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686239b
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We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it.
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Jon Ronson |
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1c9fa97
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The way we construct consciousness is to tell the story of ourselves to ourselves, the story of who we believe we are. I feel that a really public shaming or humiliation is a conflict between the person trying to write his own narrative and society trying to write a different narrative for the person. One story tries to overwrite the other. And so to survive you have to own your story. Or"--Mike looked at me--"you write a third story. You r..
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Jon Ronson |
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cac7dca
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They'll be brought great distances," Trump had said. "We're not dropping them right across. They learned that. President Eisenhower. They'd drop them right across, and they'd come back. Then when they flew them to a long distance, all of a sudden that was the end." Here, Trump was praising Operation Wetback -- a 1954 endeavor in which Mexicans were rounded up and dumped in the wilderness, where they were stranded without food or possessions..
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Jon Ronson |
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8437b70
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I had to remind myself that it's good for journalists to feel demeaned. It means we're onto a story.
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Jon Ronson |
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b799e3c
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SPEAKING OF BURNING HUMANS -- actual ones, as opposed to ones who existed only in Alex's imagination -- in the late 1970s, a left-wing Filipino journalist named Satur Ocampo was arrested in Manila by President Ferdinand Marcos' soldiers. He was manacled, blindfolded and electrocuted, while soldiers poured cola on him (which apparently makes the electrocution more painful). His nipples and genitalia were burned. He survived, but thousands of..
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Jon Ronson |
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b6ac83a
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In these exciting times for people who thrive on chaos, Trump had emerged from the polluted waters of Twitter like a mutant fish, and the world could not believe its eyes.
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Jon Ronson |
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23ccf61
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Alex said this about Sandy Hook in January 2015: "Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are -- that they clearly used actors."
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Jon Ronson |
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869f722
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Normal people definitely didn't feel this panicky. Normal people definitely didn't feel like they were being electrocuted from the inside by an unborn child armed with a miniature Taser, that they were being prodded by a wire emitting the kind of electrical charge that stops cattle from going into the next field.
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Jon Ronson |
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44c727f
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Racists and conspiracy theorists are taking succor from Trump's nomination. His fans are frequently caught on camera at his rallies yelling at protesters, "Go back to Africa" and "Allah is a whore" and "Go to fucking Auschwitz" and "Go make my fucking tortilla, motherfucker." They hang effigies of Hillary Clinton from nooses. At a high school basketball game in Indiana in March, white students chanted "Trump! Trump! Trump!" at Latino studen..
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Jon Ronson |
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3f71c67
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If a conscience is living in a world defined by regrets, then yeah, I've got a conscience. My very first thought every morning is what I've done wrong. That
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Jon Ronson |
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e4958c6
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So after all of Joey's talk of science and preparation, I was imagining the corned-beef contest to be somehow more graceful and balletic. But as Shea counts down to zero and the eating begins, what I see instead are twelve people grotesquely cramming huge piles of meat and fat-sodden rye bread into their mouths. The juice drips down their arms, saturating their shirts. Their puffed-out cheeks are beetroot red. They resemble sweaty, meat-sme..
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Jon Ronson |
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31a4326
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The word forever had been coming up a lot during my two years among the publicly shamed. Jonah and Justine and people like them were being told, 'No. There is no door. There is no way back in. We don't offer any forgiveness.' But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don't?
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shame
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Jon Ronson |
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df4e0d3
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All violence {is} a person's attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.
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Jon Ronson |
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9b3908a
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As a group they tend to be more charming than most people," she said. "They have no warm emotions of their own but will study the rest of us. They're the boss or the coworker who likes to make other people jump just for the pleasure of seeing them jump. They're the spouse who marries to look socially normal but inside the marriage shows no love after the initial charm wears off."
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Jon Ronson |
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eef4a52
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if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
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politics
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Jon Ronson |
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b10398d
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The way we construct consciousness is to tell the story of ourselves to ourselves, the story of who we believe we are. I feel that a really public shaming or humiliation is a conflict between the person trying to write his own narrative and society trying to write a different narrative for the person. One story tries to overwrite the other. And so to survive you have to own your story.
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Jon Ronson |
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953fc3b
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predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.
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Jon Ronson |
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3c339b7
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I'm like a sociopath when it comes to expensive cars. I feel no emotion.
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Jon Ronson |
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e582544
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He interviewed thousands of American infantrymen and concluded that only 15-20 per cent of them had actually shot to kill. The rest had fired high or not fired at all, busying themselves however else they could. And 98 per cent of the soldiers who did shoot to kill were later found to have been deeply traumatized by their actions. The other 2 per cent were diagnosed as 'aggressive psychopathic personalities', who basically didn't mind killi..
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Jon Ronson |
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9068ba7
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It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.
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Jon Ronson |
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31655a5
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Feedback is an engineering principle," Adam's email to me ended. 'And all engineering is devoted to trying to keep the thing you are building stable."
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Jon Ronson |
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029ffa5
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It's as if both Midas and also the Queen of Narnia were here," I said, "and the Queen of Narnia flew above a particularly fierce zoo and turned everything there to stone and then transported everything here." "What?" said Al. "Nothing," I said. "No," he said, "what did you just say?" He shot me a steely, blue-eyed stare, which I found quite debilitating. "It was just a jumble of words," I said. "I was trying to make a funny comment but it a..
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Jon Ronson |
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c44e43d
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Among the Parisians there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they a..
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Jon Ronson |
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58334eb
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I suppose he was being rewarded so richly because his messages were inspirational. My talks tend to be more disincentivizing, which, I have noticed, pays less.
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Jon Ronson |
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cf1df9a
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When you say Jonah seems broken, what do you mean?" Justine said. "I think he's broken and that people mistake it for shamelessness," I said. People really were very keen to imagine Jonah as shameless, as lacking in that quality, like he was something not quite human that had adopted human form. I suppose it's no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt--before, during, or after the hurting occurs."
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pop-psychology
dehumanization
shame
psychology
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Jon Ronson |
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1c27157
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Guy fell silent again. And then he said--and his voice sounded sorrowful and distressed--"Last week I killed my hamster." "Just by staring at it?" I asked. "Yes," confirmed Guy."
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Jon Ronson |