So You've Been Publicly Shamed

by Jon Ronson

From Jon Ronson, the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, this is a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame.

'It's about the terror, isn't it?'
'The terror of what?' I said.
'The terror of being found out.'

Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us – people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job.

A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.

Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws – and the very scary part we all play in it.

• ISBN10: 0330492292
• ISBN13: 9780330492294
• Publish Date: 31 December 2015 (first published 9 March 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[adamfortuna]

This book brought up some interesting feelings for me. I haven't been publicly shamed, but a number of the incidents documented here I was aware of when they happened -- and took a sense of schadenfreude in the incidents. It's hard to understand just how out of proportion some of the responses from the media and public were though, which this book did a good job of highlighting -- and following up on those shamed.

[remo]

Un ensayo muy curioso sobre las modernas humillaciones públicas, que ya no tienen lugar en la plaza del pueblo sino en Twitter.
El autor inicia el libro contándonos algunos casos recientes de humillaciones públicas (Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, y un doble combo con tiro por la culata incluido, el DongleGate, en el que también la denunciante sufrió las iras de la masa enfurecida). El autor entrevista a mucha gente, entre ellos a los humillados, meses o años después de que todo sucediera, y nos cuentan cómo han cambiado las cosas para ellos desde entonces. Una lectura muy interesante.
Algunas cosas que no me han gustado tanto hasn sido las largas excursiones hacaia los rincones de la psique humana para indagar en los mecanismos de la vergüenza, que más parecían relleno que aportación. Esos trozos han sido con diferencia lo más aburrido del libro.