In Puritan times, citizens who trespassed against the law were subject, among other punishments, to humiliation at the pillory, something Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts memorably in The Scarlet Letter. The pillory was

so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks—against our common nature—whatever be the delinquencies of the individual—no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame.

The days of the pillory have long passed. But the humiliation of the public gaze—for social transgressions, if not criminal ones—lives on, thanks to Facebook and the internet.

Consider Exhibit A: the website People of Walmart.org, which posts surreptitiously taken photographs of shoppers who embody the worst stereotypes imaginable within this particular demographic (a demographic large enough, incidentally, to include this writer).

Exhibit B is the blog Asians Sleeping in the Library, picturing—you guessed it—Asians sleeping in various university libraries. Although this site, like the people of Wal-Mart site, is also rooted in stereotypes, it intends to "celebrate, not berate" those pictured, according to the blog's creator. Indeed, a former student of mine was featured there when she was a sleepy, studious law student, and she took it as an honor. Of course, it helps, she told me, that she's "not a particularly private person" and that the friend who submitted the photo of her sleeping got her permission first. Still, while she does find the site funny, she acknowledges "mixed feelings" about it. "I think a lot of the photos are sent in by strangers or people who aren't so considerate about how someone might feel about being the object of amusement." Fortunately, the site's owner, who describes himself as someone who also likes to sleep in libraries, asks anyone who wants a picture taken down to contact him and he will "gladly do it."

Exhibit C was brought to my attention by a current student of mine at Liberty University: a new Facebook group called Awkward Couples of Liberty. Created just a few weeks ago, the group has gained nearly 6,000 "likes." As its name suggests, the site posts photos of couples taken around campus engaged in romantic moments that are quite awkward—most often (but not always) a rather innocent kind of awkward, although still in violation of university rules that prohibit physical contact beyond handholding (resulting in posts in the group by the Dean of Students reminding students of university rules and consequences for violations). The group's creator cautions group members that "there is no reason to make harsh fun at anyone or say anything rude about their appearance," invites contact from anyone concerned about the page, and has even posted a photo of a roommate caught in an act of awkwardness.

If you're like me, your initial response to such sites is great amusement. And in the case of the one closest to home for me—the awkward couples—I was, I'll admit, delighted to discover purveyors of tasteless public displays of affection being put to well-deserved public shame. But with my finger poised just above the "like" button, I paused. Something about the whole thing seemed not quite right. In fact, whatever wasn't right seemed like a more serious wrong than awkwardness, more serious even than obnoxious PDA, and worse than a rule infraction.

First is the matter of violating people's privacy by posting their pictures on the internet without their permission. Second is doing so for the sole purpose of mockery.

Understand, please, that satire is one of my academic specialties. Satire is defined as the ridicule of vice or folly for the purpose of correct. So ridicule is part of my daily repertoire. But the purpose of satire is to correct, and I'm not sure if that is the goal of sites like these. I asked Keegan, the student who showed me the awkward couples site, what he and his peers thought of it. "The group is uncomfortably voyeuristic," he responded. Since Keegan has done some study with me about images vs. words and is writing his senior honors thesis on symbol and sacrament under my direction, I asked him to expand, and he did:

We as a generation are an image-driven people, but these types of groups show disrespect for other people's image. We apparently view a person's image as no longer belonging to them. If they are in public, their image becomes public property for us to photograph and use at will. I believe this disrespect for image is born internally: we are divorced from our own image.
Even in Christian subcultures, we view image as constructed—something to be pieced together through status updates, profile pictures, and retweets. Image is no longer God-given, carefully crafted by God for His own delight. In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells his people, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart." This "form" God speaks of is not just our intangible spirit, but our bodies, our faces, our image. When we take the image of others as public property, free and available for distribution like tabloid photographs, we evidence a lack of respect for our own image, created uniquely and specifically by God for his good pleasure.
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I'm not pining for a return to the pillory, mind you. But at least with that instrument of shame, the personhood upon whom the public gaze was cast—flesh and blood, not an image, subject, not object—was manifest. In the age of the virtual, postmodern pillory, we need to consider when the images we circulate freely are images of the image of God, and treat them accordingly.