So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“I asked Michael at what point it stopped being fun and he replied, ‘When your quarry starts panicking.’ He paused. ‘It’s like being out in the woods hunting and you’re like, “This feels great!” And then you shoot the animal and it’s lying there twitching and wants its head to be bashed in and you’re, “I don’t want to be the person to do this. This is fucking horrible.’”

Ronson’s methodology is largely based on personal interviews, as seen in this quote, and he is unabashed about including profane and colloquial language. Here, as part of his examination of the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation, Ronson identifies how participating or generating a public shaming, even as a professional journalist, can take an emotional toll not only on the target of the shaming but on those doing it.

“It felt like the people on Twitter had been invited to be characters in a courtroom drama, and had been allowed to choose their roles, and had all gone for the part of the hanging judge.”

Throughout the text, Ronson examines Justice and Redemption in the traditional criminal justice system and the new social media environment. In this quote, he draws parallels between the two while highlighting a key difference: social media shamings do not involve due process and can be particularly vicious.

“But at the archives I found no evidence that public shaming fell out of fashion as a result of new-found anonymity. I did, however, find plenty of people from centuries past bemoaning its outsized cruelty, warning that well-meaning people, in a crowd, take it too far.”

While comprising a small part of the book, Ronson does undertake some archival research into the history of public shaming in the criminal justice system. His finding that they have largely been phased out because of the viciousness of the crowd presages the intensity of the crowd dynamics he observes in modern-day public shamings on social media.

“A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high dramas. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.”

As shown in this quote, Ronson often uses language like “ruined” and “destroyed” to describe the impacts of public shaming on its victims. He ascribes the public desire to see someone taken low as a form of unwarranted vindictiveness for entertainment rather than as a genuine search for justice and sees himself as part of this cycle, to an extent.

“After a while it wasn’t just transgressions we were keenly watchful for. It was misspeakings. Fury at the terribleness of other people had started to consume us a lot. And the rage that swirled around seemed increasingly in disproportion to whatever stupid thing some celebrity said. It felt different to satire or journalism or criticism. It felt like punishment. In fact it felt weird and empty when there wasn’t anyone to be furious about. The days between shamings felt like days picking fingernails, treading water.”

In a few places in the text, such as in this quote, Ronson acknowledges that there are some legitimate “transgressions” that warrant attention but that often, public shaming is disproportionate to the magnitude of the wrongdoing. He reiterates here how much of the Shaming in Print and Social Media is a form of entertainment, rather than a sincere desire for justice.

“Even the most violent crowds are never simply an inchoate explosion. There are always patterns, and those patterns always reflect wider belief systems. So the question we have to ask—which ‘contagion’ can’t answer—is how come people can come together, often spontaneously, often without leadership, and act together in ideologically intelligible ways.”

Part of Ronson’s investigation into the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation leads him to seek an understanding of why crowds or mobs act in the ways they do. While Le Bon’s theory suggests that people lose all sense in a crowd, social psychologist Stan Reicher is quoted here as saying that there is a “wider belief system” at work in crowd dynamics.

“It seemed to me that everybody involved in the Hank and Adria story thought they were doing something good. But really they only revealed that our imagination was so limited, our arsenal of potential responses so narrow, the only thing anyone can think to do with an inappropriate shamer like Adria is punish her with a shaming.”

One of the key findings in Ronson’s exploration of Shaming in Print and Social Media is that people are motivated to take part in public shamings out of a sense that they are doing good and encouraging others to do good. Ronson implicates all of society in this system by using the first-person plural “our.”

“‘Growing up I was ashamed of everything,’ she wrote, ‘and at a certain point I realized that if I was open with the world about the things that embarrassed me they no longer had any weight! I felt set free!’”

This quote from producer and actor Princess Donna highlights a key finding of Ronson’s exploration of the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation. Here and elsewhere in the text, he identifies that one can neutralize shame by simply ignoring it or not keeping shameful things a secret.

