One idiotic photo. One inappropriate comment on social media after an extra glass of wine. And now my whole life is going downhill. Just one sin, and a wave of popular rage is destroying everything in its path. This is the dark side of social media. Forbes Life publishes an excerpt from “So You Were Publicly Humiliated” by acclaimed writer and documentary filmmaker John Ronson, which will be released by Bombora in January.
For several years, John Ronson studied the phenomenon of “public shaming”, meeting with its victims who were disgraced in a big way. What is it: a new type of justice or abuse of authority? “So you've been publicly disgraced” is a study by Ronson, which is both discouraging and incredibly funny, about how people under the guise of restoring justice sometimes literally destroy other people's lives.
This story began in early January 2012 when I discovered that another John Ronson had started tweeting something. Instead of his photo, there was a picture of my face. His nickname is @jon_ronson1. His last tweet, which appeared while I was looking at the feed in disbelief, read: “I'm going home. We need to get a recipe: a huge dish of guarana and mussels in a mayonnaise bun: D #вкусняшка”.
“Who are you?” - I tweeted to him.
“I'm watching #Сайнфелд. Now I would like a huge bowl of celery, perch and sour cream kebabs with lemongrass #гурман,” he tweeted.
I didn't know what to do.
The next morning, I opened the @jon_ronson feed even earlier than my own. At night, he tweeted, “I'm dreaming about #время and #член.”
He had 20 followers. I've known some of them in real life, and they probably wondered why I was so excited about fusion cuisine and write so openly about dreams.
I did a little research. It turned out that a young researcher formerly associated with the University of Warwick, named Luke Robert Mason, had commented on the Guardian website a few weeks earlier. This was a replay to my short video about spambots. “We've created a personal infomorph for John,” he wrote. “You can find him on Twitter: @jon_ronson.”
“Oh, it's some kind of spam bot,” I thought. “Okay. It's going to be fine. Apparently Luke Robert Mason thought I'd like the spambot. When he finds out that's not the case, he'll delete everything.”
So I tweeted to him, “Hi! Will you please turn off that spam bot?”
It's been ten minutes. He then replied, “We prefer the term infomorph.”
I frowned.
“He's pretending to be me,” I wrote.
The infomorph doesn't pretend to be you, the answer came. “It modifies social media information and creates an infomorphic aesthetic.”
It became a little difficult for me to breathe.
“#класс damn it, I'm in the mood for a decent bowl of grilled onions and thick-crusted bread,” @jon_ronson tweeted.
I've been fighting a robotic version of myself.
It's been a month. @jon_ronson posted information twenty times a day about the whirlpool of his social life, various soires and a wide range of friends. He now had fifty followers. They all received a catastrophically distorted image of my views on soire and friends.
The spam bot made me feel powerless and dirty. The strangers turned my personality upside down and I had nowhere to go for help.
I tweeted to Luke Robert Mason. Okay, he stubbornly didn't want to turn off the spambot, but maybe he could at least meet me? I would film this meeting and post it on YouTube. He agreed, adding that he would be happy to explain to me the philosophical ideas underlying the infomorph. I replied that I would love to hear the philosophical ideas behind the spam bot.
I've rented a room in central London. Luke came with two more men, with a whole team behind the spambot. All three turned out to be teachers. They met at Warwick University. Luke was the youngest, handsome, in his early twenties, “technology and cyberculture researcher, director of the Vertual Futures Conference,” according to his online resume. David Bausola looked like a cheeky teacher, someone who could well speak at a conference dedicated to Aleister Crowley's work. He turned out to be a “creative technologist” and CEO of the digital agency Filter Factory. Dan O'Hara had his head shaved, and his eyes pierced right through, giving the impression that their owner was fed up with everything. The jaw is clenched. He was in his forties and lectured on English and American literature at the University of Cologne. Prior to that he was a lecturer at Oxford. He has written one book about writer James Graham Ballard called Exceptional Metaphors and another book called Thomas Pynchon: Schizophrenia and Social Control. As far as I understand, David Bausola was directly responsible for creating the spam bot; the other two provided “analysis and advice”.
