In his new book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson tells the stories of a number of ordinary people who have done or said something foolish on the Internet, with disastrous results.
As Ronson writes in his book, the Web has become a center of outrage and public scorn, a hotbed of hot takes where conclusions are quickly and forcefully drawn, and character rehabilitation is all but impossible. By the time a shamee’s life has been ruined, the ’Net has moved on to new targets. At times it’s as if the Web is a Reign of Terror run by Robespierre and Saint-Just, virtual heads being chopped off left and right for slights perceived and real.
Ronson writes about a public relations director for a Web company who made a careless tweet about AIDS being a disease that only affected black people, then boarded an international flight from South Africa to the U.S. By the time she’d landed, oblivious to the furor she had caused, she’d been fired and humiliated as nes, social media and pop culture websites tore her to pieces for the poorly considered remark.
But the Internet’s headsman has a dull blade. Often, the punishments seem ill fitted to the crime, and the Web’s choices for pariahs are rather capricious. While genuine sociopaths terrorize online communities with racist, sexist and every other kind of -ist screeds daily—suffering no repercussions—people who have been generally upstanding citizens but for one poor decision are plunged into nightmares that will never end, their tormentors cackling with glee as they take them down.
Ronson might be preparing a bonus chapter about disgraced NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams for the paperback edition of his book. Williams may not qualify as an ordinary person, but after he admitted last month that he had “misremembered” a story about being shot at in Iraq while covering the war in 2003, he was suspended by NBC for 6 months. He could very well lose his job, not to mention all hope of every being employed again in the business.
Williams didn’t post something stupid on Twitter or send an over-the-top email rant to friends or colleagues that made its way to a website. But he has been widely shamed online for his shifting account. Interestingly, Williams’ story of the incident has in fact changed over the years. In 2003, he reported that it had been another helicopter that had taken fire, not the one he was in. Only in recent years has he begun claiming to have been on board a downed craft.
It’s possible that he really has lost track of what happened over the years. We should know eventually if this sort of thing was a habit for Williams; many are digging in to Williams’ body of work, looking for evidence of habitual misstatement. So far, nothing concrete has been revealed.
If it turns out that Williams has a history of lying or embellishing, then he deserves his fate. If not, though, I have to ask: should his career be over because he made one (serious) mistake?
I wonder how many of Brian Williams’ excoriators would like to be judged as they have judged him. I think most people would like the opportunity to apologize (as Williams has done) and be forgiven for a mistake—even a doozy.
But the Internet will probably only become a more dangerous place for mistake makers. I wonder if, in the years to come, social media will wither as more people choose to eschew it rather than risk typing that one thing that makes the house come down all around them.
