‘Breaks my heart': Wrestling cult figure has leg amputated
The cult wrestling figure, whose real name is Marcus Bagwell, underwent the operation due to complications from injuries he suffered in a car crash in 2020.
In a Facebook post shared on Saturday, Stasiak said the injuries never fully healed.
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'I've known Buff a long time. I've seen him in the spotlight, I've seen him behind the scenes, and I've seen him fight through things most people never even hear about. This one is hard,' Stasiak wrote.
'For him. For everyone who knows and loves him.
'The injuries from his 2020 accident never fully healed. He gave it everything he had to avoid this outcome — but that fight led him here. And now begins a whole new kind of battle.
'Buff was one of the brightest stars of a wild era in wrestling. He made you look. He made you care. But it's who he is as a person — past the lights, past the persona — that I hope people think about today.'
The pro wrestling world offered their thoughts and prayers for Bagwell on social media as word reached X that he had had the surgery.
Wrestling icon Ric Flair, who fought matches with Bagwell multiple times, posted: 'After Seeing What Happened With My Good Friend Buff Bagwell's Leg Amputation, It Makes Every Health Issue I Have Complained About Minor In Comparison,' he wrote.
'To The Loss Of A Limb For Such An Active Young Man. A Good Friend And Great Talent In The Business!
'Get Well Soon My Friend! Godspeed.'
Former WWE ladies champion Leilani Kai posted: 'Praying for Buff Bagwell this morning. He managed me on his first day in the wrestling business.
'He's a kind, sweetheart of a person and this breaks my heart. I hope everyone subscribes to his YouTube channel to show him love.'
Bagwell, 55, competed in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from 1991 to 2001 and then briefly in WWE after WWE bought its rival North American promotion.
He also competed for Total Nonstop Action wrestling and others.
He was a five-time WCW tag-team champion and was ranked No. 66 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated's Top 500 wrestlers of 1999.
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SBS Australia
38 minutes ago
- SBS Australia
Keeping kids safe as an influencer
Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Sean: As someone listening, you should literally be thinking, so the founder of TikTok, the founders of Instagram, the founders of Meta, they don't want their children to have the platforms and you are comfortable giving them to your kids. *music* SB: Social media is complex. Some say without it, they would never have found their community. Others warn it's addictive and a platform for misinformation and bullying. Either way, it's become embedded in everyday life … with people now using it as a way to make an income. Sean Szeps is one of them. He's a content creator working in the online parenting space. Raising twins with his husband, Sean makes Instagram reels about what he describes as the rude reality of parenting. I'm Sophie Bennett and in this episode of The Beta Blueprint, Sean shares how he navigates the complexities that come with sharing your life online. *music* SB: Thanks for joining me Sean. So, how long have you been working in social media? I have been working in the social media industry for 15 years. My very first job in the social space was in 2011, kind of as a community manager at the very bottom of the industry. And I was able to climb the ladders all the way up to being the head of social and digital at an advertising agency. My Instagram grew with popularity. When my children were born, I was showing my life as so many people do and posting pictures. And because my family is a unique modern family, me and my husband had children via surrogacy. That was obviously compelling to people on the internet. And so the audience grew and when the audience got large enough that, that became more financially viable as a job than the career I had dedicated a decade to. I walked away from advertising and now I am a full-time content creator in the parenting space. SB: Yeah wow, did you imagine that's where your career would head? Yeah, I was at school literally studying at uni when social media courses began to become integrated into communication degrees. And my mum actually called me and was like, this thing, this social media thing, it's going to be big. And so I started taking courses as soon as I graduated. I was one of the very, very first generation of people who had a degree where they had actually studied it, and so I was able to transition right into the workforce. SB: So you've been working in the space since 2011 - how has it changed since then? I have always worked, like one of my specialties back in the day was working with bloggers and I think that's probably the biggest transformation is watching the power shift away from traditional media, huge big budgets that were going towards TVC campaigns and radio advertisements and traditional billboards or magazines. And then slowly but surely year after year, the power shifting to these bloggers who then became what we now think of as modern day influencers, to really look at the infancy of that industry where you would give someone $50, you would not ask them what they were going to shoot, you would not give them a brief, it was literally just like, here, do your thing over there, you weird influencers. And now 15 years later, the power that they hold and the fact that brands really think of them that entire industry as a deeper connection to their potential customer. I think that's probably the biggest shift I've always noticed is this very unimportant person becomes, not only did they become very important, but