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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/shame-twitter/"></div>On January 19, Twitter exploded when Rob Lowe <a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/1219066691025395713" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/1219066691025395713', 'wore the wrong hat.');">wore the wrong hat.</a> That’s right. The actor decided to cover his head with an NHL hat at an NFL game. That mis-lettered acronym could have cost him dearly. The fact that Rob Lowe’s choice in headgear had any bearing on anything at all is cause for concern.
For years, now, Twitter has been celebrated — particularly among journalists — as something of a digital equivalent to the Roman Forum. You could go there to exchange ideas and make your thoughts heard without having to pass through a gatekeeper.
I experienced the vast potential of Twitter for the first time in 2011 <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/honduran-tensions-rise-as_b_293594" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://www.huffpost.com/entry/honduran-tensions-rise-as_b_293594', 'when I was trapped');">when I was trapped</a> in a hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras by a days-long, round-the-clock curfew enforced by the government. I was in Central America to research my forthcoming novel, In the Heart of the Jungle, and had chosen that particular hotel because of its location in a neighborhood where many countries kept their embassies. That turned out to be a colossal mistake since that was exactly the area targeted most heavily by supporters of an attempted coup d’etat. With only intermittent internet access, I was able to report the events in real time. The sense that I was doing something useful also helped keep me sane.
Almost 10 years later, the notion that Twitter constitutes a public forum is almost laughably unserious. In fact, the once-hailed social media service has now solidly cemented its role as our contemporary colosseum. When we want to throw some martyrs to the lions, we head straight for Twitter. Best of all: it’s free and just a click away.
You might object to this idea — and I’m terrified that you do, lest you shove a plywood shield at me and have me tossed into the ring — and you’d be partially right. After all, Twitter didn’t create our thirst for ethical bloodsport; it just capitalized on it. Our intense desire to spectate the suffering of the Justine Saccos and Jonah Lehrers of the world is a symptom of something else.
In his brilliant 2015 book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/306321/so-youve-been-publicly-shamed-by-jon-ronson/9781594634017" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/306321/so-youve-been-publicly-shamed-by-jon-ronson/9781594634017', 'So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed');">So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed</a>, Jon Ronson explores the phenomenon of public shaming. Through a canny narrative, Ronson tracks this phenomenon back to private shame. Like the ultra-violent prisoners of a Massachusetts prison in the 1970s, our rage to shame is caused by our rage at being shamed.
In this way, we serve as a contemporary analog of Oscar Wilde’s conception of 19th-century European society’s dual hatred of realism and romanticism. Wilde famously compared this hatred to Caliban’s rage at being presented with his image and being denied that presentation.  We, in our turn, rage against our shame and rage when others dare deny us their shame. (How dare Rob Lowe so shamelessly wear an NHL hat to a football game?)
Just a few short years ago, there was an obvious critique hanging in the cultural ether about the appearance of mixed martial arts as a sport. The idea of two men in a cage beating each other senseless seemed like nothing more than a manifestation of the Roman public’s thirst for blood.
But today, the roiling sea of interlocking Twitter mobs makes Connor McGregor’s recent 40-second-long bout, which culminated with a spine thrumming head kick delivered by McGregor, seem relatively innocuous. The fighters might leave the octagon short a few molars but at least they retain their sense of self, their identity.
Not so with the victims of social media’s shame vigilantes. As Ronson writes, these victims are stripped of the things we’d once considered inviolable: our personhood, our right to face an accuser, our undying potential for redemption. They’re gutted and left to what storytelling guru Robert McKee calls a “fate worse than death.”
In the past few years, American culture has finally begun turning its attention to the ravages of shame and the essential role vulnerability plays in our lives. And yet, what we might call the Twittersseum — All hail Emperor Dorsey! — has never been stronger. The appetite for witnessing destruction-by-shame has never been greater.
This leaves us with only one question to ask: How can we let this go on? How can we allow the Twittersseum to continue to desolate lives — and earn billions in doing so? (Fine, that’s two questions. So hang me.) The answer is we can’t.
Am I here to advocate the regulation of social media? Damn right I am. But that’s not really the point. Rather, every single one of us has in our possession a little vile containing an antidote to the Twitter poison. That antidote is the ability to stop and think. The more you think, the less Twitter is able to exact its punishment on innocent (or <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/lori-loughlin-can-teach-us-schadenfreude-compassion/">relatively innocent</a>) people. It’s like clapping your hands to save the fairies: it really works.
But even deeper than that antidote is the import this has on our own lives. The truth is, we’re all pissed off. The world isn’t the way we want it to be. Not only that, but some uber-troll (looking at you, Zuckerberg) is shoving that shitty little reality in our face every second of every day.
The solution is not just calling for us to turn off algorithm-based hatred, which is tempting but logically circular. Instead, we need to begin seeking out the meaning that can lead to lives which are just a little bit more fulfilled, more joyful, more generous and — most of all — more forgiving. The day that even a small but critical mass of us begin confronting our private shame by taking this kind of emotional risk is the day public shame starts to die.
Until then, fight on, gladiators.
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It’s a Shame About Twitter

