Jon Ronson has written a book about public shaming (confession: I have not read it yet, but I have read Ronson’s other books and enjoyed them greatly), So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
And then I got tangled up in the boundary between criticism and shaming. Is Engber shaming Ronson? Is Ronson shaming everyone who shamed Lehrer? Have I been cruelly shaming creationists and Republicans? Is it grossly unfair to publicly and persuasively expose bad acts by bad people?
There’s obviously a continuum here. Dick Cheney is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (at least) and the wasteful destruction of entire countries — I would hope that pointing that out isn’t a disgraceful faux pas, and that the message is that we ought to discreetly look the other way, and try not to embarrass an old grandpa with his failures. On the other hand, if someone walks out of a restroom with toilet paper on their shoe, it’s probably not right to fire them for their tastelessness and lack of decorum, and then get on the internet and make sure that Google associates their name with coprophilia forevermore. There are situations in which shame is an excessive response.
But where do we draw that line? It seems to me that when there are clear and serious problems, we have an obligation to bring them up and not forget them — Lehrer’s crimes against journalism should not simply vanish, and are especially relevant if he’s trying to insert himself back in that world. That wouldn’t justify crank-calling him at 2am every night to rage against him, or to carry out acts of retribution against his family, or to throw tomatoes at him when he steps out into public, but putting the documentation that describes his errors honestly and accurately, without falling into the trap of obsession, seems like a responsible thing to do.
I also see echoes of some of the bad ideas of internet culture here. The chans and trolls all seem to value anonymity over responsible behavior — you are not allowed to violate the shield that protects them from shame. You are allowed to send gutter threats of murder and rape against people; if you can steal nude photos of them, you can post those and accuse the person of being a slut; you can swat them, call in the police to raid their homes; but the greatest, most unforgivable crime of them all is to expose the people who do those things. How dare you dox someone? Not, how dare you threaten someone’s family, but how dare you expose the identity of harassers and abusers?
I’m afraid I’m all for exposing them. I don’t want to live in a world where the greatest sin is to break the illusion that all is sweetness and light, and we’re brought up to respect decorum rather than right behavior — where we’re all trained to close our eyes to bad actions, or where the little boy who embarrasses the emperor by pointing out that he’s naked is quickly gagged and dragged away, to make sure he doesn’t disrupt the parade.
I’m afraid our problems going far beyond just shaming: Amazingly, Cheney is still considered a respected pundit, invited by mainstream news outlets to offer his opinions. Why? Ideally he should be both shamed and incarcerated. But I’d settled for indifference by the mainstream media. At least disappear him, take him off my TV.
Some people deserve to be shamed because some behaviour is shameful.
Cheney is still considered a respected pundit, invited by mainstream news outlets to offer his opinions
So’s Kissinger. And when they die they will be canonized. Without the devil’s advocate being invited to the party. It’s “cognitive dissonance on parade” – rather than figure out “why did we allow these assholes near the steering wheel?!” it’s easier to decide “I guess they weren’t so bad after all.”
Then there’s what he did to Adria Richards: http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equivalencies.html
Generally, people shouldn’t be doing of saying things in public which they would be ashamed of. Anonymity as a protection against violent retaliation is another matter. The borderline is still fuzzy. Imagine A is doxxed by people who consider his behavior shameful, disgusting and deserving of long term consequences. He is hounded, his family and friends are threatened. Many of them are shocked at the discovery of his behavior in the first place. He’s fired from his job and has to leave his home, but the doxxers aren’t particularly sorry – after all, A is a treat to others.
Now realize that A might equally well be an atheist or a racist. The certainty of being right in their respective positions drives the doxxers and shamers. It doesn’t matter if you *know* you’re right. The people on the other side *know* the same thing and exhibit the same behaviors. There’s a moral problem right there.
Of course Cheney has no shame (and technically no pulse)–remember, this is the same man who said when asked about the
tortureenhanced interrogation program. And he’s hardly suffering for any of his decisions, beyond perhaps permanently curtailing the possibility of ever being able to visit the amber waves of grain of a liberated Iraq (though that one’s really Obama’s fault, BTW).Maybe all the public shaming of Cheney only makes him stronger?
As someone for whom dead naming/ doxing could be disastrous, PZ, I must respectfully disagree, as there will be more public support for doing ‘deceptive me’ than for youthful hijinks like threats and abuse. People still literally get away with murdering trans women, please don’t have faith in the willingness of the Great YourCountryHere Public to distinguish between shameful behaviours and people who should just be ashamed to exist. I get the impulse, but the splah damage can get people killed.
