Not long ago a badly judged joke would be greeted by an embarrassed silence. Now, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, it can destroy reputations, end careers and bring down companies.
Yet silence is still the best answer to the braying mob, according to an author who has spent three years investigating internet “shaming”.
Jon Ronson, whose book is published this week, was once among those who joined in with grumbles of disapproval leading to roars of outrage when someone caused offence on social media.
It started to change when he turned the angry glare of Twitter on to three academics who “stole” his identity and began posting using his name. At first he felt “utter joy” at the torrent of abuse they received from Twitter users, but that feeling soon turned to unease.
Ronson told the Bath literary festival: “I suppose I felt a little bit uneasy that suddenly I was at the head of a pitchfork mob.”
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He described Twitter vitriol as a rediscovery of power last wielded in the days of the stocks when minor offences could lead to public humiliation.
His advice for anyone who finds themselves the target of a Twitter storm? Keep your head down and say nothing. Almost anything you say can only make things worse, he says.
One of the people whose life has been “utterly destroyed” by Twitter was Justine Sacco, a New York PR executive who made a joke about Aids before boarding a flight to Cape Town in December 2013. She tweeted to her 170 followers: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m White!”
She meant it as a joke against white South Africans who believe Aids is a “black problem”. The irony got lost somewhere over the Atlantic. By the time she landed she had been condemned as a racist by hundreds of thousands of people, become the No 1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide and been dismissed from her job.
“When we decide en masse to get something we have total power,” Ronson said. “The snowflake does not like to feel responsible for the avalanche. The fact is we are the powerful ones and until we wake up and understand the extent of our power there are going to be more and more of these miscarriages of justice.”
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His research in the New England archives revealed that in the 17th and 18th centuries there was concern that public humiliation was too brutal, and it was eventually abandoned. One woman sentenced to flogging for adultery was happy to take her punishment but begged that it should be in private.
Ronson’s book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, is published by Picador.