Yeah, the article is a bit over the top here. I do think shame is at it's worst when coupled with real violence or intense threat of violence.
> In fact, that's why exposed crooked politicians and companies keep getting away with things: shaming them just slow them down, not stop them.
This is critical to the whole article: if a person is shameless and/or their community is ok with the "shameful" behaviour, then really there isn't any effect at all.
I question whether it's genuinely over the top or if it's just a worrying symptom of society's increasing trend, on both sides of the aisle and every political corner, to equate speech with violence.
While I take your point, I think you might be over stating it a little: I would much rather take a punch in the face than lose my job for instance. A lot of men routinely get into fights over social status, I think their preference is pretty clear there.
>I have been humiliated many times in my life, some times in life changing ways, and I'd still take it over real violence.
I would too, in most cases; that said, I'd rather get a literal slap on the wrist or even the face than be humiliated in an online sphere, especially as related to my real identity. It's not the case that shame and humiliation always trumps physical violence in my order of preferences, and I'd be surprised if it's not the same for you too. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a cute rhyme, but utterly disintegrates when one starts to consider degree and the importance of social standing in public daily life (from getting a job to the looks you get at Walmart).
Nah, any of the substantive physical violence I have suffered easily trumps the worst humiliation I've felt over the stupidest things I've expressed online. I'd rather be canceled than get knocked out any day of the week.
>Shame is powerful and necessary, but it's very much a first step punishment, a warning, not an ultimate one.
It's the dog growling to get you to back off so it doesn't have to bite you.
>This mismatch between perceived intensity and the real thing is seen everywhere these days: insecurity, activism, political projections.
This derives from the zero-tolerance policies in school. No bullying allowed and so people, millenials, never quite earnt or understand this.
>It seems we solved so many important problems that humans have reset their baseline of comfort to confuse unease with danger.
A common thing for humans. Right now it's like 18c outside and im freezing. But in the spring when it's 15c its soooo warm.
the same goes for pleasure and pain. If you're always comfortable, you end up needing more and more pleasure heading to an extreme just to be happy. Societies even have this problem, when pleasure becomes imbalanced you end up throwing people to the lions.
Yes, Reddit's "watchpeopledie" forum was very instructive in just how damn good we have it in the West, and how precious it is and how much we need to protect our society from enemies foreign and domestic.
On /r/watchpeopledie I saw a 16-year-old girl doused with gasoline and burned to death because she was accused of being with a gang that killed a local taxi driver in a mugging, a group of four young men bashed with rocks and set on fire because they were accused of stealing a laptop, and elementary-school children going around an abandoned building murdering tied up men in some kind of ISIS propaganda video. I've seen a woman in Iran hanged by being pulled up from a crane, starting to kick her feet slowly and then wildly and then stopping. A guy in Mexico having his heart cut out while he was alive in front of his son, and then the same happening to the son. A group of women stripped naked and shot in the head in some kind of cartel video. A guy told that he was being released and to turn away, and then used for target practice with some kind of heavy artillery - he essentially exploded when they hit him.
All that shit is out there, and most Americans who have never seen anything worse than a mean Tweet have no idea about it.
There's something very chilling about watching a video of a mob stoning someone to death and noticing some of the people cheering and filming are using iphones. It seems like a horrifying anachronism but it's just how things are now.
While there are experiences worse than death, there are instances where shaming leads to suicide. So at least in those instances the person apparently prefers death to shame. It’s likely that we all experience mental pain differently so the balance between the pain caused by shame and violence may vary by individual and culture. Also, the source of shame in one culture may elicit a “meh” response and in another drive someone to suicide.
> Tressie McMillan Cottom recently argued in The New York Times that shaming is a corrective to a white-dominated culture: against the backdrop of a more open and diverse public square, “shame is evidence of a democratic society operating democratically.”
...except that when the person being shamed is from your camp.
