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The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation
A clear-eyed warning about the increasingly destructive influence of America’s “shame industrial complex” in the age of social media and hyperpartisan politics—from the New York Times bestselling author of Weapons of Math Destruction
Shame is a powerful and sometimes useful tool: When we publicly shame corrupt politicians, abusive celebrities, or predatory corporations, we reinforce values of fairness and justice. But as Cathy O’Neil argues in this revelatory book, shaming has taken a new and dangerous turn. It is increasingly being weaponized—used as a way to shift responsibility for social problems from institutions to individuals. Shaming children for not being able to afford school lunches or adults for not being able to find work lets us off the hook as a society. After all, why pay higher taxes to fund programs for people who are fundamentally unworthy?
O’Neil explores the machinery behind all this shame, showing how governments, corporations, and the healthcare system capitalize on it. There are damning stories of rehab clinics, reentry programs, drug and diet companies, and social media platforms—all of which profit from “punching down” on the vulnerable. Woven throughout The Shame Machine is the story of O’Neil’s own struggle with body image and her recent decision to undergo weight-loss surgery, shaking off decades of shame.
With clarity and nuance, O’Neil dissects the relationship between shame and power. Whom does the system serve? Is it counter-productive to call out racists, misogynists, and vaccine skeptics? If so, when should someone be “canceled”? How do current incentive structures perpetuate the shaming cycle? And, most important, how can we all fight back?
Shame is a powerful and sometimes useful tool: When we publicly shame corrupt politicians, abusive celebrities, or predatory corporations, we reinforce values of fairness and justice. But as Cathy O’Neil argues in this revelatory book, shaming has taken a new and dangerous turn. It is increasingly being weaponized—used as a way to shift responsibility for social problems from institutions to individuals. Shaming children for not being able to afford school lunches or adults for not being able to find work lets us off the hook as a society. After all, why pay higher taxes to fund programs for people who are fundamentally unworthy?
O’Neil explores the machinery behind all this shame, showing how governments, corporations, and the healthcare system capitalize on it. There are damning stories of rehab clinics, reentry programs, drug and diet companies, and social media platforms—all of which profit from “punching down” on the vulnerable. Woven throughout The Shame Machine is the story of O’Neil’s own struggle with body image and her recent decision to undergo weight-loss surgery, shaking off decades of shame.
With clarity and nuance, O’Neil dissects the relationship between shame and power. Whom does the system serve? Is it counter-productive to call out racists, misogynists, and vaccine skeptics? If so, when should someone be “canceled”? How do current incentive structures perpetuate the shaming cycle? And, most important, how can we all fight back?
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
138 people are currently reading
6005 people want to read
About the author
Cathy O'Neil
10 books535 followersCathy O’Neil is the author of the bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction, which won the Euler Book Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She received her PhD in mathematics from Harvard and has worked in finance, tech, and academia. She launched the Lede Program for data journalism at Columbia University and recently founded ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company. O’Neil is a regular contributor to Bloomberg View.
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April 19, 2022
I’ve read another book by this author - Weapons of Math Destruction. This was something of a surprise, not least since it really wasn’t about statistics or anything else to do with mathematics. She makes it clear that, as an overweight woman, she knows more than enough about shame to write a book. There is no question that this is the case. The parts of the book detailing her shame are quite challenging to read.
Essentially, the book is divided into two main ideas about shame: that too often shame is used to ‘punch down’ - that is, it is used to shame the powerless and so to keep them in their place. However, the other idea here is that shame can also be used to punch up - that is, to shame the powerful and then bring meaningful change to the world. This division is used to divide shame into good and bad shame. Shaming the powerless is bad, shaming the powerful for misusing their power is good. The book is then essentially a series of examples explaining how shame is used to do one or the other of those two things - and also how social media allows people to shame others (mostly by punching down) so as to ‘virtue signal’.
So, that’s the short version, and I liked the book, I think these are important lessons to learn and that we can’t really hear them too often.
But I think, if I was writing this book, I might have gone about it slightly differently. First of all, I think I would have not just discussed shame, but I would have linked shame to desire and to disgust, and perhaps also to addiction. She almost does this in a few cases, but rarely explicitly. The main thing I think is missing from this book is linking the idea of shame to our social system and discussing how shame is an essential component of that. This has a long history in the social sciences - which is why I would have linked the concept to ‘desire’ rather than just ‘shame’ discussed, since these are aspects of the same idea as both imply a lack of something.
The point being that shame in this book is perhaps far too closely linked to deficits in the individual, rather than considering society more generally. That then means that the ways to address these deficits often involves individual acceptance - ‘yes, I’m overweight, but I’m healthy and happy in my own body…if you are upset by that, that is your problem, not mine’. In itself, this isn’t a terrible lesson, but I think there are broader lessons that are always just under the surface in this book, and all too rarely allowed to break the surface into plain view.
That is, our social system could not exist without the shaming that goes on between individuals and further that we are trained in by the media - including novels, films, advertising, news programming…the works. For capitalism to function there needs to be ever increasing demand within society for the products of production. Capitalism doesn’t merely ‘meet our needs’, it also ‘creates out needs’ - that is, needs we never knew we had. It does this by constantly bombarding us with advertising. Advertising is so ubiquitous that after a while we hardly noticed that we are surrounded by it. Invariably, we imagine, unlike everyone else in society, we alone are immune to the affects of advertising. And virtually all advertising proposes an incredibly narrow definition of who is ‘normal’. In fact, so narrow is the definition of who gets to be normal that virtually none of us fit that definition. In fact, Goffman, in his Stigma, said “there is only one complete unblemished male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports.” (Page 128)
Everyone who does not match this definition is ‘blemished’ and so is open to be ‘shamed’ - or, more generally, open to feel a desire to meet the demands of this insanely narrow and exclusive definition of ‘perfection’. Desire here works to make us ‘complete’ - but since we can never be complete, we are faced with an endless array of products that promise if we purchase them we will gain access to the promised land.
A favourite example my childhood was an advertisement for some sort of moisturiser. It had a woman standing in front of a mirror and the voice over was commiserating with her for her ‘rough, dry elbows’. There is not an inch of anyone’s body that is not a potential source of shame, and therefore also of desire. But even if you do find a way to soften and smooth your elbows, there is a super-abundance of bacteria on your tongue to worry might be causing bad breath, or the coffee stains on your teeth that need to be made so white your teeth turn blue, or your bloodshot eyes that need artificial tears to return them to clarity - the list is endless and the list is also ever changing. And so it must be - since the new products to be sold to you are also endless and ever changing too.
As Baudrillard says in his The Consumer Society, while people refer to capitalism as an economy of abundance, really it is the society of perpetual lack, it is Tantalus grasping for, but never quite reaching what he desires most. This is anything but affluence because it can never be sated - desire piled on desire, and never satisfied since whatever we purchase implies the next purchase.
As such, shame is a necessary part of what it is to have a capitalist society. A society that creates wants that never existed before and which must use all means at its disposal to achieve the aim involved in the creation of those wants - shame is a potent motivator, and desire is the false path out of shame.
I can’t remember where I read it, but someone was talking about those shows you see on television about a hoarder. You know the score. A house with piles and piles of stuff. So much stuff that it is a fire hazard. The author here mentions these shows in passing too, but I preferred what the other book said about this. We watch these shows because they reassure us. We are hoarders too. When a friend of mine’s wife died he was clearing out his cupboards and discovered boxes and boxes of electrical appliances she had bought but had never opened. I’ve since found out that this is quite normal. Many people do this. The point of showing us hoarders is to say, ‘at least I’m not as bad as that - I’ve lots of shit I don’t need - but at least I’m not as bad as that’. But it is all a matter of degree, not of kind. As Bauman says somewhere, the point of the consumption cycle is to make the distance between the showroom and the rubbish bin as short as possible. What you throw out saves you the humiliation of seeing your pointless purchases.
Given that capitalism is a system of eternal lack, this produces psychological damage to virtually all of us. This damage, in feelings of worthlessness and failure, is inevitable given so few of us can keep up with the latest fashions, the latest must have accessories, not least since these increasingly are the main ways in which we assert our identities, prove our individuality - increasingly we are what we buy. That damage is soothed by various forms of addiction. The classic forms, of course, are drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, but increasingly also to things we don’t normally associate with addiction - exercise or work for example. An excellent book on this is The Globalisation of Addiction.
