Have you been flamed? When the internet and social media become the 21st-century public square for public shaming, witch hunts, and venting frustrations, what will become of rational discourse and the future of free speech?

Following his previous work So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which spent ten consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and his screenplay for the movie Frank,
Author Jon Ronson "personally goes down" to explore the destructive power of 21st-century crowd "public shaming."

Chu Chia-An / Writer
Huang Che-Pin / Journalist
Huang Yang-Ming / Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Fu Jen Catholic University
Kuan Chung-Hsiang / Professor and Department Head, Department of Communication, National Chung Cheng University
Lu Yu-Chia / Writer
--Recommended
➢➢Online public trials wielding "the people's hammer," exposing fake personas, and netizens "crusading" are almost constantly happening.
Just one wrong move, one inappropriate comment, and the next person to be doxxed and flamed could be you...
In recent years, with social media dominating, once someone makes a mistake and is "doxxed" or "crusaded against" online, the public's anger and "the people's hammer" will strike like a storm.
In the blink of an eye, someone can be completely torn apart by a group of angry netizens, subjected to widespread ridicule, demonized, and sometimes even lose their job.
Overwhelming online public trials, vigilante justice, and flaming incidents are ubiquitous. The judiciary seems to have been "democratized," with the once silent majority scrambling to voice their opinions.
But what is the purpose behind the netizens' "voice of justice"? We mercilessly expose others' flaws, define the boundaries of what is considered normal,
and single out "abnormal" people—shaming becomes a tool, indirectly achieving a twisted form of social control.
The author of this book, Jon Ronson, has always had sharp and unique insights into social phenomena and internet culture, and is skilled at reportage. In today's increasingly polarized public opinion and crowd sentiment,
he witnessed the destructive power of online communities and netizens, and decided to personally explore related issues, writing this book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed.
During the writing process, Ronson visited many places in the UK and US, contacting victims of sensational flaming incidents. Those publicly shamed are ordinary people, just like everyone else,
who might have made a bad joke on social media or made a mistake at work. The incidents the author interviewed for and deeply understood for this book include:

↪During a large conference with hundreds of people, two engineers whispered inappropriate tech-related jokes to each other. The woman in front took the jokes seriously, turned around to take a picture and posted it online to shame them, expressing her dissatisfaction. The engineers were quickly fired by their respective companies, and the woman was also targeted by netizens, attracting a large number of misogynistic attacks with sexual connotations, ultimately also losing her job.
↪A woman who jokingly posted on Twitter about her white privilege and immunity to AIDS had her tweet interpreted by netizens as a thoughtless comment demonstrating "racial and political blindness." After posting and immediately boarding a plane, she was offline. When she reconnected to the internet after landing, she discovered she was being widely condemned, topped the Twitter trending topics, and was doxxed over a million times in search engines over the next 11 days.
↪"Formula One Boss Hires Five Prostitutes for Disgusting Nazi-Themed Orgies"—After this sensational headline was published, the individual in question openly discussed the scandal on a BBC program, calmly addressing it. The author met with the individual for a deep conversation, wanting to understand if his lack of remorse was due to an antisocial personality. In fact, the answer behind it might be much simpler...

The author constructs powerful arguments on public issues and reports humorously with a novelistic flair. So You've Been Publicly Shamed directly confronts the dark side of contemporary life,
many of us have, intentionally or unintentionally, played the role of a keyboard warrior or participated in witch hunts in situations similar to those described in the book. By revealing the beginning and end of events and their details,
this book debates human flaws; more importantly, the author reminds readers to sometimes look back at the faint glimmer of humanity that has not yet been extinguished.
▩Praise and Acclaim
No one can deny the power of crowds online anymore; the internet can drive policies, cause people to step down, and make companies collapse. So You've Been Publicly Shamed organizes the uncontrolled aspects of this power from real events. When people's moral emotions go online, the high interaction brought by righteous indignation becomes a source of profit for social media platforms. In the online echo chambers of the post-truth era, you won't be surprised that some people's lives are destroyed almost solely due to bad luck.
—Chu Chia-An / Writer
Facebook entered Taiwan in 2008, marking Taiwan's formal entry into the era of online social networking. Although it has been almost 20 years, disasters in online social networking are still frequent, whether personal or corporate, they are often heard of. Even though I consider myself a heavy user of online social networking, there are times when I feel helpless because online social interaction is unpredictable, and trolls' verbal attacks are completely merciless. Not to mention, the rules of online social networking are constantly changing rapidly, and if you can't keep up with the trend, you will also be frustrated in online social networking.
In So You've Been Publicly Shamed, perhaps not all things that happen online can be covered, but by understanding these real-life events, I believe it is quite enlightening for us to engage in online social interaction. What shocked me the most is that the protagonists of these stories are not influential figures, most of them are ordinary people. I hope that everyone who uses online social networking can pick up this irresistible book and read it; it might change your online social habits and thus allow you to be a happy netizen, instead of a slave kidnapped by online social networking.
—Huang Yang-Ming / Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Fu Jen Catholic University
A sense of justice can sometimes preserve, correct errors, and even guide society towards progress. However, any act of justice should first ascertain the facts, understand the causes from as many different angles as possible, and also be empathetic, in order to gradually solve problems and implement justice. But this often requires time and patience; otherwise, it is easy to become self-righteous or harm innocent people.
Social media often makes us lose patience, act quickly, shoot at shadows, and be too lazy to verify facts. In our echo chambers, it is difficult to view issues from multiple perspectives, let alone put ourselves in others' shoes and empathize. Even unintentional mistakes can be infinitely magnified because, for many people, practicing self-righteous justice is more important than anything else.
This also makes "flaming" a common phenomenon on social media. Some flaming can indeed teach wrongdoers a lesson and uphold justice; but some flaming is not only collective violence but also vigilante justice that violates the principle of proportionality and legitimacy, and it can even have devastating effects on unintentional individuals.
Jon Ronson, the author of this book, traveled around the world to visit the protagonists of flaming incidents and analyze the stories behind them, using these cases to help us better understand what is called "flaming justice."
—Kuan Chung-Hsiang / Professor and Department Head, Department of Communication, National Chung Cheng University
※The previous traditional Chinese edition of this book was published in Taiwan in 2016 under the title: Public Shaming by Netizens: Is the Power of Crowds Justice or Bullying?

出版日期/Publication Date：November 1, 2025
出版社/Publisher：臉譜
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