15 Minutes of Shame

The documentary is built on collective shaming. An image or a text about someone spreads online, millions react, and within a few days that person's life is over: they lose their job, their address is circulated, their family is threatened. The film follows several cases. Among them are a teacher, a restaurant worker and ordinary people nobody had heard of. Alongside them, researchers who study the mechanism speak: why we join in, why we do not stop, and why the platforms speed it up. Max Joseph directs. The documentary was made together with Monica Lewinsky, who also produced it. Lewinsky's part is its foundation; she was the target of a worldwide shaming campaign at the end of the nineties, when social media did not yet exist. The distinction the narrative builds is between holding to account and mob punishment; the film asks where the border lies and gives no easy answer. The documentary takes aim at its own viewer as well; the narrative does not lay this behaviour on some distant crowd. The section on platform design is the most concrete part; why anger spreads further is explained technically. Its limit is depth; the cases are kept short and some are not opened enough. It was released in 2021 and its subject has only grown more current since. Who it is for: people who watch documentary on social media and society. Who it is not for: it goes little beyond the familiar arguments and the narrative is loose in places.