"We can GET them!" - Jon Ronson's hilarious & disturbing story about public shaming & mob justice
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- Excerpted from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, September 2015.
Jon Ronson, always funny, always insightful, has authored The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015).
full video: • Jon Ronson: Shame Cult...
We destroy people for fun and games, sickening.
Mankind has always been sadistic and cruel. This is nothing new, just a new way of expressing it.
These comments don't have enough upvotes.
Derren Brown did a gameshow on it.
I don't think his audience got the message. There is a new self-righteous and privileged group...SJW's.
Gilles 82 ,fun*
You have to stand up to these people. Trump owes part of his success to the fact that he does.
Clinton's popularity surged when Hillbilly Bill stood up to the BLM protesters and shut down their tirade with a barrage of truth bombs. The leftists mantra at the time was shock that Bill Clinton dared to speak facts and to use the cultural differences of the era to justify his tough-on-crime stance. Thus, because the left media was upset that someone wasn't simply parroting their bullshit, Hillary hid Bill away from the campaign trail and Hillary went right to mindlessly pandering.
And we wonder how bullying among children and teens has exponentially grown in occurrence and severity.
_"We love to publically shame people, but if it happens to the in-group we should remain nuanced, because they might not have meant it!"_
I love these stories of soc-jus types, where they become aware of the cannibalistic nature of their methods.
The problem with twitter is it attracts the sort of people who want to be on twitter.
the problem with politics is that it attracts the sort of people who want to be in politics...
I'm starting to see a trend here. 😂😬
I'm not much of a Twitter or Facebook person but I do watch a fair bit on CZcams. Every now and then I feel compelled comment on the content, maybe because I agree or disagree with the creator. The replies to these rare comments never cease to amaze me. Usually polar opposites, some will share my opinion some will not but those that don't, wow! The vitriol expressed by people who don't share my point of view is incredible, the like one never encounters bizarrely, in real life.
Maybe one day we will all be able to think as fast as we can type.
Dude do people even have lives anymore nowadays? Who has time to stalk a woman who made a bad joke on twitter all day and all night wtf? Don't these people have any hobbies?
My feelings after watching this can only be described as horror. We are doomed, I think
'Mob justice' rarely involves justice.
What was good in social justice has been co-opted by people who are unhappy with their lives and need someone to blame for their lot in life. What does it feel like for the bullied to become bullies.
It's not enough to be sad and angry that we do this. We have to want to help the people who are hurt, and then pause there to make sure we don't hurt anyone with our outrage afterwards. Otherwise, we'll just get a spiral of outrage - people being offended by people getting offended, everyone calling for everyone's head. You have to put helping first. It's not as much fun, but it's what gets things done.
If even Jon Ronson thinks SJWs are out of line, we're in serious trouble...
I voted for Trump, enjoy Milo Yiannopoulos, and agree with you the ideology of silencing speech through SJW's in part inspired me to vote for Trump. SJW's like Sharia adherents, oppose free speech and react with seething hatred, hysteria, and violence when introduced to new ideas.
^this
Lisa Pdx How's Trump working out for you so far?
when does he say sjws? he's talking about the power of the internet and how it can be used for good or ill. not your anti-sjw lark. come on
Arianrhod Hyde It's SJWs that use it the vast majority of times.
I see public shaming on a daily basis within the feminist and other social activist groups. What used to be forums for sharing ideas and stories and driving encouragement to make positive changes in the world have now become absolute cesspits where the goal posts move on a daily basis. One wrong word, one-day-out-of-date terminology used, one simple question: these all become the surest signs of dissent and that person is feasted up and shamed out of existence, never to be heard of again.
I've seen it time and time again. I've seen people whose hearts were in the right place, who'd dedicated time, money, energy and passion to driving positive changes get called the vilest of terms because they hadn't got the latest memo listing the latest terminology.
"We were like unpaid shaming interns for Google and Twitter."
They all laugh but I bet many in that audience are guilty of social media lynch mob justice!
CZcams comments are the most notable examples
this is exactly why i don't use my own picture or name.
The title of his follow up book, or the subtitle of that one should be "feels over reals".
Thats the mantra of this era. Especially since the 90s, feelings have been the only thing most people care about :/
Its disgusting because it has lead to so much more damage than people can imagine but nobody wants to acknowledge it because their feelings are more important than reality.
