
The Industrial Revolution of Shame - merrier
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/opinion/sunday/internet-shaming.html
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orthecreedence
This is getting pretty bad. The thing that really bugs me is when people are
shamed for things they did 20 or 30 years ago. 20 years ago I was prank
calling people and saying some pretty awful stuff to them. Would I do it now?
No, of course not. I've changed. Should I be shamed for something that long
ago? I don't personally think it's productive.

I guess there's a balance, though. If I had questionable character _now_
perhaps it would be relevant to include past information. And also, what's the
cutoff? Five years? Ten? At what point do we say "that's recent enough to be a
reflection on you?" I don't know.

I do know we seem to be reaching back ever-further to find ways to smear
people we don't like. It's a constant drive to feel outraged about something.
As if there isn't enough bad stuff going on already...

~~~
apocalypstyx
I sometimes think about part of Fredric Jameson's remarks on one of the
distinctions between modernity and postmodernity being an atemporality, that
under postmodernity there is only the ever-present now. And I wonder if things
like this are part of that, that we technically still recognize time, in the
sense that we know we get off at five o'clock, but at the same time inherently
_don 't_ recognize that in a sort of broader context, so people are forever
what they were, are, always was, will be. So under such strictures, such makes
a certain sense, in descriptive terms, that there is no what someone _was_ but
only what they _are_.

~~~
malvosenior
True post-modernism should also dissolve a staunch moral evaluation framework
thus dampening outrage. What we have is some mix of modernism (rejection of
classical thought) and fundamentalism (harsh judgement with black and white
morality).

~~~
maze-le
The way I see it, post-modernism has enabled the outrage machine in the first
place, by dissolving the borders between fact and fiction and dismissing
context in any form. When everything is interpretable in any possible
framework truth, reason and nuance become just another straw in the haystack
and not something individuals should strife for.

You suggest we don't have true post-modernism, because it is not critical
enough of the own operating moral framework. I counter that with: post-
modernism is essentially only 'tried and tested' anti-modernism, but it
doesn't come along as religious outrage like in the old times, but dressed in
the form of moral outrage machines, that can be triggered by any form of non-
conformist behaviour in any possible framework -- the frameworks have become
interchangable, the operational mechanisms work like they always have.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If I understand correctly, one of the things that postmodernism says is that
all speech is about power, not truth - that all claims of truth are really
assertions of power.

It's not just that the border of fact and fiction has been dissolved. The
question is not even considered relevant, because the statement isn't
considered to be about truth in the first place.

"Everything can be interpreted in any possible framework" only in the sense
that they will interpret your statement in the framework that makes it look
the worst. Why will they do so? Because _their_ interpretation of your
statement is not about finding truth, but about _their_ assertion of power.
That is, these people are operating consistent with their philosophy.

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rosser
The word "censure" doesn't appear once in The Fine Article, which, I think,
undermines its point a little. He writes with nuance about witnessing without
judgement, but then assumes all this behavior is categorically "shaming".
There is a legitimate social value to censure, and some of this stuff is
absolutely censure, not shaming.

To clarify my terms, "censure" talks about behaviors: "That is not an okay
thing to do," versus shame's, "You are 'bad' for having done the thing."

Shame is just toxic. Telling people they're defective in an effort to make
them improve is stupidly counterproductive.

It gets tricky when we have some kind of identity invested in the thing we're
doing. It becomes hard to experience censure and not feel shamed.

~~~
explainplease
Your distinctions between shame and censure are arbitrary and meaningless.
e.g.:

Censure: "You shouldn't have done that."

Shaming: "You shouldn't have done that. Shame on you."

The point is the same. If an action is deservedly shameful, then so be it.

Shame that brings positive change is not a bad thing; it is a natural social
consequence. The problem is lack of forgiveness even after repentance. How can
one's debt to society be paid when convicted by the court of public opinion,
prosecuted by the NYT? The exile is indefinite.

One of the problems in our society now is shamelessness, i.e. the lack of
social consequences for some actions encourages people to take them.
Compounding that is the media, which now acts as self-appointed arbiters of
who should be ashamed, when, and why, depending on a person's current favor
with the politically powerful. Displease the wrong people, and words uttered a
dozen years ago without complaint are suddenly cause for outrage, according to
them. Meanwhile, others who said much worse things yesterday are lauded. It's
all a big farce.

Democracy dies in darkness, all right--the darkness of the evil of the
contemporary press.

~~~
taneq
> The point is the same. If an action is deservedly shameful, then so be it.

The point is different because censure (as we're using it here) judges the
_action_ but shaming judges the _person_.

Censure: "That thing that you did was bad."

Shaming: "You are a bad person for doing that thing."

~~~
explainplease
No, you are arbitrarily deciding that "shaming judges the person," and that
shaming means, "You are a bad person." That's what _you_ think it means. You
do not get to decide what "shaming" means to everyone, and it's not right for
you to tell others what "shaming" means to them.

Besides that, even if one thinks that shaming _does_ "judge the person,"
that's not necessarily bad, either, because rightful shame can lead to changed
behaviors, which is good for the person and for society as a whole. However,
this only works as long as _forgiveness_ is available to those who change.

The problem our society currently has is that forgiveness is often denied,
even after repentance. The judgments of the court of public opinion are
essentially permanent, which is not healthy. And it's doubly bad when
relatively old words and actions can be cited as a reason for judgment and
outrage today.

