"We can GET them!" - Jon Ronson's hilarious & disturbing story about public shaming & mob justice

Excerpted from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, September 2015.
Jon Ronson, always funny, always insightful, has authored The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015).
full video: • Jon Ronson: Shame Cult...

[@motelghost477]

We destroy people for fun and games, sickening.

[@Singularity2039]

Mankind has always been sadistic and cruel. This is nothing new, just a new way of expressing it.

[@stefandekkers4897]

These comments don't have enough upvotes.

[@bastiaan0741]

Derren Brown did a gameshow on it.

[@citizen1114]

I don't think his audience got the message. There is a new self-righteous and privileged group...SJW's.

[@jesusdiscipledon1499]

Gilles 82 ,fun*

[@KFrost-fx7dt]

You have to stand up to these people. Trump owes part of his success to the fact that he does.

[@OverbearingUrge]

Clinton's popularity surged when Hillbilly Bill stood up to the BLM protesters and shut down their tirade with a barrage of truth bombs. The leftists mantra at the time was shock that Bill Clinton dared to speak facts and to use the cultural differences of the era to justify his tough-on-crime stance. Thus, because the left media was upset that someone wasn't simply parroting their bullshit, Hillary hid Bill away from the campaign trail and Hillary went right to mindlessly pandering.

[@angeleahlebrie5170]

And we wonder how bullying among children and teens has exponentially grown in occurrence and severity.

[@jaydamalley3398]

_"We love to publically shame people, but if it happens to the in-group we should remain nuanced, because they might not have meant it!"_ I love these stories of soc-jus types, where they become aware of the cannibalistic nature of their methods.

[@nicstroud]

I'm not much of a Twitter or Facebook person but I do watch a fair bit on KZbin. Every now and then I feel compelled comment on the content, maybe because I agree or disagree with the creator. The replies to these rare comments never cease to amaze me. Usually polar opposites, some will share my opinion some will not but those that don't, wow! The vitriol expressed by people who don't share my point of view is incredible, the like one never encounters bizarrely, in real life. Maybe one day we will all be able to think as fast as we can type.

[@cabbage9398]

The problem with twitter is it attracts the sort of people who want to be on twitter.

[@bengersbootlegs]

the problem with politics is that it attracts the sort of people who want to be in politics... I'm starting to see a trend here. 😂😬

[@grahamyodude]

Dude do people even have lives anymore nowadays? Who has time to stalk a woman who made a bad joke on twitter all day and all night wtf? Don't these people have any hobbies?

[@danjordan9160]

'Mob justice' rarely involves justice.

[@etch.asketch2420]

I see public shaming on a daily basis within the feminist and other social activist groups. What used to be forums for sharing ideas and stories and driving encouragement to make positive changes in the world have now become absolute cesspits where the goal posts move on a daily basis. One wrong word, one-day-out-of-date terminology used, one simple question: these all become the surest signs of dissent and that person is feasted up and shamed out of existence, never to be heard of again. I've seen it time and time again. I've seen people whose hearts were in the right place, who'd dedicated time, money, energy and passion to driving positive changes get called the vilest of terms because they hadn't got the latest memo listing the latest terminology.

[@wildbill1726]

My feelings after watching this can only be described as horror. We are doomed, I think

[@TheChugg11]

If even Jon Ronson thinks SJWs are out of line, we're in serious trouble...

[@lisanpdx]

I voted for Trump, enjoy Milo Yiannopoulos, and agree with you the ideology of silencing speech through SJW's in part inspired me to vote for Trump. SJW's like Sharia adherents, oppose free speech and react with seething hatred, hysteria, and violence when introduced to new ideas.

[@musological]

^this

[@wwondertwin]

Lisa Pdx How's Trump working out for you so far?

[@arianrhodhyde7482]

when does he say sjws? he's talking about the power of the internet and how it can be used for good or ill. not your anti-sjw lark. come on

[@videowhat614]

Arianrhod Hyde It's SJWs that use it the vast majority of times.

[@davidshepherd397]

What was good in social justice has been co-opted by people who are unhappy with their lives and need someone to blame for their lot in life. What does it feel like for the bullied to become bullies.