Shame to see so many people in the comments missing the point. Ronson is criticising a particular kind of behavior which can come from anyone with a self-righteous attitude, left, right or centre.
Milo Yiannopoulos' recent talk in Milwaukee is a great example. He openly mocked and belittled a trans student, singling them out as a target for shaming whilst they were in the room. He could have advanced an argument without mentioning any particular person, but he didn't. Like the people Ronson describes, he gets off on shaming people. He moved from shaming gamers three years ago to creating a space to shame others today. He's been doing it for years, and until he saw his chance to jump on the anti-SJW bandwagon, he was exactly one of those people.
I've read Ronson's book, and followed many of the objectionable instances of public shaming that even some of Milo's admirers would agree with me were terrible. But some of them use people like Ronson as a way of shouting down one kind of shaming so they can do their own. It's sad.
sure, everyone does it to a degree. I would say Milo for example has his trigger words just like anyone else, for example don't call him a white supremacist (he loves black men). Sort of like calling Ben Shapiro a Nazi is dumb (he is a Jew).
Ronson's point is that most of these instances of name calling and shaming are done out of ignorance and yes a self righteous attitude, but mostly with little or no consideration for the thoughts, feelings, reasons of the target of the shaming. They are also done in an anonymous mob like fashion and not in a way where civil discourse is even possible.
Honestly , that Milo sounds to be bad in singling out a person , we don't need people like him
@Scott's Precious Little Account yes, he is. I think you missed my point.
This video (and Mr. Ronson's writings) will become exceedingly important over time. This should be required viewing with every new social media account sign-up.
Jon was hilarious BTW. :)
Until they censor it.
It is called the mobbing instinct. Read the work of Dr. Heinz Leymann on Workplace Mobbing.
Being a Rightist, I'd love to put it all on Leftists. But it's bigger than that. You guys have seen it on CZcams. Some sweet middle-aged woman will post a video of herself having harmless horseplay with one of her pets--Just a delightful, innocent little video. This will be followed in the comments section by some of the most vile, hateful posts about how that animal abuser needs to die a painful death. There's a toxic internet subculture, folks, and it's not getting any better.
Robert E. Howard said "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be discourteous without having their skulls split," and this past two years brought to mind more of his feelings, "Civilization is unnatural," and "I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed."
The longer I live, the more I see society as a mistake. The global village will kill us all, and we're loading the barrel for fun.
There's a world of difference between tribalism and being an animal.
Not really, no. Without any kind of organized education system, record-keeping system, unified language, and other such nice things, it wouldn't take many generations for our intellectual level to fall back to the ancient era.
You're conflating small, widely dispersed communities with individuals living in trees.
Explain, as I don't see it.
I've watched the social mob operate and decided to not even get on twitter for this reason. I have a sick sense of humor and in this climate I could easily offend the angry mob lol!
You have to understand this in terms of our cultural history. Every society has a consensus moral code, and shaming system to enforce it. But there are considerable variations in terms of degree; a good (contextually) definition of the word "liberal" (in its true meaning rather than as the American political designation as "left wing") would be how intense the shaming system is; liberal societies are relatively shameless whereas illiberal ones are intensive shamers.
Western society- and particularly, Protestant derived European societies (which map onto the Anglosphere and Northern Europe loosely) have suffered a long culture war between liberals and anti-liberals (for whom the term "puritan" is quite apt). This has resulted in an oscillation of the degree of shaming. Society was very shaming 100 years ago, by the end of the Victorian Era (which followed a liberal era). Then it went liberal after WWII. Now it is back into puritanism (shaming) again.
The new intensive morality- our era's form of "Victorianism" is propagated by those calling themselves Progressive, Social Justice, and (laughably) "liberal". The moral strictures differ somewhat from the last phase (though less than one may think, except for a strategic volte face regarding homosexuality), but the character of it is the same. The Progressives of 100 and more years ago were the moralist fanatics, and they are today.
"Political Correctness", a silly term but we're stuck with it, is our Victorian Values. It is just as irrational, just as immune to criticism, and likewise justified, by its boot-faced fanatics, as "just doing the right thing". They're cleaning up society, freeing us (forcibly) from danger, saving us from each other and from ourselves. They usually see themselves as secularists these days but their cultural movement traces directly back to the Reformation.
