社交媒体时代的声誉危机管理

Review: ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’ Delves Into Infamy in the Age of Social Media

社交媒体时代的声誉危机管理

One of the people Jon Ronson interviewed for his latest book asked him a tough question. “Given that my previous books were about such frivolous topics as military psychics (‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’) and conspiracy theorists (‘Them: Adventures With Extremists’), why did I suppose my readers would be interested in the important question of public shaming?” Mr. Ronson was asked. Since his writerly persona is that of a stellar entertainer-explorer-clown, humiliation does seem weightier and less breezy than what he usually likes to handle.

乔恩·龙森(Jon Ronson)为了创作新书采访了一些人，其中一人问了他一个尖锐的问题——“你之前的书都是讨论一些没什么意义的话题，比如《瞪着羊群的人》(The Men Who Stare at Goats)讨论特异功能军事部队，《他们：与极端主义者的冒险》(Them: Adventures With Extremists)讨论阴谋论者，你觉得你的读者怎么会对公众声誉这种事情感兴趣呢?”的确，龙森的作家形象一直是一个善于探索又兼具娱乐精神的小丑，和龙森以往处理的话题相比，公共声誉这个话题显得有点沉重和严肃了。

But the choice of subject for “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” turns out to be gutsy and smart. Without losing any of the clever agility that makes his books so winning, he has taken on truly consequential material and risen to the challenge. His overall point is something we already understand: Public shaming in the age of social media has the kind of power that no form of shaming ever had before.

但事实证明，这本书的话题选择是大胆而明智的。《你已被公开羞辱》继承了龙森广受读者欢迎的风格：机灵、敏锐。此外，他还采用了非常重要的素材，并克服了可读性的难题。龙森的大致观点我们并不陌生：在社交媒体的时代，声誉的毁坏往往带来巨大影响，这是之前的时代无法企及的。

Mr. Ronson sets out to find specific examples of public missteps and the revenge they attracted, trying to grasp some sense of proportion between the two, or at least figure out the rules of the game. He digs deeply into a few things you already know about and many you probably don’t. He explores the reputation-fixing business, to both sad and hilarious effect. And he draws surprising conclusions about what kind of response to shaming can quash it.

龙森找到一些关于公共领域内个人过失的特别例子，以及这些过失所招来的报复，并试图抓住二者之间的某种相关性，或者至少解释这个游戏的规则。他阐述的事例有些是我们知道的，不过大部分我们可能并不了解。他研究危机公关这个行业，研究它带来的既可悲又可笑的影响。关于怎样才能应对声誉危机，龙森做出的结论令人惊讶。

Case in point: Max Mosley, the son of the British fascist Oswald Mosley, was caught by the British tabloid News of the World in an alleged “Nazi” orgy involving prostitutes and German military uniforms. News of the World subsequently went out of business. Max Mosley never denied anything except the idea that Nazi trappings were involved. He sued the newspaper, won the case, shrugged the whole thing off and remains the same happy, kinky guy.

一个例子是：英国法西斯主义者奥斯瓦尔德·莫斯利(Oswald Mosley)的儿子马科斯·莫斯利(Max Mosley)曾被英国小报《世界新闻报》(News of the World)曝出参加了“纳粹”主题的狂欢会，派对上不光有妓女还有德国军装。《世界新闻报》随后倒闭。除了纳粹服饰这一点外，马科斯·莫斯利自始至终没有否认过其他说法。他起诉了报社，赢得了官司，然后把这事儿抛在了脑后，一如既往地快活和变态。

“So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” begins with a mini-example involving the author, just to give a taste of how aggravating Twitter can be. He finds a fake @Jon_Ronson tweeting and discovers that the spambot is the creation of a team of academics. When he tweets to ask them to take the spambot down, the response is “We prefer the term infomorph.” This spat isn’t much, but it’s a good lead-in to the book’s first major episode: the outing of the popular writer Jonah Lehrer for including fake quotes from Bob Dylan in his book “Imagine,” which was subsequently withdrawn and pulped. This episode made headlines when it happened. But Mr. Ronson has the tangled story of what Mr. Lehrer’s shaming was really about.

