{"id":241,"date":"2017-10-16T13:56:19","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T13:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/?p=241"},"modified":"2017-12-12T01:41:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T01:41:42","slug":"doing-something-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/2017\/10\/16\/doing-something-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Something Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapter Six: Doing Something Good in So You\u2019ve Been Publically Shamed <\/em>by Jon Ronson<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the sixth chapter of his book, the author opens with an account of developers Hank and Adria at Pycon. During a conference presentation, Hank and his colleague were joking together about \u2018dongles\u2019 and \u2018forking,\u2019 terms that had a clear sexual connotation.\u00a0 In the row directly in front of them, Adria turned around and snapped a photo of the two developers. Not much time passed before Hank and his colleague were pulled out of the room by the conference organizers to discuss their sexual comments. After explaining the situation, not much more came of the situation during the conference.<\/p>\n

However, when leaving the event, the two developers soon discovered that Adria posted their photo and the subject of their jokes on Twitter: \u201cNot cool. Jokes about forking repo\u2019s in a sexual way and \u2018big\u2019 dongles. Right behind me #pycon\u201d (pg. 114). To further explain her tweet, she produced a more extensive blog. In conversation with Ronson, Adria further detailed her feelings of danger after hearing the comment from the men behind her.<\/p>\n

The repercussions for Hank was termination from his work. Nothing was mentioned about the consequences for his colleague. After being terminated, Hank turned to Hacker News to publicly apologize for his lewd remarks. In his statement, he mentioned the outcomes of his actions \u2013 his termination. Adria asked to remove this portion of the apology.<\/p>\n

The public jumped into the conversation to both defend and further shame both Hank and Adria.\u00a0Adria was received rape and death threats while her work was hit by a DDoS attack. The DDoS attackers threatened to continue until Adria was fired. She was shortly fired. Hank was defended and then later insulted by men\u2019s right bloggers. These bloggers focused on Hank\u2019s masculinity \u2013 or lacking masculinity. Both the shamer and shamed were harmed by the actions of the crowd.<\/p>\n

In the latter half of the chapter, Ronson switches gears slightly by writing about his interview with a 4chan user accused of DDoSing PayPal. According to the author, her motivation for shaming was \u201cthe desire to do good\u201d (pg. 123) and stems from a place of powerlessness: \u201con the internet we have power in situations where we would otherwise be powerless\u201d (pg. 123). This place of powerlessness is apparently rooted in violations, namely stop and frisk, of others constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

Later, in their conversation about Adria, the 4chan user defends Hank claiming that Adria infringed on his and his colleague\u2019s freedom to speech. And, that in the case of Sacco (another victim of shaming mentioned in Chapter Four), she became the symbolic enemy \u2013 rich, white person. The 4chan user claims that some \u201ccrimes\u201d \u2013like these \u2013 cannot be handled by the courts but by shaming.<\/p>\n

Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we learned, 4chan\/b\/ is ephemeral, with threads lasting no more than a few minutes and most disappearing from the front page within hours. \u00a0Because of this, Ronson\u2019s comment that \u201csomebody inside 4chan was silently erasing me whenever I tried to make contact\u201d (pg.121) seems like a misunderstanding of 4chan\/b\/. If so, a tad more research would have been beneficial instead of misleading readers about the nature of 4chan\/b\/ users or the level of administration\/moderation that occurs on the forum.<\/p>\n

In addition, the author\u2019s connection between stop and frisks and online activism seems relatively weak. In the connection to police, Ronson makes the statement that \u201cone by-product of [stop and frisks] was that some repeatedly frisked young people sought revenge in online activism \u2013 by joining 4chan\u201d (pg. 126). This statement is based on conversations with only two individuals from New York City. And, in his conversation with Troy, there is no mention that Troy even engages in online activism; his activity on 4chan could simply be to have a free space without interference instead of seeking revenge. \u00a0Although the evidence supporting the association between NYC stop and frisks and online activism isn\u2019t particularly strong in this book, the notion that powerlessness can translate over into bullying \u2013or shaming more broadly-\u00a0 does make sense.<\/p>\n

The conversation about Hank and Adria could have been bolstered with a conversation about guilt. Shame and guilt are different. The former leads to painful feelings about our identities (we feel bad about ourselves), and the latter leads to empathic views about how we behaved poorly as well as the consequential harm. \u00a0The discussion of guilt\/shame could help pull out the issues with shaming a little better to demonstrate why guilting someone might be a better alternative than shaming.<\/p>\n

The shameful rather than guilty response can be seen for both Hank and Adria. In Adria\u2019s response, she states: \u201cno one would have known he got fired until he complained\u201d (pg. 129) \u2026 and it was \u201chis own actions that resulted in his own firing, yet he framed it in a way to blame me\u201d (pg. 130). The result of her shaming appears to be defensive and angry rather than empathic and remorseful. Something similar can be said of Hank. In his response to Hacker News, he might not have appeared furiously angry. But his description of distancing from female co-workers shows some alteration to his self-worth. He notes that with female developers, \u201cI\u2019m not as friendly. There\u2019s humor, but it\u2019s very mundane. You just don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t afford another Donglegate\u201d (pg. 130).<\/p>\n

For both Hank and Adria, shame seems counterproductive. \u00a0I have not finished the book yet, but I hope there is a discussion about shame versus guilt. \u00a0And, in particular, how the public can elicit guilt rather than shame to help change people\u2019s behaviors for the better.<\/p>\n

Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Is shaming inherently bullying?<\/li>\n
  2. If not, when does shaming become bullying?<\/li>\n
  3. Is shaming justifiable for the greater good?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Article: Chapter Six: Doing Something Good in So You\u2019ve Been Publically Shamed by Jon Ronson Summary: In the sixth chapter of his book, the author opens with an account of developers Hank and Adria at Pycon. During a conference presentation, Hank and his colleague were joking together about \u2018dongles\u2019 and \u2018forking,\u2019 terms that had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}