“God That Was Awesome” is an essay written by Jon Ronson, is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. The essay starts with Ronson talking us through the day of one Justine Sacco. Ms. Sacco had made some bad jokes on twitter. These jokes were meant to mock stupid white privilege ideas, but ended up being miss interrupted as racist. Unfortunately for Ms. Sacco her tweets  ended up becoming famous in a bad way. Long story short Ms. Sacco had he life ruined, thanks to thousands and thousands of people posting on her twitters. She lost her job and she was turned into this racist monster online. At this point Ronson filled us in on how his interview went with her. While it was obvious that she was not ok at the moment, there was some hope that she would bounce back. At this point public shaming looks like it is the worst thing imaginable. Then Ronson went to talk with Ted Poe. A judge known for using public shaming as a legal punishment in court. Ronson is ready to meet the devil when he goes to see him. Though as he talks with him he finds out that while public shaming sounds cruel, it can have some benefits. Ronson finds that this shaming can be what it takes to set people on the right path, and can even be healing. This is were he gets to talk to a man sentenced by Mr. Poe, Mike Hubacek. Mr. Hubacek killed two people while drunk driving. His punishment was to stand outside a school with a sign that said “I killed two people while driving drunk”. Ronson was expecting to hear the worst, but got something else entirely. Mr. Hubacek what happy that he was punished as he was. He said that be for the punishment he was losing himself and that after he had a purpose again. People even encouraged him that things would be ok while he was holding the sign. Now Ronson had a dilemma, he was supposed to find public shaming as a horrible thing but now he had prof of the opposite, though he also still had his original evidence that it was bad.  It is here that his essay goes from just being a popular writing piece and starts asking the scholarly questions, or at least allowing you to grasp them yourself.

Ronson’s essay is good but it by no means is a scholarly research paper. Though that does not mean we can’t take the message and make it into one. As I said in the beginning Ronson’s essay is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. With this knowledge we can look up things revolving around these things. Find so actual facts and make real arguments about something instead of this point of view written paper.