I work in the not for profit internet governance space, and we frequently discuss the "shirky principle" -Because we see signs of it all the time.
What a blast from the oast. I have not heard
Clay Shirky in a long time. Did he stop writing?
The March of Dimes Syndrome
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Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#12in short, society was solved circa 1995 with the introduction of the successful united colors of beneton ad campaign
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#13Weird to post an article decrying the concept of pivoting on a news site for tech startups, but sure, it's the leftists' fault.
IIUC, the article discusses two phenomena related to charities outliving their original purpose:
(1) (as you mentioned) pivoting to a new cause.
(2) increasing the urgency / direness of their messaging, because making progress on an issue causes their audience to de-prioritize it relative to their other concerns.
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#14“and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class” Blatantly false. Given the huge number of recent anti LGBTQ+ laws that have been created in the last few years, it is quite apparent that the exact opposite is true. There are some parts which have been hard won, but one just has to look at how many people feel they have the right to not deal with LGBTQ+ people, even when it’s their public duty to do so (e.g. th…
> Kim Davis debacle One Kentucky county clerk refused same sex marriages to people ten years ago, was then jailed for it, forced to do it anyway and this is evidence that many people feel they have the right not to deal with LGBTQ+ people in all the years since?
You not knowing other instances isn’t the same as it not going on.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/25/texas-judge-gay-wedd...
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/new-...
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#15> I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?
Because the very cultural change that makes things better, makes the remaining bad stuff less socially acceptable.
By the time gay marriage was a hotly debated political topic in the US, things were already better for gay people than they had been a few decades earlier, so why was it a hot topic when things were better, rather than when things were worse? Because when things were much worse, there was a general consensus that being gay was wrong, and so it wasn't a topic worthy of much debate. Once society became relatively more accepting and there were actually two popular sides, then it became a hot button issue.
Sure, things are better in the US for black people than they were several decades ago, but the threshold for what's an acceptable level of discrimination has also changed. Right after the Civil War, just "well they're not slaves anymore" was a huge improvement over the prior status quo, but that hardly meant that things were actually good.
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#16This at its core is the problem with activism, be it left or right - what do you do once you 'solve' the cause you set out to solve?
The answer is very rarely "ride off into the sunset" - often its moving goalposts.
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#17Weird to post an article decrying the concept of pivoting on a news site for tech startups, but sure, it's the leftists' fault.
Pivoting when it comes to profit-seeking is substantially different than pivoting when it comes to solving a grievance. For example, when I complain to my bank about a fee or a bad customer service experience, after it's solved, I don't come back and say "Well actually...". On the other hand, if I sell something to someone, I might come back and say "Here's a new thing...".
Category error.
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#18This at its core is the problem with activism , be it left or right - what do you do once you 'solve' the cause you set out to solve? The answer is very rarely "ride off into the sunset" - often its moving goalposts.
Put more charitably, there are always problems facing society
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#19Funny how he saw organization leaders move to new organizations to apply their existing skills in leadership and made that into a "non profit issue". Seems like the exact same thing is pretty standard for corporate executives - it's almost as though leading an organization is a skillset totally distinct from knowing the details of the work it does.
Re: The March of Dimes Syndrome
#20The thesis more or less works for any institution. It doesn't work outside of those bounds, like for MeToo and BLM. It's interesting how it's somehow a progressive issue. "Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting?" Perhaps because expectations have risen, and perhaps because there was no one to report to earlier that would listen. Anyone who thinks raci…
I mean its a conservative one too - look at the moving goalposts to the right on Abortion, the right keeps demanding more and more stringent controls, gun rights too. Its an activist problem more than anything else.
Even for religion. In one of the yeshivas in the upper west side of Manhattan, they painted longer sleeves on a photograph of the founding rabbi’s wife because it doesn’t comply with current modesty rules.