[1] With the rise of social media, public shaming moved to the digital sphere, exposing and humiliating people daily, sometimes without their knowledge.
Like physical punishment and harsh hazing, these have become controversial in most modern societies, in many cases leading to legal restrictions and/or (sometimes voluntary) abolishment.
[citation needed] Head shaving can be a humiliating punishment prescribed in law,[4] but also something done as "mob justice"—a stark example of which was the thousands of European women who had their heads shaved in front of cheering crowds in the wake of World War II,[5][6] as punishment for associating with occupying Nazis during the war.
[5][6] Further means of public humiliation and degradation consist in forcing people to wear typifying clothes, which can be penitential garb or prison uniforms.
This was not uncommon in the sentences to Staupenschlag (flagellation by whipping or birching, generally on the bare buttocks)[16] in various European states, till the 19th century.
[21] Other examples of physical torture or modification used as public humiliation throughout history include ear cropping (starting in ancient Assyrian law and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and extending into the 1800s in parts of the US)[22] and tarring and feathering.