it became my livelihood. SB: And just on that, how was that transition from managing brands to becoming the face in front of the camera? I'm really lucky, I think because the majority of people who become content creators or influencers for a living, they trip into it. Maybe they do have aspirations of stardom as an actor or as a comedian, but a lot of people who become influential, it's not something that you can predict. You either have je ne sais quoi or you don't. People are either interested in you or they're not. But for me, because I started my whole career on the other side of the camera, I really feel like I was able to understand the business side of this career, the value that you provide to businesses, the marketing skills that can be deployed to ensure that people are connecting to the product and still are entertained. And so I really feel like I'm one of a very few group of people who got to dedicate, almost do your 1000 hours behind the scenes, so that when I stepped forward, I minimised a lot of the risks that I think influencers trip into. I just had a really robust understanding of how to make money, how to be safe, how to make sure that anyone in my orbit is safe. And so I really do feel like I have a leg above a lot of other creators because of that background. SB: You've brought up risks there, can you tell me what kind of risks are involved with the work and when you mention being safe, what does that mean to you? So there's one side of it which is more of the professional risk, which is there are legal ramifications to your actions. But when I say risk through the lens of my specific focus of parenthood, you're also talking about risk, the reality of people having a parasocial relationship to you, feeling very connected to you and how that manifests itself in the real world. So I have had people come up to my children when they were online and just start talking to them in public places. I have had people come up to me who like me a lot in public places and I've had people come up to me who do not like me a lot in public places. And so there's definitely a risk, especially as a queer person, you're putting yourself out there for the world to see and that can always result in physical harm, stalking, and that's just the reality. It's the downside of the job for sure. SB: And you said when your kids were on social media, they're not any more: what made you decide to stop including them in your content? That's right. So I have been online full-time for five years, but my children are seven. So for the first full two years of their lives I had a smaller account and I really treated it like Facebook with friends and family. I just posted pictures all the time of everything they were going through. I had rules for myself and for our family, and that was based off my professional experience. So never show their school uniforms, never show them naked, never show them in compromising situations, don't show them crying, getting angry. And the question I asked myself is, would you post this of a friend, a really good friend without asking first? And if the answer was no, then I did, then I posted it and I always was taking into consideration what would their digital footprint be. But when they turned, it was like between the ages of three and four is when people started to recognise us out in public. That was really a shift for me and coming to terms with the fact that not only was I making money off of our family, my children were also earning money for jobs they were doing that had been put away for them that they'll have access to when they're older, but are they mentally developmentally capable of understanding their involvement and the ramifications of that? And that risk and me wanting them to be involved and feeling confident that they can be involved is what drove me offline. And then there's this other kind of thing that's not spoken about, which is it's really difficult to work with children. This is my job, it's my full-time job. I think most people listening would not want their children to come to work every single day with them. And yet my job became working with my children. That felt unfair to me as a professional. I was getting stressed out. I was having high expectations of them as colleagues, and that felt just incredibly unfair. And before they got to the point where they were really able to engage talking to camera or anything like that, I decided with my husband that not only were we going to remove them, but we were going to remove him and that I was still going to remain an active member of the parenting community online, but people weren't going to have access to where we went to dinner or what we ate, what trips we went on, and any movement of our family's life. SB: Did that impact your following at all? What was the response when you removed your kids and your husband? It's really interesting. Around that time I decided, I'm not naive, I've spent my whole career in this industry. I understand the value of having your children. As a marketer, we leverage social for the deep parasocial relationship that an influencer has with the follower, and it is the word of mouth that marketers are always searching for that trusted voice, that deep connection. And so if you're trying to sell parenting products or products for kids, it is actually valuable to have that word of mouth of like, wow, that kid looks like he's having fun or, wow, that mum and the kid look really great wearing it. And because I knew that removing that could potentially have an impact on my bottom line, this is my full-time job, this is how I pay for everything. I decided I needed to just build a strategy that was going to align with the modern times and hopefully it wouldn't have an impact. That