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The Industrial Revolution of Shame

nytimes.com

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Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#21

Post by taneq »

explainplease wrote: post #14
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 t…

> The point is the same. If an action is deservedly shameful, then so be it.

The point is different because censure (as we're using it here) judges the action but shaming judges the person.

Censure: "That thing that you did was bad."

Shaming: "You are a bad person for doing that thing."

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#22

Post by agumonkey »

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…

> I don't think these questions have legible answers.

A lot of things today are intensely emotional (angry, indignant, scandalized) events over non legible answers. The only conclusion I have so far is: this decade is akin to a mass scale depression where anything is a source of madness.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#23

Post by maze-le »

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).

The way I see it, post-modernism has enabled the outrage machine in the first place, by dissolving the borders between fact and fiction and dismissing context in any form. When everything is interpretable in any possible framework truth, reason and nuance become just another straw in the haystack and not something individuals should strife for.

You suggest we don't have true post-modernism, because it is not critical enough of the own operating moral framework. I counter that with: post-modernism is essentially only 'tried and tested' anti-modernism, but it doesn't come along as religious outrage like in the old times, but dressed in the form of moral outrage machines, that can be triggered by any form of non-conformist behaviour in any possible framework -- the frameworks have become interchangable, the operational mechanisms work like they always have.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#24

Post by Nasrudith »

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 think the true answer is that we need to apply nuance and context to things instead of emotional knee-jerking. At the same time we should judge for past in both positive and negative ways.

If they supported apartheid for fear of communism then you certainly are right to question their moral and practical judgment (even accepting the fear the action is counterproductively shoving the oppressed to the arms of the enemy). If they made racist jokes but moved on and supported civil rights for all let it lie.

It brought to mind one thing from a parent referring to someone as being a radical liberal for supporting gay marriage in the 1980s. Now their view is throughly vindicated - visionary not radical is the appropriate term.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#25

Post by watwut »

kkarakk wrote: post #17
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

Afaik, all involved people were fired.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#26

Post by rayiner »

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…

Shame serves an important social function. It is how society enforces norms without having to create a punitive consequence for every bit of undesirable behavior. It's not just about you--by shaming you for something you did in the past, society reinforces what behaviors are undesirable and encourages people to feel shame for engaging in those same behaviors in the present.

Shaming people for things they did in the past is particularly important for reinforcing changes in norms. There are a lot of behaviors that were accepted 30 years ago that are not okay now. We shame people for engaging in that conduct not because it makes sense to hold people to behavioral norms that didn't exist at the time they engaged in the conduct, but to reinforce those norms in the present.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#27

Post by Novashi »

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…

It isn't just the older generation (and actions done 20-30 years ago) doing dumb things and getting shamed for it. The newer generation grows up without learning the implications of mass surveillance, mass long-term storage, mass searching and indexing, and encountering driven people looking to shame others just for fun.

(example: one of the kids of the parents accused in the college admission scandal tweeted about "studying is hard" or something to that effect and it came into my twitter feed and everyone was having a laugh)

If you decide that people NOW shouldn't be shamed for behavior 20-30 years ago, why even bother shaming? I know I'll be different in 20-30 years in the future, so maybe don't shame me (as much) in the present, as long as the actions aren't too heinous. Maybe I don't end up changing, in which case, more shaming would seem 'normal', but the advantage there is that someone has to remember to come check on me. I could gamble that there's a bigger outrage and the internet mob moves onto something else.

The upside of this is that the internet is learning how many people are really bad people. Part of the outrage culture comes from that. Most of these details were hidden in an information-deprived world, and importantly, lack of searching and indexing to actually find all of it.

Maybe it will get so bad that new identities become a much bigger industry and that becomes a social norm. A new identity and probably a new home country is probably the best short-term solution today for this if anyone feels unjustly shamed by society.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#28

Post by darepublic »

Outrage culture is not about social function imo, it's that words and thoughts provoking the feeling of outrage transmit more easily, that people willingly click into stories about outrage regardless of their relevance. If ideas are like DNA in that they propagate across human minds and there is a type of Darwinian survival of the fittest, outrage inducing memes are simply more fit.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#29

Post by dalbasal »

pjc50 wrote: post #20
dalbasal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good analogy. There's something to it.

Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame

#30

Post by dexen »

apocalypstyx wrote: post #7
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 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…

Thank you, apocalypstyx - your comment is insightful and useful in analyzing certain present-day trends.

Bit of a tangent, I remember reading a comment regarding old art's propensity towards showing past as nearly the same as present. Take medieval christian paintings - while depicting scenes from era way past and cultures far removed, they were typically depicted with then-current clothing, equipment, housing, etc. It's only during renaissance (hopefully not mixing that one up?) that people commonly understood past & other societies were significantly different from the present, with different customs, culture, technology, etc. Accompanying the awareness was ongoing research into how the past actually was; what were the possibilities and limitations; what was the culture and what drove people to certain choices, however misguided they may seem in the hindsight.

Through your comment I realize we are in process of losing the ability to clearly delineate the past, and to hold it as imperfect, but necessary, stepping stones to the present day. And perhaps also to run effective, objective research into the past, without feeling the urge to nudge it into direction of a preferred narrative.

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