Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is carefully written, keeping the reader’s attention by structuring it so that he does not get to the point right away and instead goes through every step that he takes and how that influenced the people in front of him as well as himself.. He mentions numerous times where it took many emails for the people to finally accept an interview with him. Ronson told everyone’s story in a documentary styled pace, and with every story he embedded other information that would become background knowledge for the following story. Through the use of concrete diction, Ronson is able to create a casual tone that drives readers through the interviews. Jonah Lehrer, one of the “publicly shamed” people, plagiarized most of his work as an author, and through this interview Ronson argued how one tweet can quickly ruin someone's life. After word was out that he plagiarized quotes, Lehrer became “drenched in shame and regret” (Ronson 34),and he quickly thought of a good opportunity to make a public apology. Lehrer had been invited to “deliver the after-lunch keynote” (Ronson 41) and he decided instead to prepare an apologetic speech live. What Lehrer did not know was that as he gave the apologetic speech there was a live twitter feed behind him and he would glance at it reading negative comments like, “[He’s] just boring people into forgiving him” (Ronson 46) or “[He’s] a friggin sociopath” (Ronson 46). Jonah Lehrer had been “begging for a second chance” (Ronson 44) and even though he looked like a “scared child in front of the class” (Ronson 44), everyone still kept tearing him down. Ronson’s decision to include Jonah’s story as well as others throughout the book strengthens his argument that social media ruins the lives of people in less than a second and he had begun by first sharing his story which gives him the credibility to write everyone else’s story since he went through it himself.
“All these people had, just as Steve Reicher said, come together spontaneously, without leadership. I wasn’t one of them. But I’d piled on plenty of people like Justine. I’d been beguiled by the new technology- a toddler crawling toward a gun. Just like with Dave Eshelman, it was the desire to do something good that had propelled me. Which was definitely a better thing to be propelled by than group madness. But my desire had taken a lot of scalps- I’d torn apart a lot of people I couldn’t now remember- which made me suspect that it was coming from some very dark well, someplace I didn’t really want to think about.”( Ronson 109)
Author of The Psychopath and other New York Times bestsellers, Jon Ronson explores a different kind of psychological phenomenon through his work, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Throughout the book, Ronson interviews people that are considered victims of public shaming and analyzes how those with seemingly no public influence can create a large impact on a stranger’s life. Ronson’s writing style is reflected in the excerpt above as he refers to the ideas developed by people he had interviewed and mentioned throughout the chapter, in this case being Steve Reicher, and applies similar philosophies to his own actions. Choosing to write in a way in which his own life choices are analyzed on the basis of public shaming, Ronson is able to avoid the sense of being superior to his audience as he acknowledges that he wields the same power online that others have used to publicly shame someone. Utilizing metaphors and other forms of figurative language throughout the book, as seen by the quote “a toddler crawling toward a gun,” Ronson comments on the quality of innocence that makes the power of having authority or influence dangerous as people with good intentions could unintentionally harm others. Ronson developed these ideas through cases like the Stanford experiment, where the young men acting as guards became more aggressive towards the prisoners in hopes of giving the experimenters good results, and Justine Sacco’s incident on Twitter, where she lost her job after posting a poorly made joke resulting in thousands of Twitter users attacking Sacco for being a privileged racist woman. By using a variety of examples, Ronson is able to interest readers that have read his other work related to psychological phenomena while attracting a newer audience that is more familiar with how social media functions. Intertwining multiple examples throughout one chapter, Ronson is able to instill a sense of power within the audience that would otherwise not be present as he emphasizes the dangers of using one’s authority carelessly. Through the connections he makes within each case and the analysis of his own life choices, Ronson hopes to aid the audience in realizing the power in their voices and the responsibility that comes with having an influence on the lives of others.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson engages the readers through the world of public shaming by providing direct quotes and specific background information throughout the book. Ronson’s use of direct quotes from those he interviewed gives the readers the true emotions felt by those personally victimized by the world of shaming on social media. For example, Ronson covers the shaming of Justine Sacco, who was shamed for a poorly worded joke she tweeted resulting in the world viewing her as a racist white woman and the loss of her dream job. Justine shared with Ronson how her life was still affected by the shaming even after some time had passed: “ I’m not fine. I’m really suffering. It was incredibly traumatic” (Ronson 80). Readers can begin to sympathize as they get a glimpse into what happens to those affected by the modern-day public shaming. Justine explained because of the aftermath of the shaming she felt as if she “ might lose [her]self” (Ronson 80). Readers start to understand the power they can have over one’s life when they contribute to a shaming. Furthermore, throughout Ronson’s journey through the publicly shamed, he expresses his own views about what he notices from each person he meets about shaming. For instance, while writing about Justine’s story he notes how he believed our “own natural disposition as humans is to plod along until get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama” (Ronson 79). He pieces together how the idea of shaming others may be established in our nature and the way social media has produced a sense of a never-ending shame fest on anyone who gets the spotlight. Through this combination of writing, Ronson creates a novel that makes readers feel that they are apart of his journey into the world of public shaming within a new culture that has been created by social media.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, Ronson’s interest in people whose lives have been ruined because of their viral public shamings sparked when he experiences it himself. In the beginning of the book, Ronson shares with his readers that his identity was used to make a fake twitter account without his permission. The “spambot” posted explicit content on the account that had been followed by people he knew personally and all he could do was ask the people behind the account to take it down. This experience left him feeling “powerless” until he developed an “unexpected discovery.” Jon Ronson was motivated to explore the lives of “the shamers and the shamed” and by sharing his experience as a victim, he provides readers with a distinctive perspective that strengthens his argument and continuously cuts right to the stories of how posts affected the lives of the “shamers and the shamed.” Ronson argues that people are friendlier in person than on the internet and wants the readers to know that everything they put on the internet should be carefully thought out because it could ultimately destroy them. Lindsey Stone, for example, took a picture mimicking a sign as a joke that read “Silence and Respect” on a national cemetery for soldiers. Lindsey tells Ronson that she was continuously being bombarded with comments from people who were wishing for her death. She was so terrified that she rarely left home, that is, until she was offered a job to mentor children with autism, where she became even more terrified. Lindsey accepted the job without mentioning the post and still felt that “the terror was always there.” Even though she was given really good compliments she always took it with a “heavy heart.” Linsdey’s example is one of many in Ronson’s book that found it difficult to live a freer lifestyle knowing that anyone could look them up on Google in a matter of seconds. Ronson’s exigency to write this book is to reach out to the younger generation who are now a part of social media by the time they turn ten. Ronson wants to put his message out to make others aware of what they are sending out to the public because it is impossible to remove it from the internet
In So You’ve been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson, Ronson intrigues his audience by sharing various instances of modern day public shaming while questioning its purpose and rationality. When illustrating the situation of the “shamee” (the individual being shamed), Ronson sticks to rather casual, yet precise diction which in turn makes the book easy to understand and successful in evoking sympathy from the reader towards the “shamee”.
“ 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 drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. What rush was overpowering us at times like this? What were we getting out of it?” (Ronson 79).
This paragraph clearly demonstrates the standpoint Ronson takes throughout the book because of his strategic use of rhetorical questions. Public shaming via the internet has become something common and normal; Ronson’s goal for using rhetorical and accusatory diction is to make the reader realize that although public shaming has become normal,it is immoral. Overall I would characterize Ronson's writing style as informal and idiomatic because of the way he is able to communicate with the reader in a logical yet understanding way. Ronson creates a sort of condemning tone in which he refers to public shaming as a flaw in human society that needs to be addressed.
In So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Robson, powerful, terrifying mysterious style intrigues his audience by using modern-day situations and as you read it quickly introduces a large social situation in society. Which takes on the author’s journey from confusion to enlightenment, in my opinion I was having a hard time understanding, but once I analyzed it started to make sense and created this big idea that it’s going what’s going on in society. This book argues that it’s bad not just for the “shamee“, but for the shamer as well; self-reflection within the chapters and the situations. “I suppose so when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious are collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche “ (Ronson56). The purpose of this line is to address the imbalance to compensate for the poverty of empathy that exist in the online world. Metaphorically speaking he means that each snowflake is only a piece of the avalanche and cannot be held responsible for the destruction it causes. Overall, this is a reminder that people on the Internet are real, and the things we do there have real world consequences, like in Jonah situation in plagiarism.
In the novel, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson takes the reader on a journey to dissect the act of public shaming in the twenty-first century. Ronson documents his interviews with victims of brutal public shamings on what it is like being the target of ridicule. Ronson’s writing style is both informative and interactive: He feeds the reader intriguing bits of information that have relevance to his countless interviews. Then, he baits his audience by proposing questions that the reader must want to know. Finally, once the reader reaches a pivotal moment in Ronson’s research, the chapter ends and the reader is left turning the page and wanting more. Ronson floods each chapter with excerpts from his conversations with victims of public shamings, ultimately creating an opportunity for the reader to see these disgraced victims as unguarded and genuine humans. Ronson acts as the mediator between the army of social predators and the people they prey on by giving these victims a platform to express their contrition.
“I’d been dismayed by the cruelty of the people who tore Jonah apart as he tried to apologize. But they weren’t the mob. We were the mob. I’d been blithely doing the same thing for a year or more. I had drifted into a new way of being. Who were the victims of my shamings?” (Ronson 89, par. 2)
Ronson uses critical diction to create a reproachful tone. Ronson is neither the good guy nor the bad guy. Instead, he is simply a spectator analyzing the evil in the world of public shaming- the evil that he admittedly contributes to. Jon relays a sense of humility by relating to the reader: By confessing to have participated in the act of shaming and dehumanizing someone online, Ronson prompts the reader to consider the amount of Jonah Lehrers they may have impetuously attacked behind the safety of their computer screens. He recognizes his own faults at mercilessly shaming others, and combats that relentless berating with the newfound knowledge he has gained from face-to-face conversations with victims of online shamings. As a result, Jon experiences a sense of self-reproach.