first year, I grew my account 150%, and then last year it grew 250%. And so it's clearly not had an impact, but it has required a lot of strategic planning. SB: I mean navigating social media as a parent seems so complicated, you'd almost question why bother at all? What benefits do you see coming from this space? Social media has so many downsides and everyone listening knows them. But one of the beautiful upsides of social and the tech boom and digital competency and how it's evolved, the way that we communicate and connect with other people, is a shift in the way we talk about the brutal reality of parenthood. If you take a step back, just one singular decade, but two decades, to make the point even more clear, women were shunned for talking negatively. Primary parents were shunned for talking negatively about the parenting experience. It was a part of our cultural zeitgeist and the way that we communicated to really say, you chose this. Why are you complaining? Children are always angels. Do you need help? And one of the joys of social, and I think TikTok gets a lot of credit for this, is the shift in the way that we communicate our brutal honesty about the rude reality of the lives that we're living. This happens in so many beautiful micro-niches, whether it be different minority groups, but in the parenthood groups specifically, we've seen a massive shift in the way we talk about the challenges of day-to-day parenthood. That's an undeniable bonus and great value that social has provided. Women in particular, but primary parents at large who get to show up after a really hard day where they're struggling and see someone else, a creator saying, I woke up 15 times last night. I'm exhausted and now I have to go to work. Or my kid just yelled at me, I'm in a fight with my partner. It's that confirmation that you're not alone. And when we think about the massive issue of mental health with first time parents, but parents in general, to have that confirmation, to be able to have, if you live in Orange, New South Wales or even farther in the middle of this country and you don't have a connection to a parenting group, you don't have a connection to share your day-to-day problems with parenthood. Social media is an amazing space. It's a huge parenting group. And so I think that's been wonderful. I think a lot more primary parents feel comfortable sharing honestly their experience. And when we share and when we can see people like us, we're more likely to ask for help, we're more likely to go and get help if we need it. And I think any therapist would admit that if we get to see ourselves, it's easier to be ourselves. And so I think in the parenting space, it's almost like a huge parenting tribe. And that's why there's just so many amazing mother creators in particular on Instagram who really are leaning into, here's the honesty, here's what you're getting yourself into, or here's what you're living through every day. SB: You're describing the space there as a big tribe but there's also smaller groups within that. I know for example, the gentle parenting style has become increasingly popular online over recent years - what do you think of those kinds of movements that emerge? Yeah, I think it's... listen, the reality is there are billions of people and everyone has a different cultural background, and there are socioeconomic variables that increase the likelihood of someone being successful online. And we all know that. So people who tend to trickle to the top of the parenting space just so happen usually to be white women from affluent English speaking countries. But the reality is there's unbelievable pockets all across the internet and pockets for any type of parent with any type of background. I think one of the downsides that one of the bad things about social is a trend, a way to parent in a specific situation can pop off and go viral, and an algorithm can shove that in front of people. And when you are in a constant state of decision-making, which parenthood is just like millions of micro decisions, you have to make a day and you're searching for answers, you can be influenced by a video, and that can become how you parent based off of that one video. So I usually say to people when they're like, what do you think of this parenting trend? What do you think of this? The rise of gentle parenting? I just say, I think it's just that it's a trend. Our parenting and the way that we parent shifts literally every year. I think it used to be like every decade, but social has almost made it so that it's changing daily. And I say, trust your gut. Have conversations with your tribe. Make sure that you feel confident with your partner with the way that you're parenting. Do not use a social media video to impact and influence the way you parent solely. SB: I think that's good advice. Just quickly, I wanted to go back to how you deal with some of the more negative aspects of working in social media. You mentioned earlier that you've had people come up to you in person as well as comment negative things online - how do you deal with those encounters? Yeah, it's a really complicated question because I have more than a decade worth of experience on the other side, responding on behalf of brands, and because of that, when I transitioned into this being my job, I don't think of myself as Sean Szeps personal person on his personal account. I think of myself as an actor who's rising to the occasion at work each day, and so when I'm responding and moderating, I'm in a business state of mind, and so if someone is there as a detractor, if the sentiment is negative, it's easy for me to think about it that way. That's just one person in a sea of positivity. If that was a data point, it would be 0.0005% negativity for the