[@MrRootBeerSauce]

"We were like unpaid shaming interns for Google and Twitter."

[@hahacutty6584]

this is exactly why i don't use my own picture or name.

[@peterheke]

Shame to see so many people in the comments missing the point. Ronson is criticising a particular kind of behavior which can come from anyone with a self-righteous attitude, left, right or centre. Milo Yiannopoulos' recent talk in Milwaukee is a great example. He openly mocked and belittled a trans student, singling them out as a target for shaming whilst they were in the room. He could have advanced an argument without mentioning any particular person, but he didn't. Like the people Ronson describes, he gets off on shaming people. He moved from shaming gamers three years ago to creating a space to shame others today. He's been doing it for years, and until he saw his chance to jump on the anti-SJW bandwagon, he was exactly one of those people. I've read Ronson's book, and followed many of the objectionable instances of public shaming that even some of Milo's admirers would agree with me were terrible. But some of them use people like Ronson as a way of shouting down one kind of shaming so they can do their own. It's sad.

[@BearNDragon]

sure, everyone does it to a degree. I would say Milo for example has his trigger words just like anyone else, for example don't call him a white supremacist (he loves black men). Sort of like calling Ben Shapiro a Nazi is dumb (he is a Jew). Ronson's point is that most of these instances of name calling and shaming are done out of ignorance and yes a self righteous attitude, but mostly with little or no consideration for the thoughts, feelings, reasons of the target of the shaming. They are also done in an anonymous mob like fashion and not in a way where civil discourse is even possible.

[@sheremydandelion7249]

Honestly , that Milo sounds to be bad in singling out a person , we don't need people like him

[@peterheke]

@Scott's Precious Little Account yes, he is. I think you missed my point.

[@nascar0509]

They all laugh but I bet many in that audience are guilty of social media lynch mob justice!

[@DarkTemplar981]

KZbin comments are the most notable examples

[@Seleteles]

It's not enough to be sad and angry that we do this. We have to want to help the people who are hurt, and then pause there to make sure we don't hurt anyone with our outrage afterwards. Otherwise, we'll just get a spiral of outrage - people being offended by people getting offended, everyone calling for everyone's head. You have to put helping first. It's not as much fun, but it's what gets things done.

[@b1aflatoxin]

This video (and Mr. Ronson's writings) will become exceedingly important over time. This should be required viewing with every new social media account sign-up. Jon was hilarious BTW. :)

[@canadiankewldude]

Until they censor it.

[@waltermh111]

The title of his follow up book, or the subtitle of that one should be "feels over reals". Thats the mantra of this era. Especially since the 90s, feelings have been the only thing most people care about :/ Its disgusting because it has lead to so much more damage than people can imagine but nobody wants to acknowledge it because their feelings are more important than reality.

[@jonaseggen2230]

Mailed this to several people. I usually don't do that, but this is a must see. I think this is the most important speech I ever heard.

[@exapplerrelppaxe7952]

Being a Rightist, I'd love to put it all on Leftists. But it's bigger than that. You guys have seen it on KZbin. Some sweet middle-aged woman will post a video of herself having harmless horseplay with one of her pets--Just a delightful, innocent little video. This will be followed in the comments section by some of the most vile, hateful posts about how that animal abuser needs to die a painful death. There's a toxic internet subculture, folks, and it's not getting any better.

[@tziirkq]

Robert E. Howard said "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be discourteous without having their skulls split," and this past two years brought to mind more of his feelings, "Civilization is unnatural," and "I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed." The longer I live, the more I see society as a mistake. The global village will kill us all, and we're loading the barrel for fun.

[@tziirkq]

There's a world of difference between tribalism and being an animal.

[@ManoredRed]

Not really, no. Without any kind of organized education system, record-keeping system, unified language, and other such nice things, it wouldn't take many generations for our intellectual level to fall back to the ancient era.

[@tziirkq]

You're conflating small, widely dispersed communities with individuals living in trees.

[@ManoredRed]

Explain, as I don't see it.

[@raykaelin]

OUTSTANDING..!! Well done sir, we need much more of this.

[@floyddebarber7645]

It is called the mobbing instinct. Read the work of Dr. Heinz Leymann on Workplace Mobbing.

