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Justine Sacco
Lindsey Stone is a woman who was publicly shamed on the internet in 2012, shortly after a satirical picture she took went viral. While visiting Washington, D.C., Stone and a friend—who had a tradition of taking silly pictures with public signage—staged a photograph in which Stone was raising her middle finger at a sign asking for silence and respect at Arlington Cemetery. When the picture, which Lindsey’s friend posted, went viral, incensed mobs of people on platforms like Twitter and Facebook called for Lindsey to lose her job and to suffer violence and assault. Lindsey did end up getting fired from the care facility where she worked, and the press hounded her and her family so intensely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and barely left the house for a year. Jon Ronson uses Lindsey’s story to illustrate the misogyny behind many public shamings, as well as the long-term ramifications that a slightly offensive but ultimately innocuous misstep can have for an ordinary person. Stone was eventually able to secure the help of Michael Fertik’s firm Reputation.com. Together with Fertik and his associate Farukh Rashid, Lindsey was able to flood the internet with positive search results for her name and drive down the negative ones to relative obscurity.
Lindsey Stone Quotes in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
The So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed quotes below are all either spoken by Lindsey Stone or refer to Lindsey Stone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11
Quotes
“Literally, overnight everything I knew and loved was gone,” Lindsey said.
And that's when she fell into a depression, became an insomniac, and barely left home for a year.
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The criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners—young, black—have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time—bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers.
I thought about Justine Sacco. How many of the people piling on her had been emotionally damaged by what they had read? As far as I could tell, only one person was damaged in that pile-on.
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Chapter 13
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“Normal prison is punishment in the worst sense,” Jim told me. “It’s like a soul-bleeding. Day in, day out, people find themselves doing virtually nothing in a very negative environment.”
I thought of Lindsey Stone, just sitting at her kitchen table for almost a year, staring at the online shamings of people just like her.
“People move away from themselves,” Jim said. “Inmates tell me time and again that they feel themselves shutting down, building a wall.”
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Get the entire So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed LitChart as a printable PDF.
Lindsey Stone Quotes in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
The So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed quotes below are all either spoken by Lindsey Stone or refer to Lindsey Stone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11
Quotes
“Literally, overnight everything I knew and loved was gone,” Lindsey said.
And that's when she fell into a depression, became an insomniac, and barely left home for a year.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners—young, black—have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time—bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers.
I thought about Justine Sacco. How many of the people piling on her had been emotionally damaged by what they had read? As far as I could tell, only one person was damaged in that pile-on.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13
Quotes
“Normal prison is punishment in the worst sense,” Jim told me. “It’s like a soul-bleeding. Day in, day out, people find themselves doing virtually nothing in a very negative environment.”
I thought of Lindsey Stone, just sitting at her kitchen table for almost a year, staring at the online shamings of people just like her.
“People move away from themselves,” Jim said. “Inmates tell me time and again that they feel themselves shutting down, building a wall.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