This is part of the reason why I don’t think we can stop climate change. Our social system requires eternal growth and ensures this by making us feel terrible about ourselves - ashamed and desiring a completeness that our purchases never quite provide. It is a feedback loop that will end the planet - and one that makes us increasingly shallow as humans. In the end we have become plastic models of plastic dolls, copies of copies of things that never existed - with our implanted abs, false eyelashes, dyed hair, Pepsi Max, and Lexus SUVs. We express our individuality by following, by being an expression of what we purchase - I am a PC, I am a Rolex. There are no ways off the conveyor belt, none that are not already and immediately been captured, packaged and sold back to us yet again.
All of which means, I guess, that rather than shame being, as is said in this book, something that is used by the ‘normal’ or the ‘average’ against those unfortunate enough to live the life of outliers - we are all outliers and all examples of the potential shames imposed upon us as we seek desperately to either hide or disguise this shame in our prepackaged desires. Shame isn’t for the few, but for the many. Shame is our normal state - we hide it from others and hide it from ourselves, perhaps more effectively from ourselves than from others. But shame is the system functioning as intended, it is not an adoration, it is as necessary to the continuation of the system as is going to work.
That is, my version of shame is a bit darker than her version. Still, I can recommend this book.
Essentially, the book is divided into two main ideas about shame: that too often shame is used to ‘punch down’ - that is, it is used to shame the powerless and so to keep them in their place. However, the other idea here is that shame can also be used to punch up - that is, to shame the powerful and then bring meaningful change to the world. This division is used to divide shame into good and bad shame. Shaming the powerless is bad, shaming the powerful for misusing their power is good. The book is then essentially a series of examples explaining how shame is used to do one or the other of those two things - and also how social media allows people to shame others (mostly by punching down) so as to ‘virtue signal’.
So, that’s the short version, and I liked the book, I think these are important lessons to learn and that we can’t really hear them too often.
But I think, if I was writing this book, I might have gone about it slightly differently. First of all, I think I would have not just discussed shame, but I would have linked shame to desire and to disgust, and perhaps also to addiction. She almost does this in a few cases, but rarely explicitly. The main thing I think is missing from this book is linking the idea of shame to our social system and discussing how shame is an essential component of that. This has a long history in the social sciences - which is why I would have linked the concept to ‘desire’ rather than just ‘shame’ discussed, since these are aspects of the same idea as both imply a lack of something.
The point being that shame in this book is perhaps far too closely linked to deficits in the individual, rather than considering society more generally. That then means that the ways to address these deficits often involves individual acceptance - ‘yes, I’m overweight, but I’m healthy and happy in my own body…if you are upset by that, that is your problem, not mine’. In itself, this isn’t a terrible lesson, but I think there are broader lessons that are always just under the surface in this book, and all too rarely allowed to break the surface into plain view.
That is, our social system could not exist without the shaming that goes on between individuals and further that we are trained in by the media - including novels, films, advertising, news programming…the works. For capitalism to function there needs to be ever increasing demand within society for the products of production. Capitalism doesn’t merely ‘meet our needs’, it also ‘creates out needs’ - that is, needs we never knew we had. It does this by constantly bombarding us with advertising. Advertising is so ubiquitous that after a while we hardly noticed that we are surrounded by it. Invariably, we imagine, unlike everyone else in society, we alone are immune to the affects of advertising. And virtually all advertising proposes an incredibly narrow definition of who is ‘normal’. In fact, so narrow is the definition of who gets to be normal that virtually none of us fit that definition. In fact, Goffman, in his Stigma, said “there is only one complete unblemished male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports.” (Page 128)
Everyone who does not match this definition is ‘blemished’ and so is open to be ‘shamed’ - or, more generally, open to feel a desire to meet the demands of this insanely narrow and exclusive definition of ‘perfection’. Desire here works to make us ‘complete’ - but since we can never be complete, we are faced with an endless array of products that promise if we purchase them we will gain access to the promised land.
A favourite example my childhood was an advertisement for some sort of moisturiser. It had a woman standing in front of a mirror and the voice over was commiserating with her for her ‘rough, dry elbows’. There is not an inch of anyone’s body that is not a potential source of shame, and therefore also of desire. But even if you do find a way to soften and smooth your elbows, there is a super-abundance of bacteria on your tongue to worry might be causing bad breath, or the coffee stains on your teeth that need to be made so white your teeth turn blue, or your bloodshot eyes that need artificial tears to return them to clarity - the list is endless and the list is also ever changing. And so it must be - since the new products to be sold to you are also endless and ever changing too.
As Baudrillard says in his The Consumer Society, while people refer to capitalism as an economy of abundance, really it is the society of perpetual lack, it is Tantalus grasping for, but never quite reaching what he desires most. This is anything but affluence because it can never be sated - desire piled on desire, and never satisfied since whatever we purchase implies the next purchase.
As such, shame is a necessary part of what it is to have a capitalist society. A society that creates wants that never existed before and which must use all means at its disposal to achieve the aim involved in the creation of those wants - shame is a potent motivator, and desire is the false path out of shame.
I can’t remember where I read it, but someone was talking about those shows you see on television about a hoarder. You know the score. A house with piles and piles of stuff. So much stuff that it is a fire hazard. The author here mentions these shows in passing too, but I preferred what the other book said about this. We watch these shows because they reassure us. We are hoarders too. When a friend of mine’s wife died he was clearing out his cupboards and discovered boxes and boxes of electrical appliances she had bought but had never opened. I’ve since found out that this is quite normal. Many people do this. The point of showing us hoarders is to say, ‘at least I’m not as bad as that - I’ve lots of shit I don’t need - but at least I’m not as bad as that’. But it is all a matter of degree, not of kind. As Bauman says somewhere, the point of the consumption cycle is to make the distance between the showroom and the rubbish bin as short as possible. What you throw out saves you the humiliation of seeing your pointless purchases.
Given that capitalism is a system of eternal lack, this produces psychological damage to virtually all of us. This damage, in feelings of worthlessness and failure, is inevitable given so few of us can keep up with the latest fashions, the latest must have accessories, not least since these increasingly are the main ways in which we assert our identities, prove our individuality - increasingly we are what we buy. That damage is soothed by various forms of addiction. The classic forms, of course, are drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, but increasingly also to things we don’t normally associate with addiction - exercise or work for example. An excellent book on this is The Globalisation of Addiction.
This is part of the reason why I don’t think we can stop climate change. Our social system requires eternal growth and ensures this by making us feel terrible about ourselves - ashamed and desiring a completeness that our purchases never quite provide. It is a feedback loop that will end the planet - and one that makes us increasingly shallow as humans. In the end we have become plastic models of plastic dolls, copies of copies of things that never existed - with our implanted abs, false eyelashes, dyed hair, Pepsi Max, and Lexus SUVs. We express our individuality by following, by being an expression of what we purchase - I am a PC, I am a Rolex. There are no ways off the conveyor belt, none that are not already and immediately been captured, packaged and sold back to us yet again.
All of which means, I guess, that rather than shame being, as is said in this book, something that is used by the ‘normal’ or the ‘average’ against those unfortunate enough to live the life of outliers - we are all outliers and all examples of the potential shames imposed upon us as we seek desperately to either hide or disguise this shame in our prepackaged desires. Shame isn’t for the few, but for the many. Shame is our normal state - we hide it from others and hide it from ourselves, perhaps more effectively from ourselves than from others. But shame is the system functioning as intended, it is not an adoration, it is as necessary to the continuation of the system as is going to work.
That is, my version of shame is a bit darker than her version. Still, I can recommend this book.
December 26, 2021
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
This is a book that while it professes to be about shame and who profits from it, is really about the author.
She apparently has had weight problems her whole life, and has experienced deep shame over it. There's a lot of stuff right out of the Dr. Oz show about this.
There's also a lot of talk about "punching up" and "punching down" although what she means by this isn't really clear except that it's okay to shame people she doesn't approve.