[@matbroomfield]

Incredibly powerful piece.

[@Posiman]

The talk is amazing, the comment ection is cancer. Right-wing commenters don't realize that Ronson only picks on liberals because he's a liberal himself (like most of his audience) and it helps him drive the message home. But the problem is exactly the same with right-wing trolls. If you take this talk as a great piss on liberals, you've understood nothing of what he said.

[@Itsmeeman1]

"When the only tool you have is a hammer... "

[@BooRadleyTube]

This is not a "left" and "right" issue, people. Those who engage in public shaming come from the full political spectrum.

[@liyans1]

I think in moments like this become such a big deal because we all walk around with an inner sense of outrage and this is just somewhere to direct it because the reasons these injustices even exist in the first place are unseen paradigms that we have allowed to be created and passively participate in.

[@ian_b]

You have to understand this in terms of our cultural history. Every society has a consensus moral code, and shaming system to enforce it. But there are considerable variations in terms of degree; a good (contextually) definition of the word "liberal" (in its true meaning rather than as the American political designation as "left wing") would be how intense the shaming system is; liberal societies are relatively shameless whereas illiberal ones are intensive shamers. Western society- and particularly, Protestant derived European societies (which map onto the Anglosphere and Northern Europe loosely) have suffered a long culture war between liberals and anti-liberals (for whom the term "puritan" is quite apt). This has resulted in an oscillation of the degree of shaming. Society was very shaming 100 years ago, by the end of the Victorian Era (which followed a liberal era). Then it went liberal after WWII. Now it is back into puritanism (shaming) again. The new intensive morality- our era's form of "Victorianism" is propagated by those calling themselves Progressive, Social Justice, and (laughably) "liberal". The moral strictures differ somewhat from the last phase (though less than one may think, except for a strategic volte face regarding homosexuality), but the character of it is the same. The Progressives of 100 and more years ago were the moralist fanatics, and they are today. "Political Correctness", a silly term but we're stuck with it, is our Victorian Values. It is just as irrational, just as immune to criticism, and likewise justified, by its boot-faced fanatics, as "just doing the right thing". They're cleaning up society, freeing us (forcibly) from danger, saving us from each other and from ourselves. They usually see themselves as secularists these days but their cultural movement traces directly back to the Reformation. In my view, only by acknowledging the source of this grotesque, illiberal behaviour can we understand it and thus fight against it. As Ronson implies (correctly) again and again in this video, it is those who flatter themselves as liberal, socially just etc who are the actual core constituency inflicting it.

[@celinak5062]

jaxxstraw this is very interesting considering what just happened to bbc sherlock

[@ian_b]

What do you mean by what just happened to BBC Sherlock? It's not something I know much about.

[@celinak5062]

***** right sorry, I should have elaborated. They basically failed to live up to modern social justice culture and some characters would have fitted better in, in a gothic victorian story then the episode that actually took place in victorian times. In the last episode, they had a Madwoman In The Attic, who was also a mary sue or a deus ex machina dependent on how you look at it and the episode got leaked, which was oddly hilarious. It doesn’t help that sherlock was even more of a marty stu then usually in the previous episode or that they fridged Mary Watson.

[@rainyfeathers9148]

(¬_¬)

[@PurpleHumbug]

This was probably the most interesting KZbin vid I have watched in years. So educational. My only query is 'I wonder how many watched this and thought this doesn't apply to them?' They were above this? Not everyone is innocent as I note from the comments. Trying to 'shame' those who perpetrated this. None of us are beyond reproach. The only thing we can do is learn from this and think more in the future about our actions and their consequences.

[@fnanfne]

This was good, thanks for sharing.

[@breevestal]

I've watched the social mob operate and decided to not even get on twitter for this reason. I have a sick sense of humor and in this climate I could easily offend the angry mob lol!

[@darkhighwayman1757]

Im so glad when I was younger, there was no social media to remember it forever.

[@potterj09]

Love this guys' work. I have most of his books, paperback & audio. He's done both some intense and hilarious stories. The twitterbot chapter at the beginning of this book is damn funny.

[@DisabilityExams]

Never used Twitter, never will.

[@jasoncofax1794]

Sounds as if the SJW's are beginning to get a taste of their own medicine!

