Cornbelly’s: Family Fun and Public Ridicule
Reading Time: 2 minutesI did not expect to be publicly ridiculed when I brought my friend with me to the opening night of Cornbelly’s, but I was.
Cornbelly’s, a family friendly fall festival at Thanksgiving Point, hired a DJ to play music for attendees to enjoy. I was standing behind the designated dancing area, in line for the haunted corn maze.
Of the 100 or so people on the dance floor, not very many of them were participating. To motivate people, the DJ played the Hokey-Pokey and offered a grand prize of a dozen cookies.
During the song, he got off the stage and walked around. That was when he spotted me standing next to my friend, who was dancing vigorously. The DJ then proceeded to ridicule me in front of everyone for not dancing.
“You are the worst date ever,” said the DJ. “Hey buddy, you should find another date because this girl is lame.”
I was in shock. Not only because it happened, but also because he assumed my friend and I were on a date. He also falsely assumed that I was a bad date just because I wasn’t dancing.
After the Hokey-Pokey ended, the DJ named the winner of the competition, which happened to be a couple of girls in the line ahead of us.
As the DJ walked back to the stage he turned to my friend and gave him his own prize.
“Don’t worry buddy, I got you something too,” said the DJ, “I got you a few girls numbers, for obvious reasons.”
The people around me went silent. No one said a word. I brushed it off and at the time, not thinking it was a big deal.
The truth is it is a big deal. We have become a culture of shaming. We accept the shame that others give us and feed it back. We label shame as sarcasm, or as a joke to make it seem okay.
The DJ’s job is to help people have fun. Instead, he used his microphone and platform to shame me.
Pressuring someone to dance and then insulting them for not doing so should not be a social norm.
It was a jolting, uncomfortable moment to called out publicly as the superlative of bad dates. He shamed me as someone who needed to be discarded and as a replaceable girl for something as superficial as dancing.
Hey Mr. DJ– this is my microphone. I hope you hear me loud and clear: Next time you want to persuade someone to cooperate with you, remember that insulting them in front of a friend and a crowd probably isn’t the most effective strategy and is certainty not okay.