Shaming people doesn't change their behaviors, it just hurts them and makes them hostile to you. It's always counterproductive. If you want vengeance for something there are more satisfying ways to hurt someone, if you want to cause change shame is the wrong way to go about it.
Shaming is a deep-seated evolutionary mechanism to somewhat gently encourage people to conform to the norms of society. It works pretty great on almost everyone.
I'm also wondering why HN is having dozens of articles hit the frontpage defending white supremacists. I distinctly remember a general agreement of get-a-job when Occupy Wall Street was forced off the streets by police.
I hesitate to comment because I don't think this conversation is productive. But I'll stray in. Your request for links is strange because Matt never said there were pro-supremacy posts. He said there were posts defending white supremacists. You have conflated the two concepts.
I don't take "defending white supremacists" as defending their right to free speech or to assemble peaceable (which I support). I take it as defending them, which I don't.
I may be misinterpreting him for sure! That's part of why I asked.
Defending the right to free speech for everyone is not the same as defending white supremacists, so it sounds like you are the one conflating two concepts.
My apologies if I gave you this impression. I only tried to clarify what was in Matt's post. I didn't think I was making any positive claims myself, but apparently I gave that impression. I'm sorry to have posted in this conversation and I wish I could delete my comment. I feel very sensitive to receiving downvotes.
What articles? Sounds like you are trying to "shame" HN. Shame....what a state of affairs we are in. We write articles, comments, and do all sorts of things over what boils down to "hurt feelings". Grow up world, there are real problems and actual hardships that exist, and shame has never been either.
I don't think its any surprise that class tensions that could have unified the lower classes have been redirected into racial/gender tensions that have us fighting...
That's probably sample bias, because the posts you disagree with stand out more (where by 'you' I mean everybody). There's almost no general agreement on HN. That's why the threads on divisive topics are so divisive.
I think it's unique to America. We seem to have this fixation on righteous indignation. It's not enough that someone disagrees with you, or you get angry at someone, the indignation is so great it moves people to become vindictive and hurtful.
Not at all unique to America. America actually falls much more on the guilt side of the guilt vs. shame-based culture spectrum. (For those unfamiliar with the difference: guilt is the emotion we feel when we've done something bad, shame is the emotion when we believe we are bad. Guilt presupposes a distinction between a person's worth and their actions, and assumes that once a person who has done bad things has repented, made amends, and is no longer doing bad things, they are no longer a bad person. Shame assumes that character is an innate personality trait, and once a bad apple, always a bad apple.)
Far-eastern countries like China/Japan/Korea and honor-based cultures like the Middle East tend to be much more shame-based. It's not unheard of in America to go to prison, do their time, get out, and start a huge company (IBM, for one). Or to go bankrupt 4 times, sexually assault women, have this all highlighted on national TV, and still end up president. This would be unheard of in a culture like China, where you basically need a squeaky-clean public image (what you do in private is a different story) to get anywhere.
"sexually assault women, have this all highlighted on national TV, and still end up president. "
You mean Bill Clinton? I think you're misinterpreting societal shame. Far east countries, as you call them, do have heavy shame and saving-face issues, but society as a whole recognizes that shame. In America, the shame is never-ending, and it's used as a weapon. It becomes less about a societal tool to punish bad behavior, than as a sick and twisted mechanism for one person, totally unrelated, to exact some harmful retribution.
The "bankrupt 4 times" part is Donald Trump, obviously. "Sexually assault women" includes a number of American presidents, including Trump, Bill Clinton, JFK, Thomas Jefferson, and likely others, though only Clinton and Trump had it paraded through the media. I'm making a general statement about who the American people are willing to elect, one which has been proven over and over again.
My other point is that when it's just one person, totally unrelated, trying to exact some harmful retribution on a person, that's not shame, that's vengeance. Shaming requires enough of a consensus that you can convince a person, in their own head, that they're a bad person. And this is easier to do with some people than others: I remember being bullied extensively as a teenager until I was convinced that I was worthless as a person, while now, in my 30s, I'd just think "Wow, those were some really fucked up kids that I never want to see again in my life."
