
Who should be shamed, and who not? - jseliger
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/08/misgivings-tone-emphasis-headed.html
======
SAI_Peregrinus
Shaming people doesn't change their behaviors, it just hurts them and makes
them hostile to you. It's always counterproductive. If you want vengeance for
something there are more satisfying ways to hurt someone, if you want to cause
change shame is the wrong way to go about it.

~~~
matt4077
Shaming is a deep-seated evolutionary mechanism to somewhat gently encourage
people to conform to the norms of society. It works pretty great on almost
everyone.

I'm also wondering why HN is having dozens of articles hit the frontpage
defending white supremacists. I distinctly remember a general agreement of
get-a-job when Occupy Wall Street was forced off the streets by police.

~~~
pc86
_Dozens_ of pro-white supremacist articles? Please provide links. I haven't
seen a single one.

And I don't know what that has to do with OWS or the feeling that they should
get jobs.

~~~
imron
> Dozens of pro-white supremacist articles? Please provide links.

Some people conflate defending the free speech rights of white supremacists as
being pro-white supremacist.

~~~
pc86
That's why I asked for links - I simply don't believe there has been even a
single pro-white supremacy article.

~~~
tedsanders
I hesitate to comment because I don't think this conversation is productive.
But I'll stray in. Your request for links is strange because Matt never said
there were pro-supremacy posts. He said there were posts defending white
supremacists. You have conflated the two concepts.

~~~
benchaney
Defending the right to free speech for everyone is not the same as defending
white supremacists, so it sounds like you are the one conflating two concepts.

~~~
tedsanders
My apologies if I gave you this impression. I only tried to clarify what was
in Matt's post. I didn't think I was making any positive claims myself, but
apparently I gave that impression. I'm sorry to have posted in this
conversation and I wish I could delete my comment. I feel very sensitive to
receiving downvotes.

------
gwbas1c
I guess I view extreme-right-wing ideologies like opioid abuse: We know that
criminalizing drug abuse doesn't really solve the problem.

~~~
TheLilHipster
I find the sweeping generalizing of groups that people are directing their
hate towards to be incredibly toxic.

The Boston protests (for example) were purely about Free Speech:
[http://i.imgur.com/abhmjW8.png](http://i.imgur.com/abhmjW8.png)

Yet thousands of protesters show up, shout slurs and weave their own
narratives that the protesters are nazis which then justify their directed
hate.

It's disgusting:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskThe_Donald/comments/6utjoi/anyon...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskThe_Donald/comments/6utjoi/anyone_attend_the_boston_free_speech_rally_share/dlvkv0d/)

It's just mobs justifying hate, its the most ironic shit I've ever seen. It
just fills me with more discontent and distrust of the majority and the mob.

Idiocracy is getting less and less satirical by the day.

~~~
greglindahl
You're upset because other protestors showed up and exercised their right to
free speech? Sorry you're disgusted, but it's free speech, you know.

~~~
TheLilHipster
I'm not disgusted by their right to do it.

I'm disgusted with the lack of critical thinking it represents.

~~~
greglindahl
So, it's OK if they think as long as they think the way you want?

------
Overtonwindow
In today's never-forget internet, shaming has become a lifelong death
sentence. There is no escaping it.

~~~
cannonedhamster
That's a bit of hyperbole. There are clearly those that are able to live
fruitful lives after being shamed. Americans especially love a comeback story.
There are numerous people that have done stupid things and come back from
them, a pretty public one is Robert Downey Jr.

~~~
concede_pluto
From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Downey_Jr.#2001.E2.80.9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Downey_Jr.#2001.E2.80.932007:_Career_comeback)
:

> Downey was able to return to the big screen only after Mel Gibson [...] paid
> Downey's insurance bond

> [...] for which producer Joel Silver withheld 40 percent of his salary until
> after production wrapped as insurance against his addictive behavior.
> Similar clauses have become standard in his contracts since then.

He's going to carry this stigma for a looong time. If he were only a
supporting actor without influential friends he wouldn't be worth the risk;
he'd have been fucked.

