So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Author: Jon Ronson

The first time I heard Jon Ronson’s voice was while listening to a This American Life podcast. The subject was something called a "Psychopath Test” and Jon was reading an excerpt from his book on the subject. I found myself enthralled with the sincerity of his narration and got the feeling that he was telling me a story. I so thoroughly enjoyed the book that when I saw that he had another book out, I went looking for the audiobook just to hear his voice again.

I obtained the audiobook from the library and it was in the form of CDs, which are pretty much extinct now. I went through the rather painful process of converting these CDs into an Audiobook for the iPhone. It is such a complicated process that I am not sure I can replicate it. Once it was done, however, it made it very convenient for me to listen in my car and Jon did not disappoint. His very sincere tone makes you feel that he genuinely believes every single line that he was written in there.

Jon has seen examples of people being shamed on the internet and he starts his quest to find out the biggest, baddest shaming out there, so we can learn from it. There are several examples in the book and I don’t want to take anything away by revealing the details. To make it personal Jon starts out with his own tale of a spambot impersonating him on twitter. While I am sure this was frustrating and annoying to Jon, it is really trivial relative to how the other people’s lives were destroyed as a consequence of their public shaming.

Jonah Lehrer was a superstar writer who had authored several popular books until it all came crashing down when it was discovered that he had made up some quotes from Bob Dylan. Justine Sacco made a tasteless joke on AIDs and South Africa on twitter and within an instant this was broadcast to the entire twitter-verse and she became unemployable. Lindsey Stone posted her crude gesture at Arlington cemetery on her Facebook page and was vilified that it turned up on every google search for her name. There’s also the story of the two geek engineers who shared a joke about “dongles” in a Tech Conference and suddenly found themselves ejected from the conference. They were “outed” by Adria Richards and this particular story has multiple twists that I will not reveal here.

There are several other entertaining stories as Jon seeks them out in the quest to find out how you put your life back together after one of these events. While the book is entertaining — and I highly encourage you to get the audio version — there aren’t too many useful lessons that you can draw from it. Read it to be warned of the perils of the hyper-social lives we lead today.