This could be a valuable book if the author got over herself. The section on masking could be extremely educational, except that the author doesn't actually know there are two perspectives. There's shaming on both sides, but the author is completely ignorant of this.
I have to call this a missed opportunity.
This is a book that while it professes to be about shame and who profits from it, is really about the author.
She apparently has had weight problems her whole life, and has experienced deep shame over it. There's a lot of stuff right out of the Dr. Oz show about this.
There's also a lot of talk about "punching up" and "punching down" although what she means by this isn't really clear except that it's okay to shame people she doesn't approve.
This could be a valuable book if the author got over herself. The section on masking could be extremely educational, except that the author doesn't actually know there are two perspectives. There's shaming on both sides, but the author is completely ignorant of this.
I have to call this a missed opportunity.
March 31, 2022
The author writes well about her lifelong struggle with feeling fat-shamed and her encounters with diet culture. This is persuasive and informative, I'm sympathetic to it, and I learn from it. Those are the personal essays that open and close the book: Chapters 1 and 10.
Other chapters focus on addiction, poverty, state violence, online incel culture, and other situations that produce chronic shame. These are cursory since the whole book is only 200 pages, and they are not written as first-person experience, so inevitably they are limited. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the book's wide scope and the context these chapters provide.
Many people who write on this topic distinguish guilt as focus on what you've done and shame as focus on who you are. O'Neil makes a similar distinction with an interesting twist. When considering our active judgment of others, she calls it all shame, and she says that we're "punching up" when we hold people accountable for their actions (i.e., they are guilty) and we're "punching down" when we're making them feel bad about something they can't change (and so they're likely to feel toxic shame as a result). I am intrigued by this definition, and I will consider its applications in the future.
I believe, however, that there's more to the distinction between "punching up" and "punching down." Some people simply have more power than others. Most of us prefer to imagine ourselves as victims rather than aggressors, and as a result, many of us do not acknowledge the power we exert in a given interaction. O'Neil recognizes this, but she leaves it as a well, it's complicated, rather than pointing out that there are simple ways to help identify if you have power. (For example, you first acknowledge the socially dominant groups to which you belong — many people don't even acknowledge that they are white, abled, cis, affluent, etc. or that these identities convey privileges — and then you can examine how you and your entire identity package shows up in a given interaction with someone else and their identities.) You have to look at how the power dynamic works in the situation. So, for example, if a teacher shames a student for improper behavior, the student might really be guilty of the infraction, and maybe a public shaming is appropriate, but even so, the teacher surely isn't "punching up." (Unless, in this hypothetical, the student has some massive social privileges that override the teacher/student hierarchy.) There is more to the hierarchy of up/down beyond someone getting their just deserts for moral waywardness. It's not a pure ethical meritocracy out there.
I agree with the author's political stance that society should solve poverty at the structural level rather than blaming individuals for their alleged "bad choices." If people weren't equipped to choose differently, shaming them solves nothing.
Often, the author's political position felt clear and strong. Other times, it seemed she was both-sidesing — fretting more about the fact of polarization and conflict than about the importance of articulating and empowering the indisputably better positions. The book seemed written to appeal to people all over the political map, and that can be an important project, yet in a number of places my reaction was but the other side does not have a valid point here.
This happens in the Conclusion. "Don't shame your chubby daughter" (OK) "and" (here comes the foul ball) "don't go overboard with shaming your neo-Nazi son either....talk to them about values, but focus on what they need and want, and help them make better and healthier choices for themselves." (p. 213) Granted, that's a broad statement — and who doesn't smile heartwarmedly at the thought of a nasty person turning a new leaf and making "healthier choices"? — but, also, it's cool if you stop catering to the desires of your Nazi family members. Disowning them, rather than fumbling through bad dialogue with them, might give them their best hope for seeing the light. You could entirely break up with them. I would not blame you for the polarization and the cancel culture. To be excruciatingly explicit — at the risk of explaining my own joke, which was not funny anyway — I would blame the Nazi for being a Nazi. I would blame you for meeting them in the middle; I would not blame you for holding your ground and walking away from the negotiating table. White people have to learn to break up with Nazis.
Specifically, I also struggled with the way that a couple issues of importance to transgender people are discussed. This paragraph, for example:
Relatedly, the author describes J. K. Rowling's aggression toward trans women as "her quibbles about accepting trans women as women." No, they are not mere quibbles seen from a trans person's perspective. The next sentence is: "These are indeed issues people need to talk about." (p. 129) This is ambiguous in a worrisome way. Who needs to talk about what, and to what end? Cis people need to tweet transphobia? For those of us who know that trans people are the gender we say we are, and that having come by one's gender in a trans way does not lessen one's status within that gender, the statement trans women are women actually does not need to be talked about, least of all do trans people need to be talked to about it by hostile parties. Rowling is ringleading a years-long, deliberate, targeted attack. In fact, three days after the release of O'Neil's The Shame Machine, Vladimir Putin (amidst his invasion of Ukraine) took a moment in a public speech to praise his fellow billionaire Rowling for her opposition to "gender freedoms." (Putin has banned LGBT-related books for a decade. He has also enabled ongoing state killings and torture of gay men in Chechnya.) Last week in his speech, he positioned himself and Rowling as billionaire victims while positioning trans people as the enemy. So this is not just some lady who is talking about "her discomforts surrounding gender" (p. 130) from her armchair and making oopsie tweets. Her opinions are not a conversation we need to have at all — not on her terms, and not with this particular bad actor. Putin is thrilled by what she is doing. Putin.
Reading this book on Transgender Day of Visibility, it's important to me to say this. It would have been helpful to bring in a trans person's perspective. Especially in a book about shame, a huge amount could have been done with how shame operates in LGBTQIA+ people's lives and how queer/trans shaming affects the wider culture. Trans people have been aware for years about the blisteringly fascist meaning of Rowling's tweets, and now Putin is a public fan, so Rowling's operations aren't a mystery. When a discussion is limited to why Rowling signed the Harper's Letter and whether the Harper's Letter was a punch-up or a punch-down, then, even when correctly concluding that the letter was a punch-down, the issue remains framed as a matter of so-called "cancel culture" which is exactly what J. K. Rowling wants us to do, and we are not really telling the story of who is profoundly at risk while anti-trans aggressors are deflecting the conversation toward their own supposed victimhood. We are yet again doing the exercise of whether we ought to empathize with a cis person and not hashing out how cis people can quit shaming trans people like all the way without hesitation this very morning because it's actually easy to do if one believes in the mission.
I received a copy in a Goodreads giveaway.
Other chapters focus on addiction, poverty, state violence, online incel culture, and other situations that produce chronic shame. These are cursory since the whole book is only 200 pages, and they are not written as first-person experience, so inevitably they are limited. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the book's wide scope and the context these chapters provide.
Many people who write on this topic distinguish guilt as focus on what you've done and shame as focus on who you are. O'Neil makes a similar distinction with an interesting twist. When considering our active judgment of others, she calls it all shame, and she says that we're "punching up" when we hold people accountable for their actions (i.e., they are guilty) and we're "punching down" when we're making them feel bad about something they can't change (and so they're likely to feel toxic shame as a result). I am intrigued by this definition, and I will consider its applications in the future.
I believe, however, that there's more to the distinction between "punching up" and "punching down." Some people simply have more power than others. Most of us prefer to imagine ourselves as victims rather than aggressors, and as a result, many of us do not acknowledge the power we exert in a given interaction. O'Neil recognizes this, but she leaves it as a well, it's complicated, rather than pointing out that there are simple ways to help identify if you have power. (For example, you first acknowledge the socially dominant groups to which you belong — many people don't even acknowledge that they are white, abled, cis, affluent, etc. or that these identities convey privileges — and then you can examine how you and your entire identity package shows up in a given interaction with someone else and their identities.) You have to look at how the power dynamic works in the situation. So, for example, if a teacher shames a student for improper behavior, the student might really be guilty of the infraction, and maybe a public shaming is appropriate, but even so, the teacher surely isn't "punching up." (Unless, in this hypothetical, the student has some massive social privileges that override the teacher/student hierarchy.) There is more to the hierarchy of up/down beyond someone getting their just deserts for moral waywardness. It's not a pure ethical meritocracy out there.
