Shari Rudavsky, and Amy Haneline

IndyStar

Public shaming is nothing new. The Greeks ostracized those with whom they did not agree. The Puritans forced adulterous women to don a scarlet A. And now the Internet allows rebukes that might once have been private or witnessed by a few people to go viral all over the world.

An Indianapolis woman’s insensitive screed on a local bar’s Facebook page sparked a scathing response from one of the bar staff, which has now been shared thousands of times and made headlines. The exchange (scroll to bottom of story) also illuminates an inescapable reality of social media today: When speaking with a cyber-bullhorn, mind what you say or the mob will flog you.

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Not long after midnight on Jan. 1 a woman left a post on Kilroy's Facebook page saying she would never return “after the way we were treated when we spent $700+ and having our meal ruined by watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose."

Chris Burton, a managing partner at Kilroy’s, replied to the post, saying that the person in trouble was actually an older woman who had a heart attack and thankfully was revived.

“It sounds like you were very concerned about her so I thought you should know," he said. "But I can completely understand why you think being intoxicated ... (jerks who) didn't understand your bill should take priority over a human life."

The woman, whom The Indianapolis Star was unable to reach and is not naming, removed her profile page from Facebook. But not before her comments were captured in screenshots and shared in a New York City blog, the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom and other media outlets.

Words of support rolled in for Burton and disdain for the woman.

“It’s the car wreck phenomenon,” said Dom Caristi, professor of telecommunications at Ball State University. “It’s the verbal equivalent of a car wreck. We’re watching people destroy themselves.”

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The lack of being face to face discourages people from editing themselves on the Internet, says Irina Raicu, director of the Internet ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

“We suddenly have this tool that allows people to respond very off the cuff to a much broader audience than they used to and without the sense of the consequences that come of that,” Raicu said. “It’s distant and loud. We don’t see each other, and we’re just shouting at each other.”

The Kilroy’s incident is just the latest in a number of high-profile cases of this ilk. In July a diner owner in Maine weathered a maelstrom after a couple posted on Facebook about how she yelled at their 2-year-old daughter who was crying after waiting more than half an hour for pancakes.

In another incident, a woman on her way to South Africa Tweeted about how she hoped she would not get AIDS, adding, “Just kidding. I’m white.” By the end of her 11-hour flight, the Tweet had gone viral with many demanding her employers fire her, which they subsequently did.

Response to the Kilroy’s customer included numerous posts on the Facebook page of the salon where she works asking that she be fired.

Even Burton said in an interview Monday that he feels “slightly bad” for her now.

“If I had any idea it was going to go viral, I wouldn’t have used her name. When something like that goes viral, people on the Internet get a little mob mentality and start sending death threats, calling her employer trying to get her fired,” he said. “That is completely unnecessary. But you know, you’ve got to be careful what you post online. It can come back and bite you.”

That’s especially true today, said Aine Donovan, director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College and a faculty member at the Tuck School of Business.

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Even though online comments are not necessarily anonymous, a patina of anonymity is associated with spewing off on a computer screen rather than in person, Donovan said. And people can dash off these comments quickly without stopping to think.

“The whole notion of the Internet is speed, and speed often is the enemy of reasoned discourse. There’s a worldwide epidemic happening right now of a lack of civility,” Donovan said. “There’s a direct relationship between anonymity and incivility, so when people know there’s no cost to that behavior, they ramp it up.”

Public shaming can, however, play an important social role, said Lori Brown, a professor of sociology and criminology at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. It allows society to sanction people for bad behavior even if that does not rise to the bar of illegal behavior.

“This is sort of like a massive slap from the community…. It’s setting standards. It’s saying to the rest of society, you need to be more compassionate, you need to be kinder,” she said. “The Internet creates a power that no community has ever had before where so many people can know.”

But public shaming online in a vast cyber universe also can claim collateral victims.

Another woman from Indianapolis who shares the same name as the disgruntled Kilroy's customer had no idea what was going on when she started receiving Facebook messages from people she did not know calling her vile names. The messages came from Arizona to Australia.

As the messages kept pouring in, first 10, then 100 within a few hours, she just turned her phone off. Finally a friend alerted her to the Kilroy’s story and she realized what had happened.

Mistaken identity, however, is no excuse for the verbal lashings and threats to her personal safety, she said, including death threats.

One reason why The Star is not naming the Kilroy's customer is because of such hostility.

“I’m really surprised that people will go that far,” said the woman who shares the customer’s name. “I don’t know where we have lost our conscience. Think there’s a line of distinction that needs to be made.”

She contemplated taking down her Facebook page, but instead Monday morning she changed her profile picture to a square reading “Not the (woman) Who Went to Kilroy’s on NYE.”

Part of the problem is that the Internet is still young, experts agree, and working out the rules of engagement. Twitter, for instance, recently issued new rules of etiquette that will give it more power to police what is said.

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Meanwhile, individuals and businesses both are learning how best to use the Internet to achieve their goals.

Social media sites such as Yelp encourage customers to express their opinions about restaurants but may also lead posters to have a quick trigger when it comes to criticism, said Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of learning technologies at the IU Kelley School of Business.

“We have heard enough stories about people getting better service and some response, so the emotion takes over and people post stuff like that,” said Smith-Robbins, also a member of the marketing faculty. “Consumers sometimes don’t think of the business as a person; they think about their power as a consumer.”

But in this case, it backfired for the customer. Kilroy’s response was not only justified but also a smart marketing move, Smith-Robbins added.

Another business might have tried to smooth things over more, giving the customer an opportunity to save face. Or the business might have tried to handle it privately.

Instead, Burton issued his scathing reply, did so quickly, and in so doing sent other customers a powerful message about the establishment, Smith-Robbins said.

“By doing it publicly, they’re not only correcting her misunderstanding but they’re also communicating with the rest of their fans,” she said. “It says to all of their other customers who don’t spend $700, we care about 70 year old ladies, we also care about you.”

On Monday Kilroy's asked on its Facebook page for something else to go viral: a GoFundMe campaign for the heart attack victim's medical bills. It already has raised more than $9,000 dollars. The 57-year-old woman remains in critical care.

Burton's message to others: “Just be nice. … People in the service industry are people. We all are humans that need to get along with each other. And everything will get handled a lot better if you are polite and nice.”

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.Follow Amy Haneline on Twitter and Instagram @amybhaneline, and Facebook. Call her at (317) 444-6281.