Jon Ronson, The Met, Bury, 22nd May 2015
From his son’s first brush with the world’s worst swearword, to strange encounters with Iain Paisley, via Frank Sidebottom and experiences of secret terrorist meetings, Jon Ronson told tales of his extremely fascinating life with the humbleness and wit his fans have grown used to. He also proved that, for such an anxious man, he can be pretty adept at dealing with drunken hecklers. When irrelevant questions were shot at him time and time again from one shandy-laden audience member, he laughed them off and carried on like a pro. You got a sense of just how he’s managed to draw so much information out of the people he’s interviewed down the years.
Jon was mostly in Bury to discuss his latest book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. It was when he came to this subject that his passion was most apparent. If you haven’t read it yet, this fantastic piece of investigative journalism deals with a very fascinating and very contemporary problem. The rise of the social media shaming. Looking at the way that ordinary people like me and you have taken to Twitter in recent years, condemning people for the smallest mistakes, Jon tracks how our shaming patterns evolved from justified attempts to bring papers like The Daily Mail to account into unfair and unbridled joy as we mobbed together to ruin someone’s life for making a slightly off-colour joke.
It’s a startling piece of work. A book that is difficult to put down. From a journalist who misquoted Bob Dylan, to a computer programmer who was overheard making an only slightly dodgy joke about a dongle, we see how social media has created a world where the slightest transgression can create almost complete destruction. Sackings, divorces, family fallouts, people going into hiding, all because of the angry Twitter mob. It’s terrifying.
Perhaps the most affecting story in there is that of Justine Sacco. Anyone remember her? She Tweeted this off-colour and easily misinterpreted joke one night: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!’ After hitting send, she got on a plane. 9 hours later she arrived in Cape Town to find out that her life as she knew it was over – she was sacked, the world knew her name, she was the top trend worldwide on Twitter and now forever known as a racist.
Jon Ronson doesn’t see the justice in this – and it was this subject that brought the most outrage out of him at the Met Theatre. After interviewing Sacco for his book, he is better placed than most of us to comment on her intentions. She was, he says, intending to make fun of the ‘white bubble’ of ignorance in America. I believe him. One audience member in particular didn’t. This led to the highlight of the night as Jon argued his point, eloquently establishing the facts and telling the audience that he didn’t want to live in a world where we couldn’t forgive such a small mistake. Where a woman could be denied a second chance because Twitter says so. Well said, that man. Jon has received a fair amount of backlash for defending Justine – but he’s stuck to his guns. Never more so than here in Bury. In a world where so many of us sit back and watch as the keyboard warriors destroy another real life person, Jon should be heavily applauded for his stance.
After Justine Sacco, the subject that Jon talked about with the most awe was Twitter itself. He was very clear that he didn’t want his book to seen as bashing social media in any way, but more as an investigation of how we have begun to use it. At their best, he sees these platforms as a way for the voiceless to have a voice. He raves about the days when Twitter was used for good, when it was a tool that allowed people to admit their worst fears and find that they weren’t alone in feeling that way.
As he has throughout his career, Jon discussed this his own unique way, blending his slightly effeminate mannerisms and his obvious anxieties with a brilliant comic timing and a powerful message. We can only hope that the Twitter trolls of the future were listening.
Fran Slater