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Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

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111–120 of 173 posts

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#111
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government regulation of shameful behaviour? That's worked out wonderfully in the past.

European governments have regulations for anti social behaviors that curb some excesses and they haven’t collapsed. So I would agree, they have worked in the past

Haven't most European governments in the last century or so collapsed? Eastern Europe regulated anti-social behaviorsandin a pretty extreme way and the superstructure collapsed directly, but Western Europe as it exists now is what emerged out of the ashes of the last collapse in the 1930s.

I don't think there are many broad lessons to learn beyond aiming for peace and liberty, but "European governments didn't collapse" is hardly a powerful argument. The area is notorious for collapse, it is still in living memory when large chunks of Europe fell apart, sometimes quite comfortably so. It could easily happen again.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#112

It's not shamelessness, it's authenticity. In today's curated, hyperreal society people desperately crave imperfections, cracks in the armour, they want something real , something human. They desire vulnerability, in part because it gives them courage to also be vulnerable, to not be afraid of judgement and rejection, and the freedom to be themselves. And I think it's actionable advice for all of us. Be genuine, be v…

[deleted]

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#113
post #5

This generally is a version of what economics and game theory knows as countersignalling. A classic paper is “Too Cool for School” https://host.kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf Always worth pondering when it works, and when, for whom, and how it fails.

Rory Sutherland had a good description of this:

"If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car."

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#114
post #30

This is perhaps the best articulation on the rise of certain cantankerous people... in social media / politics / The metaphor of the game is a good one for general understanding (though the Signaling / Counters-signaling paper is a TIL for me) I was hoping that there would be a "solution" of sorts to tackle / handle this issue of when EVERYBODY seems to use this strategy, but perhaps there isn't one...? (My own way o…

>This is perhaps the best articulation on the rise of certain cantankerous people... in social media / politics /

It's a comforting one but I think it's also a crappy and wrong one. Take a few steps further back and it looks like the pendulum is simply swinging.

It was over the past 10-20yr very fashionable to invest (or waste, depending on your take) a lot of resources softening up what we have to say and how we say it in order to avoid unnecessarily offending people, avoid imprecision, avoid edge cases of meaning and head off nitpickers and detractors who we'd never agree with.

Now, a more "I'll say more or less what I mean with no shits given about edge cases, I'll handle offense after the fact if it's a problem and the haters can go f themselves because I was never going to appease them anyway" style of communication is taking off because it offers a competitive advantage of less resource investment for message delivered.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#115
post #33
post #30

This is perhaps the best articulation on the rise of certain cantankerous people... in social media / politics / The metaphor of the game is a good one for general understanding (though the Signaling / Counters-signaling paper is a TIL for me) I was hoping that there would be a "solution" of sorts to tackle / handle this issue of when EVERYBODY seems to use this strategy, but perhaps there isn't one...? (My own way o…

> I was hoping that there would be a "solution" of sorts to tackle / handle this issue of when EVERYBODY seems to use this strategy, but perhaps there isn't one...? It’s called government regulation. There’s whole fields of research on how to solve an arbitrarily complicated Prisoner’s Dilemma. A lot of people are allergic to the idea because they don’t want to have limits on their behavior, only on others or on no o…

You're peddling government as a silver bullet. It's not. You're no less ignorant (a much milder word than I want to use) than the people who think various flavors of near-anarchy can magically work fine.

Some people are allergic to your knee jerk silver bullet solution because often times it comes with downsides that are on comparable orders to the original problem, same as every other silver bullet being peddled by every other ideologue.

Shit is complicated and care needs to be taken.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#116

It's not shamelessness, it's authenticity. In today's curated, hyperreal society people desperately crave imperfections, cracks in the armour, they want something real , something human. They desire vulnerability, in part because it gives them courage to also be vulnerable, to not be afraid of judgement and rejection, and the freedom to be themselves. And I think it's actionable advice for all of us. Be genuine, be v…

Let's take an example: people who play music/video aloud on public transport. In Ye Olden Days of the last century, this would be a shameful act, and people would be shamed for doing it. In our enlightened modern times, people don't give a shit, and trying to shame them into not doing it is pointless. They are shameless about their selfishness, and apparently that's OK now. With the result, as others have said, that…

Unfortunately everyone mocked Karens who at least were a force for good in enforcing social norms and etiquette.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#118

It's not shamelessness, it's authenticity. In today's curated, hyperreal society people desperately crave imperfections, cracks in the armour, they want something real , something human. They desire vulnerability, in part because it gives them courage to also be vulnerable, to not be afraid of judgement and rejection, and the freedom to be themselves. And I think it's actionable advice for all of us. Be genuine, be v…

Let's take an example: people who play music/video aloud on public transport. In Ye Olden Days of the last century, this would be a shameful act, and people would be shamed for doing it. In our enlightened modern times, people don't give a shit, and trying to shame them into not doing it is pointless. They are shameless about their selfishness, and apparently that's OK now. With the result, as others have said, that…

>Let's take an example: people who play music/video aloud on public transport.

>In Ye Olden Days of the last century, this would be a shameful act, and people would be shamed for doing it.

Your equivalent ilk of decades past complained about "kids these days" and their boomboxes in public in basically the same way you're doing now.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take an example: people who play music/video aloud on public transport. In Ye Olden Days of the last century, this would be a shameful act, and people would be shamed for doing it. In our enlightened modern times, people don't give a shit, and trying to shame them into not doing it is pointless. They are shameless about their selfishness, and apparently that's OK now. With the result, as others have said, that…

Unfortunately everyone mocked Karens who at least were a force for good in enforcing social norms and etiquette.

Karens got mocked because busybody and entitled types expecting trying to enforce various sorts of compliance upon other people in ways far beyond what is reasonable is such a common occurrence and annoys so many people that mocking them resonates. Same reason you'll never see a standup comedian who doesn't mock intimate relationships somehow.

Re: Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)

#120
post #49

It's not shamelessness, it's authenticity. In today's curated, hyperreal society people desperately crave imperfections, cracks in the armour, they want something real , something human. They desire vulnerability, in part because it gives them courage to also be vulnerable, to not be afraid of judgement and rejection, and the freedom to be themselves. And I think it's actionable advice for all of us. Be genuine, be v…

It's a very specific form of authenticity. It's the authenticity of people who don't make an effort, who don't feel any need to try, who know that people are going to accept them and look up to them no matter how shitty they are. But for regular people it's a fantasy. Because it only works if you're rich.

>It's the authenticity of people who don't make an effort, who don't feel any need to try, who know that people are going to accept them and look up to them no matter how shitty they are.

Or they know other people won't accept them regardless and they don't care.

It's one of those communication patterns you see at the top and the bottom and if your life consists of working in an office, living in a condo and golfing on the weekends you'll basically never run across anyone that does it.

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