It is anti-democractic and bypasses justice mechanisms we worked hundreds of years to put in place. It is almost irrelevant what the group of people who experience disdain towards themselves think. Because subconsciously they are engaging in status-seeking behavior, which playing the victim card is very useful for.
Sorry, I fail to see how reputational injury is anti-democratic. It is the people who decide if various attributes make a virtuous reputation. If anything, it can be more democratic than the law (with all of the unfortunate consequences that entails... The reason we bind force with rule of law and not rule of democracy directly is that we know the danger of the mob).
The issue I see with that there seems to be no middle ground. An issue is either largely unnoticed or it turns into crusade affecting everyone involved and leaving no winning move for participants in {dramaName}.
Welcome to the internet, that’s the price of admission. Don’t want to play? Don’t chase status and unless you’re really awful you won’t be incorrectly dragged online. If someone does something fucked to they need to be accountable for that. That takes actually putting in work and being repentant. There’s no faking that.
Just on the surface of it, it’s hard to believe that a Twitter account called “Libs of TikTok” is in fact engaging in well-intentioned discourse about medical treatment for minors.
> “Trump never knowingly mocked a disabled reporter.”
Is “knowingly” the operative word here? Because there’s a video of him doing just that.
I mean I have to be honest here and there is a pretty good chance Trump isn't smart enough to realize the mannerisms he is mocking are in any way related to common disabilities.
I'm not sure what your point is actually? Are you reading my comment as being somehow pro-Trump?
If so and you do not have some disability that makes picking up on sarcasm or humor difficult then please read again as I suppose you may be distracted or going through some problem.
If you do have a disability that makes picking up on sarcasm etc. difficult then no, it was insulting to Trump because it goes back to the common observation that Trump is intellectually deficient, thus if someone is defending Trump they are now left with two problems, I have apparently sided with them and said well of course Trump is stupid so he won't be able to understand that he is mocking a disabled person.
This would be problematic for a defender of Trump because if they admit he is stupid this puts their hero in a bad light, but if they argue he is not too stupid to realize the person they are mocking is disabled then we are back to he knowingly mocked a disabled person.
By pretending to excuse Trump by reason of stupidity I establish the rhetorical point that the mannerisms that were being mocked are commonly understood as being evidences of disability. This rhetorical point once established makes it difficult to argue that he didn't know, they need now to argue:
1. that the mannerisms are not commonly understood as being disabled.
2. that he did not know the person was disabled and
3. because of 1 his not knowing is not evidence of stupidity.
all that would be tall order, and thus someone who was in the bag for Trump would probably prefer not to do any of them.
I believed that for years. It just sounds like the sort of oafish, lame humor I'd expect from him.
But finally, I looked more deeply into it. My impression from that dive is that he was not specifically mocking this reporter's disability. Rather, it's more of a theatrical way of saying "Duh!", which he has used on many prior occasions, and even occasionally when referring to himself. (And of course, "duh" comes from a meaning of mocking people with low IQs or other similar disabilities. You could argue that it's wrong, but it's not particularly unusual in American discourse.)
It's somewhat open to interpretation, but I think a reasonable person could come down either way.
Generally, children don't have gender affirming surgery at all, as there really isn't any need. Mostly, you tend to have puberty blockers at best, something that's relatively benign and reversible, and from what I'm aware its not given out lightly just for shits and giggles. It's life altering, but in a good way generally.
So it took me a fair bit of time to actually read what children's boston rather than just accept what you said as true, minutes of my life I won't get back. Enjoy!
>>The center currently offers vaginoplasty, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, chest reconstruction, breast augmentation, facial harmonization and other gender affirmation surgeries to eligible patients. We are guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards and other criteria to surgically treat people who are stable in their gender identity and have documentation of persistent gender dysphoria. You do not need to be a GeMS patient to have surgery at the center. All genital surgeries are only performed on patients age 18 and older.
Libs of TikTok is going to get more people killed by stirring up the latent hate among transphobes. This is the same type of stunt that lead to abortion clinic bombings. Don’t spread their hate. If you got a criticism you would be wise to find a source that isn’t so despicable.
