Studies online social shaming through a series of interesting case studies. The book breezes through intriguing hypotheses but never moves past the anecdotal. Sometimes the overarching narrative feels like window shopping for straw men - is it really such a conundrum why some individuals escape their shamings unscathed? I'm not sure.

Still, it's a fun read. The stories are well-told, compelling & funny, and they draw attention to a weird social phenomenon.

I love Jon Ronson and this book reminded me why. He digs into cases of people who have been publicly shamed online, and analyzes what it means to be ashamed, and really looks closely at the court of public opinion online, mainly via social media. I'm glad I read this today, post 'me-too' because I think a lot has happened since he published this in 2015, and I think this book should be required reading for online citizenry at this point.
Beyond the cases themselves, he gets into some interesting territory that I didn't expect. I especially liked what he had to say about James Gilligan, the psychiatrist who tried to overhaul the penal system in Massachusetts in the 1980s. He had introduced therapeutic communities for offenders that were based on a sort of radical empathy that tried to get under the causes of violence in criminal offenders--which inevitably gets into issues of systemic and structural violence and inequality. His work seemed fascinating and like it had enormous potential for prison reform.
I also enjoyed reading about the 'real' story behind the Stanford Prison experiments--I hadn't realized that lots of people viewed the findings as totally spurious and felt the students roles in makeshift prison had been performative rather than indicative of a fundamental lack of human decency.
I also laughed out loud repeatedly and made a note to read more Jon Ronson soon!

An interesting read, although didn't have the depth of some of his others.

Is social media; good or bad? Facebook is one of the original ones, but it has since been joined by Twitter and many others. Most of the time these can be a good thing, are fairly harmless, and keep people in touch with each other, but there are times when it isn’t. In this book Ronson meets and talks with those that have suffered from the overwhelming and brutal response from twitter, as well as other forms of public humiliation.

He starts with himself though. He is a bit of a twitter addict and on finding out that there was another @jonronson account, with a fondness for baking amongst other things, he started to do some digging. Turns out it was being run by a couple of guys as an experiment. He manages to meet them, mainly to see what was driving them, but also to persuade them to cease. This shocked him somewhat and into finding out what others had experienced. He starts with the ‘pop’ science writer Jonah Lehrer. It is an author that I have read before, and liked, but in one of his books a journalist noticed that some quotes didn’t ring true. After some correspondence with Lehrer, bordering on harassment at times, he publishes. Cue Lehrer’s career going down the pan, even more so when he makes a public apology on twitter.

There are other case studies in the book too; a PR executive, who just before getting on a plane to Africa made a tasteless joke about AIDS and Africa, a lady whose private photograph of her mucking around in a cemetery went viral, a software engineer whose innuendo laden joke about dongles in a private conversation at a tech developer conference offended a lady sitting in front of him. She posted a photo on twitter, and it went viral. All were sacked from their jobs. In a horrible reprisal the lady who posted it then suffered at the hands of the twitter mob, and lost her job too.

He interviews Max Mosley, better known as the ex boss of the FIA. The News of the World tried to shame him by releasing a film being ‘entertained’ by a number of dressed in military garb. He sued them and won, he has never felt any shame, but more importantly he hasn’t suffered from online humiliation unlike others. Ronson concludes that this is because for certain things a lot of people really don’t care. He starts to explore the darker side of this, and comes across a site called 4chan, where people’s desire for finding subjects to be offended by and extracting online revenge is rife. Very worrying stuff. He also talks to an American politician who has used shame as part of a punishment, he says this is limited to that individual and takes place in the local community affected by the crime, then it can have some effect in reducing re offending rates. But even this humiliation that now takes place now was considered excessive when you go back a couple of hundred years.

This public shaming of people, for what most sane people would consider just ill thought out comments or stupid lapses, is getting out of hand. The irony of it is that those doing the shaming are sometime equally guilty of crass, insensitive and downright horrid remarks; this once useful social tool is now a heavy blunt instrument. Ronson is a good journalist, and in this book he has had a long hard look at the way we use social media, the potential pitfalls and the potential jeopardy that we face in what we think are private offhand comments. This should be the start of the debate as to what is considered acceptable with regards to shaming of people, and also what steps well over the line when the online mob get started.

Didn't live up to the hype.

I have not read any of Ron's other books but I found this one entertaining. Again, nothing too profound in this volume. I enjoy his approach to writing, comical but sad, opinionated but gentle. The breadth of information about shaming and contemporary examples is vast and even the most involved social media user will only recognize one or two of his case studies. I will admit I was not expecting this to be so embedded in social media (it reads more of an overview of past examples and how those involved were affected) and was a bit disappointed there was a more psychological approach. Maybe I should have brushed up on his other readings before I got there.

Either way, it was an extremely easy read, very interesting, and well written. The chapters are short so if you are a multitasking reader like I am, feel free to leave off and return to this book as you finish others.

Interesting stories and ideas. I may have enjoyed it more if I knew more about the publishing world, and pop culture.