In my view, only by acknowledging the source of this grotesque, illiberal behaviour can we understand it and thus fight against it. As Ronson implies (correctly) again and again in this video, it is those who flatter themselves as liberal, socially just etc who are the actual core constituency inflicting it.
jaxxstraw this is very interesting considering what just happened to bbc sherlock
What do you mean by what just happened to BBC Sherlock? It's not something I know much about.
***** right sorry, I should have elaborated. They basically failed to live up to modern social justice culture and some characters would have fitted better in, in a gothic victorian story then the episode that actually took place in victorian times.
In the last episode, they had a Madwoman In The Attic, who was also a mary sue or a deus ex machina dependent on how you look at it and the episode got leaked, which was oddly hilarious. It doesn’t help that sherlock was even more of a marty stu then usually in the previous episode or that they fridged Mary Watson.
(¬_¬)
Mailed this to several people. I usually don't do that, but this is a must see. I think this is the most important speech I ever heard.
Incredibly powerful piece.
"When the only tool you have is a hammer... "
This is not a "left" and "right" issue, people. Those who engage in public shaming come from the full political spectrum.
This was probably the most interesting CZcams vid I have watched in years. So educational. My only query is 'I wonder how many watched this and thought this doesn't apply to them?' They were above this? Not everyone is innocent as I note from the comments. Trying to 'shame' those who perpetrated this. None of us are beyond reproach. The only thing we can do is learn from this and think more in the future about our actions and their consequences.
Never used Twitter, never will.
OUTSTANDING..!! Well done sir, we need much more of this.
I remember when the Justine Sacco tweet first hit and its STILL the funniest tweet of all time
Sounds as if the SJW's are beginning to get a taste of their own medicine!
Watching this in June of 2020. Sadly, it's gotten so much worse.
Yeah, people over reacted to Sacco's tweet, she obviously didn't mean anything by it. The people who came for her neck used her tweet for racial and social gratification which that is way worse than anything they accused her of.
As of 11:00 minutes mark, I have to disagree with this Vid's title. The delivery of this guy IS hilarious, yes. But the story is just plain horrifying.
I think in moments like this become such a big deal because we all walk around with an inner sense of outrage and this is just somewhere to direct it because the reasons these injustices even exist in the first place are unseen paradigms that we have allowed to be created and passively participate in.
unpaid shaming interns. An even bigger problem today.
The talk is amazing, the comment ection is cancer. Right-wing commenters don't realize that Ronson only picks on liberals because he's a liberal himself (like most of his audience) and it helps him drive the message home. But the problem is exactly the same with right-wing trolls. If you take this talk as a great piss on liberals, you've understood nothing of what he said.
This was good, thanks for sharing.
No one has ever shamed me that I haven't ignored or ripped a new one.
Im so glad when I was younger, there was no social media to remember it forever.
Nothing's changed. The crux of the issue is that there is STILL insufficient legislation structuring the social interactions we have on social media. Yet, days have gone by in the past 3 years where we've had more social interaction with relative strangers online than with people irl.
I wonder where Justine is today.
Her employer was not entitled to fire her, she should have first been called in a meeting where she would describe what happened and present ways in which she would change her behavior if it was the case. So what they did was illegal and she should have sued them. And it's obviously you should never seriously consider what the folks on the internet are saying cause quite a vast majority are even mentally troubled. I've never seen decent people wanting to harm anyone for any reason, however I've noticed so many severely damaged people either trying to scam or "destroy" others by either using verbal abuse or other forms of harassment. I have even met such a person in real life, wanted to see how far he would go and discovered there is not predefined he would set for his destructive actions. He would even have me taught how to "mentally" destroy people, as he would put it. He and his friends had a strikingly similar profile, lack of education due to purposely missing school, no job and no intention to search for any legal means of earning money, problems with alcohol and a troubled family background. Obviously I made their names known to the police.
the dark humoured and sarcastic joke/tweet was actually funny
Why do people have to be so mean??? Why do they even care?
- even if she'd meant it*, ppl should be allowed to be joking about anything...
(* and I know she didn't)
Social media is terrifying.
