Set aside the specifics of the incident. This is not about whether people should wear masks.

The point of the shaming viral videos, which are invariably out of context and filmed/edited by people who have an agenda, is to make their subject look terrible. Relying on them to make a decision about an incident, especially when they’re missing crucial information, is something that only terrible people who don’t care about basic honesty and fairness would do.

And these days that’s all of us. 

Any decent critique of social media would begin by ending the torrent of public shaming videos and no legitimate news organization would republish them. Obviously, none of that is happening. If anything, the media has joined in to keep getting people fired.

And the people being fired violate the media’s preferred values, whether it’s opposing Black Lives Matter or not wearing masks.

Does this make the media a cyberbullying/cyberstalking organization? The arguments for that are pretty solid.

A raging mask debate during a Gulf Coast Town Center Costco yelling incident was captured on video June 27 and went viral Monday night with almost 10 million views. The tirade appears to have cost the man his job.

A man wearing a red, “Running the world since 1776” T-shirt, dark shorts and flip flops was seen yelling “I feel threatened!” and “Back up! Back the (expletive) up and put your (expletive) phone down!” He glared at the camera after a female shopper had asked him to comply with Costco’s mask policy at Gulf Coast Town Center in south Fort Myers. 

So, of course the cyberbullying/cyberstalking commenced, his name was obtained, and he was fired.

“Thank you to everyone for their comments and messages raising awareness about a former employee at Ted Todd Insurance,” the statement from Charley Todd said. “Their behavior in the video is in direct conflict with our company values and their employment has been terminated. Threatening behavior and intimidation go against our core mission to be trusted advisors in our community. We are also committed to immediately reviewing our internal existing culture at TTI.”

Uh-huh.

This is not about the specific incident. It’s about the pattern of getting people fired who violate the media’s set of chosen values.

As a thought experiment, do you think that if Person X had behaved the same way, but in defense of wearing a mask, would any of this have happened? Instead, the media helps spur fundraisers for people who behave obnoxiously in defense of mask-wearing.

This isn’t about his conduct or his attitude. It’s about enforcing a certain kind of conformity by making examples out of people.

And the willingness of companies to fire employees for violating that conformity and lefty values, outside work is a major civil rights crisis. A crisis that’s much bigger than the false claims of police racism.