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partiallypro
Outrage culture exists, in part, because it is very profitable. News outlets
have an incentive (for clicks/ad revenue/social engagement) to find something
to be outraged about 24/7...even if it is completely absurd. The problem is
this really is eroding the trust in media. Even if something is so absurd that
most people disagree with it, the hate clicks/engagement from that is well
worth publishing it.

The only real way to solve this, imo is to start punishing these publications
by simply no longer engaging with them or supporting them. Even good
publications (I'm thinking Wired, which generally is good, but lately has
published some absurd things.) Until then, or until the ad business model
changes...this will continue.

We should be looking at alternative business strategies for media, so they
aren't dependent on the absurd. That extends to cable news as well. Fox, CNN,
MSNBC have all turned into clown shows...and what anyone that has been on
these programs or done media training will tell you...the producers often book
people simply for being absurd. Merit it no longer what matters, it's all
about engagement to drive ad revenues.

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CptFribble
We're on the cusp of, or sliding down into, a long and intense reckoning for
our public figures and elected officials vis a vis Harm.

Think of all the things that were done to women, minorities, etc throughout
history, and how difficult it's been for them to have a voice before the
internet. Imagine if the black community in the 1950s-60s had smartphones and
Twitter. Would the newspapers of the time be decrying the "shame" mobs as
truth was inevitably spoken to power?

Yes, categorizing someone as 'bad' or 'defective' in an effort to induce
change is counterproductive, as another commenter said. So too, actions from
10-20+ years may not be relevant.

But when historically oppressed people get a national platform, if you aren't
one of the oppressed, you may not like what they have to say.

~~~
kkarakk
now you're equating WILDLY different things, a minority being oppressed is
different from say - donglegate. remember that? two dudes fired for making a
joke about dongles and penises because some "woke" woman overheard and tweeted
about it? now imagine one of those guys changed and became a true feminist
champion. the internet mob of today wouldn't let him do anything related to
feminism because of his past

~~~
watwut
Afaik, all involved people were fired.

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darepublic
Outrage culture is not about social function imo, it's that words and thoughts
provoking the feeling of outrage transmit more easily, that people willingly
click into stories about outrage regardless of their relevance. If ideas are
like DNA in that they propagate across human minds and there is a type of
Darwinian survival of the fittest, outrage inducing memes are simply more fit.

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iron0013
Man, it really feels like at this point the reactionary response to “outrage”
is orders of magnitude larger than the initial outrage ever was. I never, ever
even hear of any of these supposed outrages until I hear folks going on and on
and on about how opposed to the “outrage” they are

~~~
growlist
I'm guessing you haven't been using the Internet for the past few years then?
This stuff is rife, and often well planned and organised with the apparent
collaboration of the MSM.

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scottlocklin
Witch hunts are nothing new; people have been doing this for as long as there
have been people. I'd even go so far as to say the mass media have been doing
this for at least 150 years now.

What's new is its weaponization as a tool for political control in the West.

~~~
_bxg1
What's new is the explosion of scale the internet has enabled.

~~~
gotocake
Not really, I think the literal Inquisition still has us beat.

~~~
scottlocklin
You should read an older history of this series of events; past views of the
inquisition were vastly different than the present view. For a long time, it
was seen as a humane thing due to their use of an actual legal process rather
than people and local strong men burning heretics (who were probably mostly
"heretics") at random. In other words, the inquisition was a Church reform
designed to mitigate "private sector" witch hunters who were causing political
upheaval. The use of standards of evidence by people like Bernard Gui (who
wrote a manual on the subject) was a big innovation, as silly as it might seem
today.

My historical point of comparison is the events leading up to the various
religious wars. The protestant reformation unleashed historical and cultural
forces in the same way the present slow motion destruction of the last 100
years of political consensus.

~~~
gotocake
No, it’s not silly, just a testament to how screwed up the time period in
question was. Just to add to what you’re saying, did you know that the
inquisition was only allowed a single torture session? Of course they got
around that by “pausing” the session and resuming endlessly. Still the _ideas_
in the Inquisition, putting aside its aims and practices, were interestint for
the time. So “big innovation” isn’t silly, although I admit it’s an
interesting perspective not usually taken.

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Invictus0
I think it's too simple to just blame the media for this phenomenon. What is
needed is not less media, but more nuance in the discourse; an ability to
weigh the importance and relevance of some prior digression against the
present person. It is possible, although perhaps uncommon, for people to
change, even in major ways. But as one commenter noted, many people today seem
to believe in a constancy of time and personality; that the core self is
always the same and never changes, and therefore some action taken 20 years
ago should carry the same weight as if it were done today. That belief is what
is really underlying the current culture of outrage.

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40acres
Shame has always been a part of human nature, doing shameful acts -- like
eating up all the reserve food that the tribe worked so hard to store is
appropriately responded to with shame from peers.

Social pressure has it's place in society, as with all things the internet
takes everything about the human social experience and turns the dial to 11. I
think we are only just coming to grips with what actually should be shamed on
the internet. As with all things, we will reach an equilibrium. You don't kick
someone out of the tribe for a simple mistake that has a slim chance of
happening again if the proper amount of social pressure is applied.

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waplot
the media produces a lot of manufactured outrage as well.

