public shaming

The Good Die Young and the Bad Try to Make Money Off It

August 10, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Originally published by The Good Men Project

“Monsters aren’t born. They are created”… Are you buying that?

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I’m so furious right now! I just got off the phone with my UCSB-student daughter, who informed me about a slasher film titled, Del Playa, being promoted for release. A petition with 20,000 signatures so far is being circulated by Santa Barbara college students calling for its halt, rightfully upset at the audacity of this writer/director capitalizing on the death of innocent victims from last summer’s Isla Vista shooting. The movie was filmed in Isla Vista, written and directed by a UCSB alumni, and has a protagonist stalker/murderer portrayed in a sympathetic light (“Monsters aren’t born. They are created”). The writer/director was quoted to say,

“Our intentions were not to make light of such a serious issue, but to engage our audience in an active discussion about bullying and violence. ”

Are you buying that Good Men?

I’m more than skeptical. After all, the superficial, narcissistic online celebrity culture has taught us that profit and shameless self-promotion at the expense of others is acceptable. Everybody’s doing it!

Somebody’s feeling helpless and losing their composure? Film it and FaceBook it! Celebrate their downfall. Hilarious!

Sex on a yacht? Film it and arrange for it to be “stolen.” Publicly denounce the thief while signing your reality series contract.

Kids get gunned down in cold blood by a deranged murderer? Go to the same neighborhood and film a slasher film. Make the protagonist a bullied loner turned down by a beautiful cheerleader like the real-life murderer. Publicly apologize to the still-traumatized community while actively promoting the release of the film.

What the hell is happening to us? Have social media likes and potential for profit rented out the moral judgment center of our brains? Are we so jaded by disappointment that we no longer bother to speak out for the right? Are trolls now setting the tone of discussion just because they have no limits and limitless time? Please tell me my judgment is skewed from the perspective of a protective mother lion. Because I don’t like to think that we have, in fact, slid to such lows as a society.

I’m aware that I risk promoting this heartless film capitalizing on still-fresh pain and trauma. I’m honestly conflicted about it. But I also hope it sparks outrage that shames the film creators into pulling it from the shelves. Or maybe my article will remind us that six innocent kids were stabbed and gunned down in cold blood May 23, 2014, by a remorseless homicidal maniac; a young adult who wrote a detailed manifesto evidencing his evil plot to punish those who wronged him; a young adult who left a chilling YouTube video stating his indignation upon being rejected by beautiful women. It’s important that we don’t forget the victims and work harder for gun violence prevention.

I’m still sad for the murder victims’ families, as well as the Santa Barbara students stripped of their safety and sense of innocent celebration. I was a student at UCSB in the 1980s. My memories of Isla Vista are of partying hoards of sunburned college kids, laughing and playing Smash Ball at sunset at Dog Shit Park. In those days we feared midterms, finals, and that we might oversleep and miss one of the three parties we hoped to attend that night. These were the memories of innocence, our first try at independence and openly joyous friendship; the memories of university life outside of the library or classroom.

I have a daughter there now who heard the bullets and saw kids running in terror last summer, moments before she was planning to walk the same streets as the murderer’s bloodied victims. She came home and fell into my arms, afraid, confused, and sad.

We desperately tried to understand what had happened. We read the killer’s ranting manifesto on the living room couch, lit by the glow of news updates. We cried and ached for the parents who lost their young sons and daughters, the apples of their eyes, their lives taken when their futures were blossoming with possibility. We still work to patch together her recovery while trying to reclaim a fun-filled university experience.

Who in their right mind would think of filming a slasher film in the same community only one year later?

Somebody who spent hours with its creation somehow blind to the parallels and the pain it would cause? Somebody who thinks they can say there’s no connection when parallels are splashed all over the trailer like blood on asphalt? Somebody without basic empathy and compassion?

For those who know my work, you know I speak out against public shaming. You also know I’m a fierce advocate for the underdog, for families and kids. Today I’m calling for writer, director Shaun Hart and producer Josh Berger to pull their film in dedication of the grieving and the traumatized and reflect on their conscience. Or better yet, devote their creative enthusiasm in service of murder victims instead of providing violent fodder for the lost and the lonely.

Is this a first amendment rights issue or a human one? Weigh in, shout out, take a side! I’m proud of the Santa Barbara students speaking out. They give us hope that the world has not gone to hell in a hand basket. I’m with student writer Hector Sanchez Castaneda, who says

“Listen to the people, Shaun, and do right by your alma mater.”

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.

Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty

GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Photo Credit: STOP by Ryosuke Yagi, CC by 2.0

The Sting of the Loveless Troll. What It Teaches Us About Kindness.

