So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed explores what causes people to feel ashamed as well as the reasons the public finds for shaming them. While the overall text focuses on a series of examples of public shaming, there is also some exploration of private shames and the effects both have on society, individual lives, and behavior. In Chapter 3, Ronson engages in a brief exploration of public shaming in American history, such as the public whipping of Abigail Gilpin in 1742 for infidelity to her husband. However, he is largely focused on contemporary shamings in recent history, such as that of Max Mosley for his controversial German prison scenario orgy by News of the World and that of Justine Sacco on the social media platform Twitter. Ronson is concerned with the way these shamings have mass or viral appeal in the information age. He interrogates the desire “we” have to engage in these shamings online and the effects they have on their targets.

Ronson analyzes his own desire to instigate and participate in public shaming while interviewing 4chan posters to better understand their motivations for this behavior. In the opening chapter, when Ronson gets massive online support to have the spambot impersonating him removed from Twitter, he says he feels like the hero of “Braveheart,” the 1995 film starring Mel Gibson as Scottish rebel William Wallace: “striding through the field, at first alone, and then it becomes clear that hundreds are marching behind me” (7).