cases a little more communication, understanding, and restraint could have prevented a lot of hurt and damage to individuals’ lives, livelihoods, relationships, egos, and reputations. Generally speaking, once you click send on social media there is no taking it back and opportunities for reconciliation go out the window. And in the tragic case of Izabel Laxamana, a young life has been cut short and a family shattered.

As long as we have bullies, egos, social injustices, personal conflict, and social media, people will turn to social media as a platform for retaliation, revenge, and promoting social justice and systemic change. But is it worth it? We certainly don’t want to let the bullies win or see our youth uncontrollably unbridled, but we also don’t want to become bullies ourselves. All too often, sincere individuals like Mr. Knudson turn to social media to try to right a wrong only to find that their actions are not much different than the actions they are retaliating against. In his case, the YouTube video he posted became a weapon in the very war he was claiming to eschew, and the unforgiving public viciously turned on him for it. In the words of Jon Ronson, although the collective fury of public online shaming [or any other form of online retaliation] can feel “righteous, powerful and effective” because justice is being “democratized”, there is a “disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment.” Once something has been shared via social media, we essentially lose all power to control it. Although we may feel justified in airing our grievances online, especially when we’ve seemingly exhausted other avenues of recourse, we should always think twice (or maybe three or four times) before we click.