The Future of Reputation

The introduction of this book talks quite a bit about “dog poop girl”, an incident about a girl who wouldn’t pick up after her dog that went viral. Because this girl wasn’t adhering to social norms, the internet took it out on her, posting all sorts of information about her private life. One section I really liked was the mention of confrontation. Before the rise of the internet, the only way to punish someone for stepping outside of the norm would be to physically/verbally confront the person, or to just passively give them the hairy eyeball. Now, with the ability to connect to millions of people, someone could just share a picture and let the people of the internet do the rest of the work, finding personal information and giving that to the world.

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