Oh boy you’ve drank all the koolaid. That is not the default treatment, you have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re letting propagandists wind you up.
While some may claim the resulting infertility condition that impacts young people given puberty blockers is the price worth being paid due to trans suicide rates, it is worth stating: it is not benign and it is not reversible.
The treatment side effects are permanent and are life altering for most people. Imagine a person finding out at 26 that they are infertile - it is a life impacting event that causes mental anguish, divorce in some cases, and even suicide.
I think you are arguing against something I didn't state - or maybe you replied to the wrong comment. My statement, backed by papers, is that puberty blockers given to older children and younger teens has a negative impact on fertility that needs to be known.
I make literally no statement on what is worst (trans suicides are a thing, and infertility is a thing also). Its a tough place for parents to be to help their children.
What does not help anyone - including yourself - is making up statements that you then get hot and yell about. If you scream about dog whistles / terfs / transphobes it has the impact of shutting down conversation.
Coincidentally, another HN story today (https://www.wired.com/story/i-uncovered-an-army-of-fake-men-...) featured a brief quote from a company spokesperson Justine S... who, I assume, was the person of that name who had her own 15 minutes of infamy a few years ago. So the good news is that stories like this can eventually fade away.
Of course this is laundered through Yale, the center of the cyclone of struggle-session insanity.
Framing this around shame is of course misplaced, it is about threat: threat to one's comfortable use of the internet, one's social network, one's livelihood, and you'd love to believe these maniacs would stop there, wouldn't you. Did they ever before?
Shame is used as a weapon and a warning. It isn't that those lucky souls this doesn't work on are shameless: rather, they are protected from mob violence against their character wreaking havoc on their livelihood.
Authors exist in an ecosystem where they make money based on the popularity of their work. It's an ecosystem more sensitive to public perception of the author than others.
But that means an author simply has to be more protective of their private lives than other professions. There's a reason so many in history have written under pseudonyms; the effect of losing your audience if the public discovers you don't fit the mould is not new.
But there's a disproportionate power wielded by the "cancellers" that isn't really dependent on the public's willingness to buy the books. Note that the cancellers never go on a big publicity campaign to get people to stop buying a certain book - they target the gatekeepers in the system, like the publishers, who are staffed by Oberlin and Wesleyan alumnae who don't want to be ostracized as "bigots" at their college reunion. With the founder gone, Amazon is also a suitable target because the management of Amazon got their jobs through currying favor with their seniors rather than the approval of customers like Bezos did.
Yes, that has not changed. It isn't like authors sold their books door-to-door in the past. If anything, self-publishing is easier now than in the past.
... But authors who have tried that have also found the public isn't receptive.
Yes, the cancellers know that self-publishing is not the solution, and the authors know that going that route is the road to perdition and permanent unpersoning. The authors know that they have to write a long mea culpa and promise to "do better" and "be an ally" and funnel a good chunk of money into the canceller ecosystem with sensitivity readers and empowering diverse voices.
Interestingly enough, I can't think of J.K. Rowling doing any of that, and her net worth is like a billion.
Nor Orson Scott Card (net worth $10 million).
In fact I'm kinda racking my brain thinking of any examples of someone doing this recently...
I'm starting to think the problem isn't the author's personal positions, it's that they're writing books few people want to read in the first place and the public finding out they're also not the sort of folks the public wants to support financially does their sales no favors on top of that.
Of course JK Rowling doesn't have to apologize, her net worth is like a billion. Cancellation is most public when targeting extremely famous people but it's the less famous people who actually get harmed: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/books/amelie-wen-zhao-blo...
Looks like she tripped over the American assumption that the flavor of slavery experienced in their territory was the only type.
... But, she was planning to sell to an American audience so that matters. If anything, it sounds like the feedback gave her a chance to tighten her fiction to be aligned better to the target market. That's a win for her and her publisher.
