So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of violent threats and sexual assault.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed was written during the rise of mass online social media culture, particularly during the rise of the micro-blogging site Twitter. While online social media had been around in some form since at least the 1990s, the scale and access increased drastically from the mid-2000s onward. Ronson is writing during this critical moment in the shift from an Internet of walled gardens, where like-minded people communicate with relatively small groups on message boards or Facebook, to public forums like Twitter where everyone, from celebrities and strangers, can interact freely and en masse.

Ronson has been active on Twitter since December 2008 and has observed shifts in the tone and interactions on the platform firsthand, noting that initially, “there had been no public shamings” (83) on Twitter. As the platform became more popular and more high-profile figures like Donald Trump joined, Ronson saw his and other people’s behavior change: “We were the mob […] I had drifted into a new way of being” (84). People could be targeted or become the subject of a “pile-on” for transgressions big or small. As a result of public shaming, people lost their jobs, speaking opportunities, publishing deals, and worse.

While the dynamics that Ronson describes on social media are now described more generally as “cancel culture,” Ronson does not use this expression or framework in his book. According to a Vox article by Aja Romano, describing someone as being “canceled” for their opinions or actions was originally used on Black Twitter, the term for the community of Black users on Twitter, in 2015, but it did not gain mainstream use until later in the 2010s (Romano, Aja. “Why We Can’t Stop Fighting About Cancel Culture.” Vox, 25 Aug. 2020). The debate around “cancel culture” is complex, but Ronson touches on some of its key concerns in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: mob justice, consequences for actions or comments not intended to cause harm, the psychological toll of being “canceled,” and how fear of being canceled leads to a less daring, more homogenous culture.