I suggested that they sit on the sofa in a row so they could all enter the frame. Dan O'Hara looked at the others impressively.
“Let's play along,” he told them. Everyone sat down, Dan in the middle.
— What do you mean by “playing along”? — I asked him.
“This is about psychological control,” he said.
Do you think that sitting you in a row on the same sofa is my way of psychologically controlling you? — I asked.
“Sure,” Dan said.
— How?
“I'm doing the same thing with my students,” said
Dan. - I sit in a freestanding chair and put them in a row on the sofa.
— Why would you want to psychologically supervise some students? — I asked.
For a moment, Dan's face was anxious, as if he had been caught saying something disgusting. “To control the study environment,” he said.
— Do you feel uncomfortable? — I asked.
“No, not really,” Dan said. “And you?” Are you uncomfortable? “Yes,” I said.
— Why? - Dan asked.
I have explained my claims in detail.
Experts from the scientific community, I began, “don't invade a person's life uninvited and don't use it for some scientific experiment.” And when I asked you to fix it all, you immediately said, “Oh, it's not a spam bot, it's an infomorph.”
Dan nodded. And he leaned forward.
— I'm guessing the world is full of John Ronsons? he began. “People with the same name as you?” Yes?
I looked at him suspiciously. And he answered cautiously:
— I'm sure there are other people with the same name as me.
And I have the same problem, Dan said, smiling. “There is another professor whose name is the same as me. “You don't have the same problem,” I said, “because the same problem is the fact that three people I don't know stole my identity, created a robotic version of me and refuse to get rid of it — although they are all from very reputable universities and are even speaking at a conference TED.
Dan sighed for a long time.
You say, “There's only one John Ronson,” he said. “You imagine yourself to be, let's say, true and want to maintain that integrity and authenticity.” Yes?
I stared at him.
I think you're the one that annoys us, Dan continued, “because it's not particularly convincing for us.” We think there's already a touch of insincerity, and you're trying to protect your online identity — your brand. So?
“NO, I'M JUST TWEETING,” I yelled.
“The internet isn't the real world,” Dan said.
I'm writing my own tweets, I said. “And I press the Tweet button.” So that's me on Twitter. We stared at each other.
It's not academic, I said. “It's not postmodern.”
And this is a fact.
This is unusual, Dan said. “I think it's very strange how you feel about the situation.” You're probably one of the few people who decided to sign up for Twitter and use your own username as a username. Who does this? Which is why I think your motives are a little suspicious, John. So I'm saying I think this is brand management for you.
I didn't answer, but it still kills me that it never occurred to me that it never occurred to me to draw Luke Robert Mason's attention to his own username, @ LukeRobertMason.
Our conversation went on like this for about another hour. I told Dan that I've never used the term “brand management” in my life; that language is foreign to me. And he added:
— It's the same with your spam bot. His language is different from mine.
“Yes,” all three agreed in chorus.
That's what annoys me the most, I explained. “This is an incorrect depiction of me.”
— Would you like him to be more like you? - Dan asked.
“I wish it didn't exist,” I said.
“This is unusual,” Dan said. And he whistled as if in disbelief. “I think it's very interesting from a psychological point of view.
— Why? — I asked.
I find this statement very aggressive, he said. “Do you want us to kill this algorithm?” You must feel threatened in some way.” He looked at me with concern. “In everyday life, we don't wander the streets trying to kill everything that we find annoying.
— You're a TROLL! - I roared.
When the interview came to an end, I staggered and walked out to meet London day. I was horrified by the idea of uploading this video to YouTube: I yelled too much in it. I mentally prepared for comments that ridiculed my shrill behavior and uploaded it. I waited ten minutes. Then he opened it cautiously.
“This is identity theft,” read the first comment I saw. “They must respect John's personal freedom.”
Wow, I thought wary.
“Someone should create left-wing Twitter accounts for these damn clowns and constantly write about their addiction to child pornography,” read the following comment.
I smirked.
“These people are real manipulative goats,” the third comment read. “To hell with them. Sue them, break them, destroy them. If I met them face to face, I'd say they're damn bastards.”