I agree with the author's political stance that society should solve poverty at the structural level rather than blaming individuals for their alleged "bad choices." If people weren't equipped to choose differently, shaming them solves nothing.
Often, the author's political position felt clear and strong. Other times, it seemed she was both-sidesing — fretting more about the fact of polarization and conflict than about the importance of articulating and empowering the indisputably better positions. The book seemed written to appeal to people all over the political map, and that can be an important project, yet in a number of places my reaction was but the other side does not have a valid point here.
This happens in the Conclusion. "Don't shame your chubby daughter" (OK) "and" (here comes the foul ball) "don't go overboard with shaming your neo-Nazi son either....talk to them about values, but focus on what they need and want, and help them make better and healthier choices for themselves." (p. 213) Granted, that's a broad statement — and who doesn't smile heartwarmedly at the thought of a nasty person turning a new leaf and making "healthier choices"? — but, also, it's cool if you stop catering to the desires of your Nazi family members. Disowning them, rather than fumbling through bad dialogue with them, might give them their best hope for seeing the light. You could entirely break up with them. I would not blame you for the polarization and the cancel culture. To be excruciatingly explicit — at the risk of explaining my own joke, which was not funny anyway — I would blame the Nazi for being a Nazi. I would blame you for meeting them in the middle; I would not blame you for holding your ground and walking away from the negotiating table. White people have to learn to break up with Nazis.
Specifically, I also struggled with the way that a couple issues of importance to transgender people are discussed. This paragraph, for example:
"The trouble is that what appears to one community as accepted truth, achieved through long and thorough discussion, remains utterly foreign to those in another group. It's as if they missed the memo. Pronouns? Why? Does that mean I'm insulting people if I don't display mine? Instead of seeing these language tweaks as the reasonable conclusions of a conversation around justice, they instead represent baffling new mandates created by a sanctimonious tribe of aliens, in this case, the 'woke.' So the two sides shame each other, one for propagating new orthodoxies and the other for rejecting them.From where I stand, there aren't "two sides" on this matter. The issue here is that some people literally did miss the memo. They have read zero books written by transgender people, have never knowingly talked to a transgender person, they called in sick for Diversity Awareness Day and played Call of Duty, and the only context in which they've ever heard about "sex changes" is when they heard the term coughed out the ass-end of an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving the CIA and the Apocalypse. So this is not You say I'm in a cult, and I feel the same about you. This is: Some people are queer/trans, and others are trying to eliminate all evidence of queerness from society and carve trans people out of the social contract.
Blinkered inside our small online contingents, dialogue shrivels and misunderstanding grows, along with contempt. As a result, we tend to see others not just as different but as followers of cults. They often think the same about us." (p. 102)
Relatedly, the author describes J. K. Rowling's aggression toward trans women as "her quibbles about accepting trans women as women." No, they are not mere quibbles seen from a trans person's perspective. The next sentence is: "These are indeed issues people need to talk about." (p. 129) This is ambiguous in a worrisome way. Who needs to talk about what, and to what end? Cis people need to tweet transphobia? For those of us who know that trans people are the gender we say we are, and that having come by one's gender in a trans way does not lessen one's status within that gender, the statement trans women are women actually does not need to be talked about, least of all do trans people need to be talked to about it by hostile parties. Rowling is ringleading a years-long, deliberate, targeted attack. In fact, three days after the release of O'Neil's The Shame Machine, Vladimir Putin (amidst his invasion of Ukraine) took a moment in a public speech to praise his fellow billionaire Rowling for her opposition to "gender freedoms." (Putin has banned LGBT-related books for a decade. He has also enabled ongoing state killings and torture of gay men in Chechnya.) Last week in his speech, he positioned himself and Rowling as billionaire victims while positioning trans people as the enemy. So this is not just some lady who is talking about "her discomforts surrounding gender" (p. 130) from her armchair and making oopsie tweets. Her opinions are not a conversation we need to have at all — not on her terms, and not with this particular bad actor. Putin is thrilled by what she is doing. Putin.
Reading this book on Transgender Day of Visibility, it's important to me to say this. It would have been helpful to bring in a trans person's perspective. Especially in a book about shame, a huge amount could have been done with how shame operates in LGBTQIA+ people's lives and how queer/trans shaming affects the wider culture. Trans people have been aware for years about the blisteringly fascist meaning of Rowling's tweets, and now Putin is a public fan, so Rowling's operations aren't a mystery. When a discussion is limited to why Rowling signed the Harper's Letter and whether the Harper's Letter was a punch-up or a punch-down, then, even when correctly concluding that the letter was a punch-down, the issue remains framed as a matter of so-called "cancel culture" which is exactly what J. K. Rowling wants us to do, and we are not really telling the story of who is profoundly at risk while anti-trans aggressors are deflecting the conversation toward their own supposed victimhood. We are yet again doing the exercise of whether we ought to empathize with a cis person and not hashing out how cis people can quit shaming trans people like all the way without hesitation this very morning because it's actually easy to do if one believes in the mission.
I received a copy in a Goodreads giveaway.
April 25, 2022
Really disappointed by this book. I guess I expected something different. It felt like being on twitter, which is the last thing I want in a book.
It's an easy read and even handed. It is most effective when she writing about her own experiences of being shamed and the transformational possibility of confronting shame. There are some good bits about the power of vulnerability, forgiveness and reconciliation... but these are too few and too incidental to the thesis of the book (there are better works focused on this aspect of shame).
Ultimately, this book is simply a catalogue of events (mainly online, though some historic) that the author breaks down in terms of shamer/shamed. Unfortunately, her definition of shame is pretty amorphous so you get Ghandi's protests for Indian independence cast as an example of good shaming, or "punching up", which feels simplistic and flattened to flesh out the chapter's thesis. If you've been online for the past decade, you've witnessed almost every example she furnishes in support of the online shame machine.
What I was hoping for was an examination why we're currently so prone to shaming and feeling shamed. And why has social media rendered prosocial shaming ineffective? O'Neil offhandedly mentions that for shame to have a positive, restorative effect, participants (shamers and shames) must accepts the same norms and agree on relevant facts. Yet she doesn't attempt to work out why we're so divided. What are the mechanics of outrage culture and how does it benefit those profiting? Really lacked any analysis on these issues.
It's an easy read and even handed. It is most effective when she writing about her own experiences of being shamed and the transformational possibility of confronting shame. There are some good bits about the power of vulnerability, forgiveness and reconciliation... but these are too few and too incidental to the thesis of the book (there are better works focused on this aspect of shame).
Ultimately, this book is simply a catalogue of events (mainly online, though some historic) that the author breaks down in terms of shamer/shamed. Unfortunately, her definition of shame is pretty amorphous so you get Ghandi's protests for Indian independence cast as an example of good shaming, or "punching up", which feels simplistic and flattened to flesh out the chapter's thesis. If you've been online for the past decade, you've witnessed almost every example she furnishes in support of the online shame machine.
What I was hoping for was an examination why we're currently so prone to shaming and feeling shamed. And why has social media rendered prosocial shaming ineffective? O'Neil offhandedly mentions that for shame to have a positive, restorative effect, participants (shamers and shames) must accepts the same norms and agree on relevant facts. Yet she doesn't attempt to work out why we're so divided. What are the mechanics of outrage culture and how does it benefit those profiting? Really lacked any analysis on these issues.
February 2, 2022
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.
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.
April 22, 2022
It knew it was a bad read from the first few chapters. I stuck with it to see if things would improve, and sadly it didn't.
First, a positive - it is well written. I wouldn't have been able to finish it if it were a slog.
So what's wrong with the book? A lot. It had so much potential to dissect the role of shame that plays in society. The good, the bad everything. The author attempts a bit but falls short a bunch.
My biggest problem is the cognitive dissonance. From the title of the book it is apparent that shame is bad. Perhaps there's a machinery that's taking advantage of it. Then the author goes onto to cite Gandhi, who famously "shamed" Britain out of India. It is unclear what the takeaway from the book is. There's the predictable "for profit companies bad" narrative but it is very blunt. It lacks the nuance and adds nothing more than what has been said so far.
