This was an OK read overall, I think it felt more conspiracy theory than communicating science and fact.

O'Neil's breakdown of shame is riveting and wide-ranging. She mentions Brene Brown and Jon Ronson's works, but mainly she is breaking down how certain people can profit from negative shame and how to break free of them (an ongoing process). On the topic of using shame to convince people to do the right thing, she treads a similar path to Amanda Ripley's high conflict, with a similar conclusion: People are only going to be convinced by people they already see as members of their in-group.
For anyone who likes social science and psychology, this offers fresh insights and fleshes out the picture of how we interact with each other in this modern world.

I had really high hopes for this book, but in my opinion, it really fell short. I’ll start off with what was good about this book, and one thing is for sure, Cathay is such a great writer. I read this book straight through, and it’s pretty amazing that a woman who is a mathmetician has such awesome writing skills. The other part that really stands out about this book is that you can tell that this is a topic that O’Neil is really passionate about. She shares a bit of her personal experience with shame in different parts of the book, and as someone who has struggled with my weight, I could really relate to her stories and how she feels. But other than that, this book didn’t meet my expectations. It’s possible that Cathy set the bar extremely high for me with her first book Weapons of Math Destruction, but this book just felt like there were so many missed opportunities to dive into shame.

I’m really interested in the topic of shame and how online shaming has changed how we shame one another, so I read a lot of books on the topic. Whenever I pick up a book, I ask two questions: “Whos is this for?” and “What are you bringing to the table that’s new?”. There are millions of books out there, and so many on similar topics, so you have to bring something new to the conversation. I was excited about the premise of the book as it was going to discuss how social media platforms and companies profit off of shaming. The book is extremely short, and it could have easily been double the length if it had as much research and data as the previous book.

There was minimal data and research in this book. Most of it was just telling every mainstream story you can think of when it comes to shaming. Central Park Karen, the Convington High School student in the MAGA hat, and many others that most of us are familiar with. She offers some great critiques of the diet industry and how they profit from shame, but it’s all been said before. Based on the previous book, I figured there’d be deep dives into algorithms promoting shame and some statistics, but they were few and far between. O’Neil also could have gone deeper into the psychology and philosophy around shaming and morality. What really let me down was based on her experience, there were some missed opportunities to show compassion for people she disagreed with, but it didn’t happen. Certain stories showed personal biases, and some lacked crucial parts of the story that we learned after the mainstream hype around them (for reference, listen to the Bari Weiss podcast episode about Central Park Karen).

I feel bad writing this review, but it’s only because I know what O’Neil is capable of writing. So, do I recommend this book? If you’re unfamiliar with some of these stories, you may enjoy it. I guess I’m grateful that since Cathy has such a massive audience, maybe it will shift perspectives for people who participate shaming others or lack compassion. But as mentioned, there are parts where the author could have shown more compassion but didn’t, so hopefully people use the book as a jumping off point to read some more books on shame, moral philosophy, and similar topics.

An investigation on how society, and companies, use shame to influence society, and how those mechanisms are used and abused in social media and advertising, as well as how they can by used to "punch up" and create change.