Order SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED here
Some of you already know I work on social media. I love my job, it's a great way to earn a living while staying connected to what's going on in the world, but it can get fucked up quick. It's a place where everybody feels at home, yet everybody can have a word of what everybody else is doing at all time as long as someone posts it on their page. I've seen the phenomenon of online outrage and shaming materialize and become a key component of our 21st century society and I find the lack of perspective on the subject appalling and even terrifying at times.
What are we doing to ourselves? Is the digital age finally turning us against one another? Since expertise on the subject doesn't exist yet, I decided to read So You've Been Publicly Shamed, a book by a guy who seems as concerned as I am by the issue, Jon Ronson.
The underlying premise of So You've Been Publicly Shamed is that we've been looking at the information age the wrong way: it's not an evolution, but a rebirth of society. So, we're rediscovering many pleasures we thought ourselves too sophisticated for and over the last couple years, public shaming has been all the rage on social media. They're a new and empowering platform for the "voiceless" people, as Jon Ronson calls them, and we have not really figured out how to use them to change the world yet. In some cases we did, but most times we're just very proudly ruining people's lives for having ideas different to ours or worse, for making stupid jokes.
Jon Ronson tells the stories of Jonah Lehrer, Justine Sacco, Linsday Stone and other people who have been raked over the digital hot coals of the internet, lost their job and we're condemned to forever wear a Google dunce hate because of a virtual mob's indignation. These people all had committed ethical blunders (Lehrer particularly), but none of these people actually mattered. Sacco and Stone particularly behaved like their actions didn't matter because their audience was so small, they figured everybody that was exposed to the joke would get it. But that's where the power of social media comes into play. You're always one click away to become what you've just said to a crowd of bloodthirsty strangers.
So You've Been Publicly Shamed put me in a foul fuckin' mood, but it unearths a discussion we need to have: why are we piling on people like us for inane tweets and online photos? Is it the feeling of power? The momentary transcending of boredom? Because policing one another's thoughts out of context like this sure shit ain't democracy. Shaming people for a tweet, a rant or a photo only encourages others to broadcast socially accepted on their social media platforms in fear of reprisal from strangers. Say what people want to hear and you'll get "likes" and "shares" in exchange. Do the opposite and you'll get a lifetime of internet infamy for your troubles. Ariel Ronis decided to kill himself rather than face racism accusations on Facebook.
Have we solved racism by doing that? No, but we killed a man with our indignation. It doesn't matter whether the accuser was right or not, a human being killed himself because she turned what must've been an alienating day at the office into an ideological battle. She's probably never going to get into that fast lane now.
Jon Ronson's book is tragic and infuriating and not always pertinent. In some chapters of So You've Been Publicly Shamed, he investigates the emotion and its origins and I thought it drifted away from what the book actually stands for: calling out that instinct we have of shaming people for meaningless instant gratification. I think social media CAN and EVENTUALLY WILL change the world, but we're a long way from that happening. We need to get over our own smugness and sense of entitlement and understand the difference between what has meaning and impact and what doesn't. There will be other lives ruined on social media before it happens because we are way too comfortable with it. One thing you can do though is read So You've Been Publicly Shamed and understand how destructive and ultimately inane your outrage can be.
Have we solved racism by doing that? No, but we killed a man with our indignation. It doesn't matter whether the accuser was right or not, a human being killed himself because she turned what must've been an alienating day at the office into an ideological battle. She's probably never going to get into that fast lane now.
Jon Ronson's book is tragic and infuriating and not always pertinent. In some chapters of So You've Been Publicly Shamed, he investigates the emotion and its origins and I thought it drifted away from what the book actually stands for: calling out that instinct we have of shaming people for meaningless instant gratification. I think social media CAN and EVENTUALLY WILL change the world, but we're a long way from that happening. We need to get over our own smugness and sense of entitlement and understand the difference between what has meaning and impact and what doesn't. There will be other lives ruined on social media before it happens because we are way too comfortable with it. One thing you can do though is read So You've Been Publicly Shamed and understand how destructive and ultimately inane your outrage can be.