Shame was more effective in the past is because it came with consequences - lost business, lower standing in the community, fewer romantic prospects. It used to be part a healthy survival instinct. Without repercussions, shame is just a handicap and those who don't have it have a massive advantage.
The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
21–30 of 108 posts
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#22I was discussing this the other day. Shame and shaming are alive and well. Especially if you do not agree with whatever paradigm is being pushed, like supporting sports team X or not holding the prevailing opinion.
Agree. Shame is very much not dead.
Gen Z is an entire generation paralyzed by social anxiety.
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#23Could they change the rules so that there’s no or less incentive to “tank?”
From the article: “And so, this past summer, the N.B.A. announced a full revamp of the system, with a new approach that penalizes the worst teams in the league. We will see how long this remediation lasts.”
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#24Regarding the article's example of "tanking" in NBA games in the opening paragraph, what would solve this is a switch from the franchise system to a promotion/relegation system. No team would bench their best players or throw a game when relegation to a lower division is on the line.
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#25I was discussing this the other day. Shame and shaming are alive and well. Especially if you do not agree with whatever paradigm is being pushed, like supporting sports team X or not holding the prevailing opinion.
Shaming being alive and well doesn’t imply that shame is.
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#26I was discussing this the other day. Shame and shaming are alive and well. Especially if you do not agree with whatever paradigm is being pushed, like supporting sports team X or not holding the prevailing opinion.
I don't really know if I would call that shame, though. In Japan if you wear your shoes into someone's house you'll be lambasted with shame, but that's got a deep religious and cultural foundation behind it-- the person being shamed gets their nose rubbed into their mistake so that they don't do it again. There is a "re-centering" of the person so they get another chance.
Nowadays in the west, holding an option contrary to whatever herd you find yourself in falls into a binary label. There is no redemption for you, there is no second chance. "You voted for X? You're nothing but evil thoughts and vacuity where a human could have been".
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#27> Evil genius is just a lack of shame.
-- Cory Doctorow
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-11...
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#28There seems to be a bit of a gap vis a vis solutions in the article - someone could set the system up so it doesn't incentivise tanking. The punishment for tanking should be that the teams performed poorly for no compensation. It's all very well to set up a system to encourage poor behaviour then shame the people who behave rationally. But it is much more sustainable in the long term to make good behaviour also strategically optimal.
> Post-Hinkie, the league experimented with variations of the lottery, but none of them could deter teams from losing on purpose.
I struggle to believe they've tried everything unless they're also talking about players betting against themselves (which probably is impossible to overcome without bans). Incentives aren't easy things but there has to be some system where winning > losing.
On that topic we're actually pretty lucky - in the real world, the winning strategy over long time-frames is almost always talking, prosperity and cooperation. Not obvious why the powers that be are so keen to involve other strategies that routinely deliver worse material and moral results.
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#29Shame was more effective in the past is because it came with consequences - lost business, lower standing in the community, fewer romantic prospects. It used to be part a healthy survival instinct. Without repercussions, shame is just a handicap and those who don't have it have a massive advantage.
I don't get it. On one hand people are lamenting departure of shame, on the other they complain how easy it is to get your life ruined by becoming a target of internet hate for a minor transgression.
Maybe the shame didn't disappear, just fell prey to increasing inequality where one end of the spectrum has very little where the other gets absurd amounts?
Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart
#30Strange that this short article mostly focuses on the absence of shame in business and politics, which has been a constant for many times my lifetime. And we should blame social media for this, too? The only difference now is that everyone knows about backroom dealing. If the author didn't conspicuously omit the absence of shame in journalism, I feel like he'd be a step closer to an interesting observation.