In the novel So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, Ronson explores the effects and lives of victims of modern shaming. Ronson’s writing style is rhetorical and humorous. Ronson’s writing style keeps the reader engaged as you want to keep up with Ronson’s research on modern shaming. Ronson utilizes detailed and joking diction to keep the reader engaged. As Ronson includes details of the victims' lives, Ronson also adds some comedic relief to the novel.
“‘I can fully grasp the misconception that’s happening around my world… They’ve taken my name and my picture, and have created this Justine Sacco that’s not me and have labeled this person a racist. I have this fear that if I were in a car accident tomorrow and lost my memory and came back and googled myself, that would be my new reality,’” (Ronson 75 paragraph 1).
Ronson included this quote by Justine, who tweeted a very controversial tweet which others deemed as racist, as a way to clearly show the negative effects public shaming has on the person. Justine was just making jokes on twitter but the whole situation turned for the worse on her. While Ronson has documented other lives that went through public shaming and included conversations between them, Justine’s quote fits strongly into what Ronson is trying to reveal: social media and other forms of public shaming is an awful approach leaving the life of the person in shambles.
“In the end, it was all academic for Michael. He said he felt as trapped in this story as Jonah was. It was like they were both in a car with failed brakes, hurtling helplessly toward this ending together. How could Michael not press send? What would people think if the story got out? That he’d covered it up for career advancement? I would have been the spineless so-called journalist who buckled to Andrew Wylie. I never would have worked again” (Ronson 26; chapter 2) In So You’ve been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson’s style of writing would be characterized to be understanding, illustrative, and blunt with his opinions when he explains stories of people who have felt ashamed due to their actions. To grab the reader’s attention, he uses critical diction and rhetorical questions to further emphasize on the difficulty of trying to understand people’s reasoning on shaming others. As Ronson is explaining the story of Michael and Jonah, he includes the controversy of how Michael could potentially publicly shame Jonah on a blog post: “He said he felt as trapped in this story as Jonah was”. Ronson uses a simile to try and make the reader feel empathetic towards the two people and make them feel engaged to the situation so that they can figure out the psychology behind their actions. He is also constantly asking the readers questions to further make them wonder if what was being done by the two men would actually be sane and humane. Ronson focuses on intriguing the audience by using real life situations to expand his purpose of making people rethink about their decisions and how making mistakes in life can make one’s life much more difficult. As an author, he does an excellent job of connecting the story he is saying by sharing his own thoughts along the way so that the reader can notice how there can be multiple ways to understand where these people are coming from. Not only is he entertaining with his side comments, but he also wants the audience to acknowledge how current social norms impact the way humans have flaws and how they perceive what is morally correct.
In his book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson recounts the ultimate effects on those who have been condemned by public shaming. He has put together conversations with those who've been shames and using storytelling techniques to apprise the readers with the story of those people while remaining open-minded about the situations. While retelling these events, Ronson interacts with the reader to keep interest while conveying the details leading to the moment that causes the shame itself. He also includes quotes directly from the conversations with the shamed to put out the sense that they felt like victims who made "a giant miscalculation"(Ronson 58). In this example with Jonah Lehrer, Jon points out that the ridicule Jonah had faced has made him "exhausted"(Ronson 57) by "the effects of the stress"(Ronson 58) he has dealt with. Throughout his storytelling, Ronson uses a lot of metaphor along other figurative language to appeal to the feeling of the shamed as he thought they fitted best, such as Jonah acting "like a popped balloon shooting wildly in all directions"(Ronson 58) and later feeling disenfranchised about losing parts of himself. Jon Ronson has the ability to relate to these people as he was part of a public shaming himself, but also relate to those who are young or have a presence in social media since it has become a major part in which these shamings have taken place. Apart from that, he has deliberately researched the topic of shame as a process that cannot be stopped. Ronson's writing style has allowed him to reach out to his readers and give a perspective of the people involved who have made a mistake.
“But the shifting sands of shame worthiness had shifted away from sex scandals—if you’re a man—to work improprieties and perceived white previlidge, and I suddenly understood the real reason why Max has survived his shaming. Nobody cared. Max survived his shaming because he was a man in a consensual sex shaming — which meant that there had been no shaming. I e-mailed Max to tell him. “Nobody cared!” I wrote “Of all the public scandals, being a man in a consensual sex scandal is probably the one to hope for.” Max was a target for no one— not liberals like me not the online misogynists who tear apart women who step out of line. Max suffered nothing. An hour passed. Then Max e-mailed back: “Hi Ron. I think you are spot on” ( Ronson 185-186 ) Ronson has a writing style that more closely is aligned to someone who carefully articulated their thoughts. The way he articulates himself feel like his entire thought process is refined and put in nicer words clearly showing how one discussion gives him an idea and how it develops into real actions. While I am not as knowledgeable as Ronson his flow of words and thoughts is very relatable and raw in a refined sense to me. His diction as can at times be more sophisticated and at other moments be filled with satisfaction, irritation, and awkwardness that comes with these interviews and situations he puts himself through. He gives the book the tone of a written documentary where nothing that he does was set out. He ,like the rest of us, leaves each day and event with a tone of curiosity and genuine learning.
Jon Ronson writes in a chronological order and states facts of the event occurring at the moment. Jon Ronson also puts in his own opinion based on people’s actions and his own. In the book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”, author, Jon Ronson, uses diction in order to create the sense of shaming happening in the person’s life at the moment. After the exposure of Jonah’s lying, he decide to escape into the wilderness. Jon Ronson wrote his opinion based on that action, “ It seemed appropriate that we were hiking in a desert canyon because his punishment felt quite biblical, a public shaming followed by a casting out into the wilderness, although that analogy only went so far because biblical wilderness tend not to be filled with extremely beautiful movie stars and models walking their dogs.” (Page 40, 2nd paragraph). Jon Ronson wrote this to create a sarcastic tone of Jonah’s reflection in the “wilderness” that he is staying. The author wants the audience, writers and fans, to know that just by going away from your problems for a while doesn’t show a remorse in an instant. To show remorse towards the readers of their articles or books is by writing their own story by themselves and writing the truth.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, Ronson introduces various examples of publish shaming being a concept that is prominent in society thanks to social media. This allows for the opinions of people, no matter how toxic, to be shared with the world and also allows for regular people to rally together online to protest massive corporations or bring attention to the actions of an individual. Ronson chimes in as the narrator of these stories of the shamed to give his opinion on the effects of mobs of people attacking other online. For example, Jonah Lehrer was a respected author who worked for companies like The Daily Mail and Wired, was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and was paid thousands to speak at various conferences but was exposed for using fake quotes in his book of Bob Marley.Ronson in his style of writing uses powerful adjectives which make the reader appeal to his opinion like on the resurgence of public shaming. Ronson used diction when stating the shaming Jonah experiences was “Important”(34), and was the introduction of “The shape of things to come”(34) because Lehrer was brought down by someone “Powerless”(34).Ronson uses this selection of words to perceive the situation as a regular person witnessing the start of something great. This diction creates a motivational tone because it highlights that no matter how much honor and respect someone has, we live in a generation where a regular person can change how corporations or people with power are perceived. Ronson believe this mentality is righteous as he describes the public shaming as a “Renaissance”(34) which punishes the “ Bigoted Daily Mail columnists”(34) and “Monolithic gym chains”(34). Ronson again uses the diction through his description of wicked companies to reassess that this resurgence of public shaming gives power back to regular people and they don’t have to settle for these companies or people who step out of line. However, Ronson states that the “Uncovering of his lies was appropriate” which tell us readers that this form was justice was justified. We can see through Ronson’s tone that he’s confident that the publication exposing Lehrer was justified which displays that this form of public shaming has regular people be the judges of right and wrong in these situations. Lehrer believed this shouldn’t be revealed but after he was exposed to the public they decided not to let this mistake slide leading to Lehrer’s reputation to be ruined.
“We were much frightening than Judge Ted Poe. The powerful, crazy, cruel people I usually write about tend to be in far-off places. The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people’s flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.” In the novel So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson writes a provoking investigative expedition focusing on the conspiring and nature of public shaming on the internet. Ronson uses dramatic diction in order to create an informative tone. Throughout the book, Ronson includes many case studies and meets with many people who have been publicly shamed or have shamed others. Ronson goes to speak to Ted Poe, a lawyer, who uses public shaming as a form of justice. Only to find out that his mechanism seemed effective in some aspects it made people less likely to commit another crime, but it did have psychological effects. Ronson describes online shaming as more ‘frightening’ than the type of shaming Ted Poe would do. Although Ted Poe had been brutal and made people do crazy things. (90) Ronson describes ‘shamees’ online more ‘frightening’ to create an informative tone that we people collectively are crueler online because there is no limit to what we say online. Specially in shaming, because there’s too many people who are contaiged with rage and fury that it can’t all be controlled. Ronson speaks about the transgression of Twitter and how it had gone from a place being ‘Even from the Eden Garden’ to a place where people ‘keenly’ watched for the next transgression. Ronson describes everyone- including himself, as ‘soldiers making war on other people’s flaws’, to create a dramatic tone and inform people of the brutality of our society on the Internet. Ronson discovers while speaking to Ted Poe that in the real world we have rights whereas on internet we are allowed to say what we want. The main question is to what extent and what is okay to say and why do these crowds violently form. Ronson intention is to bring awareness about the brutal shaming online and inform why it happens.
