Public Shamings That Ruined People's Lives

Public shaming has presumably been used as a punishment since people realized they could shame one another, but while shaming was once localized and would usually involve a pretty big faux pas, the internet means someone's entire life can be ruined by total strangers over something as minor as a tasteless Tweet.

This great TopTenz list demonstrates ten times people were publicly shamed online in ways that totally damaged their lives. While you could argue that at least most of them should have known better, it's hard to fault the baseball fan who tried to catch a foul ball and then ruined his team's chances of making it to the Series.


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She was famous and a little chastised, but I think the public shaming on the internet was much worse than she would have received via traditional mediums that may have put more responsibility on the Clintons.
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I think the majority of these people asked for it in some way or another, they may not have deserved having their lives ruined, but letting your dog poop on the subway and refusing to clean up, making crazy racist remarks on Twitter -most of them are far from innocent.
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I agree that it might send conflicting messages to include name and images of the people mentioned, but they were all such public stories that are so widely spread online I don't think it makes any difference to put the names in and it does add journalistic benefit since that information is so readily available.
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Now I know how my dog must have felt that time I farted in a subway and blamed him. Other dogs would bark at him all the time whenever we went for a walk after that. I'm sorry, Rex.
(And I should also apologize to the other people in the subway. All they wanted was a sandwich.)
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