So You've Been Publicly Shamed

The first section of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed introduces Ronson’s unique style of writing and reporting, as well as both sides of one of the key moments of public shaming explored at length throughout the book. The first chapter, “Braveheart,” sets the tone for the rest of the text. Ronson portrays himself as a naive and awkward interlocutor whose insights and emotions will be critical to his analysis on the media environment and the general topic of public shaming. The opening line establishes the narrative’s first-person perspective: “This story begins in early January 2012 when I noticed that another Jon Ronson had started posting on Twitter” (1). Ronson feels himself to be implicated in the new social media environment, where an online mob can identify and attack the agents of a perceived slight. In this chapter, he paints himself as the instigator, rather than the target, of such an attack, which situates him as a participant in rather than a moralizer on the shaming.

The chapter also displays Ronson’s memoirist writing style. In his interviews with the University of Warwick researchers, and in other interviews Ronson describes throughout the text, Ronson details the appearance of the subjects, the location and timing of the interview, and his emotional state throughout the interview. Ronson is candid about what he perceives as his failings and regrets about the Warwick interview, a motif that appears in other interviews described throughout the book.

In addition to introducing Ronson’s writing style and the premise of the book, this section introduces both sides of Lehrer’s public shaming, which Ronson uses as a core case study in the book. This case sets up Ronson’s investigation into Shaming in Print Media and Social Media. First, Ronson follows Moynihan, whom he admires as “citizen justice” (28). Then, he follows Lehrer’s side of the story, and he finds himself deeply sympathizing with Lehrer as well. In sympathizing with both parties, Ronson is demonstrating how he intends to take a nuanced, complex approach to the issue of public shaming. As just one example of this nuanced approach, while Ronson understands Lehrer’s suffering in the aftermath of being publicly outed as a liar, he also challenges Lehrer for accepting payment for giving his public apology as a keynote address at a prestigious conference. In exploring both Moynihan’s desire for truth and Lehrer’s distress after being shamed, Ronson identifies some aspects of the Causes and Effects of Shame and Humiliation. These motivations and emotional outcomes are articulated in greater detail later in the text.

One of the most striking elements of Ronson’s narrative is his revelation about how reporting the story took a toll on Moynihan. Moynihan says, “If anything, Jonah Lehrer nearly killed me” (21) because of the stress from repeated phone calls from Lehrer to not report the story and the guilt Moynihan feels for doing so.

Although Moynihan portrays himself as an underdog in his description of events, Moynahan was not a stranger to online controversy before breaking the story. In 2006, when he was editor of the Stockholm Spectator, he published an offensive caricature of the prophet Muhammad on the magazine’s blog because he believed its suppression was a violation of freedom of the press (Goldfield, David. “Condom Nation.” Gelf Magazine, 6 Feb. 2006). In 2007, when Moynihan was a research fellow at a Swedish thinktank, he argued that American professor and activist Noam Chomsky did not deserve the honorary doctorate he received from Uppsala University due to his questionable research methods (“Should Anybody Listen to Chomsky?” The Daily Beast, 16 Dec. 2012). In 2011, Moynihan wrote a book review for The Wall Street Journal proving that British author Dominic Sandbrook plagiarized content from other historians (Moynihan, Michael C. “Book Review: Mad As Hell,” The Wall Street Journal, 12 Feb. 2011). This selection of Moynihan’s controversial stances and exposés explains why Ronson refers to Moynihan as the voice of “citizen justice,” though it does not explain why the Lehrer incident affected Moynihan more than these other public controversies.

This case is the most extensive exploration of a public shaming that Ronson provides in the text, and Moynihan is unique among the instigators for feeling guilty for exposing his target.