Originally posted at www.csdaley.com

I think I am funny. I am fairly certain that a handful of people think I am funny. I know that I have occasionally thrown something out onto Twitter that has garnered a few laughs. I also know that I have had jokes fall like weighted anvils to the bottom of the social media stream to never be laughed at or seen again. At least that's what I hope. The truth is far different from that. It doesn't go anywhere. It just sits there and waits. If you're lucky. If you're unlucky and you said something particularly offensive to somebody or you become famous, those jokes and comments will rise up like a leviathan and swallow your life whole.

We live in a world that seems to enjoy the piling on of public shame. We revel in it. Some people seem to be waiting around just hoping for that good shame feast to pounce on. This happens again and again with little to no thought of the consequences. There are times when the public shaming seems to be well deserved. Someone's caught plagiarizing or being misogynistic. Often times it is just a joke gone wrong. A few words misunderstood. Then the shame is piled on like we are in a coliseum and we are going to feed those people to the public lion. There are no breaks and lives are often destroyed in the process.

This is the subject Jon Ronson tackles in his new book So You've Been Publicly Shamed. He starts off with a personal story of shaming someone who stole his identity as a joke or thought experiment. He writes about the glee he felt when he brings them down with the power of the internet. It leads him to a deeper thought. Did I go too far? Did the punishment actually fit the crime?

He sets off to interview and tell people's stories of their public shaming. Some of them are heart breaking. Lives completely destroyed and torn apart because a joke sunk like a bomb. What's worse is their inability to ever escape it because it sits out there like an anchor around their neck. Waiting to be discovered by the next person who Googles their name.

This was my favorite Jon Ronson book since Them and that is saying something because I love Ronson. I felt he told the stories fairly and evenly. I loved that he kept his own personal feelings about the people and public shaming right up front. This book became about self discovery as much as telling these people's story. His understanding of the glee he took in several public pile ons keeps him moving forward.

As a person who puts a lot of things out into the social media world this hits close to home. It is not that hard to imagine myself at the other end of a particularly nasty lashing. It has made me examine my own behavior out on the web. To really think about the people I have blasted over the years. To examine if I want to actually be part of the shame culture that seems to exist in social media. There is no easy answer to this question but it is one well worth examining. This book will help start that journey. ( )

This was fascinating— Ronson combines personally interviews with people notoriously shamed on the internet, work with psychology experts and a ton of first person journalism to explore shaming and our responses. There’s no easy answers here — in the afterword he says basically “some people prioritize ideology over humans; I prefer humans” and that captures a lot of this book: there’s a lot of humanity here. Which means a lot of care for human beings and thoughtful approaches to not what “feels right” but actually helps people do right. There’s not shaming of shamers, either — Ronson is also honest about his own temptations to scoff at people over the internet. For such a firebrand of a topic it’s calm and personalized. And very readable. ( )

Oh no, no no. I need to take a breather to decide whether and how to articulate the anger and disappointment I'm feeling about this. ( )

Actually prefer listening to his talks.
Probably doesn't help that I've listed to so many interviews with him that I don't think there was anything "new" to me by the time I got to this book. ( )

I think this book was interesting and I'm glad I read it (unlike [The Psychopath Test], which was an almost immediate DNF for me), but I think it's going to take some digesting for me to figure out how I feel.

On the one hand, the Internet (and social media) makes people say and do a lot of foolish things, publicly, without the ability to undo or delete. Should those people have to suffer, forever, for doing something dumb once?

On the other hand, isn't it about time that privileged white men (it's almost always them, after all) get held accountable for all the BS they've long since gotten away with? Finally, people can hold them accountable! (And, as the author sort of mentions, men much more easily "bounce back" from being dicks, whereas women get death and rape threats and find it much harder to become employed again.)

On the THIRD hand, shouldn't we be pointing the finger at social media, whose algorithms are aware of social discord and polarization and aim to heighten that, because that's exactly what drives "engagement" and brings up their stock prices? Shouldn't we be pointing the finger at the capitalistic systems that have brought us to where we currently reside? We are once again yelling at each other rather than blaming who is really at fault: the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world. ( )