If someone sends you a picture of their penis is it OK to publicly shame them?

WHEN this man sent the author of a restaurant review a picture of his penis, he could never have imagined the reaction. Em Rusciano asks, did she go too far?

Well that escalated quickly. What happens when you send a man who has sent you dick pics a whole bunch of dick pics back.

I DON’T know about you, but when I leave a review on a restaurant website, I really hope that someone sees it and takes it as an invitation to send me an unsolicited dick pic.

What?

You don’t?

No of course you don’t, because that would be a spectacularly bizarre thing to do, or want, and yet, here we are.

A woman in England left a review on an eatery called The Good Food Place it read: “Amazing food & the staff is so friendly! Definitely recommend.”

I know right? TART!

Because obviously by “amazing food” she meant “throbbing manhood” and by “recommend” she meant “send me all the junk shots you’ve got”.

Oh yeah, this review is definitely asking for it.

A random American guy saw through her “food review” ruse, and knew that what this woman really wanted, was a side of his bangers and mash.

So, he tracked her down on Facebook and private messaged her his privates.

I mean, he didn’t just open with his penis, he did grease the runway with a “hey”, and “you’ve got nice eyes”. So I don’t care what anyone says, romance is not dead.

The woman’s initial instinct was to just ignore it but then she thought she’d have some fun and spent the next 20 minutes bombarding him with a smorgasbord of other men’s wangchungs.

He reacted badly, there was some hilarious/angry banter between them and once it was done, she posted it on her Facebook page.

He sent a dick pic, and got dozens of them back. Well played.

He did not react well.

As you can imagine it went and took itself viral. This man and his manhood were instant celebs. He had been publicly shamed good and proper.

Do you think the punishment fit the crime?

Last week I would have said:

HELL YES! He will never send another picture of his baby maker again! Hold people like this douche balloon accountable for their abhorrent actions!

Effect change — YEAH!

But not now. I must admit to somewhat of a backflip on this situation.

My mind has been changed for the following reason: I posted a column on my Facebook page that had been written by a woman disagreeing with me about one of my columns. She pissed me off and I was looking for a quick way to be reaffirmed by my followers, and in the process of validating myself, I inadvertently set them onto her.

I was later told she received threats and I immediately thought: “Oh boy, that’s not OK”. That’s really NOT OK. I wish I’d thought more about my response before I reacted on social media.

When you call someone out in the way that Ms Restaurant Review did to Mr McManstick, a private person suddenly becomes a very public one. She didn’t cover his name or face when she posted it and she tried to delete it when she realised how far it had gone, but couldn’t.

Once you set an angry cyber-mob upon someone, you can’t call them to a halt. There is no stopping, or controlling them once they’re in the wind. This man can’t escape Google and there is now a public record, forever linked to his name and a picture of his skin python.

Some would argue that he is to blame and brought the whole thing upon himself, but does he deserve his whole life to be tarnished because he had a bad moment online?

YES?!

NO?!

The irrational, ego driven part of me is bubbling up even as I type this. Most of my instincts want to fight back. If someone chooses to be an utter lunatic in a public forum then that is their own fault.

Then there is an annoying little voice in my head that asks: Does effectively ruining another person’s life for victimising you online make you even worse than them? Or are you empowering yourself and other victims by drawing attention to the issue? Correcting historical wrongs?

I don’t know.

Yes I do. First I need to stop and think about how I react on social media, because at the most basic level, there may be a power imbalance that should not be ignored. I was lucky to have the backing of a supportive network, and other people may not. My reaction was WAY out of proportion.

Let’s look at it this way: If a strange man came up to you in the street and whipped out a picture of their trouser snake and in response you then recruited thousands of people to follow them around yelling obscenities at them for days on end, got them fired, broke up their relationship, and watched them descend into a deep depression, do you think you’d sit back and think “gosh I probably took that a bit too far”?

I would.

All that aside, can we just agree to never send pictures of our swimsuit areas unless they have been specifically asked for? Can we also agree that the variety of terms in which I referred to the male appendage in this column are nothing short of ART?

Em Rusciano is a comedian, writer, singer and regular news.com.au columnist. You can follow her on Facebook.