Throughout the book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” there is various situations where people have made mistakes and have regretted it after being publicly shamed. Everyone who post things on social media is at risk at putting himself or herself out for public shaming. After all public shaming only takes one mistake or misinterpretation. Jon Ronson decided to make a book with different stories of people getting publicly shamed. There are also different forms of public shaming demonstrated throughout the book.
The author of the book, Jon Ronson, was one of the first people in the book to get publicly shamed. Jon had realized there was a twitter with the username “Jon_Ronson” and with Jon’s face as the profile picture. You later discovered it was a spambot that was run by “a young researcher, formerly of Warwick University, called Luke Robert Mason” (2). After asking them to take down the account they refused because Luke didn’t think any harm was being done. Although the account had very few followers you still felt ” powerless and sullied”(3).
After meeting the people behind the spambot you had interviewed Luke and his two friends and posted footage of that interview onto YouTube. You were very surprised to see that the omments were supportive of him and to see “hundreds are marching behind him” (7). You felt some kind of joy seeing that. After a couple days the fake account was taken down. The people behind the account had been “shamed into acquiescence” (8). Jon had felt as if “their public shaming had been like the button that restores factory settings”(8). The people behind the fake account had felt as if they didn’t do anything wrong.
After everything that had happened people were publicly bashing Luke for what he had done. Things from calling Luke names and saying things like “these fucked up cademics deserve to die painfully” (8). After the scandal of what Luke had done along with two of his friends, they posted a column trying to clarify and justify what they did. You felt wonderful and felt like he had people all around the world that helped him become victorious. You felt as if he won and that the people around him had united and helped him get rid of the people who would potentially ruin his life.
In another situation, someone named Jonah was publicly shamed when he fabricated several Bob Dylan quotes. Jonah made to clarify everything he had done and while doing the peech behind him was a live feed of people on twitter commenting their thoughts on his speech. People wer commenting things like “Jonah Lehrer boring people into forgiving him for his plagiarism” (46). People were basically telling Jonah that he had no forgiveness for what he did. Jonah had to stand through that and finish his speech. In another part of your book you talk about a women named Justine Sacco.
Justine made a mistake and began making jokes on twitter and many people found it extremely offensive. You began to feel like public shaming was like a routine. In addition, ou realized that “everyday people, some with young children, were getting annihilated for tweeting some badly worded joke”(67). Justine made jokes on twitter like “going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! “(68). When you interviewed her, she explained how she was only joking about all the things she has posted. People attacked her for it and she became a trending topic.
She was eventually fired from her job as a PA chief. She also described that the people has ” created this Justine Sacco that’s not me”(75). People began to put labels on Justine such as being a racist. Justine later realized that she shouldn’t spend her life crying over what had happened to her instead just embrace it and take it as a lesson. Justine was ” determined to show the people who had smashed her up that she could rise again”(82). Justine was able to learn from the mistake she had made online and saw it as a lesson rather than a complete failure.
Ted Poe was a judge who punished criminals by publicly shaming the criminals for their acts. Ted had commented that people to go to jail are more likely to go back to jail and those who were publicly humiliated were never seen again because “it as too embarrassing the first time”(86). Ted Poe made people hold up signs explaining the crime they have done while walking up and down a side of the road. After talking to Ted Poe, Jon realized how everyone who was a part of public shaming was not different from Ted Poe.
Ted believes public shamings that are online are far worse than what he does because the people who do it are anonymous. Jon realized that he had always been referring to the people who publicly shame others as “they”. He then came to realize that “they weren’t brutal. We were brutal”(88). You realized that “we were more frightening than udge Ted Poe” (90). Jon writes about those people but didn’t realize he was one of them. You felt like the people and him “were soldiers making war on other people’s flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities”(90).
People without realizing it attack others for mistakes they have made and shame them for it. I agree with you Jon and everything you had said about public shaming. Some people on “social media were just starting on our shaming crusade”(230). People tend to take others online mistakes into their own hands. You also caught yourself” judging someone on how flustered he behaves in the face of haming is a truly strange and arbitrary way”(234). Public shaming is bad, unproductive, and ineffective. I also think that people become so into shaming that they feel as if it is a neutral thing.
Public shaming is a vicious cycle and by shaming someone is likely to produce even more shame for him or her. I noticed that the attitude you had towards public shaming in the beginning of the book changed towards the end of the book. You also mention that “we are creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland”(266). Everyone has his or her own opinion on how our society is but fail to realize how oring we are becoming. I also agree that we fail to realize who much some of us are getting off on others suffering after being publicly shamed.
Many people who publicly shame other try ease the pain by creating “illusory ways to justify”(81) their behaviors. People believe that by shaming others they are doing something righteous. They use that to justify others losing everything they have done throughout their lives for a mistake they made on social media. I think it is great that you ” no longer take part in the ecstatic public condemnation”(275). Once someone realizes how many ives have been ruined because of public shaming it is sad. People seem to forget that we are all humans and no one is perfect.
People make mistakes and a tweet or post they make can be interpreted wrongly. I think your book would help a lot of people realize that public shaming is wrong. Overall, we fail to realize how publicly shaming someone doesn’t help us in any way. I think the only thing it really does is give some people some kind of satisfaction. The public shamings talked about in the book only benefited Google. In stories that make trending topics because it was publicly shamed make Google a lot of money. Jon, you mentioned, “we are unpaid interns for Google”(277).
The people who engage in public shaming don’t get paid for it but they act as if they do. People are only making Google money and people are doing it for nothing. I also agree with you in the aspect that the least we can do for people who make mistakes is to be ” patient and curios instead of instantly judgmental”(309). People are so quick to judge others on their mistakes or actions. There will always be people who make mistakes or accidently make a post thinking its not a big deal and we need to work on being able understanding and not so quick to want to bash them.
