Being human and fallible and having at least a toe in the water of the autism spectrum―mixed metaphor, I know―I've been known to miss or misinterpret social cues. Yet I get the big one, which is that other people exist. They aren't just bundles of stimuli that amuse or annoy me. They have their own subjective worlds, their own ways of thinking and feeling.
One byproduct of people being physically separated by government policy and brand new social conventions is that this gets forgotten much of the time. You become aware of people who may live far away from you, but you know them as words on a screen, a thumbnail picture, maybe some kind of video if they or someone else provide it. So it's easier to reduce them to one thing they've said or done, especially if it's something you hate. And with no presence or awareness of another person who can feel and be hurt, there's less disincentive to act hurtfully towards them. I often suspect that some activists know this and like it, that they've long thought that compassion and empathy are reactionary forces and that putting them aside will allow for actions that will improve the world in the long run. But is that a ride you want to get on?
And then one day it hit me. Something of real consequence was happening. We were at the start of a great renaissance of public shaming. After a lull of almost 180 years ( public punishments were phased out in 1837 in the United Kingdom and 1839 in the United States), it was back in a big way. When we deployed shame, we were utilizing an immensely powerful tool. It was coercive, borderless, and increasing in speed and influence. Hierarchies were being leveled out. The silenced were getting a voice. It was like the democratization of justice. And so I made a decision. The next time a great modern shaming unfolded against some significant wrongdoer―the next time citizen justice prevailed in a dramatic and righteous way―I would leap into the middle of it. I'd investigate it close up and chronicle how efficient it was in righting wrongs.
Jon Ronson's book So You've Been Publicly Shamed came out in 2015, approximately a half decade ago but a time that in some ways feels an eon away. But in it you can see an awareness dawning on Ronson of what's coming over the horizon.
One of his first subjects is Jonah Lehrer. I've read Lehrer's book How We Decide but I probably wouldn't have given him much personal thought in most circumstances. In the course of writing another book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, Lehrer quoted Bob Dylan saying things that he might not have actually, you know, said. In Ronson's book, another journalist catches him out in a sequence that somewhat recalls the movie Shattered Glass. Recriminations follow, contracts are canceled. In trying to recover, Lehrer delivers a public speech on mistakes. His sponsors place a large screen behind him, displaying Twitter comments in real time. If you're guessing it devolves into an electronic theatre of cruelty, you're quite right.
There's also Julie Sacco, a publicity consultant who, about to depart on vacation to Africa, tweeted "Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding, I'm white." A kneeslapper that leaves my knee unslapped, to be sure, but it's not hard to dig beneath the surface at what she was actually trying to do. The comedians Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer climbed to prominence doing this sort of humor, exposing prejudice by stating it baldly and blithely. They've largely phased out those jokes, after learning firsthand and otherwise that social mores have changed. Sacco got hit head-on with those changes, and among other things lost their jobs.
These are both cases of people with status and position losing it, which in some cases means that the person can live to fight another day, building their image back up. But mob justice doesn't just come for the rich and famous. Nor does it require in all cases the person to have actually done what they're accused of. In the past few days a retired firefighter was tarred in social media for throwing a fire extinguisher during the MAGA riot of January 6, despite his being home halfway across the country at the time. Society is creating new sins for the thrill of punishing them, and this is something we need to be able to name and recognize if it's to be fought.
For further reading, two insightful essays from the past couple of days by Bari Weiss and Alana Newhouse.
3 comments:
You're absolutely right in your surmise that 'Society is creating new sins for the thrill of punishing them'. As a society, and I do mean the very large part of it in the industrial world, isn't mature enough for social media itself, never mind the cruel aspects you describe of which there are far too many examples to note at this point. I read a few days ago that since the banning of Donald Trump (and Ron Paul, for goodness sake) that the best selling book on Amazon has been Orwell's '1984'. The person who mentioned that went on to say he wasn't sure if it was because there was a new audience for the novel or if many were afraid it wouldn't be available in future.
I wonder if, other than dumping social media platforms completely, we have any way of controlling the situation. Interestingly, in China, they refer to the ‘human flesh search engine’ where internet users collaborate to publicly humiliate those who have breached societal norms or are deemed unpatriotic. It appears that this program has been fully embraced in the West to the detriment of anyone who gets spotlighted. The good news so far is that FB and Twttr have lost $50+ billion dollars in the aftermath of their purges. Of course, the more complicated part is that it's become essential to have a FB account in order to get a job or for students to get class notifications. It's a package. The other good news is that the EU, Australia, and a few other countries are planning to clamp down on them and likely Google and Amazon too.
The articles you linked to are both very interesting. Bari Weiss is an intelligent and perceptive interlocutor. We have indeed reached peak everything - tech (the big news this week at a major new tech sales event is a 'doggy door' - I'm not kidding, you can look it up).. anyway, to continue peak msm, peak money markets, peak weapons, peak (post) entertainment... Once you reach the top there's only one direction left.
Alana Newhouse's piece was excellent too.. everything's broken. She's not the first to say so. I won't comment on the details of what she's written because we can discuss it next time we talk, but you might be interested to read an article I read and bookmarked a few months ago on Quillette. It's called 'John Glubb and Avoiding the Fate of Empires'. There's a wonderful picture of Glubb Pasha (the man on the right) and the article itself shows him to have been a very astute observer of world history. According to his reasoning the western world is ready for a phase change. That wouldn't be such a bad thing.. but I'm not really sure I welcome our Chinese overlords.
The fact that these social media apps and big tech companies exist wouldn't be a huge problem in itself. There would likely be some side effects any which way, but the issue there is that they've become central in a way they probably shouldn't be. They're the common infrastructure when they should just be places to waste time. Banning Trump from Twitter mostly looks like a power move, although there's a question of just whose power. Ron Paul being shut out of his Facebook account is just Kafkaesque. All he's been told is that it's for "repeatedly going against our community standards", which could mean anything and so means nothing.
Huh, didn't mean to sign off just then. I think I thought I was previewing my comment rather than publishing it.
Anyway, China's social credit system, which extends through social media but doesn't stop there, is tremendously disturbing, not least because it could keep a significant number of people onboard just because it's more convenient not to make a fuss. And I'm sure they're not the only government or other large entity who have made plans along those lines. If some countries can make effective counter-moves, that's a good thing.
I only just became familiar with Bari Weiss's work. I do know that she left the New York Times over them doing the kind of thing that they and other media companies have been doing too much recently. Details in her words here. When you said "doggie door" I assumed it was some kind of techie codeword, but apparently not. Only one direction to go indeed.
I think I had looked over that article on John Glubb before, but there are still some good morsels in it I didn't recall. Yes, every empire has an expiration date built in, but doesn't know what it is. The problem is that while most of us in the Anglo-Euro-American sphere have been part of an empire, we're not emperors. We're not powerful. So we don't shape the new order. All we can do is try to preserve our own freedoms within it.
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