So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Ronson opens the chapter with a reflection on how he chooses to no longer participate in social media shamings. Then, he quotes Michael Fertik who notes that “the Internet isn’t about us. It’s about the companies that dominate the data flows of the Internet” (262). Inspired by this, Ronson works with researcher Solvej Krause to find out how much money Google made off the Justine Sacco controversy. An economist, Jonathan Hersch, gives the low end of the estimate as less than a quarter of a million. Ronson notes that no matter what the actual figure, those who participated in the pile-on made no money while Google made a lot.

Ronson is still curious about why online shamings are so merciless. To answer this, he turns to a story about speed limit signs written by Thomas Goetz. Goetz was writing about the installation of signs that show “your speed” underneath the speed limit sign when you go past. Goetz attributes the success of these signs at slowing people’s speed to feedback loops.

Ronson, in conversation with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, wonders if social media serves as a kind of negative feedback loop. When one participates in a social media shaming, like calling Justine Sacco a racist, one is congratulated for “basically being Rosa Parks” (267). Curtis notes that when someone steps outside acceptable bounds on social media, they are pushed out or punished so the system can regain equilibrium. An unnamed journalist friend of Ronson’s says that in the aftermath of the Sacco shaming, he was afraid to publish on social media because he might become a target. Ronson ends the book by worrying that these feedback loops and public shamings are creating more conformity by punishing those who deviate from the norm.

The Afterword is written about a year after the initial release of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and responds to criticism that the book received both in print media and social media. Ronson hears from Sacco, now about a year removed from her public shaming. She has a new job in PR, and she is worried that the release of the book will again make her a target. However, she is pleased to receive lots of positive feedback when an excerpt is published in the New York Times. Ronson also notes that most of the feedback he received was positive, both in emails and in reviews in the Guardian, the Boston Review, and the New Statesman.

Ronson then reprints a lengthy excerpt of a critical review of the book by Patrick Blanchfield in the Washington Post entitled “Twitter’s outrage machine should be stopped. But Justine Sacco is the wrong poster child” (272), which criticizes the choice of Sacco as a subject because “on a level that resonates with some of the ugliest of America’s racist narratives, the blonde Sacco is archetypally vulnerable” (272). Ronson counters that he chose her as a subject not because he identified with her but because he was interested in large online public shamings. Twitter commentators begin to accuse Ronson of being racist for choosing to sympathize with Sacco. The criticism upsets Ronson and he gets a prescription for Xanax to manage his anxiety about it.

Ronson discusses other public shamings that have occurred since the book came out, such as a Minnesota dentist who was targeted and doxed on social media for killing a protected lion named Cecil. Then, Ronson himself becomes a target for a line that had been in an uncorrected proof (early edition) of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed in which he reflects on 4chan poster Mercedes’s comment that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman and getting fired the worst thing that can happen to a man; he agrees with the sentiment, personally. While he cuts the line in the published edition, it is leaked and Ronson is criticized for it on Twitter and elsewhere online.

His experience researching and being the subject of public shaming leads him to sympathize with those who are the target of this behavior, including Rachael Dolezal, a white woman who represented herself as Black. He notes that there is a difference between the use of social media to draw attention to civil rights issues like police brutality against Black people and its use to shame people who make mistakes. Ronson ends the chapter with a call to action, encouraging readers that “when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person” (297).