But in terms of actual objective consequences to these shaming episodes, in American society - they're pretty light, as long as the victim has enough inner strength to shrug it off and just find new people. Clinton and Trump both became president. Mel Gibson and John Downey Jr. are still making movies. Brendan Eich, another prominent case of an Internet shaming mob, ended up founding Brave and raising $40M via ICO. Andrew Torba got blacklisted by YC and virtually every Silicon Valley company, but Gab is the darling of the Breitbart crowd. Like I said in another comment, no matter how offensive your views, you can always find another American who shares them.
That John Downey Jr. is great as Captain Iron Man :-P.
What happened with me resigning from Mozilla was something other than a shaming incident. Anyone aware of California Law, corporate governance, and Mozilla's CEO history who was paying attention should be able to figure it out.
"Shaming" to cause change doesn't' mean the recipient of shame is the same person you are trying to change. Often shame is just a first step, the second step being mob mentality taking over and other people joining the shaming, and the "change" lies somewhere in the effect of the mob. Possibly the intended target has nothing to do with the original target, and they were only chosen because of a high probability to incite the mob mentality in others. Things are not always as simple as they seem.
Can a behavior really be taboo, if nobody shames people who engage in it? I agree that shaming someone probably won't change their behavior, but it definitely affects others who witness it.
If we didn't have a taboo around theft and unprovoked aggression, the only thing protecting us from regular muggings would be the police. I have a feeling that wouldn't work very well.
That's a bit of hyperbole. There are clearly those that are able to live fruitful lives after being shamed. Americans especially love a comeback story. There are numerous people that have done stupid things and come back from them, a pretty public one is Robert Downey Jr.
> Downey was able to return to the big screen only after Mel Gibson [...] paid Downey's insurance bond
> [...] for which producer Joel Silver withheld 40 percent of his salary until after production wrapped as insurance against his addictive behavior. Similar clauses have become standard in his contracts since then.
He's going to carry this stigma for a looong time. If he were only a supporting actor without influential friends he wouldn't be worth the risk; he'd have been fucked.
I'd hardly characterize it as a death sentence though. He's been able to work in his field and found a way to make millions by pretending in front of a camera. If he were only a supporting actor, there's a good chance no one would have noticed at all.
I was completely unaware of Robert Downey Jr's drug-addled past - I just knew him as Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. I think the public's memory may be a lot shorter than yours.
RDJ is a poor example of this. Do you have someone who is not wealthy, or famous for other reasons? Justine Sacco will forever carry the burden of her awful tweet, and in the foreseeable future she's just a Google away from having to relive and be shamed all over again.
The article makes many good points. There doesn't appear to be a line -apparently- in who gets shamed. Nor is there an innate male need to shame others (or at least I've seen both men and women do it, white, black, yellow, Indian, ...).
Even when you look at Nazis you will see a lack of historical consistency : shaming Nazis was impossible in polite company until something like 1941. It was possible when the Nazis were only in a few cities and not yet even a German movement, but by the time they had grown internationally to become an important part of international socialism, they were unassailable. Granted the exact point where it became possible varies somewhat depending on where you were, but not that much. Most socialists accepted Nazi control of France, for instance, as a prelude to a reorganization into a socialist state of that country. That is a viewpoint you find defended in New York newspapers in 1941 ... and there ideas were just the same back then. Kristallnacht had happened and was widely known and reported on and reports of state "disappearances" had leaked, some were well known. But that didn't matter. What mattered, it seems, is the opening of the second front against the Soviets. It is very clear that that was were the Nazis lost their victim status (I'm not kidding, they always played the victim card. I'm even willing to say that in some cases they rightly did so. Certainly a few of their grievances were legitimate)
Likewise communism and even to a lesser extent the Soviet system was unassailable in Western press until it was very clear (mostly through the Berlin wall) that the Soviet bloc was crumbling. It was still very powerful when criticism started, but it was clearly on the way down at that point. And criticism grew stronger the weaker the Soviets became. Coincidence ? I think no.
So I submit there is one line that I truly feel is a line in who we shame. It's the only line that I've consistently seen applied :
We shame the weak.
Those that either can't, or to a lesser extent those that for some reason won't, defend themselves against the shaming.
If there is a serious risk of getting attacked in the street, we don't shame ideas. That was true of Nazi ideas in the runup and early phases of WWII, and is equally true today.