Depends on one's goals. Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are formulaic as hell and rack incredible amounts of money.
Anybody who just wants to write can drop their thoughts on a blog and call it a day. People who want to make money writing have to account for shaping the message to part people from their dollars.
Fifty Shades of Grey started as Twilight fanfiction. In that form it couldn't be marketed. A few name changes and some reframing and it has sold over 150 million copies.
Super PAC's such as Share Blue (now known as The American Independent) weaponized online shaming through troll farms. David Brock of Share Blue had a confidential memo leaked that outlined how weak Democratic support was in online comment sections, hence - they used troll farms to counter negative comments towards them. It annoyed Share Blue how Conservative comments were mostly grass-root.
A similar Super PAC for online comment trolling was known as CTR (Correct the Record) - backed by Hillary Clinton. So if you posted a negative comment about her online back before the election, you would often see these blank troll accounts leave you a friendly little reply.
It's hard to talk about this in tech because we, as a blob, enable it. It helps our companies growth and bottom line.
Until such behaviors are made too expensive, illegal, or difficult, both parties and well enough funded organizations and individuals (see reputation management agencies) will all engage in this astro turfing. If you don’t like it when the other political party does but you don’t care when it’s your own political party, there are words for that.
Awesome. Let’s make that illegal. You on board? Will you still be on board when McConnell obstructs that or does it only bother you when democrats do this? Because I’m bothered by it when anyone does it.
Quite a provocative take you have here, given that the most well-documented scandal of the 2016 election was astroturfing by Russian troll farms in collusion with the GOP.
If that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. Respect for authority must be maintained. If current authorities can’t keep up then they should retire to save face. When they don’t they’ll get clowned.
I've always been confused of how the word "shame" and "guilt" should be used. Also "humiliation" and "embarrassment"
I thought shame was more associated to one's future "self". Guilt on the other hand is more associated to one's present "self".
So when you don't live up to the expectations of your future self, you are ashamed. When you don't live up to your current expectations, you are found guilty.
There's various examples in this article that seems to use shame as the catch-all. It feels like many of these online examples are rather guilt than shame?
Humiliation is typically an underserved feeling. Shame on the other hand is internalized and thus deserved.
LOL. Yale is five years behind the trend as usual. Online shame, and shame of all forms, is in fact now in precipitous decline, where people proudly or at least unashamedly do things that would have once invited shame (scream at retail employees, exhibit themselves nude on the Internet, default on their debts, etc.)
I feel one disadvantage of globalization ("de-localization", "de-tribalization"?) is that the (potential) positive effect of shame - putting attention on and collectively (de)valuing antisocial acts and individuals (but not outright expelling them) doesn't work anymore. Abusers, scammers, grifters can just move on to the next community that knows nothing about their behavior, and restart the cycle of abuse without consequence. And the scalability of such schemes, and the lack of granularity and affordability of the legal system prevents any negative consequences for the perpetrators "in the small".
If someone doesn't want to be shamed online, then simply don't go online. It's a very simple solution. Being online is consenting to the risk of being shamed.
For some people it's an easy choice to make: the benefits clearly out weight the risk, or vice-versa. For whatever reason, some people decide that they wish to be online, but don't agree with the risk of being shamed - a fool's errand. It's easier to move the world than to reshape the social order. Simply wishing for something to be true is the product of an immature mind.
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[ 371 ms ] story [ 2610 ms ] threadPeople seeing it that way should spend some time with me in 3rd world countries to reset their value counter. I'll show you punishment.
Shame is powerful and necessary, but it's very much a first step punishment, a warning, not an ultimate one.
This mismatch between perceived intensity and the real thing is seen everywhere these days: insecurity, activism, political projections.
It seems we solved so many important problems that humans have reset their baseline of comfort to confuse unease with danger.
Loosing your job, your social status or your tweeter audience is not the greatest suffering you can endure.
In fact, that's why exposed crooked politicians and companies keep getting away with things: shaming them just slow them down, not stop them.