Again, I'd have been ok. I think the gravest error the author made was sympathizing with "Karens" specifically the woman who called cops on an innocent black man in NY central park. I wish the author didn't try to make excuses for the woman who clearly put a man's life in danger.
Avoid the book.
First, a positive - it is well written. I wouldn't have been able to finish it if it were a slog.
So what's wrong with the book? A lot. It had so much potential to dissect the role of shame that plays in society. The good, the bad everything. The author attempts a bit but falls short a bunch.
My biggest problem is the cognitive dissonance. From the title of the book it is apparent that shame is bad. Perhaps there's a machinery that's taking advantage of it. Then the author goes onto to cite Gandhi, who famously "shamed" Britain out of India. It is unclear what the takeaway from the book is. There's the predictable "for profit companies bad" narrative but it is very blunt. It lacks the nuance and adds nothing more than what has been said so far.
Again, I'd have been ok. I think the gravest error the author made was sympathizing with "Karens" specifically the woman who called cops on an innocent black man in NY central park. I wish the author didn't try to make excuses for the woman who clearly put a man's life in danger.
Avoid the book.
July 12, 2022
Nonfiction book about cancel culture and extreme shaming, propelled to astronomical proportions these days by social media.
I get the point of this book but to me it went way overboard. She was so overly forgiving of people that it came off to me like no one can possibly do any wrong. At that point I was just turned off... many people do suck. I see that there is no point in destroying lives via social media, though, and do agree with that. But her overkill on forgiving everyone everything just rubbed me the wrong way.
She did articulate a point that I've always felt but never put into words in my own mind... that when people publicly shame others, it's really about them and trumpeting their own alleged "virtue" to their friends and family.
She lost me when she started using the term "shamescape" in all seriousness.
A much better book on this topic is "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson.
I get the point of this book but to me it went way overboard. She was so overly forgiving of people that it came off to me like no one can possibly do any wrong. At that point I was just turned off... many people do suck. I see that there is no point in destroying lives via social media, though, and do agree with that. But her overkill on forgiving everyone everything just rubbed me the wrong way.
She did articulate a point that I've always felt but never put into words in my own mind... that when people publicly shame others, it's really about them and trumpeting their own alleged "virtue" to their friends and family.
She lost me when she started using the term "shamescape" in all seriousness.
A much better book on this topic is "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson.
April 26, 2023
some really timely stuff here but i finished feeling like "ok, now what?" still, think it's good to be aware of how we're operating in this system of shaming (esp prescient with cancel culture, which always makes me sound like a crotchety old white man when i complain about it) and how we can be better... but how do we be better? where does it begin?
May 22, 2022
i wanted to like this more, perhaps expectations were too high, or the subtitle made it seem like we were getting an expose on specific companies, countries, any and all oppressors, but 'the shame machine' felt almost self-help-ish throughout. which is a shame because o'neil knows her stuff, and the entire time felt like she was holding back, nerding out and giving the dirty details; instead it was an overview of fat shaming, online shaming, political shaming, and how it generally impacts people, focusing on the extremes vs. privileged (incel vs. karen, etc.); the difference between good and bad shaming (youth activism vs. white supremacy). o'neil mentions talia lavin's 'culture warlords' which i would say you'd get more out of than 'the shame machine,' additionally, i'd steer readers in the direction of shoshona zuboff's 'the age of surveillance capitalism,' which is better at naming names and is more intense in material, reaction, and deserved pessimism at growing trends of a corporate/police state. i wanted to learn more about how shame feeds capitalism, patriarchy, something with a harsher critique, but it's not here. shame on me for building unfair expectations?
June 8, 2022
I thought this was reasonably interesting and had some different insights into topics that I hadn't considered before. However I couldn't get past the fact that the author turned the blatantly racist events which transpired in Central Park in 2020 into a defense of the woman who was to blame, and instead insisted that such people shouldn't be shamed. I disagree with this entirely and it in fact goes back to an earlier chapter within this very book whereby certain cultures would shame participants to demonstrate what isn't acceptable. Racism and extreme "Karen" behaviour should not under any circumstances be considered acceptable and so I feel applying "shame" is in this situation entirely appropriate.
March 23, 2022
Shame is most certainly a major force in our world, but is it the best framework for understanding social problems? In isolation and as a solo value system, O'Neil isn't really convincing. While some of her examples are excellent and point to smart and simple solutions to social problems, others fall flat. Furthermore, despite the fact that shame is integral to any number of major religious systems, O'Neil attempts to operationalize it in isolation. If you were a blank slate, building a world view around the two poles of "punching-up" and "punching-down" shame might work, but none of us are blank slates, and O'Neil never acknowledges that, leaving major gaps in the work.
April 17, 2022
Didn’t meet the high expectations after her astounding Weapons of Math Destruction. It read more like a diary of someone who’s experienced shame her whole life than a scientific analysis of shame (machines).
O’Neil clearly has a talent for writing vividly and to-the-point, but the examples she used weren’t very original.
O’Neil clearly has a talent for writing vividly and to-the-point, but the examples she used weren’t very original.
April 14, 2022
While at times thought provoking, it mostly felt like a personal and repetitive diatribe that became stale quickly. If I never hear the terms punching down and punching up again, it will be too soon.
June 2, 2022
I think that she raises a lot of good points about Shane and how we use social media. I also feel that the bariatric surgery was a bit of a cop out - even though she claims she did it to eliminate her diabetes.
September 5, 2023
Bad.
If there’s one idea I got stuck inside my head from the beginning to the end of this book is that the writer herself thinks to be the one that “knows it best” about the whole topic of shame BUT never gives an actual insight and critic assessment for what she says. She knows something, or at least she exudes enough confidence through her writing to make you think she does, but never comes around to fully unfold the problem.
Also: TOO MANY TOPICS. Too many topics and only one result: not enough development for any of these. At all.
If there’s one idea I got stuck inside my head from the beginning to the end of this book is that the writer herself thinks to be the one that “knows it best” about the whole topic of shame BUT never gives an actual insight and critic assessment for what she says. She knows something, or at least she exudes enough confidence through her writing to make you think she does, but never comes around to fully unfold the problem.
Also: TOO MANY TOPICS. Too many topics and only one result: not enough development for any of these. At all.
May 29, 2024
Was skeptical at first due to her credentials of being an data scientist and mathematician rather than in social sciences BUT it’s so well researched and written. This book covers so many different aspects of Shame and the impacts it has on people, institutions, and the society as a whole (while also touching on how institutions utilize shame to control individuals more). Super interesting and might be helpful in the clinical setting!
Want to read
March 20, 2022https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/p...
Good article.
Good article.
May 28, 2023
From a historical standpoint, according to O'Neil, shame has been a useful tool in enforcing the cultural norms, rules, and taboos of one's tribe to ensure the survival of its members. It has, however, taken on a much different and darker function in the 21st century. "[I]n this book," writes O'Neil in her introduction, "I focus on how shame is manufactured and mined. I analyze shame as a global force and show how it is wielded to harvest something of value from us, whether money, work, sex, votes, or even retweets. Giant sectors of the economy are organized and optimized to make us feel horrible." Shame has been commodified by big business in order to maximize profits, and we are all both consumers and victims.
O'Neil draws on a variety of resources - including case studies, scientific research, interviews, biographical sketches, and personal anecdotes - to reveal how this enormous shift has taken place and how it affects us all. She pulls her examples straight from the headlines, touching on topics as diverse as social media, mask mandates, drug addiction, incels, the #MeToo movement, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and the Kardashians to illustrate how the fears and prejudices of otherwise intelligent, compassionate people have been weaponized for financial gain. She also details her own run-in with the shame machine and the pain and humiliation that it caused her. Her description of her struggles with her weight and those who judged her for it are searingly honest and relatable.
O'Neil kept me engaged with her smooth, elegant writing, which is personal and down-to-earth without being chatty, and her hot-off-the-press stories kept me flying through the pages. The Shame Machine was a fascinating, quick, and persuasive read, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in psychology, culture, or current events.