[@Superabound2]

I remember when the Justine Sacco tweet first hit and its STILL the funniest tweet of all time

[@M.O.C.2023]

Social media is terrifying.

[@burgersbeansandchips]

unpaid shaming interns. An even bigger problem today.

[@tiagos5804]

the dark humoured and sarcastic joke/tweet was actually funny

[@DidivsIvlianvs]

No one has ever shamed me that I haven't ignored or ripped a new one.

[@bobmccack3369]

dat ending tho

[@sharkboy6952]

Watching this in June of 2020. Sadly, it's gotten so much worse.

[@Siriathion]

As of 11:00 minutes mark, I have to disagree with this Vid's title. The delivery of this guy IS hilarious, yes. But the story is just plain horrifying.

[@bkbland1626]

Twitter serves NO one.

[@southtown2366]

I love this man..

[@The_Deaf_Aussie]

oh.. so this is a repeat of the 2015 tedtalk he did in London.. but with discussions at the end...

[@RonnieBakerTattoo]

thank you

[@mistymangham4410]

Freaking brilliant!

[@Davidlee37101]

as a follow-up statement, when you are communicating a thought within any medium written or spoken it is not the duty of the consumer to interpret you correctly, it is your responsibility to be sure you are clear.

[@civicostraining6190]

Jon, you are a wonderful human being. Hoping you see this :)

[@D3Studio007]

Outrage is big business...

[@DerKiesch]

This is actually a good argument against using anything but a nickname on the web.

[@oopiv3273]

I finally relieved my gas.

[@srmj71]

This is what happens when it's ok to 'get someone'.

[@Mad_Props]

I hope that Jon Ronson saw the Black Mirror episode, "Hated in the Nation." I would also like to know what he thought of it.

[@nascar0509]

It certainly all gotten out of hand along with a massive growth in the prevalence of cluster B personality disorders such as NPD and BPD!

[@watcheroftheskies66]

That's really powerful

[@NxDoyle]

One of the scariest things about the media in 2018 is its reliance on Twitter to fill up the cycle. For example, when Louis CK returned to stand up around August at a club on Long Island, his appearance didn't generate much by way of Twitter commentary. Not long after he took the stage at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. _That_ time Twitter did its usual thing, hashtag indignation all the way, and the media ran with it.

[@didndido3638]

Spot on break down

[@InsideSmoke]

CULTure.

[@Superfantastictop10]

Jon Ronson is fearless

[@yottaforce]

I'm not on facebook, not on Instagram. I don't have Twitter and I don't read glossy magazines. This adds color to why. Bought the book.

[@Verrisin]

Why do people have to be so mean??? Why do they even care? - even if she'd meant it*, ppl should be allowed to be joking about anything... (* and I know she didn't)

[@PierreRipplinger]

This story reminds me of Black Mirror (s3 e1) _Nosedive_ that I watched yesterday. (Watch it and tell me!) It also reminds me Cersei's the walk of shame in Game of Thrones.

[@prttyboy126]

Pierre Ripplinger 5 stars my friend!

[@houndogsteve]

A cautionary tale. As Ye Sow, So shall ye Reap! Wise words from the past! Glad I never got into the twitter thing!

[@tejthebeast]

This talk reminds of a quote from a wise man: "A person is smart, people are stupid".

[@quarteracreadventures855]

I've never been on twitter.

[@rainyfeathers9148]

Yeah, people over reacted to Sacco's tweet, she obviously didn't mean anything by it. The people who came for her neck used her tweet for racial and social gratification which that is way worse than anything they accused her of.

[@Sumtinrandom]

I'm not on twitter. I just watch the world do its ridiculous thing.

[@LacrimaPhoenix]

Sadly I can only like and favourite this once.

[@waggawaggaful]

He's gaining moral ground by shaming the shamers? LMAO...

[@barbaramiller9660]

This is fucking sick to destroy any human being after saying something

[@matthurtado5634]

Grav, Sorry for not replying to the original video, I just found this more convenient. Perhaps I see it as bias because I see a lot of the speakers as more conservative/libertarian, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it's about the ideas, not the political person. But, it is something to consider if one side seems overwhelmingly more logical and cool. Still considering carefully, but these are some very good and intelligent ideas. Thanks.