day, but I have to just, the reason it's complicated is I have to admit and acknowledge it. That is so obviously not a skill that everyone else who's an influencer has, and if you're in a bad headspace, if you're struggling mentally and you have to show up online and see homophobia every single day, I totally understand the downside of that. I think brands need to do a better job of supporting the influencers they're working with. I think platforms need to do a better job of supporting the influencers who make their platform run, but really, if this is a job that you'd want to have and add on top of it, you're including your family, you really have to take into consideration what are your techniques and tips and tricks that are going to help you with mental health. In person, I tend to treat it the way that I've unfortunately had to treat homophobia my whole life, which is I have a lot of experience with it. Most queer people do, and usually the best situation is to walk away, ignore it, not to engage in a confrontational way while also acknowledging that there are people with different beliefs and you're top priority is your own safety. SB: We discussed before how you no longer show your kids online but obviously they'll eventually want their own social media accounts. How do you plan to discuss social media with them when that time comes? Yeah. I'm incredibly lucky and relieved that I grew up in a time without social media. I'm just so happy, I'm blessed that I'm not just a professional in this field, but that I'm also currently at university studying this industry because I feel better prepared to talk to them about it than most, and I'm also just so thrilled that Australia has taken the action that it's taken to limit social media use for people under the age of 16. The three of those things paired together, I'm like, I feel really good about this. The reality is the experts in this industry don't allow their children to use the technology because they understand the damage that can be done at such a young age when our brain is still developing, and so we're just going to have honest conversations about what I do, honest conversations about how I do it, constant dialogue around the upsides and downsides of technology and limited opportunities to engage with it at ways that we feel are appropriate, taking into consideration modern information that's coming out in real time. So right now my children will not have access to social media until they legally can, which is a long time away. It's a decade away, and then with every year, especially as someone working in the industry, we can evolve and update those rules as a family, but for me, it's all about that context. So I can imagine them saying, but you make a living on these platforms, but I'm actually really, really proud of how I make a living on this platform and what information I give out, and I know that not a lot of people feel that they can do that. So for me, I think I'm practising what I'm going to be preaching for them. SB: Yeah. It's interesting, even when I had the conversation about AI as well, it seems like the people working in social media and tech seem to be the most anti. Exactly. I mean, the people who create the social platforms don't allow their kids to have them. The actual makers of the platforms are like, you can't have this. Absolutely not. And so as someone listening, you should literally be thinking, so the founder of TikTok, the founders of Instagram, the founders of Meta, they don't want their children to have the platforms and you are comfortable giving them to your kids? That's something you should really ask yourself. SB: Do you expect that this is industry will continue for a long time to come? Yeah, I do. I think it will shift dramatically. When I think back to the earliest years, my infancy as a social media expert, Pinterest didn't exist. Snapchat didn't exist, TikTok didn't exist, Instagram did not exist. I make a full-time job on Instagram, and that platform didn't even exist when I got started in the industry, so I just have no choice to think if I'm just looking in the past and trying to do some predictive rational thinking that the platforms will evolve, that our trends will evolve, that the way that we engage online will evolve, and hopefully what I'd like to see in the future is massive political involvement and restrictions with these platforms. But I am really hopeful. It goes back to the beginning of the chat that we were having about this new generation. I've looked at the data. This is a generation that is engaged in activities who are more passionate about their planet, who seem to care a lot more about one-on-one experiences, and I'm hopeful that what'll see is a generation rejecting an obsession with social and an obsession with technology, and then I'd like to see that have an impact in where we put our time and investments, especially in the tech space. SB: You could be right - I think there is a possibility that there's almost a rebellion against social media as people grow up and see the consequences of spending too much time online. I mean, when you look at trends online and the rise in popularity of people going and living in the middle of nowhere and living off the land. I'm like, hopefully that just keeps picking up and picking up and picking up - and that's coming from someone who would negatively benefit from that. You know what I mean? I would not benefit from people running away from social, and yet I'm really, really hopeful that it happens. SB: That was Sean Szeps, I'm Sophie Bennett and you've been listening to the Beta Blueprint. In the next episode, I'll be speaking with Nic Seton from Parents for Climate all about his activism and how to talk to kids about a warming planet.
