Select A Store
Select Store
My Store:
Select A Store
Availability:
$8.49
Used
-
Trade Paperback
-
9781594634017
Overview
Overview
Now a New York Times bestseller and from the author of The Psychopath Test, 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.'
For the past three years, 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.
'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.'
For the past three years, 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.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Ronson, Jon
- ISBN: 9781594634017
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.10 x 0.90
- Number Of Pages: 336
- Publication Year: 2016
Customer Reviews
Rating Snapshot
5 ★
0%
4 ★
100%
3 ★
0%
2 ★
0%
1 ★
0%
2 Ratings
0
0% Would Recommend
0 Recommendations
Review Images
Sort by:
-
Quirky Reporter Examines Modern-Day Public Shaming
Kiet N. - 3 years 6 months agoJon Ronson, reporter, and author wrote this book about public shaming and its recent comeback in our modern times. The book opens with a fake Twitter account being opened in his name, and his request to get it taken down. After interviewing the people who opened it on YouTube, the public response to the video swung wildly in Ronson's favor. From there, Ronson explores and interviews modern victims of public shaming, including a woman whose inappropriate Twitter post got her fired, and a famous inspirational author whose fraudulent quotations earned him the ire of the internet. Ronson examines our willingness to put people on trial in the anonymous digital age and the madness of crowds in this witty and sharp book.
HPB Staff Review -
British journalist examines the hive-mind of the modern public scold.
Terell P. - 6 years 3 months agoAuthor Jon Ronson writes a particularly British form of gonzo journalism. Rather than the fearless, narcotic-fueled histrionics of Hunter S. Thompson or the erudite, embedded reportage of Tom Wolfe, Ronson is neurotic, self-deprecating, and extremely funny. In "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" he explores the modern mob mentality of social media, and how the self-righteous collective voice of the internet can derail someone's career and even their very life over something as egregious as journalistic plagiarism or as innocuous as a misguided off-color joke on twitter. He also explores the history of public humiliation as a form of punishment and the psychological theory of "groupthink", all in a style at once intelligent, amusing, and compulsively engaging.
HPB Staff Review