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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/lori-loughlin-can-teach-us-schadenfreude-compassion/"></div><a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scandal-usc-civil-suit-20190606-story.html" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scandal-usc-civil-suit-20190606-story.html', 'Earlier this month');">Earlier this month</a>, when USC announced that it might seek its own legal action against Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli, you could almost hear the collective groan of pleasure ripple across the media. On social media, the reaction was every bit as enraged, offended, and self-righteous as you might imagine. But why?
One of the greatest social groundswells changing our public culture today is a move away from punitive reactionism in our judicial system and towards a view that sees a whole person who has been convicted of a crime — and not simply a “criminal” who’s lost the potential for personhood. This trend is a deep and important one, as it predicates not only how we view crime and criminality but also how we understand our society.
Increasingly, we’re becoming conscious of the real consequences of the kind of justice system we choose to embrace — whether it’s one that makes us cruel, hard-hearted, and given to zealous excess or compassionate, confident, willing to forgive, and hopeful of a better future.
This makes the recent dovetailing rounds of schadenfreude concerning Loughlin so much more perplexing. There’s no doubt that what Loughlin has been accused of is wrong. The perversion of our academic system is a deadly serious matter, especially when the effect is to tilt the playing field in the favor of people who already have nearly every advantage imaginable (except, maybe, that of common sense).
The story, as we tell it, includes clear implications of greed, vanity, arrogance, and a self-serving abasement of higher education. Loughlin’s unrepentant public stance, her absence of even nominal remorse, has only exacerbated things.
And that may all be true. But here’s the thing: is that really cause for delight? Is it not a moment when we can take our oft-hashtagged feelings of empathy and compassion and put them to use, not in spite of the obnoxiousness of this particular case but because of it?
Looking through a slightly different lens, we might see Loughlin and Gianulli as two parents who wanted the very best for their children — and did something they shouldn’t have in order to secure it. The saints among us excepted, it’s an utterly human impulse which we all carry inside ourselves.
In thinking and talking about America’s justice and penal systems, we’re frequently told stories about people who committed terrible crimes — crimes that destroyed lives and families — but who, with a second chance and enormous effort, manage to redeem themselves. One might argue that these stories of redemption often (but not always) feature men or women who have served their time and paid their dues. In the case of Loughlin and Gianulli, who haven’t even been convicted, it’s entirely imaginable they’ll be found innocent. And, even if found guilty, shouldn’t we offer them a chance at redemption?
But the real point is a deeper one. Schadenfreude is a bit like torture: it leaves a wound on those who commit it by making them the kind of person that profits from someone else’s pain. Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Gianulli might not have a lot to teach us about how to live our lives. But by looking at our own reactions to their plight — and yes, whatever the causes might be, it’s a plight — we can learn something about ourselves.
The media may have pinned the scarlet letter on Loughlin’s breast, and social media pushed her onto the scaffold, but it’s we who serve as the jeering crowd. It’s for our benefit that a couple whose alleged crimes do not have a clear victim now face the prospect of sitting in prison, while white-collar criminals whose actions immiserate thousands regularly get off with a rap on the knuckles, or nothing at all.
More importantly, though, when the trap door finally drops and the condemned swing, we’ll be left needing to satisfy our bottomless hunger to demonstrate that we’re better, more righteous, and less fallible than the people who were once held up as paragons.
The question we each need to ask is: is that the kind of person I want to be? Is this the culture in which we want to live? The answer, I hope, is no.
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What Lori Loughlin Can Teach Us About Schadenfreude and Compassion

Ashley Rindsberg is an author, essayist, and freelance journalist. In 2010, Rindsberg traveled to Nicaragua to investigate the disappearance and death of his best friend, an experience that inspired his novel, He Falls Alone. Rindsberg is also author of The Gray Lady Winked, a work of non-fiction which looks at how The New York Times’s reporting shapes the world.

Ashley Rindsberg

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