There is no abstraction, no “wondering” if people are laughing it her they are, they’re unabashed about it, and she knows it. Miss Utah, on the other hand, can quantifiably measure (via tweets, blog comments, et al.) the amount of derision and vitriol directed her way. Our hypothetical Newlywed Game contestant could “know” that millions of strangers out in the world are laughing at her display of idiocy, but that knowledge isn’t solid-it’s an abstract fear, a sort of worried paranoia, one that would be nearly impossible to confirm. It doesn’t really matter that more people have the opportunity (thanks to the Internet) to mock someone like Miss Utah, it’s that she has more opportunity to see the mockery. Embarrassment in the time of the Internet, however, is an entirely different beast.įor the sake of argument, let’s ignore the whole video-sharing practice that would expose someone like Miss Utah to more viewers than our hypothetical Newlywed Game contestant would have been exposed to via cable television. On a surface level, this appears similar to what a contemporary target of public derision like Miss Utah is experiencing now. Not only would that woman experience in-the-moment embarrassment, knowing her answer was idiotic, but she’d experience embarrassment knowing potentially millions of people would have opportunities to see replays of her brain-fart and laugh at her, too. Consider a hypothetical example (or dig up some YouTube clips and find a real example) of a woman on, say, The Newlywed Game providing the host with a bone-headed response to an easy question, the type of astoundingly dumb answer guaranteed not only to be laughed at on the spot but to be included in the show’s bloopers episode as well. However, while the style of that kind of comedy is old, the form of it is radically different in the Information Age. What we’re dealing with here is by no means a new phenomenon. While these shows were able to be broadcast in every TV-owning American household, the type of schadenfreude they employed, exploited, and encouraged was/is of an ancient variety comedy has always involved, at varying levels of explicitness and emphasis, the mockery of others. Long before YouTube existed, shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos and Candid Camera, along with one-off compilation episodes of stupid game show answers, were all popular (and supposedly non-cruel) vectors for laughing at strangers’ embarrassment.
Of course, poking fun at such “bloopers” isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, and it would be disingenuous to treat it as such. Few commenters, bloggers, and tweeters have expressed anything resembling second-thoughts about anonymously taunting Miss Utah’s butchered answer, with justifications ranging from “It’s just mild teasing” to “Calling out dumb people for their idiocy is important” to “I dunno, it’s just fun to mock her, I guess.” I’m not entirely sure why we collectively believe that public shaming is perfectly acceptable, nor am I entirely sure what role the Internet plays in reinforcing that belief, but the exploration of potential answers leads to some dark places. The clip has become the did-you-see-that? video of the week and has rendered Miss Utah the target of derision, mockery, and guiltless schadenfreude. If you’ve been anywhere on the Internet these past few days, chances are you’ve come across the video of Miss Utah flubbing one of her answers in the Miss USA Pageant.
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