In 2012, Jon Ronson's online identity was stolen. Jon publicly confronted the imposters, a trio of academics who had created a Jon Ronson Twitter bot obsessed by unlikely food combinations and weird sex. At first, Jon was delighted to find strangers all over the world uniting to support him in his outrage. The wrongdoers were quickly shamed into stopping. But then things got out of hand.
This encounter prompted Jon to explore the phenomenon of public shaming and what he discovered astonished him. As he meets famous shamers and shamees, Jon learns just how quickly public ridicule, often delivered from anonymous or distant sources, can devastate its victim. After our collective fury has raged with the force of a hurricane, we forget about it and move on, and it doesn't cross our minds to wonder what we've done.
How big a transgression really justifies someone losing their job? What about the people who become global targets for doing nothing more than making a bad joke on Twitter, do they deserve to have their lives ruined? How is this renaissance of shaming changing the world and what is the true reason behind it? 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 our very scary part in it.
About the Author
Jon Ronson is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. He is the author of many bestselling books, including Lost at Sea, The Psychopath Test, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Them: Adventures with Extremists. His first fictional screenplay, Frank, co-written with Peter Straughan, was directed by Lenny Abrahamson and stared Michael Fassbender. He lives in London and New York.
Industry Reviews
superb and terrifying ... So You've Been Publicly Shamed brings together all of Ronson's virtues as a writer, to a more serious purpose than hitherto ... Ronson is a true virtuoso of the faux-naive style. He is so good at it that it's not irritating ... Ronson has beautiful comic-prose skills ... but Ronson's self-description as a "humorous journalist" is not the whole story. Comedy is his disguise and also his weapon. He is a moralist. Some of his best lines seem casual but contain fierce social diagnoses ... towards the end of his new book, someone accuses him of "prurient curiosity". This prompts what may be taken as a statement of the moral approach behind all his work. "I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on to others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light on to them, de-demonise people that might otherwise be seen as ogres." At its best, this is exactly what his writing can do ... relentlessly entertaining and thought-provoking
Steven Poole Guardian
He is such an exceptional writer ... an incredibly funny writer ... a perfect sense of comic timing throughout, but he manages to deal with profound subjects ... so enjoyable ... you can be having a laugh while understanding a social phenomenon in a completely unique way; it's such a great book ... We're buying it!
The BBC Radio 2 Arts Show with Claudia Winkleman
A magnificent book, subtly argued, often painfully funny and yet deeply serious... I'm not sure I can recommend it highly enough
Daily Mail
A work of original, inspired journalism, it considers the complex dynamics between those who shame and those who are shamed, both of whom can become the focus of social media's grotesque, disproportionate judgments
Laurence Scott Financial Times
Ronson is our current master of smarter-than-average pop nonfiction that combines social science, investigative journalism and no shortage of style ... Ronson and his subjects are strikingly candid about their fears, which is compelling if not always comfortable to read. But the book slowly turns out to be about something bigger than it seems: a survival guide to living with shame both public and private, an inevitable consequence of being human.
Saturday Paper (Australia)