In the end, O'Neil's message is clear: "Be nice. Don't spread poison. Give people the benefit of the doubt." Additionally, when people work together for the greater good, shame can be turned back on government officials and business leaders to motivate them to do the right thing. Healthy shame, she claims, "involves agitating in every domain, individual as well as institutional, from the dinner table to the welfare office to the corporate boardroom, for all people to be treated with trust and dignity."
The ultimate gift of this book is that I am much more aware of my own participation in the shame machine, especially on social media. In the future I will opt out of sneering at photos of Wal-Mart shoppers or sharing sarcastic memes. Hey, it's a start.
Thank you, Random House Book Club and Goodreads, for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book for free.
O'Neil draws on a variety of resources - including case studies, scientific research, interviews, biographical sketches, and personal anecdotes - to reveal how this enormous shift has taken place and how it affects us all. She pulls her examples straight from the headlines, touching on topics as diverse as social media, mask mandates, drug addiction, incels, the #MeToo movement, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and the Kardashians to illustrate how the fears and prejudices of otherwise intelligent, compassionate people have been weaponized for financial gain. She also details her own run-in with the shame machine and the pain and humiliation that it caused her. Her description of her struggles with her weight and those who judged her for it are searingly honest and relatable.
O'Neil kept me engaged with her smooth, elegant writing, which is personal and down-to-earth without being chatty, and her hot-off-the-press stories kept me flying through the pages. The Shame Machine was a fascinating, quick, and persuasive read, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in psychology, culture, or current events.
In the end, O'Neil's message is clear: "Be nice. Don't spread poison. Give people the benefit of the doubt." Additionally, when people work together for the greater good, shame can be turned back on government officials and business leaders to motivate them to do the right thing. Healthy shame, she claims, "involves agitating in every domain, individual as well as institutional, from the dinner table to the welfare office to the corporate boardroom, for all people to be treated with trust and dignity."
The ultimate gift of this book is that I am much more aware of my own participation in the shame machine, especially on social media. In the future I will opt out of sneering at photos of Wal-Mart shoppers or sharing sarcastic memes. Hey, it's a start.
Thank you, Random House Book Club and Goodreads, for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book for free.
May 25, 2022
Sin is a social engineer. And shame is a tool society uses to shape itself away from sin. A complex debate could be had about the use of shame and the restraints that should be placed on it. And why in the current era those restraints appear to be lacking. If that is what you seek this is not the book for you.
This book was beyond disappointing. This book was devoid of any empirical thought that one would expect from a mathematician. Critical thought was in short supply and no effort of qualitative analysis was present.
It actually reminded me of the theme of Manufacturing Consent IE that victims and villains were defined during the cold war by there status as friend or enemy rather than objectively by there actions. The author largely pulled examples of shame from the modern world and designated them as valid or invalid uses of shame based on her own perspective of right and wrong.
Other than her superficial recognition of a simplified singular anthropological example of the clowns she completely ignored the wealth of anthropological, sociological, philosophical and psychological research done on the subject.
This book was beyond disappointing. This book was devoid of any empirical thought that one would expect from a mathematician. Critical thought was in short supply and no effort of qualitative analysis was present.
It actually reminded me of the theme of Manufacturing Consent IE that victims and villains were defined during the cold war by there status as friend or enemy rather than objectively by there actions. The author largely pulled examples of shame from the modern world and designated them as valid or invalid uses of shame based on her own perspective of right and wrong.
Other than her superficial recognition of a simplified singular anthropological example of the clowns she completely ignored the wealth of anthropological, sociological, philosophical and psychological research done on the subject.
August 25, 2022
Reading this book gave me the impression that the author actively enjoys sitting on the fence, laughing at people on both sides of an argument for being shallow-minded and beneath her. It was a very tough visual to knock out of my head as I finished it.
The book occasionally touches on interesting ideas (obviously at one point I found the premise compelling enough to pick it up), but suffered from "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome. Everything that's wrong with society was suddenly manufactured shame by the elites to keep everyone else out of power, and the examples got more and more tenuous as the book went on. Not everything in life is shame-based, and that's ok.
The book occasionally touches on interesting ideas (obviously at one point I found the premise compelling enough to pick it up), but suffered from "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome. Everything that's wrong with society was suddenly manufactured shame by the elites to keep everyone else out of power, and the examples got more and more tenuous as the book went on. Not everything in life is shame-based, and that's ok.
March 28, 2022
This book started off so well and then simply crashed. I kept thinking about Ms. O'Neil's excellent first book "Weapons of Math Destruction" which was a truly eye-opening view into the world of data algorithms and its impact on our every day lives.
I think Ms. O'Neil really wanted to write about fat-shaming. I know that Aubrey Gordon recently published a book on this theme, but that shouldn't have stopped her.
The best parts of this book were those focused on Ms. O'Neil's lifelong journey and the emotional consequences of institutionalized fat-shaming. I think she has more to say here.
I think Ms. O'Neil really wanted to write about fat-shaming. I know that Aubrey Gordon recently published a book on this theme, but that shouldn't have stopped her.
The best parts of this book were those focused on Ms. O'Neil's lifelong journey and the emotional consequences of institutionalized fat-shaming. I think she has more to say here.
May 5, 2022
3.5 Stars!
“These immense shame machines punch down on people to exploit their obesity, addiction, poverty, or suboptimal health, gaining power and market share in the process.”
O’Neil is back attacking the tainted tentacles of the modern world. In here we learn about the likes of toxic feedback loops, concern trolling, punching down, self-sustaining shame markets and turning policies into shaming engines, and of course let’s not forget the delightful Hopi shame clown!
“Shame is powerful, and it works-even when it shouldn’t.”
I agree with most of what the author has to say in here, but one area I did take exception to was in the section dealing with obesity. She talks about the impact of Lizzo and yet when Jillian Michaels makes a perfectly valid point about the dangers of praising obesity, O’Neill accuses her of “fat shaming”. She adds, “Imagine that Lizzo, instead of being heavy, had epilepsy...Would the same chorus of concern trollers urge her to get brain surgery for her condition or take stronger meds?”.
This is obviously a ludicrous comparison to make and I cannot believe she would make such a stupid statement. I think here O’Neil is in danger of allowing people to take no personal responsibility and instead embrace victimhood status and therefore no one has to face up to serious health issues and the diminished quality of life that can come with obesity.
We shouldn’t be celebrating obesity any more than we should be celebrating anorexia, both are not healthy examples to set to younger people who may be convinced to aspire to one of these two extremes if they are not made aware of the wider implications. Putting aside the cosmetic aspects of both we know that both can lead to serious chronic health issues and even death when pursued to their most extreme outcomes.
Contrary to the impression O’Neil seems to be creating, there are actually many obese people out there, who…wait for it…actually got obese through overeating bad food and doing little to no exercise…now stop me if I am fat shaming here, but not all obese people are blameless, passive victims. It doesn’t matter how you try to manipulate the language. And again contrary to what O’Neil says, it is widely known and accepted that the escalating obesity rates around the world are largely as a result of high fat, sugar and calorie intake through increasingly widespread Americanized/Westernised diets, combined with an increasing sedentary lifestyle.
She actually sums it up nicely later on, “The trouble is that we humans are prone to fooling ourselves, at times underestimating our own agency, or seeing ourselves as victims, when we’re really not.” And then later on when discussing Incels, she says, “Many of them don’t seem to be stunted in spite of weak chins, pimples, weight problems, body odor, unemployment, or a host of other shortcomings.”
Now going by her criteria this looks suspiciously like punching down (a phrase used exhaustively throughout the book) and fat shaming and many of the other shaming that she spends much of the book complaining about. One of the problems with this book, is that so much seems to be about the author, which at times feels more like a lengthy therapy session (Am I shaming here?...and if I am, am I punching up or punching down?...)
On the other hand she does raise many fine points, particularly about the nature of addiction and the public perception of it, as well as many other areas too. So this wasn’t as disciplined or as engaging as her previous book, but aside from overuse of down punching and shaming, this was actually a decent enough read and it brushes up alongside the likes of Johan Hari’s “Stolen Focus” in terms of recent releases which highlight the many problems with the online world and its many ill effects on the real world.
September 6, 2022
A little torn here, because I think this idea is worth exploration, I think the premise O'Neil is setting forth, is valid, I think poor execution notched it down a few stars for me.
