A Nation of Strange, Idle Men

Like many Millennial men, I used to be pretty invested in Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West —primarily because of his music, but also because of his unique position as the one celebrity who seemed empowered to behave however he wanted.

He interrupted Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards; he said “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” at a Hurricane Katrina fundraiser; he brought a Jesus look-alike onstage.

I would shrug, and keep listening.

Then his do what I want ethos went very bad.

Ye called slavery “a choice”; he came out as a fan of Hitler; he wore a KKK-style hood.

With escalating horror, I questioned what had happened.

Was it about having too much money? Untreated mental illness? I wondered when logic and shame might kick in—when someone might get him to stop.

But the more he was rejected by his peers, the media, and some fans, the more Kanye seemed to act out.

Eventually, I accepted, grimly, that I was watching someone who, feeling abandoned and misunderstood, was determined to ignore all of his critics and double down on pursuing his chosen path.

I thought about Ye while I was reading The Castle , a new nonfiction work by the journalist Jon Ronson that attempts to unpack the motivations of wayward men who no longer fit into traditional society.

Ronson is probably best-known for his 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed , a journalistic account of the emotional incentives and historical context behind the social-media-fueled frenzy that became known as “cancel culture.” Like the people in that book, many of the subjects of The Castle have been shoved to the margins.

But the forces at play in this new book are more disparate, and perhaps more stubborn, than an angry online mob.

Ronson explores how men become alienated because they can’t achieve success in their chosen field, because they can’t pay their bills, because they have too much money, because the town around them went to hell.

The book shows how their free will, coupled with a lot of free time on the internet, leads them to pursue their self-interest as best they can—which, eventually, begets more alienation.