“Does a shaming only work if the shamee plays their part in it by feeling ashamed? There was no doubt that Jonah, and Justine too, had been having intense conversations with their shame. Whereas Max was just refusing to engage with his at all. I wondered: was unashamedness something that some people just had? Or was it something that could be taught?”

Ronson finds from his exploration that, in some instances, shame can be neutralized by simply accepting it or refusing to accept the humiliation. However, not everyone, such as Lehrer and Sacco, is able to simply walk away from a shaming unscathed or without taking on the role as someone who is shamed.

“Shame internalized can lead to agony. It can lead to Jonah Lehrer. Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least to a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too.”

In this quote, Ronson compares and contrasts the shaming experiences of Lehrer and those like Princess Donna and Mosely. Donna and Mosely are open and honest about their sexual preferences and actions, and as a result are largely unscathed by attempts to shame them, whereas Lehrer is emotionally distraught by his shaming, as he accepts the opinions that had been formed of him.

“But the shifting sands of shameworthiness had shifted away from sex scandals—if you’re a man—to work improprieties and perceived white privilege, and I suddenly understood the real reason why Max had survived his shaming. Nobody cared. Max survived his shaming because he was a man in a consensual sex shaming—which meant there had been no shaming.”

Throughout the text, Ronson identifies that the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation are different for men and women due to the misogyny that is rampant in British and American culture. In this chapter, when he learns that only the woman in the Kennebunk, Maine, sex worker scandal was shamed, he draws the conclusion that people do not care about men engaging in heterosexual consensual sexual activities. 

“The people who mattered didn’t care what [Paul] Dacre thought. The people who mattered were the people on Twitter. On Twitter we make our own decisions about who deserves obliteration. We form our own consensus, and we aren’t being influenced by the criminal justice system or by the media. This makes us formidable.”

In this quote, Ronson makes reference to Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, a rightwing British tabloid-esque newspaper known for its scandal-driven coverage. Dacre believes that people in Britain no longer have shame, but Ronson takes a different view, as expressed in this quote. A key difference between Shaming in Print and Social Media is that, where Dacre or the criminal justice system once directed who should be shamed, now the public on Twitter makes those decisions.

“I think we all care deeply about things that seem totally inconsequential to other people. We all carry around with us the flotsam and jetsam of perceived humiliations that actually mean nothing. We are a mass of vulnerabilities, and who knows what will trigger them?”

The Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation are not always those that might seem obvious. People hold deeply personal feelings of shame for things that might seem counterintuitive to others, such as Princess Donna feeling ashamed about how the quality of her work was covered by the celebrity gossip site TMZ despite being completely unashamed about the nature of the pornography work she does.

“The Right to be Forgotten would improve the life of some actual transgressor—some barely shamed niche European former fraudster who slipped through the outers’ net, for instance—far more than it would improve the life of the super-shamed Justice Sacco. And so the worst thing, Justine said, the thing that made her feel most helpless, was her lack of control over the Google search results. They were just there, eternal, crushing.”

In this chapter and in Chapter 11, Ronson explores how it is not only social media but also Google impacts Causes and Effects of Shame and Redemption. As those being shamed do not have control over the Google search results, it can make it difficult for those deserving of redemption or the ability to move on from their mistakes to do so.

“I was happy to have Gregory’s name purged from the Internet if I could get to hear the intriguing details. I was the Selfish Giant, wanting to keep the lavish garden for myself and my readers, whilst building a tall wall around it so nobody else could look in.”

Ronson examines the similarities and differences between Shaming in Print Media and Social Media. One aspect he is candid about is that some of his own work in the print media involves exposing those who have done terrible things, such as Gregory, even as he is advocating for those on social media to not do so. The term “Selfish Giant” is a reference to an Oscar Wilde story by the same name about a giant who learns to allow a child to play with him in his garden.

“Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People’s flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flags that, when you shine a light on them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres. But there was a side of Michael’s business that I respected—the side that offered salvation to people who’d really done nothing wrong but had been dramatically shamed anyway. Like Justine Sacco.”

In this quote, Ronson acknowledges that in some cases, it is appropriate to be curious and to write about people who have done bad things, as he himself has done in the traditional media. However, Ronson feels this curiosity has to have limits, such as in the case of Sacco, and often it does not on social media.

