Summary
Chapter Four of Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed begins with the story of Justine Sacco. Sacco was a public relations specialist working in New York City. In December 2013, on a flight to South Africa, she sent out the following message to her Twitter audience (roughly 170 people):
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” (68)
Ronson correctly observed that this tweet was offensive and badly-worded, but — as he tells the story of what happened to Sacco afterwards — he makes it clear that he does not think it was hate speech. Put simply, that message destroyed Sacco’s life. Not long after she posted it, she became subject to a moral trial by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. She was immediately charged with racism and insensitivity to the AIDS crisis, and her Twitter profile — along with other information about her available online — was ransacked for further evidence of her moral shortcomings. At some point, the tweet was retweeted by Gawker media journalist Sam Biddle to 15,000 followers.
This tweet cost Sacco her career (at the time, she was employed at what she identified as her “dream job”) and led to personal invasions of the nth degree. For example, she had boarded a plane immediately after tweeting; by the time she touched down in South Africa, there was already a stranger waiting for her at the airport to snap her photo. Google searches for her name jumped from 30 or so a month to over a million (71). She had to take refuge in her apartment, essentially going into hiding.
Ronson emphasized that at the time of the book’s writing (in 2015), Sacco was reluctant to speak with journalists. She was afraid of being further misunderstood. It seems that his explicit sympathy toward her — and willingness to paint her as a human being who was not racist or sociopathic, but merely, perhaps, with bad taste in humor — is the only reason he was able to interview her for the book.
The author’s interest in the Sacco case led him to sit down with a man named Ted Poe. After telling Sacco’s story, Ronson recounts his time with Poe, a legal prosecutor notorious for serving absurd and arguably over-the-top punishments to defendants. These sentences were specifically designed to shame people. For example, one of Poe’s punishments stipulated that a young man who killed two people in a drunk driving incident walk around with a sign declaring his crime in front of high schools and bars once a month for two years (p. 82).
Intriguingly, while Ronson had expected Poe to be an absolute monster, he found the prosecutor’s explanation of these unusual punishments to be “annoyingly convincing” (86). Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the young man who was sentenced to self-shame for manslaughter later came to be grateful for the punishment. By his assessment, Poe had saved him from a lifetime of incarceration and given his life purpose by facilitating his ability to serve as a warning (87). The chapter concludes with a discussion between Poe and Ronson on the fact that shaming based on trial-by-Internet is much worse than legally authorized shaming.
Analysis
This book couldn’t have come too soon. Two personal contacts of mine who work in news media have both been effectively kicked off Twitter for badly-worded commentary, charged with moral indiscretion — even though they’re both a far cry from the hate speech-mongers that pervade the Internet and somehow never get policed. I mention this specifically because I myself am not that close to the media; I’m not uniquely disposed to having personal familiarity with this scenario. Many of us probably have first or secondhand experiences with online shaming to various degrees.
While Justine Sacco should have been a bit more wise, she certainly didn’t deserve what happened to her. The fact is, on some level, her shamers probably knew that. At some point Ronson points out that some among the angry mob must have known that the decisive Tweet did not emanate from xenophobia, but was a shoddy attempt at poking fun of white privilege. He writes that “people [must have chosen] to willfully misunderstand it for some reason” (74). We can speculate as to why so many people would indulge this vindictive mentality— they get to feel like they’re a part of something, and perhaps as if though they’re on moral high ground. It’s the pleasure of righteousness, perhaps. What is key to me, here, is that the Internet uniquely empowers this impulse. Which makes me wonder if it reveals a secret about human nature, a tendency toward mob mentalities that most of us would prefer not to think about.
Along these lines, Ronson observes that many are willing to get on board with appearance rather than reality: “It didn’t matter if she was a privileged racist, as long as she sort of seemed like she was.” By now, popular discourse on “truthiness” (thank you, Stephen Colbert) has brought this situation to light. But the simply acknowledgement of the Internet falsehood-machine doesn’t mean that it’s being dismantled. If anything, it’s becoming more powerful. Our current President has used lack of falsifiability to his advantage — charges of “fake news!” to discredit fiat media have a tangible impact on the public, and our understanding of politics. Ronson points out that through Twitter and other platforms, “every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain” (78-79). Under these conditions, nuance is often lost, and communication about subtle and complex issues breaks down. I’m not sure that anything even remotely important can be declared on Twitter unless the speaker is willing to fight a war.
Questions:
- Is shame-based punishment ever acceptable? In what contexts — online, in a court of law, among close friends and family? Is it more acceptable for certain types of offense than others?
- Should popular web platforms, especially Twitter, take a more active role in policing hate speech? If they did, would this help to stymy misplaced outrage?
- Do you think there’s a way to automate detection of hate speech online, and would this be desirable?
- Is the “justice system” of the Internet really as lawless as Ted Poe says it is, or are there discernible “rules” (patterns) we can follow to mitigate the potential of being shamed or harassed online?
