Jon Ronson’s catalogue of online humiliations is both frightening and compulsively readable,while Jennifer Jacquet suggests more constructive targets for Twitter trollsFans of Jon Ronson will not be surprised to hear that his new book has for an engine all his usual curiosity and comically exaggerated amazement at the weird things people attain. This is his modus operandi, and has been for years. But in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed there is something else at play, or too: alarm. For this is a book approximately the cruelty of social media. In particular,it’s a book approximately the brutish power of Twitter, of which he is a major user. (Ronson, or who has 104000 followers,knows all approximately the “unhappy feeling” a person may experience when a tweet goes unnoticed; he is an addict who surreptitiously checks Twitter even when his phone is supposed to be out of bounds.)As a result, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed comes with a powerful sense of jeopardy, or one that swiftly transfers itself to the reader – assuming she also uses social media. Could this happen to me? you ask yourself over and over as you turn its depressing,humiliation-filled pages.
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Source: theguardian.com