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So You've Been Publicly Shamed QUOTES

So You've Been Publicly Shamed QUOTES

1 " Shame internalized can lead to agony. Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

2 " I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. We can lead good, ethical lives, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all - even though we know that's not how we should define our fellow humans. What's true about our fellow humans is that we are clever and stupid. We are grey areas.
And so ... when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices - that's democracy.
The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let's not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

3 " The word forever had been coming up a lot during my two years among the publicly shamed. Jonah and Justine and people like them were being told, 'No. There is no door. There is no way back in. We don't offer any forgiveness.' But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don't? "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

4 " [W]e need to think twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

5 " The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

6 " I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

7 " It seems to me that all the people involved in the Hank and Adria story thought they were doing something good. But they only revealed that our imagination is so limited, our arsenal of potential responses so narrow, that the only thing anyone can think to do with an inappropriate shamer like Adria is to punish her with a shaming. All of the shamers had themselves come from a place of shame, and it really felt parochial and self-defeating to instinctively slap shame onto shame like a clumsy builder covering cracks. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

8 " When shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes, nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

9 " Soon after Justine Sacco's shaming, I was talking with a friend, a journalist, who told me he had so many jokes, little observations, potentially risqué thoughts, that he wouldn't dare to post online anymore.

'I suddenly feel with social media like I'm tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry, unbalanced parent who might strike out at any moment,' he said. 'It's horrible.'

He didn't want me to name him, he said, in case it sparked something off.

We see ourselves as nonconformist, but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age.

'Look!' we're saying. 'WE'RE normal! THIS is the average!'

We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

10 " I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

11 " But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don’t? "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

12 " We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside it. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

13 " We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

14 " A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

15 " There is nothing I dislike more in the world than people who care more about ideology than they do about people. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

16 " I suppose it’s no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt—before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it’s known as cognitive dissonance. It’s the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we’re kind people and the idea that we’ve just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

17 " As somebody back then wrote, “Facebook is where you lie to your friends, Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

18 " We see ourselves as nonconformist, but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

19 " An apology is supposed to be a communion—a coming together. For someone to make an apology, someone has to be listening. They listen and you speak and there’s an exchange. That’s why we have a thing about accepting apologies. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed

20 " For the first hundred years, as far as I could tell, all that happened in America was that various people named Nathaniel had purchased land near rivers. "

― Jon Ronson , So You've Been Publicly Shamed