I recently read a book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. In his book, he talks about the burgeoning phenomenon of public shaming on social media. Ronson brings up several examples of people whose missteps have caused them to be the victims of online lynch mobs:
“Justine Sacco (made a joke on Twitter). Lindsey Stone (posted a joke photo on Facebook). Mike Daisey (made stuff up). From the Before Twitter era, Jim McGreevey (really bad governor)…… Jonah Lehrer, the millennial best-selling idea packager who was briefly employed by The New Yorker. Famous now for having two-thirds of his published oeuvre withdrawn…”
Ronson also refers back to pre-internet shamings that occurred as a result of scandalous behavior, and how modern day shamings are similar in nature to when shaming was actually used punitively as a form of maintaining social order. He also discusses how today’s lawyers use shaming as a regular tactic to intimidate and discredit witnesses.
I was thinking about certain cases in the orthodox Jewish community where people have been shamed by angry mobs –
The recent case of a Chareidi soldier being called a Nazi by an angry mob when he returned home wearing his uniform:
Little girls and their mothers being spit on and harassed on their way to school by Chareidi men:
A fundraiser for convicted sex offender Nechemya Weberman, where the victim was discredited, her character insulted, and she was accused of lying about her abuse:
I could offer more examples of how the frum community has utilized public shaming to keep people in line and make them back down from opposition against the community, but I digress.
When one thinks of an unruly mob, it’s easy to buy into the theory that otherwise good people are caught up in a mob mentality. That being thrust into the center of an explosive group loosens the inhibitions of normally peaceful people and causes them to behave badly. This explanation has been given to the recent rioting and looting in Baltimore.
However, in his book, Ronson is perplexed by an inconsistency with that theory. In most cases of unruly mobs, there are always some people that don’t get caught up in the frenzy. It could be police, soldiers, journalists, politicians, or individual citizens calling for calm. There are always a few who resist falling into a psychological state of frenzy along with the crowd.
What Ronson seems to settle on is the idea that people aren’t as much influenced by a screaming horde, as they are with their own concept of right and wrong. Whenever a public shaming occurs, whether online, at a social hall, or in the streets, the participants are convinced that they are working for the greater good, even if to an outsider, their behavior seems evil.
Ronson explains this by summarizing a famous psychological experiment conducted in a basement at Stanford University in 1971 by psychologist, Philip Zimbardo. Basically, Zimbardo was trying to prove the existence of Crowd theory, or de-individuation. He wanted to prove that mob mentality was a real thing, and that even the most law abiding citizens could get caught up in impulsive bloodthirsty mayhem through peer influence.
Zimbardo set up a faux prison setting in Stanford’s basement. He had nine volunteer prisoners, nine volunteer guards, and six on standby. The guards were given batons and sunglasses so nobody could see their eyes. The prisoners were stripped and given smocks to wear and chains for their feet. Within six days the experiment was abandoned because the guards had turned abusive and vicious – thus proving Zimbardo’s Crowd theory.
However, upon further investigation, Ronson tracked down the most infamous of the volunteer guards, Dave Eshelman, who now runs a home-loan company and seems like a pretty ordinary guy. He told Ronson that he faked his entire performance as a sadistic prison guard. He said that the first night of the prison experiment was so boring, he felt like he had to shake things up so that those sponsoring the study could get some good results, instead of just watching a bunch of guys sitting around doing nothing.
Since he had recently seen the film, Cool Hand Luke, where an evil prison guard torments the inmates, he had the perfect character to channel. He put on a southern accent, like the guard in the movie, and improvised.
“It was completely deliberate on my part,” he replied. “I planned it. I mapped it out. I carried it through. It was all done for a purpose. I thought I was doing something good at the time.”
The revelation is that when people get caught up in a frenzy, such as the men throwing rocks at the Chareidi soldier, or the men spitting on little girls on their way to school, or a crowd gathering to support a beloved sexual predator and shame his victim (who was putting the good name of the entire community at risk by her revelations), these folks weren’t caught up in infectious evil – they thought they were fighting for a greater good.
In their moral outrage, they gathered together to behave in ways that those of us outside of their understanding of morality (but certainly with our own alternate set of ethical standards which we might defend in a similarly offensive manner if put to the test) found repugnant. When people have different viewpoints of good vs. evil, coming together to a common understanding seems futile. Each will defend their version of good until the dying end, believing the other side to be evil.
