So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a great book. And an important one.
This book has completely changed how I feel about social media and the way in which we, WE, shame people and what the effects are.
Like Jon Ronson, I think I saw the internet as a positive force for justice in a lot of ways. On the internet, I’m as powerful as anyone. On Twitter, I have the same power as some other chump. I can tweet straight to Donald Trump, or about him, and have the world see me take him down.
But the way we use that power is frivolous, ridiculous, and we have wasted it. We had a powerful tool, but we trashed it in the name of what we decided was justice, but was really mob mentality and the 21st century version of public beheadings.
I think the point in the book was well made towards the end of the book. Ronson visits a former prison psychologist, whose radical idea was to treat prisoners with respect and dignity as opposed to disrespect and humiliation. And wouldn’t you know, the violence in prisons was drastically reduced.
That sounds, to me, like pretty no-duh kind of stuff. Yeah, this guy murdered someone, and now he’s in prison, but what are we going to gain by treating him as sub-human? Maybe we walk away with a feeling that we’ve done what’s right, tell ourselves this is justice served, but the cumulative effect is that this prisoner will take out the aggression and violence on others. It makes the environment terrible for everyone, including the prison staff, attorneys, and others involved in the legal system. Shame, as a tool for justice, is wielded clumsily and it doesn’t have the effect we really want.
And our methods of online shaming make us the bad guys. We are the Guantanomo guards putting people in pyramids, de-humanizing them. We treat people online in ways that we would never treat prisoners. We humiliate, threaten, and disrespect people.
Based on what I’ve read here, I completely and 100% refuse to participate in social media shaming anymore. I’d love it if others would do the same. This isn’t some bullshit pledge or petition. But I would encourage you to read this book before you ever do it again, whether the shaming goes towards someone who Tweets something that’s racist, a dentist who shoots a lion, whatever. I have decided that I am not a good moral compass for the world, and I don’t think that the general crowd that composes “the internet” is good either. They don’t read, they don’t pay attention, and they mostly want to hear about how awful someone is.
What that means:
+I will not click on ANY articles about people who are trending unless they are of actual significance. No, I don’t consider an Instagram from an unknown entity to be significant, no matter how outrageous. No, I don’t consider a social media faux pas to be significant, even if the person/entity should have known better. No, I don’t consider it news that someone I’ve never heard of and who is insignificant is racist. No, I don’t consider it significant if a comedian said or did something that’s 100% legal and in poor taste. You have to decide, in the moment, what’s significant and what isn’t. There’s no hard and fast rule, but I will know when I’m breaking that rule for myself, and I will do my best to stop. I’m going to do my best to stop feeding that machine.
+This book makes a good point, that off of a Twitter scandal that destroyed a woman’s life, totally undeservingly, Google likely made in the neighborhood of $120,000. That’s not a huge amount, but Google is profiting from the destruction of someone’s life. And I’m of the opinion that not only are the big boys like Fox News doing the same thing, but to a larger extent, so are sites like Slate, Gawker, and Daily Beast. I’m just one person, but I will continue to call out what I see as those sites profiting from the shaming of others, and remind people of the fact that these sites make money off the pain of others. I will not call out article authors, and I will not link to articles. But I do feel it’s okay, and perhaps needed, to remind everyone that these sites are making money from the pain of others, and to point out when I think news entities are jumping on the shame wagon for the sake of clicks.
+I would ask the heads of corporations to think more carefully before firing individuals based on online shaming. This happened in nearly EVERY scenario listed in this book, and in one instance, both the person shamed AND the shamer were fired. I would like to see more companies creating social media policies for personal social media, basically stating that what people do on their own time, using their own technology and networks, is not the business of the organization, provided that the content does not directly target the company or do anything illegal. I think it’s absolutely preposterous to read that people are being fired because they made a joke in bad taste. I don’t see what that has to do with a person’s job. And the end result is that people just don’t do anything funny or interesting or transgressive online for fear of losing their jobs, which makes the world a very boring place. In essence, I would fucking love, the next time something like this happens, to see the head of a company release a statement that says, “Hi. We employ this person. They have performed adequately or better in their work capacity. Frankly, it’s none of our business what they do outside of work. We don’t fire people who are drunks so long as they are functioning ones. We don’t fire people who are jerks to their families. We don’t fire people for their sexual proclivities. We don’t fire people who wear ugly clothing on the weekends. Conversely, if someone has a bad day at the office, we don’t expect that employee to carry that shame home with them. We don’t expect them to punish themselves in their life outside of work. We will continue to employ this person, not as an endorsement of their online, recreational behavior, but as an endorsement of their work history and continued work, and because we believe in the separation between personal life and work. We care for and about our employees, but we’re not their parents. We hope that our employees care about their jobs, but we do not expect them to consider their jobs the entirety of their lives. That’s our statement. We will resume work on Monday, and we suggest you do the same.”
+I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore. If we talk in real life, I really don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to talk about these kind of non-scandal scandals anymore. I don’t want to discuss whether or not a joke was acceptable or not. I don’t want to pretend that I know what happened in a situation where I totally don’t know what happened in a situation. Please don’t talk to me about this stuff. And please don’t be offended when I say, You know, that’s really not the kind of thing I want to talk about.
+I will ask people to read the whole, original truth. When you read that Jonathan Franzen called Edith Wharton ugly, if you want to read that article that hates on him, fine, but I think you’re obligated to read the original Franzen article before you pass judgment.
+I will still say negative things about books, movies, whatever. I mean, I think that if you read a book, you DO have the right to provide an opinion. But note that, even in my more negative reviews (Fun Home comes to mind…) I don’t say the authors are bad people, or that there should be a punishment delivered upon them. I’ll still talk about how some books are problematic. Do I still think Modelland is a problematic, awful book that probably shouldn’t have been printed? Totally. Do I think Tyra Banks should have her life destroyed because she wrote a shitty book? No. Am I looking to have a public burning of that book? No.
You really need to read this book. It’s quick. And it’s important. The longer we go along as we have, the more times you’ll do something that you’ll regret later on. This I promise you.