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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • 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
“O’Neil reminds us that we must resist the urge to judge, belittle, and oversimplify, and instead allow always for complexity and lead always with empathy.”—Dave Eggers, author of The Every
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Times (UK)
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 weight-loss surgery, which awakened her to the systematic shaming of fat people seeking medical care.
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?
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • 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
“O’Neil reminds us that we must resist the urge to judge, belittle, and oversimplify, and instead allow always for complexity and lead always with empathy.”—Dave Eggers, author of The Every
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Times (UK)
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 weight-loss surgery, which awakened her to the systematic shaming of fat people seeking medical care.
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?
Cathy 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 Opinion.
“Although [The Shame Machine] contains its fair share of
pseudoscience-debunking, including an admirably lucid explanation
of how diet programs massage statistics to artificially bolster
their success rates, it is largely a work of social criticism . . .
[that] keeps the human costs of the titular shame machine in clear
view. . . . Frequently moving.”—The New Yorker
“A data-driven, anecdote-fueled narrative of the multitude of human
experiences that are targets for ridicule and others’ reward.
[O’Neil] vividly portrays the indignities of poverty, addiction,
aging, dementia and other conditions we all may face but hope to
avoid, and she shows how the pain experienced by people with these
afflictions can be used for others’ financial and social
profits.”—The Washington Post
“As O’Neil argues, shame is a valuable lens through which to view
our own actions and the systems we live under. Considering whether
we are punching down on the vulnerable or up against an unfeeling
industrial complex dressed up in fluffy corporate PR is a first
step towards a healthier sort of shame.”—Financial Times
“I am struck by how very American shame seems when examined in
relief, invoking as it does notions of agency, willpower and
sacrifice. O’Neil carefully dismantles how we abdicate our social
responsibility for caring for the vulnerable when we indulge in the
notion that poverty and drug addiction result from a failure to
self-actualize.”—The New York Times Book Review
“An engaging read . . . [O’Neil] lays out the ways in which shame
drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and
political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is
designed to encourage humiliation, and unpicks the many fallacies
in how we think about shame.”—The New Statesman
“O’Neil . . . encourage[s] readers to try to think more deeply not
just about what shame is but what it might be for. . . . A simple
rejoinder to our digital phantasmagoria.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New
York Times
“What is the relationship between shame and power—and is shame
being weaponised? Smart thinker Cathy O’Neil tackles the question
in this book, exploring whether public shaming is becoming
dangerous.”—Evening Standard
“Cathy O’Neil’s fascinating, important, and insightful book is a
hard look in the mirror, but one that also gives us hope that we
can marshal shame into a force for social reform and not just
social punishment.”—Michael Patrick Lynch, author of Know-It-All
Society
“. . . not all shame is bad, O’Neil contends—used correctly it can
be a powerful tool to fight injustice.”—Nicole Aschoff, author of
The New Prophets of Capital
“The Shame Machine is an intimate and unflinching account of the
many ways that shame is produced, weaponized, and turned into
profit by industries that can grow big only when we feel
small.”—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology
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