frasersimons 's review for:

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

4.0

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Very interesting. Crowd psychology has always fascinated me but the dynamics on social media—especially on Twitter—is even more interesting to me because you can hardly spend any time on it at all without seeing shaming happening. Sometimes people are in the right and it’s the only kind of Justice that can be obtained, other times it’s just the algorithm feeding you information it knows will incense you, and the fallout is a disaster without any accountability, ironically.

This book does a good job of have a through line narrative and peppering in data and anecdotes and interviews to explore mob psychology online within a narrow framework. It’s hardly comprehensive or definitive, but in so far as getting a few perspectives it is useful and, as mentioned, very interesting (for me).