Book No. 10 of 2020
This was recommended to me by a friend on Twitter; it’s an insightful look into how internet outrage blows issues out of proportion and uses mob mentality to disproportionately hurt its targets.
The subjects cover a wide range of bizarre and toxic internet behavior, from a group of trolls who impersonated the author to the well-publicized cases of people whose inside jokes were blown out of proportion, upending their lives. Ronson also follows a shadowy company that helps people pick up the pieces of their ruined reputations after harassment campaigns, and touches on how much money Google might be making off of internet pitchfork mobs.
The book is generally a quick journey through something that is both horrifying and fascinating, though some chapters seem more like interesting tangents than fully fleshed-out supportive material. Where the book really shines, I think, is when Ronson goes deep into the provenance of shame: the history of public shaming in America (stocks, whippings, and the Scarlet Letter), the psychological profile of shame, how shame as a vehicle for dehumanization is weaponized in the modern justice and prison system.
Similar Reads
This may seem an odd connection, because they are WILDLY different books in tone, but for more on the human effects of shame I would recommend Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, which goes, deeply and eloquently, into articulating what it’s like to feel shamed in the public eye while navigating a justice system that all too often dehumanizes its participants.