~~~
nostrademons
I was completely unaware of Robert Downey Jr's drug-addled past - I just knew
him as Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. I think the public's memory may be a lot
shorter than yours.

~~~
concede_pluto
The problem isn't the audience, it's every employer he'll ever have.

------
candiodari
The article makes many good points. There doesn't appear to be a line
-apparently- in who gets shamed. Nor is there an innate male need to shame
others (or at least I've seen both men and women do it, white, black, yellow,
Indian, ...).

Even when you look at Nazis you will see a lack of historical consistency :
shaming Nazis was impossible in polite company until something like 1941. It
was possible when the Nazis were only in a few cities and not yet even a
German movement, but by the time they had grown internationally to become an
important part of international socialism, they were unassailable. Granted the
exact point where it became possible varies somewhat depending on where you
were, but not that much. Most socialists accepted Nazi control of France, for
instance, as a prelude to a reorganization into a socialist state of that
country. That is a viewpoint you find defended in New York newspapers in 1941
... and there ideas were just the same back then. Kristallnacht had happened
and was widely known and reported on and reports of state "disappearances" had
leaked, some were well known. But that didn't matter. What mattered, it seems,
is the opening of the second front against the Soviets. It is very clear that
that was were the Nazis lost their victim status (I'm not kidding, they always
played the victim card. I'm even willing to say that in some cases they
rightly did so. Certainly a few of their grievances were legitimate)

Likewise communism and even to a lesser extent the Soviet system was
unassailable in Western press until it was very clear (mostly through the
Berlin wall) that the Soviet bloc was crumbling. It was still very powerful
when criticism started, but it was clearly on the way down at that point. And
criticism grew stronger the weaker the Soviets became. Coincidence ? I think
no.

So I submit there is one line that I truly feel is a line in who we shame.
It's the only line that I've consistently seen applied :

We shame the weak.

Those that either can't, or to a lesser extent those that for some reason
won't, defend themselves against the shaming.

If there is a serious risk of getting attacked in the street, we don't shame
ideas. That was true of Nazi ideas in the runup and early phases of WWII, and
is equally true today.

We can name plenty of ideologies that have extremely unacceptable ideas and
components. Ideologies that have historically or even contemporarily committed
genocide and may even deny doing so (a certain EuroAsian state comes to mind),
and yet ... no shaming. Religions and ideologies with laws that are racist,
sexist, and frankly disgusting are a dime a dozen, and all the big ones of
course have this. And let's just shut up about the role models of ideologies.
Jesus may not have killed and even prevented others to lift a sword on his
behalf, but to say that this is uncommon behavior is ridiculous. There is no
one else who's done so. Most religious leaders demanded the opposite: that
their followers fought, commit genocide and died on their behalf. And yet very
little criticism, and even that little bit is getting attacked.

So, reality, sadly, is very simple: we shame, and otherwise victimize, the
weak. This is the very same impulse that causes racists to attack others.

~~~
gwbas1c
We (the outside world) didn't really know the extent of the holocaust until
after WWII. The Nazis were very good at keeping it a secret from the civilian
Germans.

Did 1941's New York really know what the Nazis were doing? I just don't know
enough about history to know what was known.

~~~
gozur88
It was a capital offense to discuss to spread rumors about the camps, whether
or not they were true.

------
jancsika
> What if sexual bullying lies deep in male DNA? Not for everyone of course,
> but for some people.

This is a _deeply_ ignorant question. There are plenty of pleasant little sub-
cultures in those more progressive parts of the world which for decades-- if
not centuries in some places-- have codified their own approaches to this
problem (regardless of whether it comes from DNA or learned experience). I'm
not saying they are perfect in any way. But the problems these sub-cultures
deal with are several levels above the beginner's question of what to do if
some people happen to get pleasure out of inflicting pain.

~~~
gwbas1c
A think a different way to see the article is, "condemn the behavior, not the
person."

