This article was taken from the April 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Twitterstorms follow a pattern: first a person or company makes a comment in bad taste and is called out for it online. Once shared, the subject quickly starts trending -- maybe the person loses their job, or a product is recalled. But what happens after the trending cycle is over? "People's lives are ruined," says journalist and author Jon Ronson, 47. "It's deeply psycho-logically traumatising."
In his new book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson -- the author of quirky-but-true bestsellers such as The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats -- delves into the world of online shaming. His argument: supposed bastions of free speech such as Twitter and 4chan have also brought back behaviours -- public trials, individuals informing on each other -- rarely seen since the days of the McCarthy "witch hunts" in the 50s.
Take Justine Sacco, a PR executive who lost her job in 2013 for making an Aids joke on Twitter, or Adria Richards, who was "flamed" on 4chan after she herself shamed two coders at a tech conference for whispering inappropriate comments (in Richards's case, all three were subsequently sacked). "The punishments we are doling out for nothing -- for some badly worded joke -- are devastating," says Ronson.
Part of the problem: being online, rather than face-to-face, helps us to disassociate ourselves from those being shamed -- and from the consequences. "There is a term in psychology for this, called inner cognitive dissonance," says Ronson. "When you ask us, 'How do you think Justine Sacco is now?', we reply, 'Oh, she'll be fine'. The snowflake never feels responsible for the avalanche."
So, has being exposed to Twitter's dark side changed Ronson's own online behaviour for the better? "I am more careful about what I tweet now," he says. "I'll come up with a joke and I won't tell it. And I won't take part in any more shamings." Let he who is without sin cast the first hashtag.
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Picador) is out on March 12
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
