How Would You Feel?

In the wake of the death of the nurse who was tricked by the 2dayFM presenters there has been a lot of opinion some blaming the presenters for the death others exonerating them. I'm not sure I agree with either side completely, much of the blame seems to be knee jerk and to some extent only seem be countering the results of a public shaming by starting another one. Yet the defence worries me too. We are told that we shouldn't blame anyone because we don't know the full story; we don't know what other issues the nurse may have had, nobody could have foreseen it and they were just having a joke.

The fact is we don’t know anyone’s full story, how close to the edge they are or what mental frailty may exist. As for it not being able to be foreseen, it is true that after tricking someone into thinking you where royalty to the extent that they betray confidential information then publish the whole thing Nationally and subsequently Internationally no one could predict that the person who was tricked and shamed might take their own life. No one however would expect that she would have been feeling anything less than used, humiliated and upset. 

The trouble is these excuses are exactly the same ones that I used to hear from bullies at school when you had finally snapped. They didn't know you would be hurt like that or they were just joking around. And to an extent they are valid excuses, most bullies do not realize, do not seek to ruin or end someone else’s life. They just want a cheap laugh.

On the other hand the two radio presenters, small blame to them, did not expect what happened to happen on the reasonable grounds that most of the time, pranks do not end in a suicide. Yet they will undoubtedly be blaming themselves, and will probably continue to for the rest of their lives.

As I type the world of twitter churns as the backlash against the pranksters reaches fever pitch, demanding everything from sackings to suicides as the appropriate response.

This raises the question, why do people try to create cheap laughs? The most probable explanation is because there is a market for cheap laughs. Perhaps we all need to put ourselves in the other persons place before we get in the business of publicly shaming them.