Yeah, the article is a bit over the top here. I do think shame is at it's worst when coupled with real violence or intense threat of violence.
> In fact, that's why exposed crooked politicians and companies keep getting away with things: shaming them just slow them down, not stop them.
This is critical to the whole article: if a person is shameless and/or their community is ok with the "shameful" behaviour, then really there isn't any effect at all.
I question whether it's genuinely over the top or if it's just a worrying symptom of society's increasing trend, on both sides of the aisle and every political corner, to equate speech with violence.
I would too, in most cases; that said, I'd rather get a literal slap on the wrist or even the face than be humiliated in an online sphere, especially as related to my real identity. It's not the case that shame and humiliation always trumps physical violence in my order of preferences, and I'd be surprised if it's not the same for you too. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a cute rhyme, but utterly disintegrates when one starts to consider degree and the importance of social standing in public daily life (from getting a job to the looks you get at Walmart).
It's the dog growling to get you to back off so it doesn't have to bite you.
>This mismatch between perceived intensity and the real thing is seen everywhere these days: insecurity, activism, political projections.
This derives from the zero-tolerance policies in school. No bullying allowed and so people, millenials, never quite earnt or understand this.
>It seems we solved so many important problems that humans have reset their baseline of comfort to confuse unease with danger.
A common thing for humans. Right now it's like 18c outside and im freezing. But in the spring when it's 15c its soooo warm.
the same goes for pleasure and pain. If you're always comfortable, you end up needing more and more pleasure heading to an extreme just to be happy. Societies even have this problem, when pleasure becomes imbalanced you end up throwing people to the lions.
On /r/watchpeopledie I saw a 16-year-old girl doused with gasoline and burned to death because she was accused of being with a gang that killed a local taxi driver in a mugging, a group of four young men bashed with rocks and set on fire because they were accused of stealing a laptop, and elementary-school children going around an abandoned building murdering tied up men in some kind of ISIS propaganda video. I've seen a woman in Iran hanged by being pulled up from a crane, starting to kick her feet slowly and then wildly and then stopping. A guy in Mexico having his heart cut out while he was alive in front of his son, and then the same happening to the son. A group of women stripped naked and shot in the head in some kind of cartel video. A guy told that he was being released and to turn away, and then used for target practice with some kind of heavy artillery - he essentially exploded when they hit him.
All that shit is out there, and most Americans who have never seen anything worse than a mean Tweet have no idea about it.
...except that when the person being shamed is from your camp.
The person being shamed is almost always from your own camp. That's the only time shaming has any effect.
> “Trump never knowingly mocked a disabled reporter.”
Is “knowingly” the operative word here? Because there’s a video of him doing just that.
Ah yes, ignorance as a defence. Apropos for Trump.
Anyone interested in the truth can read this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/...
The video of Trump mocking the disabled reporter is right there in the article. For anyone interested in the truth.
My point stands that the goalposts were moved in a doubling down on trump. His personality cult is impressive.
If so and you do not have some disability that makes picking up on sarcasm or humor difficult then please read again as I suppose you may be distracted or going through some problem.
If you do have a disability that makes picking up on sarcasm etc. difficult then no, it was insulting to Trump because it goes back to the common observation that Trump is intellectually deficient, thus if someone is defending Trump they are now left with two problems, I have apparently sided with them and said well of course Trump is stupid so he won't be able to understand that he is mocking a disabled person.
This would be problematic for a defender of Trump because if they admit he is stupid this puts their hero in a bad light, but if they argue he is not too stupid to realize the person they are mocking is disabled then we are back to he knowingly mocked a disabled person.
By pretending to excuse Trump by reason of stupidity I establish the rhetorical point that the mannerisms that were being mocked are commonly understood as being evidences of disability. This rhetorical point once established makes it difficult to argue that he didn't know, they need now to argue:
1. that the mannerisms are not commonly understood as being disabled.
