Social media, which gave voice to millions, was conceived as a way to make the world a better place. But today they turn us into a ruthless mob, ready to tear to pieces for any mistake, says director and writer Jon Ronson.
When Twitter first came into our lives, it was a space for liberation from shame. Users could confess some of their shameful secrets, while others in response wrote something like “Oh my God! Everything is exactly like mine!” People who did not have a voice in ordinary life suddenly found it, and this voice became influential and convincing. Now, if any newspaper allowed itself to print a racist or homophobic column, we could react to it, call them to account, hit them with a weapon whose power we understood, but they did not, mass condemnation in social networks. And the advertisers then withdrew their ads from them. When people in power abused their privileges, we could get them. All this looked like a democratization of justice. Instead of hierarchy – equality. In a certain sense, we have improved the world.
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After some time, this happened. Science writer Jonah Lehrer was caught plagiarizing and quoting and disgraced1. As I myself heard from him, he was filled with remorse and decided to make a public apology during a lunch hosted by one foundation. It was the most important speech of his life for him. He hoped that she would become some kind of redemption. He knew in advance that the foundation would arrange an online broadcast of the speech. He did not know only one thing: that two huge monitors would be hung in the hall, one next to him, the other directly opposite him, on which responses from Twitter would appear.
I don’t think the people from the foundation were that much of a monster. Most likely they just didn’t know what they were doing. I think it was that unique moment when the amazing innocence of Twitter turned into a terrifying reality.
While he was apologizing, comments flowed in front of his eyes like a waterfall:
“Jonah Lehrer decided to get us, if only he was forgiven”
“Jonah Lehrer hasn’t proven himself capable of feeling shame.”
“Jonah Lehrer is just a sociopathic charlatan.”
The last word is what we need if we want to depersonalize the person we are poisoning. We want to crush him, but not to feel remorse about this. Interestingly, when we watch all sorts of court dramas, we usually identify with the kind-hearted lawyer of the suspect. And give us the power – and we will become judges, sending to the electric chair.
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The government is changing us fast. We attacked him for abusing his position, and now he was already defeated, and we all kicked and kicked him, cheering each other on. Perhaps now is the time when we feel out of place if we do not have another celebrity whipping boy in front of us. The day when we have no one to judge, consider it wasted.
Here is another story about a woman named Justine Sacco. She worked in PR in New York, had 170 followers on Twitter, and used to tweet all sorts of vitriolic jokes. Like the one she wrote on the plane from New York to London: “Uncouth German. You are flying first class. It’s 2014 now. Use your deodorant now! is an internal monologue. She giggled, tweeted, got no replies, and got that sad feeling we all get when the internet doesn’t applaud our wit. At the Heathrow transfer, she had little time to come up with another snide joke: “I’m going to Africa. I hope I don’t catch AIDS there. Joke. I’m white!” She giggled again, sent a tweet, got on a plane, got no response, turned off her phone, fell asleep, slept for 11 hours on the flight, turned on her phone when the plane landed, and saw a message from a person whom she had not seen since graduation: “It hurts to see what happened to you.” Followed by a message from her best friend: “Call immediately! You are number one on the global Twitter top.”
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What happened? One of her 170 followers forwarded her tweet to a prominent journalist, who retweeted it with his 15 followers. And the chain reaction started! During the hours that Justine slept on the plane, her life was completely at the disposal of Twitter, and he began to consistently destroy her. Philanthropists struck first: “Disgusting racist tweet…sending donation to @Care” (a well-known independent humanitarian organization – Ed.). They were followed by indignant: “There are no words, what an abomination this racist tweet by Justin Sacco! I’m shocked!”
This unfortunate joke literally blew up Twitter that night. I somehow immediately doubted that she was really racist. Perhaps the author of the tweet did not flaunt her superiority at all, but, on the contrary, mocked those who tend to flaunt it? This is quite in line with our comedy tradition, in the spirit of the same “South Park”, Colbert2 or Randy Newman3. When I met Justine at a bar a couple of weeks later and asked her to explain the meaning of her joke, she said: “We in America seem to be fenced off by some kind of protective shell from the problems of the Third World. Actually, I was ironic about this. ” She felt completely crushed.
New Stateman columnist Helen Lewis told me that she tweeted that night: “I’m not at all sure that the meaning of the statement was racist.” In response, a flood of insults like “you’re such a bitch” poured out. Helen admits that, to her shame, she fell silent and simply watched how the massacre of Justine was going on. The clouds thickened more and more. Justine was rudely insulted, then there was an avalanche of messages that she urgently needed to quit, that this tweet was the last in her career.