“A shaming can be like a distorting mirror at a funfair, taking human nature and making it look monstrous. Of course it was tactics like John Carruthers’ that compelled us to believe we could do justice better on social media. But still: knee-jerk shaming is knee-jerk shaming and I wonder what would happen if we made a point of eschewing the shaming completely—if we refused to shame anyone.”

In this quote, Ronson makes reference to the defense attorney whose aggressive cross-examination of a rape survivor may have led her to take her own life. He criticizes how shame is used as a tool in the criminal justice system and social media, leading him to search for a different method for achieving Justice and Redemption.

“It may be paradoxical to refer to shame as a ‘feeling’, for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth.”

As part of his investigation of concepts of Justice and Redemption, Ronson profiles and interviews psychologist James Gilligan who pioneered a therapeutic prison program where inmates are encouraged to overcome their shame. He quotes from Gilligan’s text Violence: Reflections on our Deadliest Epidemic (1999) at length to compare how criminals who are shamed express emotions similar to those expressed by targets like Jonah Lehrer.

“The sad thing was that Lindsey had incurred the Internet’s wrath because she was impudent and playful and foolhardy and outspoken. And now here she was, working with Farukh to reduce herself to safe banalities—to cats and ice cream and Top 40 chart music. We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.”

Ronson is concerned with the way that Shaming in Print and Social Media encourages people to be inoffensive and conform to normative social pressure. To illustrate this, he observes the reputation management of Stone, who, in order to improve her Google search results, had to tone down her personality. Ronson implicates all of society in this with his use of “we,” suggesting that both he and the readers have played a role in creating this situation.

“Social media gives a voice to voiceless people—its egalitarianism is its greatest quality.”

Ronson does not entirely discount the positive elements of social media, especially Twitter. While the book is largely critical of the social media ecosystem, as he notes here and in the opening chapter, it has democratized who is able to express their thoughts and ideas to the public.

“We have always had some influence over the justice system, but for the first time in 180 years—since the stocks and the pillory were outlawed—we have the power to determine the severity of some punishments. And so we have to think about what level of mercilessness we feel comfortable with. I, personally, no longer take part in the ecstatic public condemnation of anybody, unless they’ve committed a transgression that has an actual victim, and even then not as much as I probably should. I miss the fun a little.”

Ronson ends the final chapter of the original edition of the text with a reflection on how his investigation into the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation has changed how he, personally, takes part in public shamings. He conflates the sentencing found in the criminal justice system with the kind of sentences doled out by the social media justice system and states that the public needs to be more mindful of how these sentences are determined.

“The phrase ‘misuse of privilege’ was becoming a devalued term, and was making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions.”

In this quote, Ronson criticizes the way in which privilege discourse has become overused on social media to justify the public shaming of someone. In some contemporary contexts, privilege is used as a catch-all term that describes how people who are some combination of white, male, straight, cisgendered, wealthy, Christian, etc. have more power in society. Ronson feels that assessments of a victim’s level of privilege are inaccurate and that criticism of them on such grounds does not rise to the level of pursuing justice for real wrongs.

“It didn’t need saying—but maybe it did need saying—that using social media to distribute those videos was a world away from calling a woman who’d just been a train crash a privileged bitch because she wanted her violin to be OK. One act was powerful and important—using social media to create a new civil-rights battlefield. The other was a pointless and nasty cathartic alternative. Given that we are the ones with the power, it is incumbent upon us to recognize the difference.”

In the Afterword, which was written in 2016, Ronson engages with the way that the Black Lives Matter movement, in response to videos of Black people being injured or killed by police in the United States that were shared on social media, differs from the kind of online behavior he is critiquing. In this quote, he echoes the misogynistic language he observed from social media shamings, “privileged bitch,” and contrasts it with the genuine search for justice as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter videos. In this quote and in interviews, he emphasizes that his focus is on the Shaming in Print Media and Social Media that blows events out of proportion, rather than those where the shaming response is appropriate given the facts.