Salon recently reported on the peculiar social media trend of “ring shaming.”
It’s where someone posts a picture of their sparkler — usually a diamond engagement ring — and everyone piles on to roast the unfortunate jewelry. There’s at least one large Facebook group dedicated to the concept: “That’s it, I’m ring shaming.”
The private group’s description implores: “Even if you love them, get creative and shame, or just like the post and scroll past. Praising comments are not welcomed or wanted. Shame. The. Ring!”
The group, created in November 2018, currently has more than 84,000 members. It achieved notoriety shortly after its creation when a post made the rounds on Reddit.
The user posted a picture of a three-stone ring still in the box and included this caption: “Ewwww. Self-shame Friday here I come. Found this in the BF’s nightstand. Not a fan. Please roast and then tell me how to tactfully say no you need to go get something different.”
Some Reddit users found the post highly distasteful.
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“Groups like this are just 100000% bad news,” one user wrote. “Someone posts a ring that’s really nice and clearly worth a lot saying ‘lol look what my boyfriend got me he’s so cheap’ and then everyone adopts that mentality and it just becomes a nasty pit of narcissism and hatred”
But others took a different view.
“It’s actually a fun group!” one wrote. “I’m in it myself and there’s also a praising group, if you can’t handle negative reactions then you go to the praising group but this ring got no bad reactions at all. In fact most people liked the ring, the one who got bad reactions was the OP :/
“For the most part it’s people willingly posting their own rings with some hilarious self-deprecating humor or absurd rings found on Wish, Facebook ads, etc.,” the user continued. “What this girl above did was something majority of the group disagreed with.”
Salon writer Ashlie D. Stevens described the Facebook group as “a steady stream of style-based abuse.” She joined briefly and “saw where someone had posted her great-grandmother’s engagement ring, a family heirloom, which one commenter compared to a ‘genital wart’ and a photo under which commenters mocked the ring’s microscopic gems.”
She notes that there are many other shaming groups, including those dedicated to making fun of cakes and houseplants.
Find out more at Salon