How One Flew Up Justin Sacco's Life Summary

The article, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life” discusses a very interesting topic of the social media age. How careers of people have become vulnerable to Shammers and misunderstanding on various social media platforms. In this article, one of many stories in which lives of people have been ruined is discussed. The person Justine Sacco who was enroute to Africa to meet her extended family Tweeted something that read, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”. According to Justine, she did not think that anyone would take her tweet literally as what it read instead, she intended to make fun of the bubble in which the people of America live with privileges while in third world countries there are issues going on.
However, the main issue isn’t about what she tweeted, it is how that tweet ruined her life and how Shammers caused it.
Some of the professional impact of her personal tweet included her being portrayed as racist, loss of her job, and public humiliation and trauma. What these things tell Shammers is that Shamming should be done very carefully and keeping in mind the ramifications that the other person might have to deal with. It is very easy to get influenced by others as trends on social media seem very cool and participating in it is a must for many. People sometimes post things or retweet things without thinking it through. There one simple and irresponsible act can land someone a life full of guilt and regret. Moreover, sometimes people think that Shamming is good or that it is a perfect way to teach someone a lesson is because it gives them the power to do the right thing in public where all their followers are paying attention. Some other reasons that enable people to shame others on social media are that Shamming helps spread awareness on issues, it throws light on ignorance and wrong views, voice of people is heard who are usually unheard and most importantly it helps reduce imbalance of
power. Although, what Shammers don’t realize is that there are also negative sides to Shamming which are clearly stated in the article displaying various incidents. Shamming is not just an act instead; it is a weapon that needs to be used at the right time and not at any time by making it a trend. Additionally, Shammers reach to conclusions faster than they think, sometimes it is not actually what they think is being conveyed by a tweet or a post. Not only does Shamming have negative impacts but, in some cases it can also become a form of online bullying, it can scare people from posting things online and sometimes can even cause depression. In conclusion, what this article is trying to show about Shammers and the act of Shamming itself is that it is neither bad as it can help spread awareness and wrong views, nor good, if used in a wrong way it can ruin lives of innocent people. Shamming is a very useful and powerful weapon to fight the imbalance of power attribution in the society but, at the same time it is a very useless weapon if Shammers don’t use it for the right purposes.