[@Gravitahn]

+Matt Hurtado I see. Thanks for explaining. But I disagree with your assessment. I would characterize the majority of the speakers on this channel as either libertarian, centrist, or liberal. I would say Steven Pinker is a fairly typical liberal. Jonathan Haidt is a former liberal, current centrist. Jordan Peterson was a liberal in his youth, not sure how he would describe himself today. Camille Paglia is a liberal feminist (just not the crazy kind). Brendan O'Neill is a classical liberal/libertarian/marxist free speech absolutist. Greg Lukianoff, Harvey Silverglate, and Nadine Strossen are all liberal civil libertarians. What connects all of them (and what perhaps makes them seem conservative in today's climate) is that they all value individual liberty and free speech over group rights, speech codes, and "social justice". But as you said, it really doesn't matter what political label a person uses. It's the ideas & values they hold that matter.

[@Leoofmoon]

Matt Hurtado this is needed though. I have seen the left evolve into this hate mongering racist group that pretends there caring but are honestly the wrist kind of people. we need more speakers to well call them out of this iresponcable behavior that only breeds distance and hate.

[@ratnadeep617]

There are actually people disliking this video, who are these people?

[@x46andtwo]

I'm still confused why Trump tweets.

[@VeaFlea]

the real moral of the story is to not be self important enough to post jokes on the internet for 99.9% total strangers. best case scenario you don't gain anything worst case: you get your life ruined

[@Acanuckian]

It's almost as if "social justice" is evil.

[@ike25young]

Like national socialism is unnatural.

[@wayne7055]

bob smith They're both bad

[@deschain1910]

Well, I suppose the concept of social justice is good, but the current "social justice" (in quotations) going on is evil. After all, "social justice" is like the dark shadow or twisted mockery of actual social justice.

[@dialatedmcd]

Social justice is not evil. Something evil took the term and put it on as a disguise. Don't let them ruin language for the rest of us. When we want to say something is justice for a social aspect of culture, we now have to add an asterisk at the end to explain that we're not talking about social justice, we're talking about _social_ (...) justice. In 2018, social justice is hated, protesting is disgusting, I agree with all this, and those that rule this society agree even harder.

[@brucebaker810]

I'd agree that just "justice" is preferable. Doesn't justice imply "among people"? What other sort of justice is there? (Oopps. Already figuring. Animals. Plants... eye roll) But also the "warrior" addendum. Like using "War on x", "Militant atheist" etc. When most of what is being done (or at least often when the epithets are, supposedly, being earned and applied) are JUST FUCKING TALKING. To say "he attacked me" (with words). You're a militant atheist...if you SAY "I'm an atheist" (and, maybe, why). Etc. It's all part and parcel of the 100 or 0 thing Jon talks about on social media. Exageration of the "damage" or stance of the Other. That makes them worse. It makes clicks more likely. It villainizes. It doesnn't, though, lend itself to reasoned discourse. And wouldn't THAT get us farther? And, dammit, I've gone on and on. Again. In response to an ancient post. Sigh.

[@rightnasty7157]

This is very disturbing and reminds me of the Olympic athlete Voula Papachristou who was expelled from the Greek team because of a completely harmless tweet that was deemed "racist." I would suggest that maybe 30 years ago a similar comment would be completely disregarded. What an absolutely sorry state we're in.

[@kaminarigaston]

this guy looks like a woody allen - harry potter hybrid

[@shananagans5]

A Woody Pot? I can see it.

[@carolecook1116]

kaminarigaston -I would've never been able to pinpoint that as you did, but, Yes! Absolutely!

[@vargonian]

Jon Ronson was a huge fan of Rebecca Watson years ago... I wonder how he feels about her now that she's become part of this outrage machine.

[@Elfin1993]

Nothing's changed. The crux of the issue is that there is STILL insufficient legislation structuring the social interactions we have on social media. Yet, days have gone by in the past 3 years where we've had more social interaction with relative strangers online than with people irl. I wonder where Justine is today.

[@gking407]

Moral of this story: Think before you tweet. This goes for the original sender AND those who reply. I don't see public shaming as wrong when an actual racist or mean-spirited bully uses social media to amplify their message. Didn't think your prejudicial message to the world would hurt others and cause a backlash? Too bad.

