The Industrial Revolution of Shame
nytimes.com
The Industrial Revolution of Shame
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#2This 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 perhaps it would be relevant to include past information. And also, what's the cutoff? Five years? Ten? At what point do we say "that's recent enough to be a reflection on you?" I don't know.
I do know we seem to be reaching back ever-further to find ways to smear people we don't like. It's a constant drive to feel outraged about something. As if there isn't enough bad stuff going on already...
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#3Man, 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
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#4The 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," versus shame's, "You are 'bad' for having done the thing."
Shame is just toxic. Telling people they're defective in an effort to make them improve is stupidly counterproductive.
It gets tricky when we have some kind of identity invested in the thing we're doing. It becomes hard to experience censure and not feel shamed.
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#5This 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.
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#6Man, 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
[deleted]
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#7This 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 broader context, so people are forever what they were, are, always was, will be. So under such strictures, such makes a certain sense, in descriptive terms, that there is no what someone was but only what they are.
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#8Man, 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
The original outrage is really concentrated in some places. Mainly social media (especially Twitter). I’ve seen a lot of outrage in the workplace as well, mostly demands placed to execs and hr.
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#9This 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…
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).
Re: The Industrial Revolution of Shame
#10We'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 "shame" mobs as truth was inevitably spoken to power?
Yes, categorizing someone as 'bad' or 'defective' in an effort to induce change is counterproductive, as another commenter said. So too, actions from 10-20+ years may not be relevant.
But when historically oppressed people get a national platform, if you aren't one of the oppressed, you may not like what they have to say.