So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

self-respect this exposure to public shame utterly extinguishes it. Without the hope that springs eternal in the human breast, without some desire to reform and become a good citizen, and the feeling that such a thing is possible, no criminal can ever return to honorable courses. The boy of eighteen who is whipped at New Castle [a Delaware whipping post] for larceny is in nine cases out of ten ruined. With his self-respect destroyed and the taunt and sneer of public disgrace branded upon his forehead, he feels himself lost and abandoned by his fellows.
    â€”Q UOTED IN R OBERT G RAHAM C ALDWELL ,
Red Hannah: Delaware’s Whippin
g Post
    As Jonah Lehrer stood in front of that giant-screen Twitter feed on February 12, 2013, he experienced something that had been widely considered appalling in the eighteenth century.
    I left the Massachusetts Historical Society, took out my phone, and asked Twitter, “Has Twitter become a kangaroo court?”
    â€œNot a kangaroo court,” someone replied quite tersely. “Twitter still can’t impose real sentences. Just commentary. Only unlike you, Jon, we aren’t paid for it.”
    Was he right? It felt like a question that really needed answering because it didn’t seem to be crossing any of our minds to wonder whether the person we had just shamed was okay or in ruins. I suppose that 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.
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    Lehrer’s intention in submitting himself to a public grilling was to show the world that he’s ready to return to journalism, that we can trust him because he knows now not to trust himself. All he proved is that he’s not wired like the rest of us. If he can figure out why that is, that would be a neuroscience story worth publishing.
    â€”J EFF B ERCOVICI ,
Forbes
,F EBRUARY 12 , 2013
    I’ve been banging the drum for Lehrer to quiet his detractors and bank some goodwill by donating that $20,000 to charity . . . Finally, I managed to get him on the phone this afternoon. “I’m not interested in commenting,” he told me. Could he at least say whether he planned to keep the money? “I read your article. I have nothing to say to you,” he said, before hanging up.
    â€”J EFF B ERCOVICI ,
Forbes
,F EBRUARY 13 , 2013
    â€œI’m still not entirely sure what I can give you . . .” Jonah was talking to me on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.
    â€œThe twenty thousand dollars . . .” I said.
    â€œIt was absolutely a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t ask for it. It was offered. They just gave it to me. I mean, what else do you want? I . . .” Jonah paused. “Look, I got bills to pay. I haven’t earned a penny in seven months. I was flying high, I was making lots of money. And all of a sudden you’re making no money.”
    Jonah had finally agreed to a lengthier interview. He sounded exhausted, like he’d been inside some spinning machine designed by aliens to test the effects of stress on humans. For a smart man, everything he’d done from the moment Michael first e-mailed him had been a giant miscalculation. He’d been like a popped balloon shooting wildly in all directions, lying frantically to Michael before slumping, the air all gone, in the middle of one of the most terrible shamings of our time.
    â€œA friend forwarded me a blog post by Jerry Coyne from the University of Chicago,” Jonah said. “An eminent guy, I interviewed him on occasion. He wrote a blog post about me where he called me a sociopath.”
    I sense that Lehrer is a bit of a sociopath. Yes, shows of contrition are often phony, meant to convince a gullible public (as in Lance Armstrong’s case) that they’re good to go again. But