You should read the book. Ronson doesn’t try to redeem Lehrer at all. He makes no bones about the fact that Lehrer did what he did and doesn’t excuse that sort of behaviour in any way at all. He tries, throughout the book, to understand shaming and why it works differently in different circumstances. Some people have been shamed for good reasons. Some people have been shamed for bad reasons. Some people have recovered, some haven’t. That’s what the book is about.
Ronson’s book is as smart and as nuanced and as well researched as all his previous books. I can’t go all the way with him on some of the things the book says, but it’s a good book and at least I bothered to fucking read it before telling everyone what it said.
I re-read Engber’s review. He doesn’t seem to have read the same book I read. There are some lies. For example:
Ronson didn’t disagree at all. That’s just a lie.
Ronson uses this as an example of people being shamed. He uses several other examples. They’re all different and the entire point of the book is to ask about that difference. Why are some people shamed while others aren’t for the same sort of behaviour? How do some people recover from shaming when others don’t? Why do crowds turn on some people and destroy them for almost nothing when others get away with horrible behaviour?
It’s as good a book as all his others and you’re being uncharacteristically stupid when you judge it on the basis of a review.
Engbur’s summary of Ronson’s account seems well-documented: there is some white-washing going on.
That account from Melissa McEwan is even more damning.
So why should I be bothered to fucking read it again? I’ve met Ronson and he’s a good guy; I’ve read his other books and liked them; but that does not mean it is impossible that he’s latched onto a misbegotten thesis and harried it to ground with selective readings and one-sided accounts.
#7, CaitieCat: I do not believe that exposing identities ought to be done casually, only that the exposure may be less troubling than the cause that prompted it. If someone is using their anonymity to swat people and send death threats, then I say that principle of anonymity is something that ought to be sacrificed to stop a greater crime. Someone who’s just talking, even arguing on the internet? That’s not cause to violate privacy.
What irks me is the assumption that it’s some unconscionable punishment to say to a Jonah Lehrer — no, you shouldn’t be getting $20,000 a speech or big book advances. As if he has a moral entitlement to return to the world of non-fiction writing — where credibility and integrity matter — and at the highest level.
Sure, Jonah Lehrer should be “allowed to earn a living.” He can earn a living the way millions of Americans do. Let him wait tables or tend bar or drive a taxi or mop a floor. Why is that such a cruel fate for someone who violated the core tenets of his highly-paid profession, when we consider it a perfectly acceptable fate for millions of folks who didn’t do anything wrong?
Conversely, how many writers are producing quality and honest work on the subjects Lehrer writes about, but can’t get published because they don’t have his “name”?
(Again, I’m speaking morally here. I’m well aware that Lehrer has the legal right to publish whatever books he wants to write, and can earn whatever the market will pay him for that. I’m just saying that those of us who would like to see our fellow market participants decline to purchase his shit aren’t being horribly cruel.)
A good guy would not have lied to and figuratively sucker punched Adria Richards. You are wrong, PZ.
That’s ridiculous. So ignore all reviews? There’s no purpose to reviewing a book?
I’ve read a couple of reviews of the book. Some like it, but they seem to be the superficial reviews; ones that dig a little deeper and quote the book seem to be finding problematic flaws. That’s relevant information.
There’s no reason to read the book at all unless you want to. I think there might be a reason to read it before you decide what it says, though.
I don’t recognise that analysis having read the book and don’t understand at all the idea that anything has been whitewashed. You’re talking about an account of something you haven’t read. What the actual fuck?
You’re right that it’s not at all impossible that Ronson is wrong or biassed or prejudiced but you don’t have the slightest idea whether he is or isn’t because you haven’t read what he actually wrote.
I couldn’t give the slightest fuck whether you read the book or not, but it’s really stupid to criticise a book you haven’t read.
No, I didn’t say ignore all reviews, what an extraordinary thing to say. You were talking about exactly one review. That review says things about the book that are simply and demonstrably not true. I pointed out one of those things, I didn’t say you should ignore all reviews.
I’m only saying that the book is worth reading and that Ronson quite obviously didn’t excuse the behaviour you said he excused based on that review. That will become perfectly clear if you read the book. Well, I think. I’m questioning myself now. But at least I bothered to read the book I’m talking about.