With the rise of social media, people who normally would not have a platform to speak their mind are now able to do so. Although social media provides a stronger sense of community to those who are outcasts in their everyday lives, it also has the power to ostracize a person for a mistake they have made, intentionally or not, making their chances of starting anew difficult as their past is permanently online. With the curious eye of a journalist, Jon Ronson had become interested in the topic of public shaming as ordinary people with seemingly no influence are easily able to destroy an individual both online and in their personal lives. Throughout his work, Ronson analyzes how modern public shaming is much like that of the past, where humiliation is much more impactful than the physical punishment itself. With this realization, readers are able to understand that people continue to recycle systems of the past and adapt them to the technology available in modern life without realising it. Including thoughts of both the shamed and those doing the shaming, Ronson explains how both parties do not act out of malice, but the aftermath makes the online platform seem malicious. Having seen the damaging effects of being publicly shamed through multiple interviews, Ronson hoped to relay the message that people, regardless of their following, have the power to influence the lives of others online and should act responsibly with that power. As a reader, it is important to reflect on how public shaming has affected the individuals interviewed throughout the book to truly understand public shaming. In addition to this, Ronson hopes his readers are able to humanize online personas to represent the person that is truly in control of that account and keep an open mind when someone makes a mistake online.
“It’s a book about us-the shamers and the shamed. So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a powerful, funny, unique, and very humane dispatch from the frontline in the escalating war on human nature and its flaws“,(Jon Ronson). The purpose is to show two sides of every public shaming and the after math of “the shamed”. That there is two sides to every story; “the shamed“ are sometimes misunderstood and it end up in situations that sometimes cause them problems. The author writes about different situations in which, “the shamed“ or not to blame. It's human nature to misunderstand situations which create opinions that may or may not help, “the shamed“. Social media is not always right they need audience which causes them to make up stories to attract a drama which help create, “shamers“. More over the idea that help him create this is deeper thought of how people perceive different situations and the mysterious development that is written in the book, but of what I have seen from other book titles like: The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries, there could be a comparison to that thought. Also I have notice that himself goes of in an adventure to look for people who have been through this and show their perspective on dealing with it. In my opinion as I read I developed this sense of fault since as humans we have opinions and we don't limit what we say or think we just express them. We never think of what the person was doing and we end up falsely accuse them for something we misunderstood and as I read it creates this fault which is what the author creates by showing real life examples. For us to see human nature at it finest and read that we could either be in either side of the story “the shamed“ or “the shamer".
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, the novel starts off with Jon sharing his experience with a spambot that was using his name and pictures on Twitter. Enraged at the creators of the spambot for their motives behind their creation, Jon ultimately found himself using a destructive weapon in today’s world: online shaming. From then on, Jon goes on a journey about the power of online shaming can have in the real world. With each story he follows, readers learn about the complexity of shaming from those who have received a shaming. Readers are confronted with an actual person that the internet has dehumanized in a series of tweets and vulgar comments. Throughout the stories, people share how powerful online shamings are and the fear it creates. For instance, Ronson interviews Ted Poe, a judge known for publicly shaming those found guilty. They discuss the difference between Poe’s shaming and online shaming, and Poe admits that online shaming is much more frightening: “You don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the Internet. And the consequences are worse. It’s worldwide forever”(Ronson 90). At the end of the book, Ronson concludes that the reason why online public shamings are so powerful is because of “feedback loops”. Since the internet is constantly giving people immediate reactions and responses to their certain behaviors, it fuels group polarization. People associate themselves with others who are similar to us, so when a shaming occurs the people feel empowered by it because they are surrounded by people who support and reinforce the behavior. We feel as if we have done some good without ever considering the real consequences left by our online actions. Ronson ends his story with an unsettling line: “ We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it” (Ronson 281). In this new age of social media, we have been given this perception that we can freely share our thoughts and opinions with the rest of the world because these platforms are supposed to create an “open-minded” environment. Though the internet does not necessarily directly have guidelines about how you are supposed to view a particular event or person, there is collective groupthink established that will tear down through shaming, or in today’s words “cancel”, those who don’t think like them. As a society that regularly uses social media, we must consider the true power that we share online when it comes to defining the line between accepting and shaming, and the consequences that will occur in real life as a result of that defining line.
In a world where we are pressured to choose a side, Jon Ronson chooses to voice an unpopular opinion on something that might be considered taboo: online shaming. While online shaming itself is common, dissecting it in the way Ronson does in his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, is a decision that is unique and bold. Initially,it is easy to interpret Ronson’s motives to be a warning against the dangers of putting our words out permanently into the public. However, Ronson actually addresses that this “wasn’t the message [he] was going for” (Ronson 284). In fact, Ronson’s true motivation for the book seems to be an attempt at reconnecting people with basic humanity. Ronson gives many examples of online shaming and compares them to public shaming. In most cases, public shamings as utilized by Ted Poe sound much more severe than the shamings going on online. To the reader's surprise, Ronson states, “We were more frightening than Judge Ted Poe...The powerful,crazy,cruel people were now us” (Ronson 90). The language Ronson utilizes to describe shamers goes to show just how grotesque online shaming is. This view is most definitely not the most popular one, considering most of the shamers are driven by “the desire to do good” (Ronson 123). So while many believe they are doing the right thing by shaming a person as a means of fixing their behavior, they are in fact doing more unnecessary harm than good. On top of this they are also corrupting themselves in terms of what they perceive as right and wrong. This is the message Ronson is wanting to establish. Ronson wants us to realize that our words do have power stronger than what we realize it to be. He states “ we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt”. This is extremely significant to Ronson’s argument because it portrays the shamer as unaware of the true consequences of these impulsive mass online shamings. For this reason, Ronson’s main focus was the aftermath of shamings via twitter on people who made minor missteps. Ronson is able to admit that these people made a mistake but is also stating that they received much more hate than they deserved. What I took away from this book is that we as a society revolved around social media have to take a step back and realize what exactly we are doing. The last lines of the afterword are strategically the most powerful in the book: “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let’s not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless” (Ronson, 310). At the end of the day we are all people, and people make mistakes. Ronson makes it clear that he does not mean to end all online shaming,that would be impossible, but to at least change the atmosphere of it. There are thousands of people on the opposing side of the spectrum,completely destroying a single human being. The internet gives us a power that is often times abused. A person's successful life could quickly go hurtling down at the tap of a screen and it’s something utterly terrifying and horrific. It’s not something that should be taken lightly. Tearing one person down isn’t going to achieve the good that people seek. We have the power to do something good but we are going about it the wrong way and not being the good we want to see in the world.
Jon Ronson’s motivation for creating this text come by his first shaming experience. Ronson writes that after his run-in with the twitter bot and the humiliation of the researchers that came after, he would join the twitter mob on public humiliations of countless others. Ronson wanted to explore what was the after effect of humiliations, what did people feel on both sides of the ordeal, and why certain scandals get harsher responses. Ronson wanted to expose himself and the audience to what shame is, how taxing it can be on people emotionally and professionally. He wanted to illustrate that the person shaming may have colleagues who confess their wrongdoings in fear of being exposed by him and the shamee being unable to publish anymore works due to the diminishing of his credibility. Ronson exposes the reader to people brutally torn down on twitter and their immense retraction from society as one side of the spectrum of the effects of shaming, but also introduces the reader to Max. Max was someone who had consensual sexual encounters with women in uniform but received little to no backlash and was even able to sue for defamation and win. Ronson is, with his exploration of all types of humiliations and exceptions and supposed ways of being immune to humiliation, attempting to show the reader that there are consequences when we humiliate someone online. However while someone can feel devastated some don’t get hung online but their transgressions go simply unnoticed by people because it doesn’t offend any group particularly. As an internet ecosystem we are quick to shame someone in power for non-PC language and crucify people who are racists and those with opposing views on sensitive topics. And with those humiliations came a wave of supporters for the one crucified due to the increasing polarized world we live in and that’s the only humiliation that sells now days, the humiliation that reaches national news and gets blogs written. Ronson wants the reader to realize that they have grown hungry for polarized humiliations and are quick to let sexual scandals fall through the grate and be forgotten solely because there are no powerful people attached. Ronson wants the reader to view the other side of humiliations, the complexities of the damage, and our own prejudices against certain things. Ronson knows that people are quick to join and then exit a mob of humiliators at their own pleasure and then forget the person which they humiliated, Ronson has many times. Ronson wants the reader to think of both sides, to not jump on the humiliation mob so quickly and just recognize that these humiliations are skewed to cater to the growing polarization, but that does not exempt the shamee from vivid emotions afterwards.
With powerful moments in Jon Ronson's novel, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws, and the scary part we all play in it. With his book, Ronson tries to understand the modern transgressions are inversely connected with online public shaming and the reason why those behind a screen find it so acceptable to do so, while examining the effects of the ones who are put to shame. He argues that this type of exposure and humiliation is rather frightening, describing the "group madness"(Ronson 80) that inherently justifies the conflicting behavior designed to make others feel ashamed of their mistakes. We are using shame as a form of social control. To demonstrate this truth, he argues with cases of public shamings, including his own experience thinking he could change the behavior of those who are doing the shaming as a way of punishment and show the brutality that this ultimately has n people. Ronson wants the reader to comprehend that individuals have become obsessed with being furious at the offences of others and taking justice into their own manners. Essentially, Jon Ronson wants us to see that with all this power at our fingertips, we are using it to humiliate the flaws of the shame and wants us to recognize the real damage that we can create with the spread of a few words on the internet. Using public shaming, especially online, unknowingly destroys the lives of others rather than having constructive conversations has become the new normal. The public shaming of Justine Sacco or maybe Lindsey Stone went viral and cost both women years of online reputational damage. All types of people participated in condemn these women; the majority never meet them or knew them, however, were able to ruin their lives with a post. In the end, the reader should take away that the consequences that public shaming can be chaotic for the reason of wanting to penalize someone in that moment, and without intending to, moving on to the next.