August 3, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Originally published by Sammiches and Psych Meds

When I was in fifth grade I got a Snoopy autograph book to commemorate my move to the fifth school since starting kindergarten. Although nervous, it would mark another opportunity for resilience in my life of many shifting directions. I loved that autograph book with its padded glossy cover and subtle rainbow of pastel pages. I took it to school and asked my friends to autograph it for me. Here are some classic quotes (misspellings intentional):

UR2 good + 2be=4gotten. Wendy ‘79
Remember M, Remember E, but most of all remember ME. From, Marcie
You have bean a greet freind, stay that way good luck in 6^th good dancing remember your old freind Steve
And from my very best friend: Dear Tracy, I think your very nice and you are fun to play with. Sincerely Yours, Theresa

How sweet is it that a kid’s first instinct is to be complimentary and polite. Especially at 11 years old, it seems to be a bit of a miracle my vulnerable request for a wish-you-well wasn’t ruined with a trollish comment. Perhaps they were more innocent days then. Or maybe it’s because those kids had to see my eager face when they handed me back my treasured autograph book and would not have risked seeing me hurt. For today’s kids, the sting of the loveless troll happens soon after they start using social media. Check out Ask.fm if you’d like to see the brutal forced-choice game of kiss, f*&k, or marry, or worse than that, anonymous questions inviting insults and harassment.

However today’s article is less about how online verbal assault hurts its victims, because it just does. Instead I’d like to focus on how much love and validation helps. Because all these years later, what I really learned from my Snoopy autograph book is to cherish those who truly know and champion me. Here’s the message from lavender page 3 from my number one fan:

Tuffy,

You have a real neat personality and a sensitivity that will always bring you close friendships but it will also cause you to have hurt feelings because others are not always as thoughtful as you. Always keep that cute little smile.

Love, Dad

PS You almost won the bike race.

I think my dad called me Tuffy in the ironic sense, although he’d never admit it. The family legend is that a neighborhood boy was picking on my 5 year-old sister, and at 2 years old I walked up and bit him on the nose – earning the nickname Tuffy. Being that I’m a bit of a chicken, I can’t imagine this is true. But then again, I’ll take a bullet protecting the underdog still…so there it is.

As a psychologist in my twentieth year of private practice, I’ve channeled that sensitivity both personally and professionally and adopted my dad’s validation and championing skills. It nourishes my soul to be of service. To see somebody blossom from the meekness fed by the shaming judgment of others into the courage to step forward and speak their truth is a privilege to witness.

It’s a tough balance to care for those we love while simultaneously nurturing ourselves. Whether it’s the desire to please others or the necessity of sacrificing as a caregiver, it’s just too easy to put yourself last. And so often, people will criticize to make sure you stay last. One of my most memorable AH-HA moments is when I realized that it’s a compliment when certain people hate you. Relationships based on feelings that form an inverse relationship (they get jealous when you do well) are a total waste of time. If comments are hurtful or not constructive, then it’s none of my business what others think of me.

But tell that to the Internet. Social psychologists can attest to the bold cloak of anonymity and how otherwise meek people will self-righteously hop on a hostile bandwagon. The famous Stanford experiment demonstrated how college students will morph into brutal prison guards when given a role to play. And remember how the Milgram and Asch experiments demonstrated how easy it is to influence people into brutality or false eyewitness with an authoritative instruction or through peer influence?

Anonymity and the immediacy of sharing momentary feelings with thousands turns the Internet into Lord of the Flies. Subtweets, flaming, social media shaming, and trollish online comments reflect a shameful display of the worst of what it is to be human. Not that haters are new. After all, even Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and Jesus Christ had haters. But let me tell you a story about how, just because there’s a time-honored tradition, doesn’t mean being an a-hole is acceptable, even if you think it’s in the self-righteous name of kindness.

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In our community lives a proud, elderly rancher who owns a feed store. We will call him Ben. He’s the kind of man who serves customers sunrise to sunset without complaint and still has time leftover to volunteer for kids. If you need to know how to care for your first bunny, just stop by and he’ll give you all the free guidance you need. Hold a chick? He’s your guy. Every single time we’ve visited over the years, and that’s often, he encourages my kids to give their mom and hug and say, “I love you,” which he promptly rewards with a grin and handful of chocolate. He even lets you return your chick weeks later if it turns out you nurtured a rooster. All in all, from my view as his frequent customer, Ben is an amazing man.

One day I got messaged from a friend that said Ben got an unpleasant Yelp review about his business. His only review at that, go figure. Why do only the complainers leave online reviews? It turns out that an animal lover came by his store and saw a calf out in the rain. After insisting that the worker at the desk craft a shelter for the calf (keep in mind it was 65 degrees), the customer returned to build it himself. He then posted a scathing review about how the store owner, Ben, is cruel to animals.