Overall it seems that O'Neil is stating that shaming doesn't work, she talks about the impacts of fat shaming or shaming addicts and why it doesn't work, but then seems to come around and say that not only is shaming OK when we are punching up (rather than punching down), that it's necessary. She does add nuance, but I don't know that it was a convincing enough argument or backed by enough data (give the data nerds what they want) to support. Because while I went into the book thinking I'd mostly agree, I was left wondering, how come shaming works when punching up but not down (not talking about rationale, simply talking about the actual functionality and whether it results in a desired outcome).
I also think that O'Neil fails to distinguish on the lines of legitimacy (easy, I know some of these topics are subjective) but shaming someone for committing sexual assault or shaming vaginal hygiene companies for lying to customers, is different than shaming someone over matters of opinion. While O'Neil says some shaming can be helpful (inspiring others to be healthy and wear a mask) she takes issue with others while failing to realize a similar motive. Do I support fat shaming? No. Do I think some people fat shame because they're truly worried about someone's health (i.e. risk for developing diabetes as O'Neil shared her own personal fear of such), similar to the desire to want others to be healthy and safe as with masks? Yes.
I don't intend to start a debate about any of what I just said, I only think, O'Neil has both stated shaming doesn't work and yet shaming is necessary when punching up (ok, so it DOES work?). And I think the basis of the shame should be considered beyond just impact, whether something is irrefutable vs truly a matter of taste or personal preference.
I do think she also muddied the waters a bit by adding JK Rowling to support the idea that everyone should be allowed to make a mistake (I agree) but then chose Rowling as a poster child, someone who has doubled down on their NUMEROUS transphobic statements that goes beyond, 'making a single mistake' as the example implies.
I also feel that the Karen example as others have noted, seemed mildly in poor taste. Do we want the NY bird watching Karen to lose her job or employability for all eternity? Well, no. But did O'Neil really grasp the other side of the coin that serious harm could have come to who she called the cops on? No. Did O'Neil address the fact that it IS against the law to file a false police report (and one could argue the falsehood based on the claims she was making while being filmed) yes it is illegal. And do companies (across the board) generally hold their employees to standards of conduct even outside of the literal office/workplace? Yes, they have for years.
There are some nuggets here, this book is a bit of an appetizer, it will wet your appetite to explore these ideas further but it won't entirely satiate your hunger. Also, don't expect anything to be 'fleshed out' as far as the cover leading you to believe that there is pure mechanized backends (in the way O'Neil brilliantly laid out in Weapons of Math Destruction). It felt a bit Malcolm Gladwellian (oh dear, I'm sorry) to me.
Overall it seems that O'Neil is stating that shaming doesn't work, she talks about the impacts of fat shaming or shaming addicts and why it doesn't work, but then seems to come around and say that not only is shaming OK when we are punching up (rather than punching down), that it's necessary. She does add nuance, but I don't know that it was a convincing enough argument or backed by enough data (give the data nerds what they want) to support. Because while I went into the book thinking I'd mostly agree, I was left wondering, how come shaming works when punching up but not down (not talking about rationale, simply talking about the actual functionality and whether it results in a desired outcome).
I also think that O'Neil fails to distinguish on the lines of legitimacy (easy, I know some of these topics are subjective) but shaming someone for committing sexual assault or shaming vaginal hygiene companies for lying to customers, is different than shaming someone over matters of opinion. While O'Neil says some shaming can be helpful (inspiring others to be healthy and wear a mask) she takes issue with others while failing to realize a similar motive. Do I support fat shaming? No. Do I think some people fat shame because they're truly worried about someone's health (i.e. risk for developing diabetes as O'Neil shared her own personal fear of such), similar to the desire to want others to be healthy and safe as with masks? Yes.
I don't intend to start a debate about any of what I just said, I only think, O'Neil has both stated shaming doesn't work and yet shaming is necessary when punching up (ok, so it DOES work?). And I think the basis of the shame should be considered beyond just impact, whether something is irrefutable vs truly a matter of taste or personal preference.
I do think she also muddied the waters a bit by adding JK Rowling to support the idea that everyone should be allowed to make a mistake (I agree) but then chose Rowling as a poster child, someone who has doubled down on their NUMEROUS transphobic statements that goes beyond, 'making a single mistake' as the example implies.
I also feel that the Karen example as others have noted, seemed mildly in poor taste. Do we want the NY bird watching Karen to lose her job or employability for all eternity? Well, no. But did O'Neil really grasp the other side of the coin that serious harm could have come to who she called the cops on? No. Did O'Neil address the fact that it IS against the law to file a false police report (and one could argue the falsehood based on the claims she was making while being filmed) yes it is illegal. And do companies (across the board) generally hold their employees to standards of conduct even outside of the literal office/workplace? Yes, they have for years.
There are some nuggets here, this book is a bit of an appetizer, it will wet your appetite to explore these ideas further but it won't entirely satiate your hunger. Also, don't expect anything to be 'fleshed out' as far as the cover leading you to believe that there is pure mechanized backends (in the way O'Neil brilliantly laid out in Weapons of Math Destruction). It felt a bit Malcolm Gladwellian (oh dear, I'm sorry) to me.
May 31, 2022
A very readable book about shame. Cathy O'Neil talks about all kind of shaming that is done to us or by us. She tells about the Hopi shame clowns who use shame to bring someone back into the community by showing the bad behavior then offering forgiveness after. She then goes on to talk how shame is used on fat people, addicted people, and those in poverty. She tells how shame is used in politics and on social media.
She then tells who gets the money through the shaming. She pulls no punches on who is profiting on shame. I was appalled at how it was the business plan for so many corporations who supposedly are "helping" people. She also talks of how the government uses it in the case of poverty. She speaks of how health insurance companies use it for addicts and fat people.
While most of what she talks of is set in the United States, she does talk about Japan where there are a class of people called hikikomori who are 18-55 who do not leave their homes and/or rooms (most live with their parents.) She describes their parents feeling shame that their children are not living the lives that were expected of them.
She tells of how shame can be used for good provided a society has the same definition and objectives of the shaming and it is not for an individual group to achieve their goals without winning the same outcome for the rest of society. She tells of #EndSARS in Nigeria as well as the Parkland, FL high school shootings specifically.
Lastly, she does provide solutions that can be done. She also has shown where shaming has worked in a public forum. Japan has a small town that has helped the hikikomori. She also describes what it was like for her to go through with bariatric surgery and its aftermath. Again giving her experience as what is wrong with this system and what should be done to make it easier and better for others.
I found this book interesting. It is extremely readable. You do not have to have a college degree to understand what she is saying. If you desire to do more research, her documentation is listed. I'd like to say I was surprised by her findings, but I am not. I was appalled at the woman in Walmart being put all over social media (Read it. Really angered me.) I agree with her last statement. Trust and d
She then tells who gets the money through the shaming. She pulls no punches on who is profiting on shame. I was appalled at how it was the business plan for so many corporations who supposedly are "helping" people. She also talks of how the government uses it in the case of poverty. She speaks of how health insurance companies use it for addicts and fat people.
While most of what she talks of is set in the United States, she does talk about Japan where there are a class of people called hikikomori who are 18-55 who do not leave their homes and/or rooms (most live with their parents.) She describes their parents feeling shame that their children are not living the lives that were expected of them.
She tells of how shame can be used for good provided a society has the same definition and objectives of the shaming and it is not for an individual group to achieve their goals without winning the same outcome for the rest of society. She tells of #EndSARS in Nigeria as well as the Parkland, FL high school shootings specifically.
Lastly, she does provide solutions that can be done. She also has shown where shaming has worked in a public forum. Japan has a small town that has helped the hikikomori. She also describes what it was like for her to go through with bariatric surgery and its aftermath. Again giving her experience as what is wrong with this system and what should be done to make it easier and better for others.
I found this book interesting. It is extremely readable. You do not have to have a college degree to understand what she is saying. If you desire to do more research, her documentation is listed. I'd like to say I was surprised by her findings, but I am not. I was appalled at the woman in Walmart being put all over social media (Read it. Really angered me.) I agree with her last statement. Trust and d
May 24, 2025
The Shame Machine by Cathy O’Neil explores how shame is used not just socially, but systemically to sell, to control, to punish.