Ronson himself is never quite sure of his purpose in writing So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Initially, Ronson’s goal was to bring attention to those who have been rebuked online, prompting the reader to ask themselves, “What is life like for the people who have been publicly shamed”? Ronson keeps the outline and direction of the novel flexible: He is entertained at the suggestion that his novel could act as a guide to recovery for victims of brutal public shamings. After hearing this idea, Ronson executes more interviews in search of a pattern and any possible resolution for the loathed victims. Overall, when it comes down to the sole purpose of the novel, Ronson is quite unaligned. He is willing to keep his mind open to new ideas that could assist victims and shamees in finding common ground. However, he adheres to the message that perhaps everyone deserves a second chance. He emphasizes the fact that many of the victims of public shamings never imagined themselves in such a feared position. Ronson gives those who have been ridiculed a platform to tell their stories. Perchance an opportunity to ask for forgiveness when no one listened before. Jon Ronson is listening. While he may or may not offer the sympathy that these shamees might be searching for, he listens. Ronson gives those who have been berated something that no one has yet to offer- a chance. Public shaming is potentially at its worst point in history with the help of technological advancements. People have the power to ruin the life of another with the click of a mouse. One day these victims were people, and the next they are monsters. Perhaps next time, the reader will stop and remember the stories behind those who never would have imagined that they would one day be publicly shamed. Perhaps you could be next.
In the novel, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, unravels the re-emergence of public shaming as a form of social control across the Internet in this age of conformity. Ronson’s exigency for writing this novel is to encourage people to stop defining the boundaries of normality and to not reject the people outside of it. Throughout the novel, Ronson meets with many people who have shamed others or have been shamed, speaks to many knowledgeable people aware of the topic, and focuses on the flaws of human nature. For example, Ronson ponders over the flaws of the criminal justice system and how it’s suppose to repair harm but sometimes “prisoners…have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time-…”(Ronson,228). People who commit crimes tend to be brought down by society and police and it roots away from the humane parts. Many people form this idea and concept that murderers are sociopaths and do not feel shame for their acts, but Galligan proves otherwise. Ronson meets with Galligan, a psychiatrist and well known informed chronicler on what shaming can do to inner lives. Galligan says that most times prisoners feel mortified and their “bodies are empty or filled with straw, not flesh and blood…Instead of having veins and nerves they have ropes or cord.”(Ronson,250). Prisoners feel the deepest shame and are “ashamed of feeling shame”. Jonah Lehrer and many others had felt that shame as they had been terrorized for years online for acts that sometimes just as prisoners could be seen as small things that receive harsh punishment. Ronson’s motivation for writing this is to consider thinking “twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position”(Ronson,260). After all, we are all human and we all make mistakes we should be able to learn and grow from them. Ronson says, “but we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don’t?”(Ronson,255) Ronson also criticizes how society can be closed off to giving second chances to those who make mistakes. For example as seen predominantly in Western society, recently there has been the creation of, “Cancel Culture”. Cancel culture doesn’t give the space or room for people to grow and learn from their mistakes and just destroys people’s lives completely. People and companies do this so effortlessly without thinking of the consequences or the inflicting pain it can cause to someone, and make them feel as if a “prisoner” in their inner selves. For example, Google had made $120,000-$456,000 from destroying Justine Sacco’s life, as it was the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter. Although in some cases, there were people who were “survivors” after having a scandal such as Max Mosley, Mike Daisey, and people in the Andrew Wright scandal. In which all of them people simply did not care much for because it did not target any general audience. As a reader, I took away from this excerpt that our society has become very conformed and conservative in the way we handle ourselves across the Internet. We do not let people be able to freely express themselves without being quick to shame someone if it opposes a larger idea or concept. We should not let shame define us as a person and fight to keep our dignity. “We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.”(Ronson,269) We should all try to be more open and accepting to others as a community by opposing to the normality.
Jon Ronson’s purpose in writing this novel is to not only demonstrate how public shaming has changed throughout the years but also shows the effects and consequences that modern public shaming has on a person. Ronson provides a personal anecdote of a twitter spambot or infomorph that "stole" his identity. Ronson uploaded youtube footage exposing the spam bot which led to people to shame the creators of the spam bot. This resulted in the account being deleted. Ronson includes this anecdote to stretch out his idea on how dangerous modern public shaming is. The novel is focused on different people Ronson interviewed who have experienced public shaming first-hand and people who were involved in that shaming. Ronson is able to use these people that undergone shaming to show how dangerous and humiliating public shaming is these days. Ronson also illustrates how dangerous shaming is in a professional environment. For example, Jonah Lehrer has lost his credibility after being exposed to plagiarizing work in his book, Justine and Hank were fired after being shamed for what they did. Not only does this damage their job but also hurts their state of mind. The ability to shame people via the internet has a dangerous outcome. Justine was branded as an entirely different person and people lost their credibility due to this public shaming. Furthermore, Ronson compares modern shaming constructed by the internet to shaming from the past. Ted Poe is a clear example of how Ronson incorporates this comparison. Ted Poe humiliated people for their crimes in public and demonstrated how it benefitted the person committing the crime. Ted Poe says “You don't have any rights when you're accused on the internet. And the consequences are worse” (Ronson 90). This quote was intentionally used to describe the shamings from a while ago to the shamings caused by the internet. What's important to take away from this book is how shamings can cause a brutal effect on their reputation and their emotional state of mind which is clearly shown by the people who were being interviewed.
Jon Ronson's motivation to write this book about public shaming when he had a first hand experience with the concept after he uploaded an interviewer with people who created a spam bot and used it to try to mimic his characteristics on twitter but in the end shared no characteristics that were similar to Ronson. Ronson gained support online via people commenting on his video which viewed these people as," Utter hateful arseholes"(Ronson 8). These comments were pretty harsh and shamed the creators to delete the spam bot that used Jon Ronson’s identity and felt content that strangers unanimously support Ronson in his time of need and to attack the creators. Ronson’s initial main argument was that public shaming was good as it allowed for people to enact change solely through social media and point out bigotry or companies taking advantage of its consumers to keep things in check and make sure these entities with power are brought down to our level and to make sure they don’t step out of line. This in a way gives ordinary people who have a social media account to bring forward change. However, Ronson takes a deep look into call out culture on twitter and delves into the after effects on not only people with power like Jonah Lehrer but regular people like Justine Sacco,and two tech developers who ended up losing their jobs after online backlash forced their employers to take action. Ronson begins to fear twitter’s call out culture but soon comes to the realization that twitter communities aren’t to blame but us as people who take advantage of the anonymity social media gives us which allows for ruthless opinions to be shared with each other online and also display the lack of empathy people have for each other in order to enjoy some twitter drama. Ronson wants the reader to think before jumping into hate mobs head first as many of these people’s lives can be ruined for the enjoyment that only lasts us a few days and that our actions online can be used to bring a positive change into a progressing society but can also bring real harm into the real world.
The author Jon Ronson writes in the first-person point of view to allow the readers to fully understand how it is that he goes about understanding how society attacks and gang up on those that are deemed of the punishment in their eyes. "You turn around and you suddenly realize you're the head of a pitchfork mob... And it's 'What are these people fucking doing here? Why are they acting like heathens?... It was horrible...those people were so cold"(51). Jon was talking with Michael and hears all of this through his first-hand experience and uses the diction of describing the crowd with a mob mentality and vicious description which creates his impression of how cruel and heinous the mob mentality is. This begins the impression on the reader that the internet that makes itself the judge jury and executioner is now the enemy and the people that did the wrong thing were the ones that deserved the empathy of the audience. July 25 one sorry :P
In the book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson’s main exigency is to write about the difficulties and major setbacks that people encounter when they have made the mistake of saying something online that they were not aware of ruining their lives. He throughly explains the outcomes of various people in different scenarios to further get to his argument of how people are becoming traumatized and are constantly being shamed by others due to their poor actions. Ronson wants the readers to know that people who are committing these errors are being forced to change their lives in a way they do not want to. They are being physically and emotionally hurt by the vast amount of hatred comments and being shamed when being seen in public. This negativity that has been put into their lives have impacted the way human beings are being treated nowadays. By seeing people feeling depressed, people not wanting to go out in public, or people not wanting to be themselves and not want to live their lives anymore is what motivated Ronson to engage in the curiosity of why we as people go through things like this in life or even the fact that us as human beings decide to shame on others especially in front of a public place. He emphasizes on telling the reader “US” to illustrate the purpose of realizing how we as people are hurting each other instead of just saying that those people that have been shaming others in person and on social media are the only ones to cause this problem. Our society continues to let it happen and he makes the readers want to connect and react to his argument by sharing different scenarios that they can sympathize to. The reader should be taking away the idea of how they can help or change their ways on social media to better our society. He does not want more people to go through the same experiences others and himself did. The consequences that people have received has made the reader rethink about their actions and how they should handle something that they do not like in a different matter. Ronson wants the reader to reconsider what they post online or even what they say to others in general that may affect people’s lives because words can be powerful. (Debanhi Guerrero)
30 comments:
Jaydee Ramos:
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is carefully written, keeping the reader’s attention by structuring it so that he does not get to the point right away and instead goes through every step that he takes and how that influenced the people in front of him as well as himself.. He mentions numerous times where it took many emails for the people to finally accept an interview with him. Ronson told everyone’s story in a documentary styled pace, and with every story he embedded other information that would become background knowledge for the following story. Through the use of concrete diction, Ronson is able to create a casual tone that drives readers through the interviews. Jonah Lehrer, one of the “publicly shamed” people, plagiarized most of his work as an author, and through this interview Ronson argued how one tweet can quickly ruin someone's life. After word was out that he plagiarized quotes, Lehrer became “drenched in shame and regret” (Ronson 34),and he quickly thought of a good opportunity to make a public apology. Lehrer had been invited to “deliver the after-lunch keynote” (Ronson 41) and he decided instead to prepare an apologetic speech live. What Lehrer did not know was that as he gave the apologetic speech there was a live twitter feed behind him and he would glance at it reading negative comments like, “[He’s] just boring people into forgiving him” (Ronson 46) or “[He’s] a friggin sociopath” (Ronson 46). Jonah Lehrer had been “begging for a second chance” (Ronson 44) and even though he looked like a “scared child in front of the class” (Ronson 44), everyone still kept tearing him down. Ronson’s decision to include Jonah’s story as well as others throughout the book strengthens his argument that social media ruins the lives of people in less than a second and he had begun by first sharing his story which gives him the credibility to write everyone else’s story since he went through it himself.