This is very disturbing and reminds me of the Olympic athlete Voula Papachristou who was expelled from the Greek team because of a completely harmless tweet that was deemed "racist." I would suggest that maybe 30 years ago a similar comment would be completely disregarded. What an absolutely sorry state we're in.
the real moral of the story is to not be self important enough to post jokes on the internet for 99.9% total strangers. best case scenario you don't gain anything worst case: you get your life ruined
dat ending tho
Love this guys' work. I have most of his books, paperback & audio. He's done both some intense and hilarious stories. The twitterbot chapter at the beginning of this book is damn funny.
Moral of this story: Think before you tweet. This goes for the original sender AND those who reply.
I don't see public shaming as wrong when an actual racist or mean-spirited bully uses social media to amplify their message. Didn't think your prejudicial message to the world would hurt others and cause a backlash? Too bad.
Peter She just did not understand the potential consequences of her actions.
Same argument as: "Oops pardon me for blasting you with my rifle, didn't mean to. Thought you were somebody else".
+John Banks I would argue that people aren't sensitive enough. If they were truly sensitive, they'd be able to stop and put themselves in someone else's shoes before judging and responding. Far too few people even bother trying to understand things from anyone else's perspective these days. Social media is training all of us to be self-centered, and the only possible outcomes of that - reward, punishment, or indifference - are each harmful in their own ways. I wish there were a solution, a way to get people back to being engaged and connected in the real world, to know what it means to have real people in our lives who care and are there for each other, but it seems we're stuck now. It's only going to get worse.
CULTure.
I'm still confused why Trump tweets.
This is what happens when it's ok to 'get someone'.
'Public shaming' means nothing unless you care what others think of you. I don't.
Always saw this as proof how short-minded, pedantic, hateful and DUMB people are or social-media is making us. Stupid people don't get jokes, only outrage.
Any other day, hearing this guy talk about privelage as if it were an actual thing, or after hearing some of his other topics, I'd have dismissed him as another liberal pipsqueak, but this was pretty legitimate, held up a mirror to a society of which I know I'm a part of, maybe instead of shouting into the soulless light that is my screen how other people are so bad, and how they need to act, maybe I should focus a bit more on myself, and taking a good long look in the mirror, see myself as the world sees me...
Jon Ronson was a huge fan of Rebecca Watson years ago... I wonder how he feels about her now that she's become part of this outrage machine.
He's gaining moral ground by shaming the shamers? LMAO...
Gotta love that social justice mob mentality. I wonder if I'll get torn apart for saying that.
Twitter serves NO one.
One of the scariest things about the media in 2018 is its reliance on Twitter to fill up the cycle. For example, when Louis CK returned to stand up around August at a club on Long Island, his appearance didn't generate much by way of Twitter commentary. Not long after he took the stage at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. _That_ time Twitter did its usual thing, hashtag indignation all the way, and the media ran with it.
People shaming people about shaming in this thread. For what? Not every thought is meant to be brandished as a sword. They are meant for us to be more aware OF OURSELVES. You know, the only person on this planet that gives a s**t what you think; goes for me too.
Enjoy dividing the country on benign issues. Think for yourselves, question authority.
as a follow-up statement, when you are communicating a thought within any medium written or spoken it is not the duty of the consumer to interpret you correctly, it is your responsibility to be sure you are clear.
I'm not on twitter. I just watch the world do its ridiculous thing.
Never got why Twitter is popular anyway. This is like staying at school with stupid people and their drama while you could have left years ago. But you keep returning to this canteen to see who is sitting by the trash bins today...
Why would anyone sane want that?
a heroin addict which is considered a bad thing has more valuable experiences and information about how life rolls,than a "normal" person who loves to shower himself in virtual world gossips and meaningless information,sometimes ask yourself how the fuck the world turned to this but dont avoid the negative feelings that will flood you,how a completely messed up person is better company and more human than the "normal healthy" people, i guess nowadays the least evil is the worst of all
Freaking brilliant!
I love this man..
Outrage is big business...
This talk reminds of a quote from a wise man: "A person is smart, people are stupid".
This is actually a good argument against using anything but a nickname on the web.
I'm not on facebook, not on Instagram. I don't have Twitter and I don't read glossy magazines. This adds color to why. Bought the book.
oh.. so this is a repeat of the 2015 tedtalk he did in London.. but with discussions at the end...