I felt dizzy with excitement. It was like being the hero of the Braveheart movie: I was galloping across the field alone, and then suddenly it turned out that hundreds more people were behind me.
“Sneaky, outrageous idiots who play with someone else's life and then laugh at the victim's pain and anger,” read the following comment.
I nodded judiciously.
Notorious disgusting freaks, the next comment read. “These stubborn professors deserve to die a painful death. That dick in the middle is a freaking psychopath.”
I frowned a little bit. I hope no one really decides to harm them, I thought.
“To gas these jerks. Especially a dick in the middle. And especially the bald jerk on the left. And especially a quiet dick. And then pee on their bodies,” read the following comment.
I've won. Over the next few days, professors took down the @jon_ronson account. They were shamed and forced to surrender. This public condemnation was like pressing a button to reset everything to factory settings. Something went wrong. Society revolted. The balance has been restored.
The professors made the removal of the spambot a real spectacle. They wrote a column for the Guardian explaining that the goal was much more global — to flaunt the tyranny of Wall Street's algorithms. “It's not just Ronson's life that bots are manipulating. And all ours,” they wrote. I still don't understand how the idea that I'm eating wasabi dumplings can draw public attention to Wall Street's flagellation of algorithms.
“They asked me to turn you off — do you know what that means?” — David Bausola tweeted to a spambot. And then again, “You've got a couple more hours. I hope you'll use them.”
“Just press the off button,” I wrote to him. “God!”
I was happy to win. And I felt great. This beautiful feeling enveloped me from head to toe like a sedative. Strangers from all over the world have come together to tell me I'm right. This was the perfect solution.
I now recall other recent cases of public spanking on social media that I was proud of and very happy about. The first one, absolutely gorgeous, happened in October 2009. Irish band Boyson lead singer Stephen Gateley was found dead while vacationing with his partner Andrew Coles. The coroner confirmed that the death was nonviolent, but columnist Ian Moir wrote in an article for the Daily Mail: “Whatever the cause of death, it's not natural any way you slice it... it deals another blow to the myth of happily ever after about civil partnerships.”
We were not going to put up with another wave of intense intolerance, and as a result of collective rage, Marks & Spencer and Nestle demanded that their banner ads be removed from the Daily Mail. Those were great times. We beat the Mail with a weapon they didn't understand: shaming on social media.
Ever since then, when someone in the world stumbled, we've been on the lookout. When the Daily Mail ridiculed the food bank for giving a food package to their reporter without checking their passport, Twitter's audience responded by donating £39,000 to charity by the end of the day.
“That's the cool thing about social media,” one Twitter user wrote about the campaign. “Mail, which is based primarily on lying to readers about their neighbors, can't cope with the fact that people communicate with each other and form their own opinions.”
When Los Angeles Fitness refused to cancel our membership in a couple's club where both partners lost their jobs and couldn't afford to pay for a subscription, we stepped up. Los Angeles Fitness hurriedly made concessions. These giants were defeated by people who used to be considered helpless: bloggers, anyone with a social media account. And the weapon that was killing them was something new: online shaming.
And then one day I suddenly realized it. Something is happening that has real consequences. We are at the very beginning of a renaissance of public censure. 180 years later (public punishment was abolished in 1837 in the United Kingdom and in 1839 in the US), it has returned — and on a large scale. Out of shame, we used an extremely powerful weapon. Powerful, limitless, increasing in speed and influence. The hierarchies were equalized. Those who used to be silent found a voice. Justice seems to have been democratized. So I've made my decision. The next time a great wave of modern censure hits a significant wicked man—the next time civil justice triumphantly and righteously prevails—I'll jump into the thick of it all. I will conduct a thorough investigation and find out how effective this method of correcting errors is.
We didn't have to wait long. @jon_ronson was deactivated on April 2, 2012. Just twelve weeks later, on the night of July 4th, a man lying on a couch in Fort Greene in Brooklyn was thinking about what to blog about and made a very unexpected discovery.
Source: forbes.ru
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