I agree with your point toward the end, but I’m curious about this. “Lehrer did what he did”? What did he do, and what does Ronson say about it?
The thing is, we shouldn’t be critical only of a few isolated quotes/passages that were inaccurate and/or plagiarized. It looks to me like there’s a running theme in all three of his books: many parts are sloppy, confusing, not supported by the evidence, illogical, ill motivated, and so on. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell, you might say. We could go into much more detail about that and whether those sorts of criticisms are warranted (many others already have), but there’s no doubt that is at least what’s going on under the surface for a lot of critics.
You do say that Ronson talks about how sometimes “shaming” is done for good reasons.* Okay. Is this clearly one of those cases? Does Ronson even hint at what I’m talking about, or is it presented as if these people who are “shaming” him are coming at it from a place where they’re simply making a huge ordeal out of a few relatively simple and isolated mistakes, thus threatening the career of an otherwise thoughtful and insightful writer? I mean, he obviously doesn’t have to say “I excuse that sort of behavior,” since focusing on Lehrer’s version of the story could be more than enough to suggest that. Then you quickly move on to the next “case study” in your arsenal, since your book ostensibly isn’t big enough to go into such detail. I can imagine that’s how it might play out. But you’d have to be reasonably knowledgeable about Lehrer’s work and that of his critics and now Ronson’s work to untangle all of that.
*I have to wonder what the point is of using a word like that so ambiguously. You ask the question “Why do crowds turn on some people and destroy them for almost nothing when others get away with horrible behaviour?” But often it (whatever you call it), isn’t for almost nothing — even if the people responsible want to tell themselves that. And it isn’t always done on shaky epistemic grounds where people don’t really know the whole story. (I’m thinking of the woman on the airplane, and her tweet which people are supposed to have misinterpreted — he talked about that on The Daily Show.) Indeed, “knowing the whole story” in some sense, not just what the person in question wants to say about it, is presumably what’s going on here.
I wonder where you could find those things out? Perhaps by reading the book?
latsot
Did you fucking read the OP? He brought up criticism of the book, mentioned he might not be reading it now, and wrote his own thoughts on the subject.
He’s not critiquing the book but others are. Those reviews have quotes and you can decide if those reviews are reasonable and if the book is worth reading without actually read said book first. That’s the whole goddamn point.
…You do realize you’re reviewing the book right now right? If we’re not allowed to decide if reviews are right and choose which books to read, then why the fuck are you posting your opinion of it? What’s the goddamn point?
You’re acting as if PZ said “I haven’t read it but I’ve decided it’s stupid for no reason and you shouldn’t read it either”.
Did you fucking read it? Are you saying Ronson didn’t minimize Lehrer’s mistakes and amp up his redemption? Why don’t you pull out your copy of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and look it up? I mean Ronson starts the account with the Dylan quotes right in Chapter 2, shouldn’t be hard to find and look through.
With respect, PZ, I still disagree. I don’t believe the value of being able to shame the people we want to shame is worth the splash damage that will (not might) occur when others can point to progressives doing it for what we consider inherently and absolutely shameful, and they consider being trans inherently and absolutely shameful – only the difference is trolls lose their jobs over this, trans people lose our lives.
I’d rather not see us giving cover to the RWA and TERF types when they dox trans people; I urge you to remember that “what is shameful?” is not a question with a monolithic answer in society.
I won’t be posting anymore on this thread, because this is all feeling massively unsafe to be saying, but I’ll be disappointed if you continue to think this is a good way for progressives to behave. No major flounce or anything, and your ability to survive my disappointment is undoubted, but it would disappoint.
Indeed, I could find out that way. In the mean time, since you have read it, that’s why you’re not answering the questions, by offering such information? Did he put it into context of the numerous other criticisms of Lehrer’s work? Or did he not do that, merely to cite a few mistakes, which were supposedly the source of the whole overwhelming firestorm that was unleashed? What kind of story did he tell? Was it good shaming or bad? What sort of description could someone accurately give about it, after having read Ronson’s book? You should be able to say something along those lines, at least.
I want to register my objection to your objection, CaitieCat, about doxxing. Context matters. Power relations matter. That horrible people will out a trans person to get that person harrassed or killed (and that is grimly true and common) does not make “doxxing” per se an immoral act that must be taken off the table and never permitted under any circumstances. That simply can’t work. And it is not going to stop horrible people from being horrible. Sometimes, though, outing them can contain their damage or limit it. Sometimes, not always.