《你已被公开羞辱》以作者本人的一个小故事开篇，展示出推特强大煽动性的冰山一角。龙森发现了一个假的“@Jon_Ronson” 推特账号，该账号产生于一个由某学术团队制作的垃圾程序。当他发送私信要求他们关闭这个垃圾程序时，他们回应说“我们更倾向于说是信息更正”。这是件小事，不过很好地引出了书的第一章：人气作家乔纳·莱勒(Jonah Lehrer)被人识破在《想象》(Imagine)一书中捏造了鲍勃·迪伦(Bob Dylan)的引言，该书随后被召回并销毁。这件事在当时轰动一时，莱纳遭到羞辱是一个复杂的事件，龙森从中找出了它的真正意义。

This book’s he said/he said is as fascinating as it is awful. It combines the stories of Mr. Lehrer and Michael C. Moynihan, the Dylanologist who spotted the fake Dylan quotes. They were truly inconsequential: Mr. Lehrer had just tacked on a little extra verbiage to things Dylan had really said. They probably wouldn’t have done him ruinous damage. It was lying about them that did that trick.

龙森在书中给出了两边不同的糟糕说法，显得非常巧妙。他把莱勒和迈克尔 C. 莫伊尼汉(Michael C. Moynihan)的故事结合在了一起 。莫伊尼汉是个迪伦专家，是他发现莱勒书中的迪伦采访引语涉嫌造假。这些话其实并不要紧：莱勒只是给迪伦实际说的话加了些冗余。其实这或许本不会为他带来毁灭性的后果，是说谎这件事酿成了苦果。

As Mr. Lehrer says to Mr. Ronson, who admits he had to do a lot of disingenuous flattering and agreeing with Mr. Lehrer to get this information, once he had insisted the quotes were real and begun trying to fake their provenance, he was cooked. His self-pity and lack of insight are stunning. The more he lied, the more of a challenge he gave Mr. Moynihan, who sounds as if he didn’t want this fiasco any more than Mr. Lehrer did. “It was like they were both in a car with failed brakes, hurtling helplessly toward this ending together,” Mr. Ronson writes.

龙森承认，为了让莱勒开口，他对莱勒说了好多不真诚的恭维话，假装同意莱勒的做法。最后莱勒告诉龙森说，当自己坚持称引语为真，并且试图伪造出处的那一刻，他的悲剧真正开始了。他的自怜和愚蠢让人惊讶。他愈是说谎，就让莫伊尼汉愈感到困扰。莫伊尼汉似乎和莱勒一样不愿意陷入这场灾难。“他们像是在同一辆刹车失灵的汽车上，绝望地携手冲向了终点”，龙森写道。

Mr. Moynihan reached the point at which too many people knew about his full exposé for him not to publish it. As for Mr. Lehrer, he made a public apology with a giant Twitter feed on a screen behind him, so that reactions were visible in real time. For a while he played it genuinely contrite, and viewers were willing to forgive him. But then he blew it so badly that the hate-on began, and talk turned to his $20,000 fee for the event at which he was speaking. All was lost, as in: “Wish I could get $20,000 to say that I’m a lying dirtbag.”

由于太多人知道真相，莫伊尼汉不得不将自己的文章发表。而莱勒的情况是，他在电视上当众道歉，背后的大屏幕上是Twitter网站上的账号，可以实时看到公众对此的反应。他的悔悟一度显得很真诚，读者也愿意原谅他。但是之后，他让这些都飞走了，公众的愤怒随之而来，舆论转向他2万美金的演讲出场费。 “我也想说我是个说谎的人渣，然后拿2万美金”，自这条评论出现，莱勒功亏一篑。

Less well-known, really shocking parts of the book tell of two guys making dumb jokes at a conference for tech developers. One of them made a nerdy, techy joke with sexual overtones, at which point a woman in front of him stood up, turned around and took his picture. She posted it on Twitter and was very proud of herself. (“Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.”) He lost his job. He posted an apology that included the fact that he had three children to support, and the woman demanded that he remove that information. Who suffered more? He was out of work; she remained smug; but she became subject to vicious sexual comments on the web bulletin board 4chan/b/.