Now, if you frequent the store as often as we do, you’d realize that that calf is named Princess and is perhaps the most spoiled animal alive. She was orphaned young so the store owner brought her to work to hang out at the neighboring veterinary hospital’s back yard. She comes when called to get her treats and is visited by the little ones of the town often. It’s arguable if calves need a roof on a sprinkling Southern California day, but honestly she usually has one. It turned out that that was one of those rare moments Ben wasn’t even manning the store. What was seemingly an attempt to champion a soggy calf ended up hurting a hard-working store owner with decades of generous service under his belt. Rumor had it that Ben teared up when he read the Yelp review (although he’d deny it).

So in defense of Ben, I and some other customers posted what this feed store really means to our kids and the community. We quickly watered down that one star with love and loyalty. The next time my kids went in to pet the chicks and shyly accept their chocolate, he looked at me with a twinkle and reminded me what’s really important in this life, that we must be careful how we champion those who are wronged and sing even louder for those who love. It was a beautiful lesson for my kids to return Ben’s kindness.

Next time you want to rant about your bad day online, remember that there’s a real person with years of invested sweat and tears on the other side. Maybe your time would be better spent being a champion to those who did go the extra mile for you rather than tearing those down who didn’t. And if you’re stinging from a cyberbullying comment by a loveless troll, remember what Winston Churchill once said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

This article is dedicated to those who nurture themselves as well as others and for the courage to follow your dreams. Drown out the trolls by posting some well-earned 5 star reviews today. It matters. I know the emails I get from my awesome GKIS subscribers and Facebook followers mean the world to me! And if you’re a parent, keep your eye out for social media apps that allow anonymity or a false alias. They are a cyberbully’s paradise, and your child won’t recognize the sting of the loveless troll unless they’re already hurting from it.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

If—

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Photo credits:

fin dac-jade by dug_da_bug, CC by-NC-ND 2.0

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/its-comments-all-the-way-down?mbid=social_facebook

The Public Shaming of Ashley Madison

July 21, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

I just got back from a podcast interview with AskaLoveGuru.com founder, Dr. Wendy Walsh, the perfect person with whom to discuss today’s scandal. Did you hear that hackers stole and threatened to publish user databases, financial records, and other proprietary information from the cheater website Ashley Madison (“Life is short. Have an affair”)? Over 37 million users could be affected!

News reports claim that hackers demanded that Avid Life Media take the AshleyMadison.com and EstablishedMen.com websites down or more information will be leaked. Public shaming unleashed!

The moment I heard this report I imaged hoards of trembling, middle aged adults being marched naked through the city by a twenty-something in Converse ringing a bell above his head yammering, “Shame … shame … shame” a la Game of Thrones.

How do you feel about this modern-day vigilante justice?

It turns out that the hackers are actually calling out Avid Life Media for reportedly charging members $19 to delete their profile and usage history, yet still maintaining name, address, and purchase details on their server. The threat from hackers calling themselves The Impact Team reads, “Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirt bags and deserve no such discretion. Too bad for ALM, you promised secrecy but didn’t deliver.”

Is this justice or another form of cyber bullying? If you’re cheating on the Internet do you deserve to be publically outed? Will hitting Avid Life Media in the pocketbook assure more ethical corporate behavior in the future? Is this David calling out Goliath? What if these hackers were threatening to out KKK or NAMBLA members? Would that change your mind at all?

Public shaming has been on my mind often lately. And honestly I am a bit conflicted. I like to think that most of us manage our impulses from an internal sense of right and wrong. However, I’ve seen some really bad behavior lately from people whose conscience clearly went out for happy hour in the 80s and never came back. For those people it seems public shaming may be the sole source for limiting terrible behavior, cruelty that harms innocent others.

And I have to admit; I wasn’t above threatening public shame on my teenager to encourage her best judgment while she was in high school. My poor child was told on more than one occasion, being from my hometown, that Mom would hear of her public shenanigans should she have any temptations to have them. It mostly seemed to work too.

So here’s my main point. In general, I think using the Internet as a vehicle for public shame is evil. Show me an adult who doesn’t have regrets, and I’ll show you that their gray matter isn’t firing. Who’s right is it to judge?

Furthermore, the position of the person doing public shaming is often far from accurate. A single individual’s perspective is rarely the whole story. What if somebody decides to throw your name in the Ashley Madison list just for giggles? Or what if a hacker decides that you deserve a public lashing for your political views, your religion, or your hobbies? Does being controversial or having enemies justify a breach of your privacy? Or, even worse, extortion?