We can name plenty of ideologies that have extremely unacceptable ideas and components. Ideologies that have historically or even contemporarily committed genocide and may even deny doing so (a certain EuroAsian state comes to mind), and yet ... no shaming. Religions and ideologies with laws that are racist, sexist, and frankly disgusting are a dime a dozen, and all the big ones of course have this. And let's just shut up about the role models of ideologies. Jesus may not have killed and even prevented others to lift a sword on his behalf, but to say that this is uncommon behavior is ridiculous. There is no one else who's done so. Most religious leaders demanded the opposite: that their followers fought, commit genocide and died on their behalf. And yet very little criticism, and even that little bit is getting attacked.
So, reality, sadly, is very simple: we shame, and otherwise victimize, the weak. This is the very same impulse that causes racists to attack others.
There are those who called the Nazis out early on, even in the US. What I think you're missing is that we pile on when it's clear the tide is moving. In that case, it's about virtue signaling. Shaming, or really any behavior has risks and rewards. It's only when the rewards vastly outweigh the risks that most people will do anything at all. Humans are risk-averse. We wait until we get told we're dying to fix our weight and exercise, we wait until last minute to study for the test, we spend money we don't have instead of saving for tomorrow because who knows what will happen. So when people start piling on the shaming, others pile on even more, lest they are the subject of the shaming themselves.
We (the outside world) didn't really know the extent of the holocaust until after WWII. The Nazis were very good at keeping it a secret from the civilian Germans.
Did 1941's New York really know what the Nazis were doing? I just don't know enough about history to know what was known.
> What if sexual bullying lies deep in male DNA? Not for everyone of course, but for some people.
This is a deeply ignorant question. There are plenty of pleasant little sub-cultures in those more progressive parts of the world which for decades-- if not centuries in some places-- have codified their own approaches to this problem (regardless of whether it comes from DNA or learned experience). I'm not saying they are perfect in any way. But the problems these sub-cultures deal with are several levels above the beginner's question of what to do if some people happen to get pleasure out of inflicting pain.
It's just mobs justifying hate, its the most ironic shit I've ever seen. It just fills me with more discontent and distrust of the majority and the mob.
Idiocracy is getting less and less satirical by the day.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 28.4 ms ] threadI'm also wondering why HN is having dozens of articles hit the frontpage defending white supremacists. I distinctly remember a general agreement of get-a-job when Occupy Wall Street was forced off the streets by police.
And I don't know what that has to do with OWS or the feeling that they should get jobs.
Some people conflate defending the free speech rights of white supremacists as being pro-white supremacist.
I may be misinterpreting him for sure! That's part of why I asked.
Far-eastern countries like China/Japan/Korea and honor-based cultures like the Middle East tend to be much more shame-based. It's not unheard of in America to go to prison, do their time, get out, and start a huge company (IBM, for one). Or to go bankrupt 4 times, sexually assault women, have this all highlighted on national TV, and still end up president. This would be unheard of in a culture like China, where you basically need a squeaky-clean public image (what you do in private is a different story) to get anywhere.
You mean Bill Clinton? I think you're misinterpreting societal shame. Far east countries, as you call them, do have heavy shame and saving-face issues, but society as a whole recognizes that shame. In America, the shame is never-ending, and it's used as a weapon. It becomes less about a societal tool to punish bad behavior, than as a sick and twisted mechanism for one person, totally unrelated, to exact some harmful retribution.
My other point is that when it's just one person, totally unrelated, trying to exact some harmful retribution on a person, that's not shame, that's vengeance. Shaming requires enough of a consensus that you can convince a person, in their own head, that they're a bad person. And this is easier to do with some people than others: I remember being bullied extensively as a teenager until I was convinced that I was worthless as a person, while now, in my 30s, I'd just think "Wow, those were some really fucked up kids that I never want to see again in my life."
But in terms of actual objective consequences to these shaming episodes, in American society - they're pretty light, as long as the victim has enough inner strength to shrug it off and just find new people. Clinton and Trump both became president. Mel Gibson and John Downey Jr. are still making movies. Brendan Eich, another prominent case of an Internet shaming mob, ended up founding Brave and raising $40M via ICO. Andrew Torba got blacklisted by YC and virtually every Silicon Valley company, but Gab is the darling of the Breitbart crowd. Like I said in another comment, no matter how offensive your views, you can always find another American who shares them.
