Last week I reviewed Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. It’s a book well worth reading, and one of the central questions the book grapples with is why some people are crushed by internet shame mobs, while others seem to come out of the controversy fine. Ronson believes, and I agree, that narrative is a key part of the story:
Read Full Article »One of the central things that happens in an episode of shaming is that the narrative of a person’s life is upended. Justine Sacco was an upstanding citizen with a rising PR career… until she simply became the AIDS tweet lady. Jonah Lehrer was a wunderkind writer with grand ambitions… until he became the plagiarism guy. Lindsey Stone was a small town girl who loved working with disabled people… until she became the disrespects-our-dead-troops girl. These folks have a mental model of who they are, and it impacts how they see themselves and how the world sees them. In an instant, that model is discarded and the entire world imposes a new narrative about who they are. A narrative in which they’re a scumbag defined by only one moment or one feature of their life.