I'm pretty sure there is more humans on earth than violins and a good violin takes nearly as much time as a human to produce..
Too Bad I wasn't there to call that fucker out..
I wish I was the center of a public shaming.. I would troll so hard!
This is fucking sick to destroy any human being after saying something
There are actually people disliking this video, who are these people?
This is horrible. How are people so awful?
I finally relieved my gas.
It certainly all gotten out of hand along with a massive growth in the prevalence of cluster B personality disorders such as NPD and BPD!
Never heard of this guy.
Things like this that happen to people because of "Mob Violence" is why I will NEVER be on Twitter.
People are fucking sick, sadistic fucks.
Jon Ronson is fearless
I hope that Jon Ronson saw the Black Mirror episode, "Hated in the Nation." I would also like to know what he thought of it.
This story reminds me of Black Mirror (s3 e1) _Nosedive_ that I watched yesterday. (Watch it and tell me!)
It also reminds me Cersei's the walk of shame in Game of Thrones.
Pierre Ripplinger 5 stars my friend!
Jon, you are a wonderful human being. Hoping you see this :)
I don't get why anyone would want to be on twitter - who benefits?
Damn this guy is deeply disturbed.
facebook, twitter snapchat and skype ... its like they are coming outta of the walls and into your homes followin you on trains and interceptin your calls..
Next verse anyone..
they are, the are, they are, they are
we need to rape some sense into them. I am Indian with an age old traditional culture, and if you can't respect that you're f'ckn racist.
I hate people like that, people who say "I hate people like that", I hate people like that, very cynical about cynics and am routinely disrespectful of people who are routinely disrespectful, here's a big sneer at all the sneering people, social shame on all the social shamers, really gotta call out all these people who took so much pleasure calling people out, you created the trump presidency
this guy looks like a woody allen - harry potter hybrid
A Woody Pot? I can see it.
kaminarigaston -I would've never been able to pinpoint that as you did, but, Yes! Absolutely!
A cautionary tale. As Ye Sow, So shall ye Reap! Wise words from the past! Glad I never got into the twitter thing!
Internet making our lives easier as advertised, I suppose...we should all get a REAL LIFE and leave internet out of it...if we still can, that is.
thank you
Society is right back to where it was in ancient times, when someone would get their head cut off for not agreeing with something the king or emperor said. This innocent woman lost her job because of a joke about westerners and the bubble they live in. I would feel absolutely terrible if I had contributed to destroying someones life like that. These social media junkies are so obsessed that they actually seem to forget that it's a real person they are hurting, not just a username. This is why I don't dabble much in the internet anymore. It's a terrible place.
Spot on break down
You should be able to joka about anything, even tasteless. i would never have understood this joke as meant to be mean or looking down on anybody.
That's really powerful
It's almost as if "social justice" is evil.
Like national socialism is unnatural.
bob smith They're both bad
Well, I suppose the concept of social justice is good, but the current "social justice" (in quotations) going on is evil. After all, "social justice" is like the dark shadow or twisted mockery of actual social justice.
Social justice is not evil. Something evil took the term and put it on as a disguise. Don't let them ruin language for the rest of us. When we want to say something is justice for a social aspect of culture, we now have to add an asterisk at the end to explain that we're not talking about social justice, we're talking about _social_ (...) justice. In 2018, social justice is hated, protesting is disgusting, I agree with all this, and those that rule this society agree even harder.
I'd agree that just "justice" is preferable. Doesn't justice imply "among people"? What other sort of justice is there? (Oopps. Already figuring. Animals. Plants... eye roll)
But also the "warrior" addendum. Like using "War on x", "Militant atheist" etc. When most of what is being done (or at least often when the epithets are, supposedly, being earned and applied) are JUST FUCKING TALKING.
To say "he attacked me" (with words). You're a militant atheist...if you SAY "I'm an atheist" (and, maybe, why). Etc. It's all part and parcel of the 100 or 0 thing Jon talks about on social media. Exageration of the "damage" or stance of the Other. That makes them worse. It makes clicks more likely. It villainizes. It doesnn't, though, lend itself to reasoned discourse. And wouldn't THAT get us farther?
And, dammit, I've gone on and on. Again. In response to an ancient post. Sigh.
Moral, use twitter at your risk
Twitter is fun from the outside... sometimes🤷🏾♀️