Jon Ronson is at his best when he depicts the same phenomenon from multiple perspectives, constructing a complex weave of subjects and affects.

A man apologises, live on the internet, for plagiarising and fabricating portions of his book. Behind him is a twitter stream of responses to his talk. It is in front of him as well. He is trapped in a hermeneutics of shame. However, it begins promising. Commenters are appreciative, incredulous for his apology. But it doesn't last. Anger, disgust and laughter fill the feed. The man's voice becomes less and less affective. By the end, he's called a sociopath.

Afterwards, when Jon asks the man what he felt, he says he felt nothing — he completely switched off. He hadn't lacked feelings, like his audience believed, he'd been overwhelmed by them.

This theme reappears, over and again, in this book. Of public shaming leading, not to positive transformation, but to a complete shutting down of capacities — an affective silencing followed by self-laceration or outward violence.

I think we have to understand that transformative justice requires shame, but shame doesn't require transformative justice. Shame, without empathy, without a bridge between self and other, speaks only silence. Shame without accountability, without a transformative process into joy and responsibility, is worse than useless — it's actively destructive.

One of Jon's most affecting chapters is when he talks to a prison psychologist, who tells him that shame, repression and the subsequent feeling of emptiness, is what drives many prisoners to violent acts, for these violent acts become the only way they can attain social status, the respect necessary to feel human, to feel wanted and loved. The simple act of treating prisoners with respect, of giving them time to learn, to make art, and so forth, undoes this cycle of violence.

Though this book was a mixed bag, scattered in that sort of postmodern, forever failing to grasp the truth, way, Jon himself says at the end that he isn't against public shaming — he's against its use on people who've cause no material harm to anyone, who've made some atrocious joke that should have disappeared, like so much other trash, into the dustbin of social media. I agree. To destroy someone's life due to a shitpost is the most absurd bullshit there is.

Weinstein, Bezos and Musk on the other hand? Fuck 'em. Bring those fuckers down.