[@gking407]

Peter She just did not understand the potential consequences of her actions. Same argument as: "Oops pardon me for blasting you with my rifle, didn't mean to. Thought you were somebody else".

[@violetxoxox]

+John Banks I would argue that people aren't sensitive enough. If they were truly sensitive, they'd be able to stop and put themselves in someone else's shoes before judging and responding. Far too few people even bother trying to understand things from anyone else's perspective these days. Social media is training all of us to be self-centered, and the only possible outcomes of that - reward, punishment, or indifference - are each harmful in their own ways. I wish there were a solution, a way to get people back to being engaged and connected in the real world, to know what it means to have real people in our lives who care and are there for each other, but it seems we're stuck now. It's only going to get worse.

[@Itsmeeman1]

'Public shaming' means nothing unless you care what others think of you. I don't.

[@LamNguyen-xh3rb]

Think I've just found out my type

[@raluraducanu8491]

Her employer was not entitled to fire her, she should have first been called in a meeting where she would describe what happened and present ways in which she would change her behavior if it was the case. So what they did was illegal and she should have sued them. And it's obviously you should never seriously consider what the folks on the internet are saying cause quite a vast majority are even mentally troubled. I've never seen decent people wanting to harm anyone for any reason, however I've noticed so many severely damaged people either trying to scam or "destroy" others by either using verbal abuse or other forms of harassment. I have even met such a person in real life, wanted to see how far he would go and discovered there is not predefined he would set for his destructive actions. He would even have me taught how to "mentally" destroy people, as he would put it. He and his friends had a strikingly similar profile, lack of education due to purposely missing school, no job and no intention to search for any legal means of earning money, problems with alcohol and a troubled family background. Obviously I made their names known to the police.

[@Iliek]

Damn this guy is deeply disturbed.

[@alialmuhanna4938]

Wow, this makes me consider quitting the internet ... Poor Justine ...

[@DannyElfmanImpersonator]

Gotta love that social justice mob mentality. I wonder if I'll get torn apart for saying that.

[@coreycox2345]

This is horrible. How are people so awful?

[@domherrera8731]

Any other day, hearing this guy talk about privelage as if it were an actual thing, or after hearing some of his other topics, I'd have dismissed him as another liberal pipsqueak, but this was pretty legitimate, held up a mirror to a society of which I know I'm a part of, maybe instead of shouting into the soulless light that is my screen how other people are so bad, and how they need to act, maybe I should focus a bit more on myself, and taking a good long look in the mirror, see myself as the world sees me...

[@Lordradost]

Always saw this as proof how short-minded, pedantic, hateful and DUMB people are or social-media is making us. Stupid people don't get jokes, only outrage.

[@bighugejake]

I believe a complete breakdown of individual responsibility for one's own actions is a large contributor towards this culture. But I concede that maybe that has always been a part of human nature. We've always shirked our responsibilities. You can say horrible things to other people online because you will likely not be held responsible for it. You don't personally know these people, or have to deal with the ramifications. And you can get into trouble for your words because you did not think of the effect they could have on others. Intellectual and moral laziness and dishonesty.

[@rainyfeathers9148]

Who's 'we'?

[@joecasey8202]

finally,somebody that gets it!

[@mogwaifeartexas]

justin is on eric

[@legasyth]

facebook, twitter snapchat and skype ... its like they are coming outta of the walls and into your homes followin you on trains and interceptin your calls.. Next verse anyone..

[@JD-hy7vt]

they are, the are, they are, they are we need to rape some sense into them. I am Indian with an age old traditional culture, and if you can't respect that you're f'ckn racist.

[@kyled.5037]

People shaming people about shaming in this thread. For what? Not every thought is meant to be brandished as a sword. They are meant for us to be more aware OF OURSELVES. You know, the only person on this planet that gives a s**t what you think; goes for me too. Enjoy dividing the country on benign issues. Think for yourselves, question authority.

[@davefreeman9847]

I'm NOT on Twitter - what is it ?

[@DrSho]

Moral, use twitter at your risk

[@katekay]

Jon is amazing