This article is about a woman named Justine Sacco who was publicly shamed last year through Twitter. She tweeted a joke making fun of AIDS and it blew up on twitter with people shaming her for the joke with the hashtag #HasJustineLanded. The tweet was, "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" Which was seen as very offensive by many people in the twitter community. Justine Sacco was a public relations executive but lost her job because of the tweet and hasn't made progress in her career. She is in the news again because it is the first time she is speaking out about in in a new book called So You've Been Publicly Shamed, a book about people who have been famous shamees, shamers, and bystanders who have been affected. I was especially intrested in this because the man who wrote this book is Jon Ronson, who also wrote the book I am reading for my IRB right now. This is also interesting because after people have been "publicly shamed" on twitter, or tumblr, or facebook, you don't generally hear about them and what happened to them and even if you do there's no sympathy for the woman who is making fun of AIDS. There's no forgiveness and I think that's what the book is really going to be about, forgiving these people who yes made mistakes but have learned from them and are trying to rebuild their lives. The book talks a lot about how the internet created this fake persona of Justine Sacco that was a racist, loud, clearly evil woman and that was not the true Justine Sacco. It was interesting to see how this one tweet destroyed a woman's life and if she had just thought about this crass and inappropriate joke a little longer she would still be a successful executive.
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