ABC News
7 hours ago
- ABC News
Is it OK to shame the Coldplay kiss cam couple?
Sam Hawley: If you hadn't realised by now that cameras are everywhere, so-called Coldplay-gate is a great reminder. And the Kisscam vision of a canoodling couple at the concert, who are apparently having an affair, is proof again how quickly word can travel on social media. Saying it went viral is an understatement. Today, political scientists from Loyola University in Chicago, Jennifer Forstall, on public shaming and when it can sometimes be a good thing. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Jennifer, we better start with a little recap from the Coldplay concert last week in Boston. I think at this point we all feel like we were there. Jennifer Forestal: Right, yeah. Social media will do that. Sam Hawley: Yes, exactly. It's got a fair bit of attention. So it was during this concert that Chris Martin, Coldplay's frontman, announced that he would be singing to a select few people in the crowd using cameras to say hello to members of the audience. Just tell me what happened after that. Jennifer Forestal: Right. So as I understand it, the Kisscam, as it's often called, is sort of going through the crowd, catching couples. Chris Martin, Coldplay lead singer: We'd like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we're going to do that is we're going to use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen. Jennifer Forestal: And it happened upon a couple that was embracing and then very quickly realized the camera was on them and turned away, you know, ducked under the cover. Chris Martin, Coldplay lead singer: All right, come on, you're OK? Uh-oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. Jennifer Forestal: And it turned out that he was absolutely right. Sam Hawley: Yeah, what a moment. OK, then the identities, of course, of this couple in the vision is confirmed as Andy Byron, who's a married chief executive of a tech company called Astronomer and Kristen Cabot, the company's chief people officer, who, by the way, is not his wife. And things haven't been going so well for them since then, have they? Jennifer Forestal: That's right. I think Andy Byron was put on leave. I think maybe actually they both were put on leave pending investigation by the company. And then we've quickly found out that Andy Byron submitted his resignation, which was accepted. News report: Astronomer said in a statement that Andy Byron had tended his resignation and the board of directors have accepted that resignation. This clip went viral. Jennifer Forestal: I think the jury is still out on what's happening with Kristen Cabot. I believe she's still employed with the company right now, but we'll see what happens there as well. Sam Hawley: Yeah, and of course, this vision, it has been beamed around the world. The original footage was taken by a TikTok user known as Instaagrace. And that vision that she posted has been viewed 124 million times. It's pretty extraordinary. Jennifer Forestal: It really is. I think it speaks to just the kind of virality that we can see on these technologies these days. Part of it is just kind of the, it's salacious. The way that we all kind of like to watch disasters unfold in front of us. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's a kind of turn against sort of CEOs and wealthy elites more generally. So it feels kind of nice to see them sort of, see their life get ruined in front of our eyes. But at the end of the day, really, I think it's just another example of the sort of strife and effect, right? That if they hadn't done anything, if they would have just stayed sort of embracing and sort of waved at the camera, we wouldn't have thought twice about it. But it's the fact that they sort of reacted the way that they did that called attention to the fact that they were perhaps doing something wrong, which, again, if they would have just, you know, hugged each other and moved on, the camera would have gone to the next person. Chris Martin wouldn't have said anything. And we wouldn't be talking about this today. Sam Hawley: And the memes, you know, there's so many of them going around. They're calling it Coldplaygate. Jennifer Forestal: You know, they just kind of all are all over the place and they're all very funny. And I think some of what I think is so striking about this is that, to me, has been picked up in this kind of very funny way where it's not necessarily attacking the people involved, but it's kind of making light of the general situation and putting other people in that kind of circumstances rather than sort of going after the two people that were involved directly. Sam Hawley: The woman who posted this on TikTok, Grace Springer, she told The Sun newspaper that part of her feels bad for turning these people's lives upside down. But she says, play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. But she also said on TikTok that she's glad people are entertained, but she's really urged them to keep in mind the CEO's wife and his family. Grace Springer, TikTok user: But at the end of the day, Andy's wife and his family, they're very real people. So just keep that in mind. