So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson - Paperback

I have enjoyed every Jon Ronson book up until now, even counting him as one of my favourites but this book annoyed me in so many ways. It feels like he misses his own point half way through, to just play into the stereotypical problems associated with public shaming such as gender and race, but then trys to say he hasn't. I feel like he overly defends some of the shamees than is necessary too, implanting what he thought they meant rather than quoting what they claim they meant. Not impressed. Feels like he is talking about the internet from the perspective of someone that isn't 'connected'. Sorry, this book just made me angry. Roll on to the next book, which will hopefully return him to talk about what he does know about.

Jeez, if you use any social media platforms, especially Twitter, then you have to read this book - I only have 200 followers which in the social media world is like talking to an empty crowd that not even your mum would bother listening to, but this book has made me think more carefully about what I post.Cancel culture ruthlessly rips through people and everything in their life, rightfully or wrongfully that’s for you to decide.Jon explores and speaks to the people that have felt the full force of cancel culture and the toxic side of social media and it’s something that make you take a deep breath and go ‘jeez’.I have read all the Jon Ronson books, if you have read the others and not this one then trust me, buy it, it’s just another interesting page turner that i wish was longer

In this book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson looks at the concept of public shaming. This was prompted by his experience using the social media platform, Twitter, where he had witnessed and in some cases, participated in, the public humiliation of people who had (or who were perceived to have), for one reason or another, exceeded societal boundaries. These perceived and real transgressions include a professional journalist who had plagiarised and invented material for his books, as well as regular citizens who had made a clumsy joke. In these and many other cases, these people have lost their jobs and suffered very real financial and emotional impacts.Ronson has written some great books in the past, where he investigates areas of life that fall outside the scope of “traditional” journalism. …Shamed explores how the concept of public shaming is nothing new, from the public stocks and flogging of centuries ago, through to contemporary judges sentencing criminals to wearing sandwich boards publicising their crime and warning others not to do the same. Ronson uses the tools of a traditional journalist: good research and first-hand interviews, with the techniques of a great novelist: a real eye for characters and events, a good ear for that catchy turn of phrase...Shamed takes the story in places where I had not imagined and it was all the better for that. It starts on Twitter but Ronson also takes us in to prisons to meet “shamed” offenders, as well as prison reformers; unconventional therapy groups that use no-holds barred emotional honesty (resulting in some angry exchanges); revisiting the infamous Stanford University prison experiment of the 1970s, looking at new evidence which might cast the standard interpretations in a new light; online reputation management companies; calculating the financial benefits of shaming to social media companies – and many other fascinating people and events that have skirted by conventional social history.So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is an excellent read, full of interesting and often little-known history, all brought wonderfully to life by a skilled writer. I enjoy Twitter a lot (except for those days when my feed is full of relentless doom and gloom), so this book held an obvious appeal but it’s range is broader than that (even though there are an estimated 330 million active monthly users of Twitter worldwide). …Shamed looks with honesty and humour at whether Western society is broadening or narrowing what is publicly acceptable and is it giving a voice to the voiceless – and what is being done with that power. It could have done with an index but that small note aside, this is highly recommended.

It's no secret that the internet runs, in many ways, on self-righteous outrage. It's tweeters rounding on tweeters, facebook demagogues whipping up the credulous into frenzies. It's cats versus dogs, Jets versus Sharks, Montagues versus Capulets. It's a never-ending war of one-upmanship, where a significant proportion earn their kudos through the aggressive denouement of those virtual entities they have considered to be beneath contempt. I'm no angel in that respect - I've been scarred in a hundred internet wars, and scarred plenty of people in turn. Recently though I've started to become more troubled by the fact that outrage on the internet is wielded so casually and so easily against the caricatures that we construct of 'the enemy'. Ronson's book is a very good exploration of the actual lasting damage that kneejerk outrage can cause, and how the self-righteousness of vindictive shaming can leave the participants looking, in almost every respect, like the villains of the piece. It's an important book - a sobering book. It's not a perfect book, but it has the same Ronson quirks that are present in every book of his I have read - the book's main flaw is that it leaves me wanting to know more about each vignette he sketches.The insights into Justine Sacco in particular are fascinating - a woman who made a stupid joke to a tiny audience, and had her life systematically dismantled as a result. I find that particular section chilling, because almost every day online I will make jokes that make hers look like the kind of somber, respectful, deeply appropriate comment one might give to a grieving widow at a friend's funeral. My only defence against a similar mass shaming is that I choose my audiences carefully, making sure they're comprised of people who will understand the context of the joke, and construct different personas depending on how broad my audience will be. That's an unfortunate state to be in, when even the anonymous must constantly fret about reputation management just in case the wider, ravenous public decide that you're the next meal to be savoured.Very much recommended.

Most of the publicity about this book covers the stories in the first few chapters. These invariably involve people losing their jobs because of tasteless jokes and, unsurprisingly, almost all the shaming was done online. In his usual style, Jon Ronson moves on from this, ranging far and wide through the topic of shaming. He attends a workshop designed to help people overcome shame and visits people involved in helping prisoners deal with their shame, not so much at their crimes, but at the abuse they themselves suffered which led to the crimes. If the opening chapters make the topic seem rather superficial, the transcript of the cross-examination of a young rape victim should bring home the danger of heaping shame on a vulnerable person. I hope that the barrister who did this is deeply ashamed of his actions because he deserves to be, far more than two men joking about big dongles.