Topic: After you read “The Snoop Next Door,” respond to the following questions: What do you think of public shaming sites? In paragraph 17, the author Jennifer Saranow gives examples of why people have started their public shaming sites. For instance, one person, Mark Buckman, says he launched his public shaming site hoping “to make real world changes.” Do you think his goal is a realistic one? Why or why not? How would you feel if your name or picture turned up on one of these sites – even if you were guilty of the stated infraction? Directions: Once a forum opens on Day 1, you are required to “Start a New Thread” by Day 3. Initial posts should be at least seven sentences long. Label your post with a provocative/descriptive title that invites your classmates to engage it. By Day 7 you need to write two response posts of no more than 50 words each that respond to two posts created by your colleagues, either on their threads or on yours. Click the forum title to complete this assignment and view the Dialogue Grading Rubric. Skip to comments. The Snoop Next Door Wall Street Journal ^ | 12 January 2007 | JENNIFER SARANOW Posted on 1/15/2007, 5:54:52 PM by shrinkermd Bad parking, loud talking — no transgression is too trivial to document online. Our reporter on new Web sites for outing fellow citizens. Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date. Almost immediately, she started receiving “weird and creepy” calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting “Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!” her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor’s office were posted, along with the admonition, “next time, you might take your business outside.” The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe. …The embrace of the Web to expose trivial transgressions in part represents a return to shame as a check on social behavior, says Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some academics believe shame became less powerful as a control over everyday interactions with strangers in all but very small neighborhoods or social groups, as people moved to big cities or impersonal suburbs where they existed more anonymously. …Posting a snarky message online is often safer than confronting bad behavior face to face. “You never know how people are going to react in person,” says Scott Terry, 32, who works in advertising in Chicago. Last spring, he posted a photo on Flickr of a “cell phone bus yapper” who disrupted his morning commute. The caption: “Can’t you use your inside voice?”