@PZ, #10:
I don’t think CaitieCat misunderstands you, PZ. I don’t think she believes that you are any threat to doxx trans folk in particular.
I think that she’s just saying that if doxxing is tolerated at all, then for some terribly and dangerously large section of the public, doxxing of crime-free trans* folk will be seen as equally, if not more, justified as doxxing the worst internet abusers. On a practical level, then, CaitieCat sees a no-doxx policy as preferable to a policy that permits doxxing under some standard X. Even a clear and conservative standard, I believe CaitieCat is saying, is insufficient to protect trans* folk and when that potential harm (and possibly other harms of a broader class for which the danger to trans folk is merely one example) is considered, the benefits of even a clear and conservative doxxing standard are outweighed by the drawbacks.
I don’t know that I agree. I think I would tend to doxx certain levels of internet harassment/threats – or at the least provide info to authorities which would result in doxxing if law enforcement followed their leads (law enforcement and court records being mostly public information). But I completely hear where CaitieCat is coming from.
CaitieCat, I’m sorry, it really doesn’t work that way. “They did it too” has never been the most powerful motivator for bad behavior by toxic people. This is an unfortunately durable fantasy for those of us on the left, that “taking the high road” will confer protection on us. It will not and that is obvious because you can see that it doesn’t work.
This fantasy, as understandable as it may be, functions only to make us willingly put down tools and disarm ourselves against right wing bigotry and harassment.
“The master’s tools” aren’t, actually, the master’s tools. That’s a flawed extrapolation that erases the line between aggressive behavior and self defense.
@JAL, yeah, I read the OP. The OP was about deciding what a book said having not read it. Having read the actual book I feel that some of the quotes in that review are simply lies and others are deliberately taken out of context. That is, in fact, the whole goddamn point. Mileage might vary but that’s what I thought.
Yes. I’ve read it. Wasn’t that my point?
well, and CaitieCat clarified while I was typing. Good enough. I hope that my reflections on your meaning accurately portrayed your position, CaitieCat.
Also, Josh, I appreciate you chiming in. I think I’m somewhere between you and CaitieCat. After I posted, I realized that when I said that “I don’t know that I agree” I should have added “for myself”.
I actually disagree if we’re talking about a standard to which someone else must be accountable. I wouldn’t be willing to tell some other person not to doxx someone engaging in a serious campaign of threats/abuse/stalking (or worse). But in the same way that I wouldn’t want to establish a standard that bans violent self defense to violent aggression while fairly certain that I would respond non-violently even to the most violent action against me, I’m pretty certain that for someone to push me over the line into willingness to doxx would require a lot more than many others would be willing to tolerate. In part for reasons CaitieCat cites.
Crip Dyke, yeah, those decisions happen on a continuum where there are not clear, objective standards of right and wrong. I’m willing to be vehement and immovable, however, in saying that the principle—-because X can result in splash damage it is therefore unacceptable and by refraining from using it we are conserving/conferring protection on ourselves—is flat wrong. It’s simply wrong. People do not work that way.
It is the equivalent—though much more dramatic and consequential–of the idea that if we merely use the correct Words of Civility then our dishonest interlocutors will become good faith conversational partners. It’s ridiculous to believe this.
Just as important—-I do not actually believe that refraining from doxxing has an actual protective effect on us. It’s not just that I doubt it, it’s objectively not true. Bigots will hurt us using whatever tools they have at their disposal. They are so loud and numerous that any “message” we think we’re sending by saying, “I will not dox” never makes it into the larger public conversation. It has no effect whatsoever on their behavior.
PZ, I do find myself agreeing with latsot’s assessment of the Slate review. Engber is demonstrably wrong; Ronson goes to great lengths to explain why it was necessary for Moynihan to ruin Lehrer. It was his job as a journalist to do so, and Ronson obviously sympathizes with this in the text.
I’m more than a little annoyed that Engbur criticizes Ronson for spending fifty pages of his book on Lehrer, and then promptly spends his entire review explaining why he disagrees with those fifty pages. To someone who read the book, that review did indicate skimming instead of reading.
The article on Shakesville concerning Adria Richards was way more reasoned and intelligently critical of Ronson’s research methods surrounding that incident. I’d be interested to hear what that writer (or, more importantly, Adria) thinks about how he describes it in the book, where he devotes several pages and ends that story comparing how the man using the harassing language found a new job, while Adria was unable. The reader is intended to share Ronson’s outrage at that disparity.
