Twitter Shame

John Ronson's TedTalk When Online Shaming Spirals Out of Control helps to shed light on the true capabilities that Twitter offers. He has blogged and written books on the subject of group shaming. In this video, he reviews what happened during the reactions to Justine Sacco's actions on twitter and what these reactions mean for where the power is on social media.

He begins with the origin of twitter. He states that it was a place for people to come together to feel accepted. Someone could let out a secret and then others would accept them. A safe space for letting others in on your secrets without feeling shameful.

The nature of twitter takes a slight turn in his mind when this group of like minded people realized they could use their collective voice to shame. They could use Twitter as a weapon to bring justice to some entities that were previously out of reach such as newspaper or scholarly journalists. The people
had a voice to be able to combat power people who misused their privilege.

This being one of Ronson's reoccurring themes throughout his presentation. The people coming together to shame on anyone who misuses their privilege. This occurs during his talk about Jonah Lehrer's public apology, at which a live twitter board with many distraught and angry tweets was posted on the screen next to Jonah, and again during his discussion on Justine's AIDS tweet.

During the twitter events that Ronson talks about, he really makes his view of how people act during these times.

He looks at some of the tweets that were made during these events and breaks them down. Truly analyzes the components of the tweets. One said that Lehrer lacked to ability to understand shame, which he says must have been posted by the world's best psychiatrist since they could completely diagnose this tiny man on their tv screen. Another called Lehrer a psychopath.

A psychopath. Ronson explains that words like these are used to help dehumanize people so that we will not have to feel shame after we attack them and tear them apart.

Dehumanizing someone before you destroy them helps with how you feel afterward, but does it help them at all? Ronson talks to people who have been shamed like this on the internet and asks them how they are doing after all this time. He goes on to share how most of these people who have been shamed, never go on to lead the same normal life they used to. Now they wake up in the middle of the night forgetting who it is they are or stay in their house for years.

During the hours that Justine was asleep on the plane and could not defend her tweet, many different arcs of this story arose. There were many who were angry, offended or even looking to get some of their own publicity by weighing in on the matter. By the time that she awoke and checked her phone, there were people calling for her to be shamed, fired and even raped.

A person called out for Justine to be raped.

The main point that Ronson is trying to make during his presentation is that in this day and age we need to take caution in how we are using social media. It is no longer an opportunity to start a new democratic system but rather a new message board to destroy the lives of people we deem unworthy of freedom of speech. His caution is that if we continue to allow actions such as requesting someone be raped and beaten, go on without consequence, and sometimes even being rewarded with praise, that the social media boards will not be there for the people but rather be a weapon to destroy the people.

Overall I found this video and the articles that I've read over the last week to be very informative and quite an enjoyable subject to having to write about.