Mia Hernandez:
“All these people had, just as Steve Reicher said, come together spontaneously, without leadership. I wasn’t one of them. But I’d piled on plenty of people like Justine. I’d been beguiled by the new technology- a toddler crawling toward a gun. Just like with Dave Eshelman, it was the desire to do something good that had propelled me. Which was definitely a better thing to be propelled by than group madness. But my desire had taken a lot of scalps- I’d torn apart a lot of people I couldn’t now remember- which made me suspect that it was coming from some very dark well, someplace I didn’t really want to think about.”( Ronson 109)
Author of The Psychopath and other New York Times bestsellers, Jon Ronson explores a different kind of psychological phenomenon through his work, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Throughout the book, Ronson interviews people that are considered victims of public shaming and analyzes how those with seemingly no public influence can create a large impact on a stranger’s life.
Ronson’s writing style is reflected in the excerpt above as he refers to the ideas developed by people he had interviewed and mentioned throughout the chapter, in this case being Steve Reicher, and applies similar philosophies to his own actions. Choosing to write in a way in which his own life choices are analyzed on the basis of public shaming, Ronson is able to avoid the sense of being superior to his audience as he acknowledges that he wields the same power online that others have used to publicly shame someone.
Utilizing metaphors and other forms of figurative language throughout the book, as seen by the quote “a toddler crawling toward a gun,” Ronson comments on the quality of innocence that makes the power of having authority or influence dangerous as people with good intentions could unintentionally harm others. Ronson developed these ideas through cases like the Stanford experiment, where the young men acting as guards became more aggressive towards the prisoners in hopes of giving the experimenters good results, and Justine Sacco’s incident on Twitter, where she lost her job after posting a poorly made joke resulting in thousands of Twitter users attacking Sacco for being a privileged racist woman.
By using a variety of examples, Ronson is able to interest readers that have read his other work related to psychological phenomena while attracting a newer audience that is more familiar with how social media functions. Intertwining multiple examples throughout one chapter, Ronson is able to instill a sense of power within the audience that would otherwise not be present as he emphasizes the dangers of using one’s authority carelessly. Through the connections he makes within each case and the analysis of his own life choices, Ronson hopes to aid the audience in realizing the power in their voices and the responsibility that comes with having an influence on the lives of others.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson engages the readers through the world of public shaming by providing direct quotes and specific background information throughout the book. Ronson’s use of direct quotes from those he interviewed gives the readers the true emotions felt by those personally victimized by the world of shaming on social media. For example, Ronson covers the shaming of Justine Sacco, who was shamed for a poorly worded joke she tweeted resulting in the world viewing her as a racist white woman and the loss of her dream job. Justine shared with Ronson how her life was still affected by the shaming even after some time had passed: “ I’m not fine. I’m really suffering. It was incredibly traumatic” (Ronson 80). Readers can begin to sympathize as they get a glimpse into what happens to those affected by the modern-day public shaming. Justine explained because of the aftermath of the shaming she felt as if she “ might lose [her]self” (Ronson 80). Readers start to understand the power they can have over one’s life when they contribute to a shaming. Furthermore, throughout Ronson’s journey through the publicly shamed, he expresses his own views about what he notices from each person he meets about shaming. For instance, while writing about Justine’s story he notes how he believed our “own natural disposition as humans is to plod along until get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama” (Ronson 79). He pieces together how the idea of shaming others may be established in our nature and the way social media has produced a sense of a never-ending shame fest on anyone who gets the spotlight. Through this combination of writing, Ronson creates a novel that makes readers feel that they are apart of his journey into the world of public shaming within a new culture that has been created by social media.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, Ronson’s interest in people whose lives have been ruined because of their viral public shamings sparked when he experiences it himself. In the beginning of the book, Ronson shares with his readers that his identity was used to make a fake twitter account without his permission. The “spambot” posted explicit content on the account that had been followed by people he knew personally and all he could do was ask the people behind the account to take it down. This experience left him feeling “powerless” until he developed an “unexpected discovery.” Jon Ronson was motivated to explore the lives of “the shamers and the shamed” and by sharing his experience as a victim, he provides readers with a distinctive perspective that strengthens his argument and continuously cuts right to the stories of how posts affected the lives of the “shamers and the shamed.” Ronson argues that people are friendlier in person than on the internet and wants the readers to know that everything they put on the internet should be carefully thought out because it could ultimately destroy them. Lindsey Stone, for example, took a picture mimicking a sign as a joke that read “Silence and Respect” on a national cemetery for soldiers. Lindsey tells Ronson that she was continuously being bombarded with comments from people who were wishing for her death. She was so terrified that she rarely left home, that is, until she was offered a job to mentor children with autism, where she became even more terrified. Lindsey accepted the job without mentioning the post and still felt that “the terror was always there.” Even though she was given really good compliments she always took it with a “heavy heart.” Linsdey’s example is one of many in Ronson’s book that found it difficult to live a freer lifestyle knowing that anyone could look them up on Google in a matter of seconds. Ronson’s exigency to write this book is to reach out to the younger generation who are now a part of social media by the time they turn ten. Ronson wants to put his message out to make others aware of what they are sending out to the public because it is impossible to remove it from the internet
In So You’ve been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson, Ronson intrigues his audience by sharing various instances of modern day public shaming while questioning its purpose and rationality. When illustrating the situation of the “shamee” (the individual being shamed), Ronson sticks to rather casual, yet precise diction which in turn makes the book easy to understand and successful in evoking sympathy from the reader towards the “shamee”.
“ 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 drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. What rush was overpowering us at times like this? What were we getting out of it?” (Ronson 79).
This paragraph clearly demonstrates the standpoint Ronson takes throughout the book because of his strategic use of rhetorical questions. Public shaming via the internet has become something common and normal; Ronson’s goal for using rhetorical and accusatory diction is to make the reader realize that although public shaming has become normal,it is immoral. Overall I would characterize Ronson's writing style as informal and idiomatic because of the way he is able to communicate with the reader in a logical yet understanding way. Ronson creates a sort of condemning tone in which he refers to public shaming as a flaw in human society that needs to be addressed.
In So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Robson, powerful, terrifying mysterious style intrigues his audience by using modern-day situations and as you read it quickly introduces a large social situation in society. Which takes on the author’s journey from confusion to enlightenment, in my opinion I was having a hard time understanding, but once I analyzed it started to make sense and created this big idea that it’s going what’s going on in society. This book argues that it’s bad not just for the “shamee“, but for the shamer as well; self-reflection within the chapters and the situations. “I suppose so when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious are collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche “ (Ronson56). The purpose of this line is to address the imbalance to compensate for the poverty of empathy that exist in the online world. Metaphorically speaking he means that each snowflake is only a piece of the avalanche and cannot be held responsible for the destruction it causes. Overall, this is a reminder that people on the Internet are real, and the things we do there have real world consequences, like in Jonah situation in plagiarism.
In the novel, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson takes the reader on a journey to dissect the act of public shaming in the twenty-first century. Ronson documents his interviews with victims of brutal public shamings on what it is like being the target of ridicule. Ronson’s writing style is both informative and interactive: He feeds the reader intriguing bits of information that have relevance to his countless interviews. Then, he baits his audience by proposing questions that the reader must want to know. Finally, once the reader reaches a pivotal moment in Ronson’s research, the chapter ends and the reader is left turning the page and wanting more.
Ronson floods each chapter with excerpts from his conversations with victims of public shamings, ultimately creating an opportunity for the reader to see these disgraced victims as unguarded and genuine humans. Ronson acts as the mediator between the army of social predators and the people they prey on by giving these victims a platform to express their contrition.
“I’d been dismayed by the cruelty of the people who tore Jonah apart as he tried to apologize. But they weren’t the mob. We were the mob. I’d been blithely doing the same thing for a year or more. I had drifted into a new way of being. Who were the victims of my shamings?” (Ronson 89, par. 2)
Ronson uses critical diction to create a reproachful tone. Ronson is neither the good guy nor the bad guy. Instead, he is simply a spectator analyzing the evil in the world of public shaming- the evil that he admittedly contributes to. Jon relays a sense of humility by relating to the reader: By confessing to have participated in the act of shaming and dehumanizing someone online, Ronson prompts the reader to consider the amount of Jonah Lehrers they may have impetuously attacked behind the safety of their computer screens. He recognizes his own faults at mercilessly shaming others, and combats that relentless berating with the newfound knowledge he has gained from face-to-face conversations with victims of online shamings. As a result, Jon experiences a sense of self-reproach.