I come here fairly regularly because I like PZ and his regulars, writing and commenting on subjects they really know about, partly because I don’t always agree but figure I’ll learn something. If PZ wants to write about his views on shaming etc, fine; but don’t tie it to a book you haven’t read. That turns it into something much more like the bloviating all-purpose TV pundits we are trying to get away from. Whatever. I’ll be back. Live long and prosper.
Anonymity lets marginalized people safely say things for which they otherwise might suffer serious consequences.
When you have a mechanism for non-consensually lifting anonymity, that same mechanism can be used against those who harass and those who are trans* or those who want to organize a peaceful demonstration.
I don’t yet have an opinion either way. But I am convinced that where available it’s more reliable to judge a book by reading snippets from its preview any of many online book services, where available.
Of course that’s not as good as reading the whole book, but nobody has time to read every book, so we’ve no choice but to rely on these kinds of estimations in order to decide which books to read in the first place.
The problem I see with “public shaming” is that it’s so often associated with a narrow form of moral absolutism. Shaming by nature requires subscription to a personal idea of morality that the shamed target has somehow breached. That may be all right and good if the target proclaimed to follow that same code before breaching it, thereby exposing their hypocrisy. But in many cases the targets have their own construct of morality that’s simply different from the shaming party’s, giving us a case where the shaming party is imposing their own morality onto someone who disagreed with it from the start.
Is this inherently wrong? I’m honestly ambivalent on that. I don’t have any sympathy for vocal misogynists like Roosh V, or vocal racists like those Oklahoma frat brats. According to my own moral code, those guys are assholes and deserve all the public shame they’ve reaped. But on other questions the line between right and wrong isn’t so thick, and in some cases can even lie in the beholder’s eye. Both sides of the old “Feminist Sex Wars”, the sex-positives and the sex-negatives, thought of themselves as fighting sexist oppression, but their interpretations of what counted as oppressive were so different that each probably saw the other as contributing to their supposed common enemy. For that matter, any form of sectarian infighting within religion is in part a battle of interpretations. In such situations, shaming seems justified only if you’re not on the receiving end.
The closest thing I have to a strong opinion on public shaming is that while people should enjoy the right to do it (within limits preventing violence or threats thereof), the targets should also enjoy the right to disregard it if they don’t accept the same moral premises. But this is going off my own, typically American beliefs in free speech which may not apply to the whole world.
You remember Jon Ronson’s treatment of the guy in Broadmoor in The Psychopath Test? The one who pretended to be insane, and was kept locked up because that’s an insane thing to do? Having read that book and heard Ronson talk about it on TV and radio, I honestly can’t tell what his opinion on the matter is, if indeed it falls into one of the binary positions of “This was a bad thing” or “This was a good thing”, and not a complicated series of IF/THEN/ELSE clauses. He starts off by giving the impression that the guy is trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare, but if you read all the way through, it sounds more and more as though Ronson thinks the guy does have something up with him, but never actually says so.
Without having read So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? I’m willing to bet that Ronson’s treatment of Lehrer is equally subtle: letting him speak for himself, and including enough facts for the reader to make up their own mind, if they haven’t made it up already.
A review is just a review, and even professionals can have an off day and miss subtleties that a fan will take for granted, especially if they’re writing in a slightly foreign idiom. Saying that, PZ’s reading time is his own; if he doesn’t want to read Shamed? for whatever reason, that’s his decision.
Me @33: That should be “reading a slightly foreign idiom”.
I suggest reading this interview with Ronson over at boingboing
http://boingboing.net/2015/04/01/jon-ronson-talks-about-the-sha.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
It’s badly formatted in places and difficult to tell where mark and Jon are speaking, but this is the apposite piece
“Jon: That happens a lot. I’m sure Justine Sacco was in part destroyed because of the way that she looked. The way people look seems to form part of it sometimes. You’re right I think the fact that Jonah looked like this smug person. I read the nicest thing the other day online about my book, somebody wrote that I’ve managed to humanize Jonah Lehrer without letting him off the hook. And that’s exactly what I was intending, too. It’s not my desire, nor my place, to exonerate Jonah Lehrer for what he did, but I think you can still write something sympathetic, and humanizing, and human, about the horrific situation that he found himself and the horrific situation weirdly that Michael Moynihan found himself in as well, without passing judgment on the severity of his transgression. I was so pleased, actually. That sounds now like the most obvious thing in the world to me, the most obvious conclusion in the world to come to, but it took me months to come to that. I was thinking if I think what happened to Jonah was brutal, does that mean I have to say that I think what he did was no big deal? That made me feel incredibly uncomfortable because I don’t think what he did was no big deal. I think he did some really stupid things and then the way he tried to cover it up was really stupid. It was a really good feeling to realize that I could humanize Jonah, could make people be in Jonah’s shoes, without having to try and exonerate his transgression. ”
So he’s not minimising what Lehrer did – but he is saying that he wants to live in a world where people do get second chances. There are other examples in the interview where he talks about how much it’s about deciding where to draw the line. He’s certainly not saying anything goes – it’s much more nuanced.
