This paper will discuss the widespread use of victim tropes in contemporary culture. Since the growth of social media, victim stories have been proliferating, and each demanding a response. Victim narratives are rhetorical, they are designed to elicit pity and shame the perpetrator. They are deployed to stimulate political debate and activism, as well as to foment an all-purpose humanitarianism. Victimology has its origins in Law and Criminology, but this paper opens up the field more broadly to think about the cultural politics of victimhood, to think how its polyvalency can be appropriated by and for different purposes, particularly racial politics. Victimhood is a mediated phenomenon that is wrapped up with shame. In trying to formulate an ethical response to the lived experience of victims, we need to experiment with kinds of critical intimacy that develop a moral alertness to the emotional distances required by victim’s stories, the shaming process, and ourselves as witnesses.