So You've Been Publicly Shamed Quotes

“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

“We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside it.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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

“We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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

“The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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

“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

“We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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

“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

“I think we all care deeply about things that seem totally inconsequential to other people. We all carry around with us the flotsam and jetsam of perceived humiliations that actually mean nothing. We are a mass of vulnerabilities, and who knows what will trigger them?”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“A lot of people move around in life chronically ashamed of how they look, or how they feel, or what they said, or what they did. It’s like a permanent adolescent concern. Adolescence is when you’re permanently concerned about what other people think of you.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“[W]e need to think twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“As soon as the victim steps out of the pact by refusing to feel ashamed,” he said, “the whole thing crumbles.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“I, personally, no longer take part in the ecstatic public condemnation of people unless they’ve committed a transgression that has an actual victim, and even then not as much as I probably should. I miss the fun a little. But it feels like when I became a vegetarian. I missed the steak, although not as much as I’d anticipated, but I could no longer ignore the slaughterhouse.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“Judging a person on how flustered they appear in the face of a shaming is a truly strange and arbitrary way of forming an opinion on someone.   •”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed: the hilarious and unnerving real-life exploration of being found out on social media

“If anyone should change their behaviour, I thought, it ought to be those doing the shaming.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“You combine insecurity and ambition, and you get an inability to say no to things.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“Shame internalized can lead to agony.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“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

“A crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. Exaggerate, affirm, resort to repetition, and never attempt to prove anything by reasoning.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“We were much more frightening than Judge Ted Poe. The powerful, crazy, cruel people I usually write about tend to be in far-off places. The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people’s flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a ‘feeling’, for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed: the hilarious and unnerving real-life exploration of being found out on social media

“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

“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

“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

“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