In the novel So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, Ronson explores the effects and lives of victims of modern shaming. Ronson’s writing style is rhetorical and humorous. Ronson’s writing style keeps the reader engaged as you want to keep up with Ronson’s research on modern shaming. Ronson utilizes detailed and joking diction to keep the reader engaged. As Ronson includes details of the victims' lives, Ronson also adds some comedic relief to the novel.
“‘I can fully grasp the misconception that’s happening around my world… They’ve taken my name and my picture, and have created this Justine Sacco that’s not me and have labeled this person a racist. I have this fear that if I were in a car accident tomorrow and lost my memory and came back and googled myself, that would be my new reality,’” (Ronson 75 paragraph 1).
Ronson included this quote by Justine, who tweeted a very controversial tweet which others deemed as racist, as a way to clearly show the negative effects public shaming has on the person. Justine was just making jokes on twitter but the whole situation turned for the worse on her. While Ronson has documented other lives that went through public shaming and included conversations between them, Justine’s quote fits strongly into what Ronson is trying to reveal: social media and other forms of public shaming is an awful approach leaving the life of the person in shambles.
“In the end, it was all academic for Michael. He said he felt as trapped in this story as Jonah was. It was like they were both in a car with failed brakes, hurtling helplessly toward this ending together. How could Michael not press send? What would people think if the story got out? That he’d covered it up for career advancement? I would have been the spineless so-called journalist who buckled to Andrew Wylie. I never would have worked again” (Ronson 26; chapter 2)
In So You’ve been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson’s style of writing would be characterized to be understanding, illustrative, and blunt with his opinions when he explains stories of people who have felt ashamed due to their actions. To grab the reader’s attention, he uses critical diction and rhetorical questions to further emphasize on the difficulty of trying to understand people’s reasoning on shaming others.
As Ronson is explaining the story of Michael and Jonah, he includes the controversy of how Michael could potentially publicly shame Jonah on a blog post: “He said he felt as trapped in this story as Jonah was”. Ronson uses a simile to try and make the reader feel empathetic towards the two people and make them feel engaged to the situation so that they can figure out the psychology behind their actions. He is also constantly asking the readers questions to further make them wonder if what was being done by the two men would actually be sane and humane. Ronson focuses on intriguing the audience by using real life situations to expand his purpose of making people rethink about their decisions and how making mistakes in life can make one’s life much more difficult. As an author, he does an excellent job of connecting the story he is saying by sharing his own thoughts along the way so that the reader can notice how there can be multiple ways to understand where these people are coming from. Not only is he entertaining with his side comments, but he also wants the audience to acknowledge how current social norms impact the way humans have flaws and how they perceive what is morally correct.
In his book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson recounts the ultimate effects on those who have been condemned by public shaming. He has put together conversations with those who've been shames and using storytelling techniques to apprise the readers with the story of those people while remaining open-minded about the situations. While retelling these events, Ronson interacts with the reader to keep interest while conveying the details leading to the moment that causes the shame itself. He also includes quotes directly from the conversations with the shamed to put out the sense that they felt like victims who made "a giant miscalculation"(Ronson 58). In this example with Jonah Lehrer, Jon points out that the ridicule Jonah had faced has made him "exhausted"(Ronson 57) by "the effects of the stress"(Ronson 58) he has dealt with. Throughout his storytelling, Ronson uses a lot of metaphor along other figurative language to appeal to the feeling of the shamed as he thought they fitted best, such as Jonah acting "like a popped balloon shooting wildly in all directions"(Ronson 58) and later feeling disenfranchised about losing parts of himself. Jon Ronson has the ability to relate to these people as he was part of a public shaming himself, but also relate to those who are young or have a presence in social media since it has become a major part in which these shamings have taken place. Apart from that, he has deliberately researched the topic of shame as a process that cannot be stopped. Ronson's writing style has allowed him to reach out to his readers and give a perspective of the people involved who have made a mistake.
“But the shifting sands of shame worthiness had shifted away from sex scandals—if you’re a man—to work improprieties and perceived white previlidge, and I suddenly understood the real reason why Max has survived his shaming. Nobody cared. Max survived his shaming because he was a man in a consensual sex shaming — which meant that there had been no shaming. I e-mailed Max to tell him. “Nobody cared!” I wrote “Of all the public scandals, being a man in a consensual sex scandal is probably the one to hope for.” Max was a target for no one— not liberals like me not the online misogynists who tear apart women who step out of line. Max suffered nothing. An hour passed. Then Max e-mailed back: “Hi Ron. I think you are spot on” ( Ronson 185-186 )
Ronson has a writing style that more closely is aligned to someone who carefully articulated their thoughts. The way he articulates himself feel like his entire thought process is refined and put in nicer words clearly showing how one discussion gives him an idea and how it develops into real actions. While I am not as knowledgeable as Ronson his flow of words and thoughts is very relatable and raw in a refined sense to me. His diction as can at times be more sophisticated and at other moments be filled with satisfaction, irritation, and awkwardness that comes with these interviews and situations he puts himself through. He gives the book the tone of a written documentary where nothing that he does was set out. He ,like the rest of us, leaves each day and event with a tone of curiosity and genuine learning.
Jon Ronson writes in a chronological order and states facts of the event occurring at the moment. Jon Ronson also puts in his own opinion based on people’s actions and his own.
In the book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”, author, Jon Ronson, uses diction in order to create the sense of shaming happening in the person’s life at the moment. After the exposure of Jonah’s lying, he decide to escape into the wilderness. Jon Ronson wrote his opinion based on that action, “ It seemed appropriate that we were hiking in a desert canyon because his punishment felt quite biblical, a public shaming followed by a casting out into the wilderness, although that analogy only went so far because biblical wilderness tend not to be filled with extremely beautiful movie stars and models walking their dogs.” (Page 40, 2nd paragraph). Jon Ronson wrote this to create a sarcastic tone of Jonah’s reflection in the “wilderness” that he is staying. The author wants the audience, writers and fans, to know that just by going away from your problems for a while doesn’t show a remorse in an instant. To show remorse towards the readers of their articles or books is by writing their own story by themselves and writing the truth.
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, Ronson introduces various examples of publish shaming being a concept that is prominent in society thanks to social media. This allows for the opinions of people, no matter how toxic, to be shared with the world and also allows for regular people to rally together online to protest massive corporations or bring attention to the actions of an individual. Ronson chimes in as the narrator of these stories of the shamed to give his opinion on the effects of mobs of people attacking other online. For example, Jonah Lehrer was a respected author who worked for companies like The Daily Mail and Wired, was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and was paid thousands to speak at various conferences but was exposed for using fake quotes in his book of Bob Marley.Ronson in his style of writing uses powerful adjectives which make the reader appeal to his opinion like on the resurgence of public shaming. Ronson used diction when stating the shaming Jonah experiences was “Important”(34), and was the introduction of “The shape of things to come”(34) because Lehrer was brought down by someone “Powerless”(34).Ronson uses this selection of words to perceive the situation as a regular person witnessing the start of something great. This diction creates a motivational tone because it highlights that no matter how much honor and respect someone has, we live in a generation where a regular person can change how corporations or people with power are perceived. Ronson believe this mentality is righteous as he describes the public shaming as a “Renaissance”(34) which punishes the “ Bigoted Daily Mail columnists”(34) and “Monolithic gym chains”(34). Ronson again uses the diction through his description of wicked companies to reassess that this resurgence of public shaming gives power back to regular people and they don’t have to settle for these companies or people who step out of line. However, Ronson states that the “Uncovering of his lies was appropriate” which tell us readers that this form was justice was justified. We can see through Ronson’s tone that he’s confident that the publication exposing Lehrer was justified which displays that this form of public shaming has regular people be the judges of right and wrong in these situations. Lehrer believed this shouldn’t be revealed but after he was exposed to the public they decided not to let this mistake slide leading to Lehrer’s reputation to be ruined.
“We were much frightening than Judge Ted Poe. The powerful, crazy, cruel people I usually write about tend to be in far-off places. The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people’s flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.”
In the novel So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson writes a provoking investigative expedition focusing on the conspiring and nature of public shaming on the internet. Ronson uses dramatic diction in order to create an informative tone. Throughout the book, Ronson includes many case studies and meets with many people who have been publicly shamed or have shamed others. Ronson goes to speak to Ted Poe, a lawyer, who uses public shaming as a form of justice. Only to find out that his mechanism seemed effective in some aspects it made people less likely to commit another crime, but it did have psychological effects. Ronson describes online shaming as more ‘frightening’ than the type of shaming Ted Poe would do. Although Ted Poe had been brutal and made people do crazy things. (90) Ronson describes ‘shamees’ online more ‘frightening’ to create an informative tone that we people collectively are crueler online because there is no limit to what we say online. Specially in shaming, because there’s too many people who are contaiged with rage and fury that it can’t all be controlled. Ronson speaks about the transgression of Twitter and how it had gone from a place being ‘Even from the Eden Garden’ to a place where people ‘keenly’ watched for the next transgression. Ronson describes everyone- including himself, as ‘soldiers making war on other people’s flaws’, to create a dramatic tone and inform people of the brutality of our society on the Internet. Ronson discovers while speaking to Ted Poe that in the real world we have rights whereas on internet we are allowed to say what we want. The main question is to what extent and what is okay to say and why do these crowds violently form. Ronson intention is to bring awareness about the brutal shaming online and inform why it happens.