还有一个不那么为人所知的故事，也是这本书中令人震惊的一个片段：两个人在一个会议上给科技从业者讲冷笑话。其中一个人用性挑逗的口吻开了一个愚蠢的科技玩笑，这时他前面的女人站起身来转向他，拍了照片。她把照片发到推特上，为此得意洋洋(“昨天，编程的未来岌岌可危，我发出了自己的声音。”)结果他丢掉了工作。他发布了道歉，说他有三个孩子要抚养，女人要求他去掉这部分信息。最后谁受了更多痛苦?他丢掉了工作;她继续自鸣得意，但她却在论坛 “4chan/b/”上备受攻击，人们用带有性意味的恶毒语言辱骂她。

Another woman whose story is told here is Lindsey Stone, who liked to be photographed doing stupid things and really outdid herself by making an obscene gesture at Arlington National Cemetery. In her case, Mr. Ronson arranged a matchup between Ms. Stone the pariah and Reputation.com, which gave her its top-flight Internet life makeover.

书中还讲到另一个女人的故事——林赛·斯通(Lindsey Stone)。她喜欢把做的傻事拍下来。有一次玩大了，斯通在阿灵顿国家公墓做了一个下流的手势。龙森为斯通这个社会弃儿和Reputation.com网牵线，这个网站给了她顶级待遇，帮她在网络改头换面。

One problem with Ms. Stone: Aside from the hate-mongering photograph, she wasn’t on the web at all. So Reputation.com started grilling her for interesting details, and the results were ... resultant. “Are cats important to you?” “Absolutely.” Career history? Five years at Walmart. Ms. Stone wasn’t going to be easy.

一个问题是，除了这张招来恨意的照片，斯通在网上其实没有什么东西。所以Reputation.com网开始盘问她，想知道一些有趣的细节，结果是……就是个结果而已。“猫对你来说重要吗?”“当然。”职业历程?在沃尔玛工作了五年。斯通没想表现得轻松。

But the team was relentless, creating accounts for her on various sites, posting pictures of her anywhere but at Arlington, writing blog posts. Throughout this whole process, there were only two posts she had to nix. One said: “Happy Birthday, Disneyland! The happiest place on earth!” Mr. Ronson’s gift for detail-picking is, as ever, a treat.

但是团队坚持不懈，为她在不同网站上开通了账号，发布她除去阿灵顿公墓以外的照片，为她写博客。在整个过程中，只有两张照片斯通没允许发布，其中一张说：“生日快乐，迪士尼乐园!地球上最开心的地方!”一如既往，龙森对这种细节的挑选天赋，是读者的幸福。

So what does he learn? That even the toughest advocates of old-fashioned shaming techniques think their tactics pale beside social media. And that social media has made people afraid, Mr. Ronson thinks, to speak freely, lest they inadvertently become targets for some crazy reason. Its anonymity magnifies groupthink, and it lets us forget one victim as we move on to the next. A Gawker writer who savaged one woman told Mr. Ronson in the book that she’d be fine — eventually. “Everyone’s attention span is so short. They’ll be mad about something new today.”

那么，龙森学到了什么呢?在社交媒体面前，传统声誉操纵策略最忠实的拥护者也会相形见绌。龙森认为，社交媒体让人们害怕畅所欲言，唯恐不经意间因为一些奇怪的原因突然变成疯子的攻击对象。社交媒体的匿名性放大了群体思维，我们在转向下一个目标时，就忘了这次的受害者。在书中，一名抨击过一个女人的掴客网(Gawker)写手告诉龙森，那女人最后会没事的。“每个人的注意力时间段都非常短暂的。他们只会对今天的新鲜事感到狂热。”