There was a time when public punishment required a public square. In ancient societies, stoning wasn’t really about justice. It was about spectacle. The accused was dragged into the open and suddenly everyone became involved—neighbors, friends, strangers. Guilt was decided together. Violence was shared. Responsibility was diluted. No single person carried the weight of what happened, because everyone threw a stone.
Stoning wasn’t just meant to punish the individual. It was meant to warn the crowd. Public shame has always been a tool of control.
In 1982, Don Henley released the song Dirty Laundry, and it feels uncomfortably relevant today. The song isn’t really about journalism—it’s about appetite. The hunger for scandal. The way people love a downfall, especially when it isn’t their own. It points to a media machine that doesn’t need clarity or truth as much as it needs something usable, loud, and damaging.
Henley paints a picture of stories being whispered, exaggerated, packaged, and sold. Tragedy becomes entertainment and grief becomes footage. The more someone loses, the more valuable their story becomes.
Sound familiar?
Today, it looks like mugshot pages shared for laughs; Comment sections diagnosing strangers; “accountability” posts written with venom instead of care; Tragedy going viral before the family is even notified.
The song isn’t condemning transparency. It’s condemning exploitation and the way moral outrage disguises itself as righteousness while feeding on scandal. It shows how truth gets warped when it’s driven by ratings, clicks, and engagement instead of responsibility.
Not all truth needs a microphone, and not all accountability requires an audience. Sometimes “airing dirty laundry” isn’t about healing or honesty—it’s about spectacle dressed as justice.
We don’t gather in a physical square anymore. We gather behind screens—alone, anonymous, and convinced we’re separate from the damage being done. And yes, me too. We’re all guilty of it. Social media, 24-hour news cycles, gossip papers, and even casual conversations have become our modern public squares. Someone’s worst moment becomes content and once the crowd is stirred, outrage sustains itself.
Media outlets profit from conflict. Algorithms reward emotional volatility. The louder the reaction, the longer the story lives. What should have stayed personal turns into a public morality test and we pile into the comments like it’s our civic duty. Every. Single. Time. Spewing hate, judgement, and assumptions. We keep feeding the machine that seeks to profit off our suffering
The cycle continues: Uproar keeps attention. Attention creates power. Power equals control. When your story is told for you instead of by you, something vital is taken. Your narrative fractures and your humanity gets flattened into a headline. Public shaming doesn’t just damage reputation—it pulls a person out of their center and hands their worth to the crowd.
The crowd feels righteous, the platform gains influence, the individual shrinks. That’s how power is harvested—not by creating truth, but by amplifying judgment.
This is the part none of us like to admit.
Most of the time, we aren’t acting out of conviction—we’re acting out of momentum. The mob mentality wiggles its way into your thoughts, “Everyone’s talking about this. Look how many people agree. If this many people think it, it must be true.”
In the public square, ancient or digital, there’s a strange comfort in blending in. When everyone is throwing stones, it feels like participation instead of violence. Responsibility disappears into the crowd.
Online, it looks like sharing before thinking. Commenting before listening. Assuming before asking.
We tell ourselves we’re just reacting, engaging, or staying informed. But what we’re really doing is outsourcing our discernment to the group. Other people are doing it, so it must be the thing to do.
That’s how mobs form. Not from hatred alone—but from permission.
And once the momentum starts, stopping feels risky. If you don’t join in, you might be next. So silence feels safer than conscience, and cruelty hides behind consensus.
Public stoning doesn’t just harm the person in the middle. It trains everyone watching. It teaches us that empathy is optional and destruction feels justified when it’s shared. It desensitizes us.
Every time we repost, speculate, comment, or assume we know the full story, we reinforce the programming, confuse exposure with integrity, and mistake being loud for being right. And the scariest part is one day, the square turns and any of us could be next.
The answer isn’t silence or secrecy—it’s pause. Before you comment, share, or post, pause and ask yourself: Why? Who does this help? Are you seeking truth—or just feeding the machine? Reclaiming power looks like restraint: refusing to throw digital stones, letting people be human without demanding their pain as proof.
Here’s the challenge: the next time your fingers hover over the keyboard, remember—they are you – just raised differently, shaped by experiences you cannot know, carrying wounds and choices you haven’t lived. Before you judge, try seeing the world through their eyes—and you’ll realize you don’t know enough to do it.
When we pause, we reclaim our own humanity and honor theirs. That is where real healing begins.
And in case you forgot, I love you,
Jenni