I will be reading the book, as I expect it to be a thoughtful piece on something that actually matters. But all the same, I probably won’t be reading anything else from Jonah Lehrer.
Ann, you said it better than anyone. All of this is in plain English in Shamed, right for Engbur to see, but he instead he uses the opportunity to review the book as a bait-and-switch: we come for the review, we receive only his opinions on how phony Lehrer is. There are quicker ways to waste others’ time.
Ann Godridge
He already lives in that world. Lehrer is being published again and paid after taking a brief hit to his wealthy lifestyle. Boo-hoo. And really, who dehumanized Lehrer? Like I give a fuck if he was insulted. That’s not dehumanizing or othering. And harassment and threats aren’t public shaming either.
So what’s the point?
At least this Amazon reviewer gets it:
Brandon Moody
Then there’s new shit too. Consider the recent backlash against some of Trevor Noah’s tweets being anti-semtic, sexist and fat shaming. And the defense is coming as anti-shaming and “it’s just comedy”.
It’s all “the public shaming has gone to far” but people have only been calling for Noah to cut the shitty problematic jokes.
This isn’t about harassment or threats (though from what I’ve read he gladly mentions it alongside as if it’s the same thing and keeps bringing up people being publicly assaulted as legal punishment) or sexist or ablist remarks against those targets. He’s wondering where to draw the line with white subjects, ignoring how women get it worse and how the one black woman got it worst of all for reporting a sexist remark. Ignoring social justice when so many public shamings are about social justice is especially heinous. While insulting people that called out Sacco’s racist privledged tweet as Rosa Parks wannabes and worse than trolls.
And why is it now that privileged people are actually facing consequences for the offensive shit they say and do is all this hand-wringing over it? This shit isn’t new to anyone at risk.
If it’s jobs you’re so concerned over, then work so employers can’t fire you for any damn reason. Unions. Laws. Fucking anything but one of the few ways to fight against the status quo. Instead of worrying about some progress being made so you can’t get away with being a douche in public. And you know, stop being a douche in public.
I don’t think Sacco’s tweet was racist – I think it was an ill judged joke ABOUT racism and white privilege. Badly expressed but to interpret it as racist is a misunderstanding, perhaps in some cases a deliberate one.
I have a sarcastic sense of humour – an issue that comes in the boing boing interview. I can say things in the company of my friends knowing that they understand that. I love sarcastic and dark humour – but it’s clearly not possible to indulge it in public any more.
As for Lehrer – my simple solution is not to buy his books any more.
It seems to me that public shaming doesn’t work where it’s most needed – on the Katie Hopkins of this world. Maybe you would include Lehrer in that. Perhaps as a strategy it’s worthy of being reassessed, bearing in mind that it has the most impact on the people who probably don’t really deserve it.
Not everyone who does something bad is a bad person. I make mistakes. At times I probably make jokes that cross the line. I’ve not read the book yet, but I suspect that I will end up feeling that the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground.
But given that I’ve needed forgiveness in my life when I’ve trod on someone’s toes, I want a world where people can make mistakes. Not without consequences. But where the consequences are in proportion to the mistake.
Ann Godridge
No, it punched down and used the African AIDS stereotype against them. It was racist in effect if not intent. Hence, racist.
It very well could have been about racism and white privilege and she fucked it up since she’s a privileged twit who didn’t take a second to think it through. Doesn’t it make it not racist.(Though this is a new revelation, which she didn’t mention in her apology, so grain of salt. She could be telling the truth or convinced herself of it since she’s a good person. *shrug*)
Of course, let’s not forget it started with a racist tweet but she had other offensive shit up beforehand, which was found when people thought she was hacked because of course she got the benefit of the doubt and she had defenders crying “cyberbulling” hours later. Nor the good charity and awareness that people raised during and because of the backlash.
