Glass Houses

The thing about Facebook is that it connects you to basically everyone you know, and a lot of people you don't know.This can be a really great thing. After all, some people keep better contact with others than we do. There have been several times when I rediscovered people I had forgotten even existed. They stayed close to other people we mutually knew. Some of those people have become favorites of mine on FB.

There are downsides to this. I saw an example of this today. A woman I went to college with saw that someone had posted a picture of a girl who works at their local Walmart. The girl was sitting on a mini-fridge while on shift. The woman wrote a nasty comment about how this girl would help customers, but then go back to sitting on the fridge. She didn't exactly call the girl fat and lazy, but it was certainly implied. One of the ways that fat-shaming often happens these days is by people taking unauthorized pictures of the fat person and posting them in public settings.

The thing is, the woman I'm friends with just so happens to be the aunt of the girl in the photo. The girl is 16. She also happens to know the woman who took the photo. The woman is a grown adult. She screen saved the picture and the nasty comment the woman posted about it and put it on her own Facebook page. She wrote about how this was her niece and how cruel it was that the woman did this, especially when she basically started a mini online hate mob about the girl.

Now, I'm not going to debate about this girl's work ethic. Should she have been sitting on the mini-fridge? No, of course not. Do teenagers slack off? Yes, they do. A supervisor should come along and give her a reprimand. That's how people learn. They certainly don't deserve, nor will they learn, from being publically shamed on Facebook.

I suppose it should be of note that, as is the nature of FB, several of my friend's friends also knew the woman who posted the picture. They knew many details about her life, including times she'd slacked off at jobs or done other things that people would consider objectionable. And they mentioned them. Was this the best response to the whole situation? I have no idea.

It might make her reconsider posting shame pics of other people though.