In last week’s post (Face Off) I outlined my first steps into Facebook.
One of my first lessons in the fb world is it’s instant.
Not instant in terms of, once you post something it’s out there and people start to interact with it, but instant in that, if you want to think about re-posting something but you don’t do it immediately it’s too late, you can never find it again.
I’ve had this a few times but one particular instance comes to mind.
There was a post, with photo, of someone who’d parked across two Disabled parking spots.
He hadn’t parked in the middle, thus taking up the spots, but had parked ACROSS them as shown.
That was bad enough but according to the post, the owner of the car became abusive when the photo was taken.
Einstein has been quoted as saying: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
This is a perfect example, once again proving Einstein to be correct.
In the fb post the photo was taken with the number plate of the car and the driver standing next to it, so it was very clear to anyone who knew this person what they’d done.
(My earlier comment about fb being instant is a reference to the fact that this post had got under my skin and I wanted to draw attention to it, but by then it was no longer findable.)
What I would like to do in this type of situation is to have a LARGE heavy duty sticky label on hand, with the sign: “You’ve taken my parking spot, would you like my disability as well?”.
This would then be applied right in front of the driver’s position so the car couldn’t be driven until the sign had been removed.
Of course, these labels are EXTREMELY hard to scrape off.
That’s what I do in my fantasy response. (I never said I’m a nice person.)
Anyway, as with a lot of fantasy responses to unpleasant or difficult situations, they don’t occur to you at the time or you don’t have the wherewithal to carry them out (I should probably carry around a set of sticky labels, just in case I come across something like this, but sadly I don’t).
While I wasn’t the one who took the photo (and posted it) it got me thinking about the “naming and shaming” approach to teaching social responsibility.
In principle I think it’s a good idea and very effective.
However, one has to be extremely careful when using this.
It’s important to have ALL the facts before publicly humiliating someone.
A story to illustrate this point.
A man was on a train with his two sons.
The boys were running riot, making a lot of noise, screaming, fighting and being chaotic.
Their father made no attempt to control them and the other passengers were clearly getting very annoyed and frustrated.
Eventually one of the other travellers went to the father and demanded very publicly and loudly that he control his children and made a big production out of this show of poor parenting and lack of parental control.
The father looked up, clearly having been in a daze and replied; “I’m so sorry. We’re on the way home from the hospital where their mother just died.”
Without all the facts it’s easy to jump to conclusions about other people’s behaviour.
Here’s a video I posted recently on fb (see, it’s not all bad) which also makes this point and does it amazingly well.
It’s a post by Chuck Goetschel.
Click on the picture to see the video – it’s well worth the few minutes.
(You may need to scroll to locate it.)
In Judaism talking about other people is called “Lashon Hara”, literally “an evil tongue”.
So how risky is this?
There’s a story of a man who fears he’s committed the sin of Lashon Hara and goes to his Rabbi to find out what he can do to rectify the situation.
The Rabbi tells him to take a feather pillow and break it up in the local square releasing all the feathers and then come back to see him.
The man does as he’s been instructed thinking this was an easier way to fix the problem than he’d expected and so returns to the Rabbi feeling quite pleased.
When he comes in to the Rabbi, expecting to be told that all is well, the Rabbi says, “Now go and retrieve all the feathers.”
So, public naming and shaming can be a powerful tool for teaching people important life lessons.
Just be sure to check all sides of the story first.