The unique thing about social media is the symmetry of the experience. The broadcaster sits behind a desk. He may get written complaints fed back to him. He does not have to go home and then see a thousand someone elses behind a desk on TV criticizing him.
Public performers, whether authors, actors, artists, etc., not reading reviews of their own work is so commonplace as to be a trope, and it long predates the Internet.
Rather, the asymmetry is that whilst in a broadcast-mode world the performer is a public character and faces the audience's response, the audience does not in turn have a similar experience. Very rarely a single individual might be made an example of ridicule, but my sense is that that was rare.
Today, the spotlight can, and does, turn on anyone at virtually any time. And it can be incredibly discomfitting when that happens. Moreover text, or audio, or images, or video, can suddenly be published around the world. Jon Ronson's explored the contemporary experience in his 2015 book So You've Been Publicly Shamed, describes several incidents.
(At least one of these ... was featured fairly extensively on HN.)
But that's the distinction I was trying to draw. Prior to, say, the late 1990s to early aughts, it was people in broadcasting, mass media, entertainment, and a few in high-profile political or business careers who might draw mass attention with frequency. Now that effect can strike virtually anyone online (and in some cases off) with little warning or reason, and expose them instantly to mass judgement by strangers.
It's not that the broadcaster could go home to avoid the onslaught (and in many cases they couldn't). It's that the many others weren't similarly vulnerable.
