In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, Or, the End of the Social () is a 1978 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, in which he analyzes the mass society and their relation to meaning. Baudrillard praises the masses for their resistance to the mass media, and lauded 'the social', for their "direct defiance of the political" "victoriously resist[ing] the media by diverting or absorbing all the messages which it produces without responding to them".
The first edition of the book was published in the final issue of the magazine Les Cahiers d'Utopie in 1978. It was translated to English by Paul Foss, John Johnston and Paul Patton, and published by the Foreign Agents imprint of Semiotext(e) in 1983. A second edition was published in 2007.
In the 1970s, magazines such as Utopie, Noir et rouge, ICO, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Pouvoir ouvrier, and the Situationists were unconditionally opposed the "official culture". They saw the masses as hypnotized into submission by a "society of the spectacle."
Baudrillard's interpretation stated that meaning became devalued.
He argues that the masses actively refuse meaning, breaking with sociology.