There is a definite place for online shaming, and there is definitely no place for harassment. It's not easy to see where the line is.

The problem is that the main difference in this tweeted society is scale.

One person making a remark: online shaming. Millions doing it: harassment. There is little each of those individuals can do to prevent the snowball from gathering snow.

I think that that specific joke could be, in the proper context, a satire of privileged people's perceptions. But when it's not a character on a comedy show or something like that, it could seem like she actually thinks that (obviously that's a thing no person of at least almost average intelligence would think, but, honestly, people on the internet have thought worse). I would suggest, in general, to give people the benefit of the doubt that a joke was meant as satire, or maybe that they were drunk.

I think that this stuff is stupid. People make mistakes! Even really bad mistakes! It doesn't make them bad people! Why do we need to hold publicly-viewable people like celebrities and apparently anyone with a Twitter account to such a high standard?

I would presume that part of it is the need to feel better than people? "Hey, look, that person is making more of an ass of themselves on the internet than I am!"

I guess that "online shaming" might have a place, but in general I think we should let people on the internet do what they want, get it out of their system, and if we don't like it, ignore them.

'He who throws the first stone' comes to mind; but at its core, my principal objection to this is that unless you have proof and/or certainty (hearsay or twittersay is not admissible in the court of Chumbles). The rush to judgement of the ignorant, the prejudiced and the mean-spirited depresses me.

There is a great deal of worth in those with privilege receiving pushback if they make particularly insensitive comments, and twitter is a fantastic tool for that. The problem is, as TMoW said, one of scale, and certainly it sometimes resembles a two-minute-hate.

This is one of the many reasons why you should never use your real name on the internet.

Amen, Tolstoy.

@Tolstoy, unless you're trying to become a writer in the internet age.