Who the fuck is saying that? I didn’t even call Sacco racist, just her tweet FFS.
Well, no shit we all make mistakes.
What specifically was too far? I don’t think losing her job since she was a PR Exec on a public named twitter account. Image and reputation is what that business is about. She fucked that up herself. I wish I lived in a world were stupid shit like that would be called out and apologized for from her social circle without having to get strangers involved. But it didn’t. It was up for hours with 200 followers before something happened.
She did some volunteer work and has a job again already. Doxxing, harassment and threats are a separate matter than public shaming. Is this a tone argument because she was made fun of and insulted for her own words? She cried and felt bad about herself because people better than her social circle called it out?
I’m so moved. I need a tissue.
The Pullet Patrol™ was trying to messenger one your way, but the messenger hit the grog soaked corn, and then got caught up in a Pullet roller derby going on outside of the Pullet Palace™; feathers and pullets are flying every which way (but loose). Don’t hold your breathe. Last time this happened it took months to get reorganized.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Oh no! Well, thankfully Ronson and supporters have ensured no screaming mob of tormentors will descend upon the poor messenger and flog them for such a simple mistake. Perish the thought if this book hadn’t been published!
Just deleted a longish comment.
*sigh* This is one of those days when I feel like this blog commentariat and I have diverged.
The “bad acts by bad people” part was a reference back to the original post where PZ said, “Is it grossly unfair to publicly and persuasively expose bad acts by bad people?” I think it’s an important point to distinguish between the two.
It seems to me that her tweet can be read two ways. That’s exactly what makes it poorly worded.
The way I read it, it was not punching down – I read it as poking at that attitude. If I read it on a satirical site, I would assume they were poking fun at racism.
Clearly many people interpret it to not have any ironic intent, and to reflect what she thinks.
So the whole question rests on whether we think she’s a good person or a bad person. Those assumptions affect how we interpret the words. I don’t know her, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Do I think losing her job was disproportionate? I think I do – but I take your point about being in PR. But I don’t like the public shaming when it’s on such shaky ground.
Jafafa Hots @42:
Do you take issue with those who support public shaming and (when appropriate) doxxing?
Tony, no.
Ann Godridge
Ah, fair enough. But not every case is a bad act by a bad person, and I still think bad acts alone qualify for public shaming.
If you read anything on a satirical site, you’d assume similar. What’s published on The Onion (I had a link but the slur won’t get through the filter) will of course get you shamed if you repeat it as a one-liner on Twitter.
Why give so much benefit of the doubt where you remove the context and place into a completely different one to make your point?
Nice how you dodge what I said. I’m guessing you place me in the “reflects what she thinks so she’s racist camp” since I’m clearly not in the “it’s ironic, you just don’t get it” camp?
No, it doesn’t. There’s context and effect. Like I said. Context from her previous tweets could be used to argue she’s that much of an unthinking asshole or that since the tweet isn’t not subversive but celebrates her privilege and how it effected others.
…Shaky? Take anything from outright racist rants and place on a satirical site and it’d be poking fun at racism so…
Is public shaming right or wrong? I don’t think there’s a quick n easy answer to that question, although it’s easier for me to arrive at an answer when the individual in question has engaged in harmful behaviors or made offensive comments that punch down.
Looking at Governor Pence, Trevor Noah, and Bill Cosby, I think they all deserve the public shaming they’ve received. While nothing immediately springs to mind, I can imagine a situation where public shaming might not be the appropriate response, so I’m not taking an absolutist stance on it.
I do think that shaming shouldn’t be lumped in with doxxing though. Publicly excoriating someone for their bigoted views or their disgusting behavior is not the same thing as revealing personal information. People who wish to retain their anonymity online do so for a variety of reasons. As CaitieCat mentioned upthread, the unauthorized release of personal information can-and does-have dire consequences, from being denied a job or housing, to being fired, assaulted, or even murdered. Unlike public shaming, doxxing IMO carries with it the very real potential for the targeted person (as well as their family and friends) to face devastating consequences.
But.
The fact that doxxing can be (and is) used as a tool to harm others, doesn’t (as Josh pointed out) make it inherently bad. If you’re facing ongoing rape/death threats, or are facing repeated harassment or stalking, I think doxxing should be a tool available for use. Like Crip Dyke, I’m not going to tell someone being subjected to any of that that they shouldn’t doxx. That person (the offender) should not be able to harm others while shielded behind anonymity.
