Tower of Iron Will

Ronson looks at several recent cases in which people were publicly shamed on the internet, sometimes for serious offenses and sometimes for making an offensive remark. At first Ronson is enthusiastic about internet shaming as a tool for justice in the hands of the masses, but as he gets to know some of the victims of public shaming he begins to see why the use of public humiliation as a punishment in the criminal justice system was phased out in the nineteenth century.

Public humiliation can utterly destroy a person psychologically in ways from which they may never recover. The same things that make it so effective also make it utterly devastating when misused. The upshot of the many public shaming incidents may be that the golden age of social media as a forum where everyone can be completely frank and honest has passed. When any careless comment can by read by the whole world without the context provided by actually knowing the speaker, then reputations and careers can be ruined by hordes of anonymous people assuming something meant as a joke was actually literal.