Mia Hernandez (blog post #2):
With the rise of social media, people who normally would not have a platform to speak their mind are now able to do so. Although social media provides a stronger sense of community to those who are outcasts in their everyday lives, it also has the power to ostracize a person for a mistake they have made, intentionally or not, making their chances of starting anew difficult as their past is permanently online. With the curious eye of a journalist, Jon Ronson had become interested in the topic of public shaming as ordinary people with seemingly no influence are easily able to destroy an individual both online and in their personal lives. Throughout his work, Ronson analyzes how modern public shaming is much like that of the past, where humiliation is much more impactful than the physical punishment itself. With this realization, readers are able to understand that people continue to recycle systems of the past and adapt them to the technology available in modern life without realising it. Including thoughts of both the shamed and those doing the shaming, Ronson explains how both parties do not act out of malice, but the aftermath makes the online platform seem malicious. Having seen the damaging effects of being publicly shamed through multiple interviews, Ronson hoped to relay the message that people, regardless of their following, have the power to influence the lives of others online and should act responsibly with that power. As a reader, it is important to reflect on how public shaming has affected the individuals interviewed throughout the book to truly understand public shaming. In addition to this, Ronson hopes his readers are able to humanize online personas to represent the person that is truly in control of that account and keep an open mind when someone makes a mistake online.
“It’s a book about us-the shamers and the shamed. So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a powerful, funny, unique, and very humane dispatch from the frontline in the escalating war on human nature and its flaws“,(Jon Ronson). The purpose is to show two sides of every public shaming and the after math of “the shamed”. That there is two sides to every story; “the shamed“ are sometimes misunderstood and it end up in situations that sometimes cause them problems. The author writes about different situations in which, “the shamed“ or not to blame. It's human nature to misunderstand situations which create opinions that may or may not help, “the shamed“. Social media is not always right they need audience which causes them to make up stories to attract a drama which help create, “shamers“. More over the idea that help him create this is deeper thought of how people perceive different situations and the mysterious development that is written in the book, but of what I have seen from other book titles like: The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries, there could be a comparison to that thought. Also I have notice that himself goes of in an adventure to look for people who have been through this and show their perspective on dealing with it. In my opinion as I read I developed this sense of fault since as humans we have opinions and we don't limit what we say or think we just express them. We never think of what the person was doing and we end up falsely accuse them for something we misunderstood and as I read it creates this fault which is what the author creates by showing real life examples. For us to see human nature at it finest and read that we could either be in either side of the story “the shamed“ or “the shamer".
In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, the novel starts off with Jon sharing his experience with a spambot that was using his name and pictures on Twitter. Enraged at the creators of the spambot for their motives behind their creation, Jon ultimately found himself using a destructive weapon in today’s world: online shaming. From then on, Jon goes on a journey about the power of online shaming can have in the real world. With each story he follows, readers learn about the complexity of shaming from those who have received a shaming. Readers are confronted with an actual person that the internet has dehumanized in a series of tweets and vulgar comments. Throughout the stories, people share how powerful online shamings are and the fear it creates. For instance, Ronson interviews Ted Poe, a judge known for publicly shaming those found guilty. They discuss the difference between Poe’s shaming and online shaming, and Poe admits that online shaming is much more frightening: “You don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the Internet. And the consequences are worse. It’s worldwide forever”(Ronson 90). At the end of the book, Ronson concludes that the reason why online public shamings are so powerful is because of “feedback loops”. Since the internet is constantly giving people immediate reactions and responses to their certain behaviors, it fuels group polarization. People associate themselves with others who are similar to us, so when a shaming occurs the people feel empowered by it because they are surrounded by people who support and reinforce the behavior. We feel as if we have done some good without ever considering the real consequences left by our online actions. Ronson ends his story with an unsettling line: “ We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it” (Ronson 281). In this new age of social media, we have been given this perception that we can freely share our thoughts and opinions with the rest of the world because these platforms are supposed to create an “open-minded” environment. Though the internet does not necessarily directly have guidelines about how you are supposed to view a particular event or person, there is collective groupthink established that will tear down through shaming, or in today’s words “cancel”, those who don’t think like them. As a society that regularly uses social media, we must consider the true power that we share online when it comes to defining the line between accepting and shaming, and the consequences that will occur in real life as a result of that defining line.
Blog post #2
In a world where we are pressured to choose a side, Jon Ronson chooses to voice an unpopular opinion on something that might be considered taboo: online shaming. While online shaming itself is common, dissecting it in the way Ronson does in his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, is a decision that is unique and bold. Initially,it is easy to interpret Ronson’s motives to be a warning against the dangers of putting our words out permanently into the public. However, Ronson actually addresses that this “wasn’t the message [he] was going for” (Ronson 284). In fact, Ronson’s true motivation for the book seems to be an attempt at reconnecting people with basic humanity. Ronson gives many examples of online shaming and compares them to public shaming. In most cases, public shamings as utilized by Ted Poe sound much more severe than the shamings going on online. To the reader's surprise, Ronson states, “We were more frightening than Judge Ted Poe...The powerful,crazy,cruel people were now us” (Ronson 90). The language Ronson utilizes to describe shamers goes to show just how grotesque online shaming is. This view is most definitely not the most popular one, considering most of the shamers are driven by “the desire to do good” (Ronson 123). So while many believe they are doing the right thing by shaming a person as a means of fixing their behavior, they are in fact doing more unnecessary harm than good. On top of this they are also corrupting themselves in terms of what they perceive as right and wrong. This is the message Ronson is wanting to establish. Ronson wants us to realize that our words do have power stronger than what we realize it to be. He states “ we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt”. This is extremely significant to Ronson’s argument because it portrays the shamer as unaware of the true consequences of these impulsive mass online shamings. For this reason, Ronson’s main focus was the aftermath of shamings via twitter on people who made minor missteps. Ronson is able to admit that these people made a mistake but is also stating that they received much more hate than they deserved. What I took away from this book is that we as a society revolved around social media have to take a step back and realize what exactly we are doing. The last lines of the afterword are strategically the most powerful in the book: “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let’s not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless” (Ronson, 310). At the end of the day we are all people, and people make mistakes. Ronson makes it clear that he does not mean to end all online shaming,that would be impossible, but to at least change the atmosphere of it. There are thousands of people on the opposing side of the spectrum,completely destroying a single human being. The internet gives us a power that is often times abused. A person's successful life could quickly go hurtling down at the tap of a screen and it’s something utterly terrifying and horrific. It’s not something that should be taken lightly. Tearing one person down isn’t going to achieve the good that people seek. We have the power to do something good but we are going about it the wrong way and not being the good we want to see in the world.
Jon Ronson’s motivation for creating this text come by his first shaming experience. Ronson writes that after his run-in with the twitter bot and the humiliation of the researchers that came after, he would join the twitter mob on public humiliations of countless others. Ronson wanted to explore what was the after effect of humiliations, what did people feel on both sides of the ordeal, and why certain scandals get harsher responses. Ronson wanted to expose himself and the audience to what shame is, how taxing it can be on people emotionally and professionally. He wanted to illustrate that the person shaming may have colleagues who confess their wrongdoings in fear of being exposed by him and the shamee being unable to publish anymore works due to the diminishing of his credibility. Ronson exposes the reader to people brutally torn down on twitter and their immense retraction from society as one side of the spectrum of the effects of shaming, but also introduces the reader to Max. Max was someone who had consensual sexual encounters with women in uniform but received little to no backlash and was even able to sue for defamation and win. Ronson is, with his exploration of all types of humiliations and exceptions and supposed ways of being immune to humiliation, attempting to show the reader that there are consequences when we humiliate someone online. However while someone can feel devastated some don’t get hung online but their transgressions go simply unnoticed by people because it doesn’t offend any group particularly. As an internet ecosystem we are quick to shame someone in power for non-PC language and crucify people who are racists and those with opposing views on sensitive topics. And with those humiliations came a wave of supporters for the one crucified due to the increasing polarized world we live in and that’s the only humiliation that sells now days, the humiliation that reaches national news and gets blogs written. Ronson wants the reader to realize that they have grown hungry for polarized humiliations and are quick to let sexual scandals fall through the grate and be forgotten solely because there are no powerful people attached. Ronson wants the reader to view the other side of humiliations, the complexities of the damage, and our own prejudices against certain things. Ronson knows that people are quick to join and then exit a mob of humiliators at their own pleasure and then forget the person which they humiliated, Ronson has many times. Ronson wants the reader to think of both sides, to not jump on the humiliation mob so quickly and just recognize that these humiliations are skewed to cater to the growing polarization, but that does not exempt the shamee from vivid emotions afterwards.
With powerful moments in Jon Ronson's novel, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws, and the scary part we all play in it. With his book, Ronson tries to understand the modern transgressions are inversely connected with online public shaming and the reason why those behind a screen find it so acceptable to do so, while examining the effects of the ones who are put to shame. He argues that this type of exposure and humiliation is rather frightening, describing the "group madness"(Ronson 80) that inherently justifies the conflicting behavior designed to make others feel ashamed of their mistakes. We are using shame as a form of social control. To demonstrate this truth, he argues with cases of public shamings, including his own experience thinking he could change the behavior of those who are doing the shaming as a way of punishment and show the brutality that this ultimately has n people. Ronson wants the reader to comprehend that individuals have become obsessed with being furious at the offences of others and taking justice into their own manners. Essentially, Jon Ronson wants us to see that with all this power at our fingertips, we are using it to humiliate the flaws of the shame and wants us to recognize the real damage that we can create with the spread of a few words on the internet. Using public shaming, especially online, unknowingly destroys the lives of others rather than having constructive conversations has become the new normal. The public shaming of Justine Sacco or maybe Lindsey Stone went viral and cost both women years of online reputational damage. All types of people participated in condemn these women; the majority never meet them or knew them, however, were able to ruin their lives with a post. In the end, the reader should take away that the consequences that public shaming can be chaotic for the reason of wanting to penalize someone in that moment, and without intending to, moving on to the next.