That said, I do think that the bar for deciding to doxx someone should be higher than the bar for deciding when to publicly shame someone, bc as JAL pointed out, they aren’t the same thing and they don’t bring with them the same potential consequences.
… it’s really stupid to criticise a book you haven’t read.Not according to Sydney Smith: ‘I never read a book before reviewing it, It prejudices a man so’.
The big problem with Jonah Lehrer is that he deliberately told lies to make money in a field where truth is important and highly valued – after all, it was his job to try to find and tell the truth. I think the fact that Ronson is British may be relevant. There’s a long history of British writers finding American fact-checkers funny and pedantic. A British journalist, Johann Hari, with a comparable record of lying and theft has just come back to a sympathetic response with a book “explaining” why it happened. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to either of them that their abilities, talents and attitudes mean they just aren’t suitable to be journalists.
Journalism doesn’t have a long-lasting effect. Even books of the kind Lehrer and Hari wrote vanish quickly. Professor Orlando Figes of the University of London was guilty of more contemptible behaviour. He used pseudonyms to attack the work of other historians and praise his own, threatened to sue people who revealed what he had done and finally apologised and paid legal costs and damages. His academic standing is unaffected and his journalism appears in respectable papers and magazines.
sc_770d159609e0f8deaa72849e3731a29d @48:
If you’re referring to the OP (I’m not sure because you didn’t quote the person you’re responding to), how certain are you that PZ is criticizing the book? It may blow your mind, but he could actually be talking about the review of the book (as well as themes raised in the book), rather than the book itself.
sc_770d159609e0f8deaa72849e3731a29d
Did you know that you can click on your name above the comment box and change your display name?
Tony1: I used the tag , which didn’t work for some reason. I was quoting latsot’s response to PZ at post 14 above.
Chigau, thanks, but I’ve got used to being sc_770d159609e0f8deaa72849e3731a29d .
Tony: I used the tag which comes after blockquote cite=””>in the list below, which didn’t work again!
It didn’t work because you screwed it up.
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
That cite business is crap.
How long have you been here?
Numerobis@30:
But we’ve seen that our enemies will do all of that regardless of what they do. They do not, ever, say to themselves (or each other) anything like “But they haven’t done that to us, so we shouldn’t do it to them.” That thought is never, ever a part of their moral decision-making.
Criticism/shaming seems a tool for adjusting reputation in excess of merit. Its use would thus seem to become harmful when it is used as a weapon, reducing reputation below merit. Anonymity and pseudonymity seem to allow limiting the ability of the powerful but demeritorious to strike against those using the tool in the first way — and limit the ability to retaliate against those who abuse such tools. The root difficulty seems in the underlying unaddressed issue of what actual “merit” is — a question involving a partial ordering relationship that ultimately seems fundamentally tied to Hume’s “is-ought” problem.
It sounds like the book raises some interesting questions and gives some interesting examples for considering them, even if the examples may be distorted and if the answers it suggests are crap.
I wonder, too. Ronson has a Name and a public. He could have written a book about, say, misogynist harassment online, or the phenomenon of trolling. I don’t think any famous author with a major publisher has tackled those subjects in a book. Instead he wrote this one.
His choice, obviously, but, yeah. What JAL said.
Based on the reviews and the critiques of Ronson’s work, I’m not given to trust his take on things. Yeah, OK, I haven’t read the book, but there are a zillion books I haven’t read and never will for similar reasons, and guess what? That’s how things are supposed to work. Ronson basically seems to be propping up the “Toxic Twitter” “PC run amok” narrative that overblows the consequences of being criticized or shamed by people who are either fact checking or calling out privilege or bigotry. The end result is that said critiques/fact checking is preemptively de-legitimitized and privileged people like Justice Sacco, Jonah Lehrer, and the guy that Adria Richards definitely did not get fired continue to enjoy the fruits of racial, gender, and/or economic privilege, while people who are less problematic but less famous continue to be shut out of those opportunities.
SallyStrange refers to him as “the guy” because his privilege is so huge that we still don’t know his name. But Ronson and a lot of other people feel sorry for him because he’s been “shamed” — so shamed that he’s still anonymous. He still can look for jobs without having Google throw up vast quantities of abusive comments.
Ronson’s choice of victims of shaming tells us a lot about Ronson.