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, of course. And I mean, you know, I've seen this is sort of a topic of debate, especially in this particular instance of public shaming or cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is that these this particular instance happened in a public forum. You know, kiss cams are not necessarily an unusual invasion of privacy. They've been around for decades or pretty familiar to anybody who's been to a sporting event or a rock show or anything like that. So, you know, there's some argument to the point that's like, you know, if you are going to show up in a concert of 60,000 people, you know, don't expect to see privacy. It's not like they were filmed in their privacy of their own home or in a place that you might expect to get some sort of privacy. On the other hand, you know, it is sort of pointing out the just general surveillance state that we all live under these days, right? That anything can go viral, anything can be filmed by anybody else and uploaded to social media where it could get picked up and viewed by millions. And so I think there's a lot to consider. You know, it's not necessarily a straightforward, you know, they did something wrong and they should pay or they're completely victims in the situation. I just it's I just think it's complicated. Sam Hawley: Well, Jennifer, let's just unpack this a bit more, because as you say, it is actually rather complicated. This is basically public shaming, isn't it? It is. Just explain that a bit more. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah. So public shaming is oftentimes a general term that we use when people have violated some sort of social norm and are sort of publicly shamed, meaning they're like put through the ringer publicly. People sort of admonish them for doing this, whatever sort of violation it is. And so, you know, in a lot of ways, oftentimes when we think about public shaming in a digital age, it's called cancel culture. We think of things like going viral on Twitter, people being racist and things like that. And so what we're seeing here is in some ways an example of public shaming in the sense that this is a couple who have violated a norm of monogamy, presumably, and are sort of being publicly rebuked for going outside of the standard modes of behavior. And so people are sort of taking them to task and ridiculing them for that norm violation. And so, you know, some people would say that this is a violation of their privacy, that this is an overreaction or an inappropriate public reaction. And others would say, you know, it's exactly what they deserve for violating a social norm of monogamy. Sam Hawley: But Byron, he's hardly Jeffrey Epstein, right? Or Harvey Weinstein. He's just some guy who's gone to a concert. And people have deemed that he's behaved badly, but it seems pretty over the top, the amount of interest in him. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, this is oftentimes one of the criticisms that we see of online public shaming in particular, right? That the scale of social media, the fact that so many people can jump on something so small, the fact that things can go public that wouldn't ordinarily be public, that this is a kind of violation or a kind of pathology of public shaming, that it's no longer working the way we might have in the past intended it to, where people, you know, broke a rule, were shamed for it, they changed their behavior and were welcomed back into the fold. And so, yeah, a lot of people would say this is the problem with cancel culture is that it incentivizes these overreactions, that their mob rule kind of goes unchecked, that there's no accountability for people who shame. And so they kind of, you know, go after people with no real seeming concern about what they might be doing to the victim of public shaming. And, you know, there's a lot to be said for that argument. I think that that is right in a lot of ways. I don't, you know, I think that there is a role for public shaming in public life. And I think it's worth thinking about sort of what is going on in cases of online public shaming, where the scale, the accountability mechanisms are maybe missing to make it valuable. Sam Hawley: Mm, all right. So you believe that public shaming is not bad in all cases. So just give me some examples when in fact it has led to good. Jennifer Forestal: So there are some violations that we, you know, wouldn't want to see people engage in, but we don't want the state to be involved in either. Right. So we don't want people to, for example, lie to their friends, but we also don't want them to be punished, like by jail if they are. In order to make sure that people keep their promises, we would publicly shame the people that don't. And then they would understand that that's a problem. Other people watching the public shaming would understand that they too would be shamed if they lie to their friends. And so we would presumably establish the social norm of not doing that. Other things that are very good candidates for public shaming are things where the state won't, for whatever reason, get involved. So there's a great book by a woman named Jennifer Jacquet about how public shaming has really been effective to use for shaming companies or corporations. So companies are oftentimes outside. They're sometimes not regulated maybe to the extent that people would want. And so public shaming campaigns can oftentimes get corporations to act in ways that people would like to see them act without necessarily getting the state involved in regulating them. Sam Hawley: Well, we do live in a world, Jennifer, where it can take a very long time to build up a reputation, but a moment to lose it. Do you think there is actually a lesson in all of this for us? Jennifer Forestal: I think that there's probably a few lessons, maybe not all of which are