Ronson himself is never quite sure of his purpose in writing So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Initially, Ronson’s goal was to bring attention to those who have been rebuked online, prompting the reader to ask themselves, “What is life like for the people who have been publicly shamed”? Ronson keeps the outline and direction of the novel flexible: He is entertained at the suggestion that his novel could act as a guide to recovery for victims of brutal public shamings. After hearing this idea, Ronson executes more interviews in search of a pattern and any possible resolution for the loathed victims. Overall, when it comes down to the sole purpose of the novel, Ronson is quite unaligned. He is willing to keep his mind open to new ideas that could assist victims and shamees in finding common ground.
However, he adheres to the message that perhaps everyone deserves a second chance. He emphasizes the fact that many of the victims of public shamings never imagined themselves in such a feared position. Ronson gives those who have been ridiculed a platform to tell their stories. Perchance an opportunity to ask for forgiveness when no one listened before. Jon Ronson is listening. While he may or may not offer the sympathy that these shamees might be searching for, he listens. Ronson gives those who have been berated something that no one has yet to offer- a chance.
Public shaming is potentially at its worst point in history with the help of technological advancements. People have the power to ruin the life of another with the click of a mouse. One day these victims were people, and the next they are monsters. Perhaps next time, the reader will stop and remember the stories behind those who never would have imagined that they would one day be publicly shamed. Perhaps you could be next.
In the novel, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, unravels the re-emergence of public shaming as a form of social control across the Internet in this age of conformity. Ronson’s exigency for writing this novel is to encourage people to stop defining the boundaries of normality and to not reject the people outside of it. Throughout the novel, Ronson meets with many people who have shamed others or have been shamed, speaks to many knowledgeable people aware of the topic, and focuses on the flaws of human nature. For example, Ronson ponders over the flaws of the criminal justice system and how it’s suppose to repair harm but sometimes “prisoners…have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time-…”(Ronson,228). People who commit crimes tend to be brought down by society and police and it roots away from the humane parts. Many people form this idea and concept that murderers are sociopaths and do not feel shame for their acts, but Galligan proves otherwise. Ronson meets with Galligan, a psychiatrist and well known informed chronicler on what shaming can do to inner lives. Galligan says that most times prisoners feel mortified and their “bodies are empty or filled with straw, not flesh and blood…Instead of having veins and nerves they have ropes or cord.”(Ronson,250). Prisoners feel the deepest shame and are “ashamed of feeling shame”. Jonah Lehrer and many others had felt that shame as they had been terrorized for years online for acts that sometimes just as prisoners could be seen as small things that receive harsh punishment. Ronson’s motivation for writing this is to consider thinking “twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position”(Ronson,260). After all, we are all human and we all make mistakes we should be able to learn and grow from them. Ronson says, “but we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don’t?”(Ronson,255) Ronson also criticizes how society can be closed off to giving second chances to those who make mistakes. For example as seen predominantly in Western society, recently there has been the creation of, “Cancel Culture”. Cancel culture doesn’t give the space or room for people to grow and learn from their mistakes and just destroys people’s lives completely. People and companies do this so effortlessly without thinking of the consequences or the inflicting pain it can cause to someone, and make them feel as if a “prisoner” in their inner selves. For example, Google had made $120,000-$456,000 from destroying Justine Sacco’s life, as it was the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter. Although in some cases, there were people who were “survivors” after having a scandal such as Max Mosley, Mike Daisey, and people in the Andrew Wright scandal. In which all of them people simply did not care much for because it did not target any general audience. As a reader, I took away from this excerpt that our society has become very conformed and conservative in the way we handle ourselves across the Internet. We do not let people be able to freely express themselves without being quick to shame someone if it opposes a larger idea or concept. We should not let shame define us as a person and fight to keep our dignity. “We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.”(Ronson,269) We should all try to be more open and accepting to others as a community by opposing to the normality.
Jon Ronson’s purpose in writing this novel is to not only demonstrate how public shaming has changed throughout the years but also shows the effects and consequences that modern public shaming has on a person. Ronson provides a personal anecdote of a twitter spambot or infomorph that "stole" his identity. Ronson uploaded youtube footage exposing the spam bot which led to people to shame the creators of the spam bot. This resulted in the account being deleted. Ronson includes this anecdote to stretch out his idea on how dangerous modern public shaming is. The novel is focused on different people Ronson interviewed who have experienced public shaming first-hand and people who were involved in that shaming. Ronson is able to use these people that undergone shaming to show how dangerous and humiliating public shaming is these days. Ronson also illustrates how dangerous shaming is in a professional environment. For example, Jonah Lehrer has lost his credibility after being exposed to plagiarizing work in his book, Justine and Hank were fired after being shamed for what they did. Not only does this damage their job but also hurts their state of mind. The ability to shame people via the internet has a dangerous outcome. Justine was branded as an entirely different person and people lost their credibility due to this public shaming. Furthermore, Ronson compares modern shaming constructed by the internet to shaming from the past. Ted Poe is a clear example of how Ronson incorporates this comparison. Ted Poe humiliated people for their crimes in public and demonstrated how it benefitted the person committing the crime. Ted Poe says “You don't have any rights when you're accused on the internet. And the consequences are worse” (Ronson 90). This quote was intentionally used to describe the shamings from a while ago to the shamings caused by the internet. What's important to take away from this book is how shamings can cause a brutal effect on their reputation and their emotional state of mind which is clearly shown by the people who were being interviewed.
Jon Ronson's motivation to write this book about public shaming when he had a first hand experience with the concept after he uploaded an interviewer with people who created a spam bot and used it to try to mimic his characteristics on twitter but in the end shared no characteristics that were similar to Ronson. Ronson gained support online via people commenting on his video which viewed these people as," Utter hateful arseholes"(Ronson 8). These comments were pretty harsh and shamed the creators to delete the spam bot that used Jon Ronson’s identity and felt content that strangers unanimously support Ronson in his time of need and to attack the creators. Ronson’s initial main argument was that public shaming was good as it allowed for people to enact change solely through social media and point out bigotry or companies taking advantage of its consumers to keep things in check and make sure these entities with power are brought down to our level and to make sure they don’t step out of line. This in a way gives ordinary people who have a social media account to bring forward change. However, Ronson takes a deep look into call out culture on twitter and delves into the after effects on not only people with power like Jonah Lehrer but regular people like Justine Sacco,and two tech developers who ended up losing their jobs after online backlash forced their employers to take action. Ronson begins to fear twitter’s call out culture but soon comes to the realization that twitter communities aren’t to blame but us as people who take advantage of the anonymity social media gives us which allows for ruthless opinions to be shared with each other online and also display the lack of empathy people have for each other in order to enjoy some twitter drama. Ronson wants the reader to think before jumping into hate mobs head first as many of these people’s lives can be ruined for the enjoyment that only lasts us a few days and that our actions online can be used to bring a positive change into a progressing society but can also bring real harm into the real world.
The author Jon Ronson writes in the first-person point of view to allow the readers to fully understand how it is that he goes about understanding how society attacks and gang up on those that are deemed of the punishment in their eyes. "You turn around and you suddenly realize you're the head of a pitchfork mob... And it's 'What are these people fucking doing here? Why are they acting like heathens?... It was horrible...those people were so cold"(51). Jon was talking with Michael and hears all of this through his first-hand experience and uses the diction of describing the crowd with a mob mentality and vicious description which creates his impression of how cruel and heinous the mob mentality is. This begins the impression on the reader that the internet that makes itself the judge jury and executioner is now the enemy and the people that did the wrong thing were the ones that deserved the empathy of the audience.
July 25 one sorry :P
In the book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson’s main exigency is to write about the difficulties and major setbacks that people encounter when they have made the mistake of saying something online that they were not aware of ruining their lives. He throughly explains the outcomes of various people in different scenarios to further get to his argument of how people are becoming traumatized and are constantly being shamed by others due to their poor actions. Ronson wants the readers to know that people who are committing these errors are being forced to change their lives in a way they do not want to. They are being physically and emotionally hurt by the vast amount of hatred comments and being shamed when being seen in public. This negativity that has been put into their lives have impacted the way human beings are being treated nowadays. By seeing people feeling depressed, people not wanting to go out in public, or people not wanting to be themselves and not want to live their lives anymore is what motivated Ronson to engage in the curiosity of why we as people go through things like this in life or even the fact that us as human beings decide to shame on others especially in front of a public place. He emphasizes on telling the reader “US” to illustrate the purpose of realizing how we as people are hurting each other instead of just saying that those people that have been shaming others in person and on social media are the only ones to cause this problem. Our society continues to let it happen and he makes the readers want to connect and react to his argument by sharing different scenarios that they can sympathize to. The reader should be taking away the idea of how they can help or change their ways on social media to better our society. He does not want more people to go through the same experiences others and himself did. The consequences that people have received has made the reader rethink about their actions and how they should handle something that they do not like in a different matter. Ronson wants the reader to reconsider what they post online or even what they say to others in general that may affect people’s lives because words can be powerful. (Debanhi Guerrero)
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