As a woman who values civil liberties, I abhor the idea of contemptuous computer geniuses being my judge and jury. After all, what gives the self-selected the moral high ground? As founder of GetKidsInternetSafe, I see ample evidence that Internet vigilante mobs are rarely on the side of what is accurate, compassionate, or just. Yet with so few effective Internet regulations, gaps are ripe for vigilante correction.

All in all, what’s most important is what happens in our own homes and communities. It’s about how we treat each other. Tonight we can be assured that many married couples had some interesting conversations about cheating and digital floggings; conversations that we all probably need to have more often, conversations that involve true intimacy, digital privacy, and why we should beware of the dangerous power of the Internets.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

What We All Need to Remember About Public Shaming and Parenting the Suicidal Teen

June 7, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

It’s happened again. Another hopeless teen chooses suicide possibly in response to cyber bullying, and this time it is tragically from her dad, a dad who posted a public-shaming video of Izzie Laxamana sitting defeated with her beautiful black hair blanketing the floor around her as he scolds her for “getting messed up.” What was she thinking jumping off the 48^th Street Bridge? What was her dad thinking?

None of us will every know, but I suspect neither of them were thinking clearly. As a mother of three, psychologist, and creator of GetKidsInternetSafe I treat the suicidal teen and unthinking parent everyday. And before we rant self-righteously about what a monster this grieving father was, take a moment and reflect on your less-than-stellar parenting moments, those times you ranted, or humiliated, or hit. Recall your desperation, your fear, and your hope that this time your kids would actually listen. Because of this one impulsive intervention, maybe they’d steer clear of what was looking like a careless leap into the lake of entitlement, cruelty, or peril.

Let’s face it. Nothing makes us more crazed than our love for our babies, love that is tinged with shame and fear that we are not being our best parent, that we failed in our efforts to protect them from the dangerous things in the world. We let them watch that violent movie or allowed too much access to friends on social media who were poor influences. We did it because we wanted to make our kids happy. They begged and pleaded and it was a sweet opportunity to let them know we love them and listen to their feelings and desires. They told us to trust them, and we did. Or that time we went too far when they didn’t pick up their backpacks from the billionth time, threatening to retire as their parent or never let them do anything fun again, ever.

If you were really honest, can you say that you have the perfect formula of discipline and affectionate connection dialed in? Because if you can say yes, then your kid is either a robot or you are in deep denial. After all, the best way to teach our kids is to allow them, and ourselves, to fail – and recover, with humility, validation, and self-compassion.

The psychological research is squarely in favor of authoritative rather than authoritarian or permissive parenting. Being authoritative means being attentive, consistent, warm, strict, validating, and forgiving; not a tyrant demanding of blind obedience and not a friend accepting of all choices. Sometimes that means parenting with affection and humor. Other times it means laying down a consequence that your kids will be really angry about. But most often, it means gently guiding them through a protected path while letting them know you love them through it all, achievements AND mistakes. That includes sharing your own accomplishments and failures and limiting their exposure to content and people that pose risk or may come between you and your gullible child.

As I sit here, my heart aching from this beautiful lost child and her tortured father, I’d like to share my guess of the vulnerability this dad caved to that contributed to the loss of his daughter. Fear. In twenty years of practice I have learned to keep a keen eye out for the one thing that people seem determined to make happen, and that is to make their biggest fear come true.

I promise you it happens to all of us. Those who fear abandonment will challenge their loved ones to leave in the most ingenious of ways. Those who fear infidelity will accuse and threaten until their loved ones throw up their hands and stray. Those who fear disobedience will smother until survival depends on an epic reach for independence. Those who fear rejection will permissively allow until their loved ones to beg for boundaries.

If you are rolling your eyes in denial that you would fall victim to fear, I suspect you’re in the most danger. And if your wide-eyed and swallowing all that this article is offering, I suspect you may also need some support. Heck, if you’re breathing you deserve a hug today. Because life is hard and parenting well is even harder.

But rest assured that there is good news about fear. With patient reflection and an open heart, it doesn’t take much to identify the fears that threaten to take over the wheel. And from those insights, one can seek out the support they need to be better, do better. We can’t do this alone. If you worry you haven’t set a firm safety plan for screen use in your home, check out the GetKidsInternetSafe Screen Safety Toolkit to get started TODAY.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

This news report states Izzy wrote suicide notes on her iPod, including one to her dad saying she loves him very much and he is not responsible for her actions. Apparently her dad did not post the video. Izzy gave it to a friend who posted it on social media. An investigation revealed that there were several contributing stressors, including a history of bullying and embarrassment about sending a selfie in sports bra and leggings to a boy at school: