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The Industrial Revolution of Shame

nytimes.com

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Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#11

Post by ghaff »

alexpetralia wrote: post #5
orthecreedence wrote: post #2

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…

Need some sort of exponential weighted moving average function: weight most recent the most.

It's not just time-based though. Most of us can probably recall recent examples where someone did or said something stupid or in poor taste. But they didn't deserve to lose their job or even had their career badly damaged because that was the easiest way for some company to placate the Internet mob.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#12

Post by fallous »

malvosenior wrote: post #9
apocalypstyx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 br…

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).

I'm not sure that dissolving a staunch moral evaluation framework necessarily results in a dampening of outrage. Absent an objective moral framework what is left is a subjective moral framework that is not debatable and thus cannot be externally challenged as "correct" or "incorrect." If my own unassailable framework is the only vaguely truth-like metric by which to measure anything, it seems to me that outrage is the perfectly predictable response towards anything with which I disagree since anything that does not agree with my moral framework is not moral.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#13

Post by twiceaday »

orthecreedence wrote: post #2

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…

To play devils advocate, the public idolizes celebrities. This boosts celebrities to new stratas of popularity. When their public image gets tarnished it becomes much harder to idolize them thus magnifying the damage. The boom bust cycles are inevitable.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#14

Post by explainplease »

rosser wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#15

Post by kkarakk »

malvosenior wrote: post #9
apocalypstyx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 br…

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).

is should but society would dissolve if it actually happened. the moral backlash is a backlash to the beginning stages of the amoralism - atheism, freedom of thought and sexuality have ripple effects on traditional social structures that are built on concepts of restriction and standardisation.

where do you put your pent up hate without being hurtful? you attack the people who are perceived as hurtful first

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#16

Post by dalbasal »

orthecreedence wrote: post #2

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…

I don't think these questions have legible answers.

Before social media, someone might smear, criticize or judge you for prank calls you made 20 years ago. Some wouldn't. It's not court.

The difference between then and now is implications. The world we're in now can take those criticisms and amplify them, making them the central theme if your public persona. It can becone thing people know about you first.

In an important sense prank calls aren't a good example. Most things that get the amplified shame treatment are not individual example of wrongdoing. They're individual examples that can (rightly or wrongly) be used as examples or symbols of a political injustice of some sort, as they see it.

I really don't think we can sort the rights and wrongs of this stuff, make it fair or consistent. What we need to do is lower the stakes, if we can.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#17

Post by kkarakk »

CptFribble wrote: post #10

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 "…

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

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#18

Post by pjc50 »

CptFribble wrote: post #10

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 "…

> Would the newspapers of the time be decrying the "shame" mobs as truth was inevitably spoken to power?

They absolutely did. This was what MLK's famous complaint about the "white moderate" was about in Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#19

Post by growlist »

iron0013 wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#20

Post by pjc50 »

dalbasal wrote: post #16
orthecreedence wrote: post #2

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…

I don't think these questions have legible answers. Before social media, someone might smear, criticize or judge you for prank calls you made 20 years ago. Some wouldn't. It's not court. The difference between then and now is implications. The world we're in now can take those criticisms and amplify them, making them the central theme if your public persona. It can becone thing people know about you first. In an impo…

> Before social media, someone might smear, criticize or judge you for prank calls you made 20 years ago

This sort of thing used to be a staple of small-town life; everyone knew everything that you ever did and you could be defined by a childhood incident. The only way out of it was to leave. Now we have made the world smaller.

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