How Public Shaming Has Evolved Through Time
From shaming sinners in public squares to online “funas,” history shows public exposure has long been used to enforce social norms. While methods changed (authorities vs. online mobs), the core idea remains — hold wrongdoers accountable and deter future offenses.
Public exposure constitutes a citizen expression through which irregular or illegal facts are communicated. Furthermore, it may be linked to the activity of individuals or groups that, through organization, seek to demonstrate publicly with the purpose of demanding the resolution of a problem or the structural change of a social system.
In current social media trends, one of the concepts widely used by Internet users is the word “funa” or the act of “funar.” The use of this word seeks to discredit and publicly expose people who are the object of social displeasure in relation to a specific issue. The Royal Spanish Academy points out that the origin of this word is Chilean and has several meanings, the most notable being “organizing public acts of denunciation against organizations or people related to acts of repression in front of their headquarters or home.”