What happened with me resigning from Mozilla was something other than a shaming incident. Anyone aware of California Law, corporate governance, and Mozilla's CEO history who was paying attention should be able to figure it out.
If we didn't have a taboo around theft and unprovoked aggression, the only thing protecting us from regular muggings would be the police. I have a feeling that wouldn't work very well.
https://www.facebook.com/brenebrown/videos/1778878652127236/
(For background...she's done about 20 years of research on shame and did a couple wildly viral TED talks.)
> Downey was able to return to the big screen only after Mel Gibson [...] paid Downey's insurance bond
> [...] for which producer Joel Silver withheld 40 percent of his salary until after production wrapped as insurance against his addictive behavior. Similar clauses have become standard in his contracts since then.
He's going to carry this stigma for a looong time. If he were only a supporting actor without influential friends he wouldn't be worth the risk; he'd have been fucked.
Even when you look at Nazis you will see a lack of historical consistency : shaming Nazis was impossible in polite company until something like 1941. It was possible when the Nazis were only in a few cities and not yet even a German movement, but by the time they had grown internationally to become an important part of international socialism, they were unassailable. Granted the exact point where it became possible varies somewhat depending on where you were, but not that much. Most socialists accepted Nazi control of France, for instance, as a prelude to a reorganization into a socialist state of that country. That is a viewpoint you find defended in New York newspapers in 1941 ... and there ideas were just the same back then. Kristallnacht had happened and was widely known and reported on and reports of state "disappearances" had leaked, some were well known. But that didn't matter. What mattered, it seems, is the opening of the second front against the Soviets. It is very clear that that was were the Nazis lost their victim status (I'm not kidding, they always played the victim card. I'm even willing to say that in some cases they rightly did so. Certainly a few of their grievances were legitimate)
Likewise communism and even to a lesser extent the Soviet system was unassailable in Western press until it was very clear (mostly through the Berlin wall) that the Soviet bloc was crumbling. It was still very powerful when criticism started, but it was clearly on the way down at that point. And criticism grew stronger the weaker the Soviets became. Coincidence ? I think no.
So I submit there is one line that I truly feel is a line in who we shame. It's the only line that I've consistently seen applied :
We shame the weak.
Those that either can't, or to a lesser extent those that for some reason won't, defend themselves against the shaming.
If there is a serious risk of getting attacked in the street, we don't shame ideas. That was true of Nazi ideas in the runup and early phases of WWII, and is equally true today.
We can name plenty of ideologies that have extremely unacceptable ideas and components. Ideologies that have historically or even contemporarily committed genocide and may even deny doing so (a certain EuroAsian state comes to mind), and yet ... no shaming. Religions and ideologies with laws that are racist, sexist, and frankly disgusting are a dime a dozen, and all the big ones of course have this. And let's just shut up about the role models of ideologies. Jesus may not have killed and even prevented others to lift a sword on his behalf, but to say that this is uncommon behavior is ridiculous. There is no one else who's done so. Most religious leaders demanded the opposite: that their followers fought, commit genocide and died on their behalf. And yet very little criticism, and even that little bit is getting attacked.
So, reality, sadly, is very simple: we shame, and otherwise victimize, the weak. This is the very same impulse that causes racists to attack others.
Did 1941's New York really know what the Nazis were doing? I just don't know enough about history to know what was known.
This is a deeply ignorant question. There are plenty of pleasant little sub-cultures in those more progressive parts of the world which for decades-- if not centuries in some places-- have codified their own approaches to this problem (regardless of whether it comes from DNA or learned experience). I'm not saying they are perfect in any way. But the problems these sub-cultures deal with are several levels above the beginner's question of what to do if some people happen to get pleasure out of inflicting pain.
The Boston protests (for example) were purely about Free Speech: http://i.imgur.com/abhmjW8.png
Yet thousands of protesters show up, shout slurs and weave their own narratives that the protesters are nazis which then justify their directed hate.
It's disgusting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskThe_Donald/comments/6utjoi/anyon...
It's just mobs justifying hate, its the most ironic shit I've ever seen. It just fills me with more discontent and distrust of the majority and the mob.
Idiocracy is getting less and less satirical by the day.
I'm disgusted with the lack of critical thinking it represents.
John 8:7 - "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."