Reply All: #18 Silence And Respect

April 2, 2015 9:01 AM

In 2012, a woman named Lindsey Stone posted a picture she took as a joke to her Facebook page. A month later, she was under attack from all corners of the internet, out of a job, hounded by the press. The internet had targeted her for a public shaming. Jon Ronson, journalist and author of the new book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed", walks us through Lindsey's story and introduces us to the sometimes sketchy world of online reputation management.

Digg article with the offending photo

posted by radioamy (6 comments total)

All right, all right, okay. Jon Ronson wrote a book, after someone made a twitter-bot based on him. He gets to say "Time-and-Cock" during interviews. Yeah yeah yeah. I like Jon, but MAN am I tired of hearing about "So You've Been Publicly Shamed".

Now I'll go listen to the rest of the episode.
posted by jazon at 9:07 AM on April 2, 2015

Now that I've heard the whole episode, I think Reply All has done a great job incorporating Jon's book into the program. Other podcasts have mentioned the book, but not been able to springboard from the concept into a fleshed out episode. I like how the used Jon to guide us through Lindsey's story, and how he helped repair her reputation (somewhat). Unlike the "vagina plane" story from episode 14, this one gets into her story, and takes us to a nice conclusion on how it's resolving itself.

I take back some of my snark from my first reply, but I am hoping the "promote Jon's book" dies down soon. That being said, this episode now has me wanting to read it, so well done Marketing team. Well done.
posted by jazon at 9:35 AM on April 2, 2015

I too am a little tired of hearing about Jon Ronsons' book (and I was afraid it would focus on Justine Sacco, whose story I'm a little sick of although I did enjoy Sam Biddle's follow-up with her).

However, I loved this episode! I felt so awful for Lindsey. I vaguely remember the offending photo and thinking it was kinda effed up, but nobody deserves the amount of vitriol and ostracization that she was subjected to. And Alex is right, when this happened to Lindsey, even though she was a real three-dimensional person (and apparently a really nice one at that) "to the world she'd been reduced to a single moment." The disproportionate amount of outrage and antagonization after these kinds of events is just...painful. Ronson's realization that we are "just toddlers crawling towards a gun" was a chilling but appropriate metaphor.

That said, that Paul McCartney song *is* pretty awful.
posted by radioamy at 10:02 AM on April 2, 2015

This is the best epsiode of this show so far. I feel so so terrible for this woman, but also a little skeeved out by reputation.com's whole raison d'être. What needs to happen is her not getting fired in the first place, and a swarm of articles flying out the hive mind about she's not a monster and is in fact a nice person at the actual time of the incident. We're probably closer to that happening now given the infinite take-vs-retake network that journalism has become, but I'm sure there are still crucifixions every day.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:55 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interview with Alex on Podcast Digest. They discuss several episodes in-depth.
posted by radioamy at 12:49 PM on April 8, 2015

Jon Ronson has a ridiculously good radio voice -- he could be reading the shipping forecast, and I would be enthralled by it....
posted by schmod at 9:41 PM on May 4, 2015