Many companies have made good money on this. Whereas before the incident, Justin Sacco was searched on average 40 times a month on Google, after that it was 1. This means, as one knowledgeable economist explained to me, that Google made from 220 to 000 dollars from this bullying. And we, the persecutors, did not earn anything. It can be said that they worked for free as interns at Google.
Finally, the trolls entered the game. “I hope Justin Sacco gets AIDS. lol. “Let someone HIV-positive rape her, let’s see if her skin color will protect her from AIDS!” And no one has put this user in his place. We were so excited by the trial, and our brains were so primitive at that moment, that it never occurred to anyone to be distracted and condemn the one who had crossed all boundaries in his accusations. Justine united into a single mass groups that had hitherto had nothing in common. Moreover, women in their insults surpassed men.
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Then, finally, Justine’s employers showed up. “This is a disgusting, offensive comment. Unfortunately, we are unable to contact the employee in question during her flight.” Twitter cheered: “I’d give a price to see Justine Sacco’s face when she turns on her phone and checks her mail.” “We will see how she learns about her dismissal, in real time.” Justine slept on the plane and was the only one in the whole world who didn’t know what was in store for her. And this ignorance of her, against the background of universal knowledge, especially warmed up the fun. It was calculated what time she would arrive in Cape Town, hashtag #Justin already landed? reached the top all over the world. “It’s time for me to go home to sleep, but here in the bar everyone is chained to #Justin has landed yet? You can’t leave.” The question arose: would anyone meet her at the Cape Town airport? Of course, there were such volunteers. “Do you want to know what a person looks like who ruined his life with a careless joke? Here, look.”
Why did we behave this way? Someone, I think, was genuinely upset. One explanation for the behavior of others is that Twitter is primarily a mutual approval machine. We surround ourselves with people who feel the same and the same, give each other approval, and this gives us a wonderful sense of self. And if someone stands across the road, we get rid of him. This is the other side of democracy. We wanted to show how much we care that people in Africa are dying of HIV. We wanted to appear compassionate—and that led us to be completely unmerciful. As the Boston Review put it, this is not social justice. It is the opposite of catharsis.
Over the past three years, I have met a lot of people like Justin Sacco. Believe me, there are many, every day more and more. We’d rather think they’re fine. But they’re not okay. The people I talked to were simply crushed. They talked about depression, anxiety, insomnia and suicidal thoughts. One woman, also hurt because of her joke, did not leave the house for a year and a half. And before that, she worked with teenagers with learning difficulties and seems to have successfully coped with this.
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Justine was fired because social media demanded it. But for her, things were even worse. She lost herself. She woke up in the middle of the night not knowing who she was. She was sentenced for “abuse of privilege”. This wording has turned into a kind of conditional signal for reprisals against this or that person. It robs us of the ability to sympathize and to distinguish small transgressions from serious ones. The image of Justine, who had only 170 followers, inevitably had to be mythologised. And then a rumor spread around the world that she was the daughter of coal multimillionaire Desmond Sacco. (Don’t let the corresponding Twitter hashtag fool us.) I thought so myself, until when I met her I asked her if this was true, and she replied: “My father sells carpets.”
If at the beginning of the existence of Twitter, he helped people to free themselves from shameful secrets and hear in response: “Oh my God, I have the same thing!” Now everything is exactly the opposite: there is a real hunt for other people’s compromising secrets. We can strive for goodness, for morality, but all this is immediately forgotten, as soon as someone tweets an incorrect remark. It opens the door to the evil that is hidden in us.
People, in my opinion, are divided into two types: those for whom a person is above ideology, and those for whom ideology is above a person. For me, a person is more important, but nowadays “ideologists” win. They prepare the ground for endless dramas in which a person can act in only two forms: either a brilliant hero or a disgusting villain. But we know that this is not true. We know that we can be both smart and stupid; the truth is that we are a gray area. The great achievement of social media was that they gave voice back to those who had no voice. But in the control society we are creating now, the best way to survive is to become voiceless again.
For details, see TED.com
Jon Ronson, documentary filmmaker, writer, author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Riverhead Books, 2015).
1 Jonah Lehrer, writer, author of books, including those translated into Russian (“How We Make Decisions” and others). He was a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, which is famous for its meticulous fact-checking. After the exposure scandal, Lehrer had to quit.
2 Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American actor, satirist, director, and writer.
3 Randy Newman is an American singer, songwriter and pianist.