--- title: Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and the Psychology of Online Shaming description: What the online hate directed at a U.S. dentist, who shot and killed a lion in Zimbabwe, says about us. canonical: https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/ author: Helen Regan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-30T10:16:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:57:14.914Z og:title: Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and Online Shaming og:description: What the online hate directed at a dentist who killed a lion says about us og:url: https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ddab20f36baace/69885d240a4a2252f69c5639/cecil-the-lion1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3120 og:image:height: 1755 og:image:alt: Cecil the lion og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and Online Shaming twitter:description: What the online hate directed at a dentist who killed a lion says about us twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ddab20f36baace/69885d240a4a2252f69c5639/cecil-the-lion1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and the Psychology of Online Shaming > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Jul 30, 2015 10:16 AM UTC  Cecil the lion rests in Hwange National Park, in Hwange, Zimbabwe. Cecil the lion rests in Hwange National Park, in Hwange, Zimbabwe.Andy Loveridge—Wildlife Conservation Research Unit/AP by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Jul 30, 2015 10:16 AM UTC Walter Palmer, the U.S. dentist who shot and killed Cecil the lion while on a hunting trip in Zimbabwe is, not surprisingly, facing a barrage of hate, threats and shaming on social media. Palmer’s River Bluff dental practice in Bloomington, Minnesota has been shut since news of the scandal broke with a throng of protesters campaigning outside. Meanwhile, Internet users have flooded his Yelp page with stinging “reviews” and calls to boycott his practice. He is quickly losing his reputation and his business. Palmer has [maintained](http://time.com/3977018/cecil-lion-walter-palmer-letter/) that he didn’t know the hunt was illegal, nor that the lion he killed was collared or part of a study. But in the eyes of impassioned online commentators and [celebrity tweeters](http://time.com/3978108/walter-palmer-cecil-the-lion-celebrities/), Palmer is an “instant villain.” “Something like this, which involves a lion, touches so many nerves.” Glenn Selig, founder and chief strategist at The Publicity Agency, a PR firm that works in crisis management, tells TIME. “This doctor becomes an instant villain: he’s apparently wealthy, and been portrayed as entitled and doing what he wants.” And as so many before Palmer have found out, it doesn’t take killing an endangered animal to make you public enemy No.1. In 2012, Lindsey Stone became an online pariah after a photo went viral of her posing and giving the finger next to a sign at the Arlington National Cemetery that read “Silence and Respect.” Stone told the [_Guardian_](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson) that it was a joke between friends to take stupid photographs and she had no idea her Facebook settings were not set to private. Within 24-hours of the photo going viral, Stone had found herself in the middle of the equivalent to a public lynching. She received thousands of derogatory comments, including death and rape threats and was fired from her job as a care worker. “Literally overnight, everything I knew and loved was gone,” Lindsey told the _Guardian_. She became depressed, suffered insomnia and barely left the house for a year. Justine Sacco shared a similar fate in 2013, when flying from New York to South Africa she tweeted a couple of sarcastic jokes, including one about getting AIDs. “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” the tweet read. Unbeknown to Sacco, a PR officer in New York, during the 11-hour flight her tweet had been picked up and had gone around the world faster than she had, with thousands of people angrily calling her a racist and reveling in the fact she didn’t even know about the online hate awaiting her. By the time Sacco landed she was the No.1 worldwide trend on Twitter, reports the [New York _Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html). Like Stone, she was also fired and suffered emotional trauma. “Situations can turn terribly viscous with the truth often becoming the biggest casualty,” says Selig. “There’s so much talk on social media but no one is policing what’s being said. And people believe it regardless of who is speaking.” The Internet is rife with examples of online shaming, whether it be for being [fat](http://time.com/3895459/dancing-man-sean-o-brien-body-shamed-fat-dance-party-los-angeles/), [breastfeeding](http://mashable.com/2015/05/30/mom-breastfeeding-photo/) in public, wearing the [“wrong” maternity clothes](https://www.yahoo.com/tv/s/pregnant-weather-woman-reads-hate-205700760.html) or for a silly tweet or photo. But what is it about the Internet, and in particular social media, that enables ordinary people to turn into crazed lynch mobs so readily? Aaron Balick, a psychotherapist and author of _The Psychodynamics of Social Networking_ says venting online is an easy, and anonymous, way to feel good about yourself. “It’s so easy to be abusive online because it is just a matter of a few clicks on a keyboard and the “enter” key. An individual gets to get the bad feeling off their chest without considering that there is another human being, somewhere, on the other side of that tweet,” he said. “This also happens on a group level where the shamed person online is made a scapegoat and the braying masses, however ultimately destructive, get to feel good about themselves.” Jon Ronson, a journalist who has written extensively on online shaming, has interviewed Stone and Sacco at length and is author of _So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,_ said social media users wield a lot of power. “There’s a lot of people like Justine Sacco, there’s more everyday,” Ronson said in a recent [TEDtalk](http://www.ted.com/talks/jon%5Fronson%5Fwhat%5Fhappens%5Fwhen%5Fonline%5Fshaming%5Fspirals%5Fout%5Fof%5Fcontrol#t-676551). “The great thing about social media was that it gave a voice to voiceless people. But we are now creating a surveillance society where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/"},"headline":"Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and the Psychology of Online Shaming","datePublished":"2015-07-30T10:16:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:57:14.914Z","description":"What the online hate directed at a U.S. dentist, who shot and killed a lion in Zimbabwe, says about us.","url":"https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/","keywords":["Living","Social Media","hunting","Internet","viral","twitter","cecil the lion"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ddab20f36baace/69885d240a4a2252f69c5639/cecil-the-lion1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Helen Regan","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/helen-regan/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ddab20f36baace/69885d240a4a2252f69c5639/cecil-the-lion1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Cecil the lion","caption":"Cecil the lion","creditText":"Andy Loveridge—Wildlife Conservation Research Unit/AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3978216/online-shaming-social-media-walter-palmer-cecil-lion/","name":"Cecil the Lion, Walter Palmer and the Psychology of Online Shaming"}}]}] ```