actionable. You know, the first is that there's a kind of a pragmatic warning in this, which is, you know, for better or worse, people are watching you in public spaces and you can get filmed doing whatever you do. And so people should probably be aware of that. Again, I'm not sure that that's necessarily a good thing or the kind of world that we want to live in, but it is the world that we do live in. And so it's important that people just, you know, remember that when they go about their daily business. More sort of philosophically, I think that it's important to when we think about public shaming and when we think about people going viral, it is also important to remember that those are real people. You know, what seems to one person to just be a kind of joke that they throw off into a tweet doesn't matter as much from that perspective. But from the perspective of the butt of the joke, it's 100,000 mean comments or 100,000 jokes at your expense. And that can oftentimes do more damage than I think we tend to think about when it's just us writing our individual response. Also thinking about ourselves in terms of the sort of collectives that we are in online. Social media platforms are oftentimes not designed to help us think about ourselves as part of communities or collectives, but we are. And so I think, again, thinking a little bit more about our online presence as part of communities rather than as individual or isolated actions is also something to keep in mind as well. Sam Hawley: What do you think? Do you think this couple deserved the level of public shaming that they were exposed to? Jennifer Forestal: You know, I don't. I don't. Probably not. No. But I will say this. It was striking to me as someone who's been thinking about this for a while that I actually don't think that Andy Byron got the same level of kind of vitriolic response that other victims of public shaming have. So if you think about high profile cases of public shaming in the past, people like Justine Sacco, who had the kind of racist South Africa tweet, or Amy Cooper, who had an altercation with a Black man in Central Park a few years ago, that these women in particular were dragged through the mud. They wereâ€'death threats were sent to them. They faced all sorts of personal attacks in a way that I have not heard is true of Andy Byron. So there, I think, is also an important thing to consider here in terms of gender, which is how your social position can sometimes insulate you from the effects of public shaming and what kinds of people are oftentimes more vulnerable to these kinds of situations. And so while I wouldn't say that anyone is sort of deserving of this kind of attack, especially individuals like that, I also am sort of aware and cognizant of the fact that different people in different social positions sort of react to or have a different response to that kind of situation. Sam Hawley: And also, I guess, the lesson, the big one, is if you don't want to be seen with someone at a big public event, perhaps don't go to that event with that person. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, or again, maybe just play it cool. If you're caught doing something that you don't want people to react to, don't react to it yourself. Sam Hawley: Yeah, the poker face would have gone a long way. Jennifer, thank you so much. Jennifer Forestal: Of course. Thank you for having me. Sam Hawley: Jennifer Forstall is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola University in Chicago. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
News.com.au
9 hours ago
- News.com.au
MAFS star Christie Jordee gives an update to fans after shock cancer diagnosis
Married At First Sight star Christie Jordee has revealed she has undergone surgery as she continues to battle cancer. The season two contestant shared a series of pictures from her hospital stay on Instagram, telling fans she has now gone under the knife twice. '2nd surgery done. Still high as a kite but was a success!' Jordee wrote in the caption. 'Getting there. Esp with my partner in crime right by my side. We got this. Love you so much xxx.' Jordee found fame in 2016 after appearing in the second season of Nine's popular dating series, in which she was matched with Victorian farmer Mark Hughes. However, the pair broke up just two months after the show ended, much to fans' disappointment. Jordee is now in a relationship with Trent Victorsen, who has been supporting her through her recent challenges. Jordee first revealed her cancer diagnosis to followers earlier this year, explaining she'd been given the shock news '10 days before Christmas' after getting checked due to finding a lump. 'I was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer,' she said. '3mm under stage three.' Jordee added that it had been a 'tough journey' and that she knew she had a big road ahead' of her. Jordee has kept a relatively low profile in recent years after stepping into the spotlight on MAFS, but revealed back in 2018 she had been left devastated by viewer backlash in the wake of her season. Jordee told BW magazine that she had been targeted by angry fans and blamed for her break-up with Hughes when they shared the news, leaving her 'hysterically crying'. 'I'll never forget that day (the split was announced). I was just pacing and I ended up on the floor in a foetal position,' she admitted. 'I couldn't breathe. I think I was hysterically crying for about three solid hours … It affected me for a good year, year-and-a-half, mentally, and to mend.'
