So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a best-selling book exploring the causes and impacts of social media pile-ons. This very modern- day phenomenon is not dissimilar to a medieval turn in the stocks but with a global army at its disposal, hurling derision rather than rotten veg. In essence, social media users decide you’ve said or done the wrong thing and it snowballs from there, sometimes (but not always) regardless of the nuances of the situation.