Through personal storytelling & vulnerability, O’Neil walks through fat shaming, addiction, poverty, criminal justice, social media outrage, and even the incel movement, showing how shame is often engineered by those in power and distributed through networks that reward outrage.
While the scope is ambitious, almost at times too broad, the goal is clear ... "who’s being shamed, why, and to whose benefit?"
One key idea is the difference between punching down vs. punching up. O'Neil argued shame can reinforce power imbalances, or, in rare cases, challenge them. She offers a cautious case for “healthy shame,” but it’s fragile because it only works when we share values and facts.
A moment that hit close to home ... during this read, a neighbor in my local Facebook group posted a photo, license plate, and public threat to report a fellow parent for unsafe driving.
The comments snowballed. Sharing the post I'm sure was intended as valid safety concern, but quickly became a digital pile-on, just as O’Neil describes. The situation reinforced how easy it is to slip from accountability into punishment, especially when shame feels morally justified.
O’Neil invites readers, in a compassionate way, to recognize when shame is at work, question its purpose, and reflect before using it. It’s a timely read for anyone feeling the weight of public opinion.
Through personal storytelling & vulnerability, O’Neil walks through fat shaming, addiction, poverty, criminal justice, social media outrage, and even the incel movement, showing how shame is often engineered by those in power and distributed through networks that reward outrage.
While the scope is ambitious, almost at times too broad, the goal is clear ... "who’s being shamed, why, and to whose benefit?"
One key idea is the difference between punching down vs. punching up. O'Neil argued shame can reinforce power imbalances, or, in rare cases, challenge them. She offers a cautious case for “healthy shame,” but it’s fragile because it only works when we share values and facts.
A moment that hit close to home ... during this read, a neighbor in my local Facebook group posted a photo, license plate, and public threat to report a fellow parent for unsafe driving.
The comments snowballed. Sharing the post I'm sure was intended as valid safety concern, but quickly became a digital pile-on, just as O’Neil describes. The situation reinforced how easy it is to slip from accountability into punishment, especially when shame feels morally justified.
O’Neil invites readers, in a compassionate way, to recognize when shame is at work, question its purpose, and reflect before using it. It’s a timely read for anyone feeling the weight of public opinion.
March 19, 2022
Thanks to the author and publisher for the advance copy I received in a gr giveaway!
We all experience shame (except psychopaths) and on an evolutionary scale, shaming wrongdoers is an adaptive behavior. However in modern times, claims O'Neil, the scale of things has become so large and information is disseminated so quickly that our shaming behaviors have become, in many instances, destructive.
Again, O'Neil has invented a metaphor that she repeats ad nauseam around which her book revolves: a shame machine is a collection of physical, social, legal... things that work together to make people feel shame about xyz aspect of their life (e.g. poverty, obesity) and often keep people in the situation that causes them shame, thereby exacerbating said shame. It's a positive feedback loop. Okay, when I spell it out like that, a shorthand term is absolutely called for but I don't love the cutesiness of the one she chose. Better than the lamely-punned "weapons of math destruction," I suppose.
Aside from the metaphor, the book does a good job describing the ways in which shaming in modern (largely American) society is deployed to good and not-so-good effect... and who is profiting from the, uh, shame-industrial-complex.
The obligatory "how we stop doing the bad thing" section is a little light. Then again, I always read those and think... well, I think cynical thoughts.
We all experience shame (except psychopaths) and on an evolutionary scale, shaming wrongdoers is an adaptive behavior. However in modern times, claims O'Neil, the scale of things has become so large and information is disseminated so quickly that our shaming behaviors have become, in many instances, destructive.
Again, O'Neil has invented a metaphor that she repeats ad nauseam around which her book revolves: a shame machine is a collection of physical, social, legal... things that work together to make people feel shame about xyz aspect of their life (e.g. poverty, obesity) and often keep people in the situation that causes them shame, thereby exacerbating said shame. It's a positive feedback loop. Okay, when I spell it out like that, a shorthand term is absolutely called for but I don't love the cutesiness of the one she chose. Better than the lamely-punned "weapons of math destruction," I suppose.
Aside from the metaphor, the book does a good job describing the ways in which shaming in modern (largely American) society is deployed to good and not-so-good effect... and who is profiting from the, uh, shame-industrial-complex.
The obligatory "how we stop doing the bad thing" section is a little light. Then again, I always read those and think... well, I think cynical thoughts.
February 4, 2025
So in this book, shame = being made to feel bad about something that isn't your fault/that you shouldn't have to feel bad about....
Alongside her definition of shame, she makes some interesting points about this feeling in the age of the internet. For example, how it is weaponised against communities and experiences, to disenpower, silence, devalue and demean. And how this is especially salient in the age of the internet, where people speak in extremities and hyperboles . So, as always, a good reminder of the importance of hearing a range of voices outside the echo chamber of The Algorithm.
Except for me, this is not a satisfying definition of shame - a term which is redolent with psychoanalytic meaning!! So underpinning her examples and essays with this thinly explored definition felt too shallow for me, whose hands made a grab for this title before my knowing it. I'm not ASHAMED to say that I'm a little let down!
Alongside her definition of shame, she makes some interesting points about this feeling in the age of the internet. For example, how it is weaponised against communities and experiences, to disenpower, silence, devalue and demean. And how this is especially salient in the age of the internet, where people speak in extremities and hyperboles . So, as always, a good reminder of the importance of hearing a range of voices outside the echo chamber of The Algorithm.
Except for me, this is not a satisfying definition of shame - a term which is redolent with psychoanalytic meaning!! So underpinning her examples and essays with this thinly explored definition felt too shallow for me, whose hands made a grab for this title before my knowing it. I'm not ASHAMED to say that I'm a little let down!
January 19, 2023
The subtitle was what really drew me in here and I was interested in hearing her take after Weapons of Math Destruction. Unfortunately, we only got that in a few chapters. I do think I will pay more active attention to where shame as a control mechanism is directed (up at power structures/powerful individuals or across/down at others) as a result of her framing.
My interest is still piqued for an exploration of the the use of public shame as a means for control, and how that has changed under the profit-driven models of attention in media, this just wasn’t it.
My interest is still piqued for an exploration of the the use of public shame as a means for control, and how that has changed under the profit-driven models of attention in media, this just wasn’t it.
April 11, 2022
Good book highlighting an unappreciated force.
This book discusses how shame is powerful, pervasive and yet often unappreciated. Ironically, shame is not recognized because it is so powerful. Being ashamed, we often either deny it, even to ourselves, or internalize it to feel it reflects a real failing. O'Neil notes that shame does serve an important sociological function but that in modern society is often misdirected and misused.
Particularly important how to look beyond the individual level to appreciate the systemic aspects of how shame is manipulated for profit. Related to this was the advice to "aim higher" -- that is, don't call out the individuals who are shaming inappropriately but look for the system behind them.
This book discusses how shame is powerful, pervasive and yet often unappreciated. Ironically, shame is not recognized because it is so powerful. Being ashamed, we often either deny it, even to ourselves, or internalize it to feel it reflects a real failing. O'Neil notes that shame does serve an important sociological function but that in modern society is often misdirected and misused.
Particularly important how to look beyond the individual level to appreciate the systemic aspects of how shame is manipulated for profit. Related to this was the advice to "aim higher" -- that is, don't call out the individuals who are shaming inappropriately but look for the system behind them.
October 14, 2022
27% into the audiobook and DNFing this. the definition of shame as a means of policing, and punching up/down is an interesting one (as opposed to shame being inherent/feeling like there's something inherently, fundamentally wrong with you), but this has been a frustrating read/listen. it's not exactly substantial/substantiated, and it's not so much shame here (whether felt or administered, societal or personal) as it is larger systemic issues at play that's the problem.
maybe it gets better as you go? but i felt like i should've known after the personal anecdotes on fat-shaming in chapter 1. it's kind of a shame, given that there were interesting bits of research; this book could've been more.
maybe it gets better as you go? but i felt like i should've known after the personal anecdotes on fat-shaming in chapter 1. it's kind of a shame, given that there were interesting bits of research; this book could've been more.
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