Description
The renaissance of the digital pillory.
What happens when a single poorly-timed joke or a minor workplace mistake is broadcast to millions? Jon Ronson spent three years traveling the globe to meet the victims of high-profile public shamings: ordinary people whose lives were dismantled in an afternoon by the collective outrage of the internet.
Ronson explores the terrifying democratisation of justice, where the silent majority has finally found its voice, only to use it as a tool for social demolition. From social media mobs to the historical roots of the pillory, this book is a hilarious, honest, and deeply unsettling look at how we define “normal” by destroying anyone who steps outside the lines. It is an essential autopsy of the escalating war on human flaws and a reminder of the scary part we all play in the feedback loop of shame.
Jon Ronson shows us the devastating social consequence of Cunningham’s law: in the digital age, being “wrong” doesn’t just get you a correction. It gets you a catastrophe.
The internet is a giant engine built to verify Cunningham’s law. When someone posts something “wrong” (a bad joke, a factual error, a social faux pas), the crowd rushes in with the “right” answer. But Ronson reveals that this isn’t a dispassionate exchange of information; it’s an emotional explosion. The wisdom of crowds becomes the vengeance of crowds. We have weaponised the urge to correct others, turning a law of information into a law of social execution. This book serves as a critical warning: before you apply Cunningham’s law to get an answer, realise that the crowd might not stop at correcting your facts.