2. that he did not know the person was disabled and
3. because of 1 his not knowing is not evidence of stupidity.
all that would be tall order, and thus someone who was in the bag for Trump would probably prefer not to do any of them.
I believed that for years. It just sounds like the sort of oafish, lame humor I'd expect from him.
But finally, I looked more deeply into it. My impression from that dive is that he was not specifically mocking this reporter's disability. Rather, it's more of a theatrical way of saying "Duh!", which he has used on many prior occasions, and even occasionally when referring to himself. (And of course, "duh" comes from a meaning of mocking people with low IQs or other similar disabilities. You could argue that it's wrong, but it's not particularly unusual in American discourse.)
It's somewhat open to interpretation, but I think a reasonable person could come down either way.
So it took me a fair bit of time to actually read what children's boston rather than just accept what you said as true, minutes of my life I won't get back. Enjoy!
>>The center currently offers vaginoplasty, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, chest reconstruction, breast augmentation, facial harmonization and other gender affirmation surgeries to eligible patients. We are guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards and other criteria to surgically treat people who are stable in their gender identity and have documentation of persistent gender dysphoria. You do not need to be a GeMS patient to have surgery at the center. All genital surgeries are only performed on patients age 18 and older.
https://www.them.us/story/libs-of-tik-tok-twitter-facebook-i...
From Nature - affects fertility in both boys and girls treated in early adolescence: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41585-020-0372-2
From Lancet - importance of informed fertility counseling for trans young people: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...
While some may claim the resulting infertility condition that impacts young people given puberty blockers is the price worth being paid due to trans suicide rates, it is worth stating: it is not benign and it is not reversible.
The treatment side effects are permanent and are life altering for most people. Imagine a person finding out at 26 that they are infertile - it is a life impacting event that causes mental anguish, divorce in some cases, and even suicide.
Lets trust the science here.
I make literally no statement on what is worst (trans suicides are a thing, and infertility is a thing also). Its a tough place for parents to be to help their children.
What does not help anyone - including yourself - is making up statements that you then get hot and yell about. If you scream about dog whistles / terfs / transphobes it has the impact of shutting down conversation.
Lets be better and lets trust the science.
Framing this around shame is of course misplaced, it is about threat: threat to one's comfortable use of the internet, one's social network, one's livelihood, and you'd love to believe these maniacs would stop there, wouldn't you. Did they ever before?
Shame is used as a weapon and a warning. It isn't that those lucky souls this doesn't work on are shameless: rather, they are protected from mob violence against their character wreaking havoc on their livelihood.
Young Adult authors have no such protection.
But that means an author simply has to be more protective of their private lives than other professions. There's a reason so many in history have written under pseudonyms; the effect of losing your audience if the public discovers you don't fit the mould is not new.
... But authors who have tried that have also found the public isn't receptive.
Nor Orson Scott Card (net worth $10 million).
In fact I'm kinda racking my brain thinking of any examples of someone doing this recently...
I'm starting to think the problem isn't the author's personal positions, it's that they're writing books few people want to read in the first place and the public finding out they're also not the sort of folks the public wants to support financially does their sales no favors on top of that.
... But, she was planning to sell to an American audience so that matters. If anything, it sounds like the feedback gave her a chance to tighten her fiction to be aligned better to the target market. That's a win for her and her publisher.
Anybody who just wants to write can drop their thoughts on a blog and call it a day. People who want to make money writing have to account for shaping the message to part people from their dollars.
Fifty Shades of Grey started as Twilight fanfiction. In that form it couldn't be marketed. A few name changes and some reframing and it has sold over 150 million copies.
A similar Super PAC for online comment trolling was known as CTR (Correct the Record) - backed by Hillary Clinton. So if you posted a negative comment about her online back before the election, you would often see these blank troll accounts leave you a friendly little reply.
It's hard to talk about this in tech because we, as a blob, enable it. It helps our companies growth and bottom line.
Dark truth.
Until such behaviors are made too expensive, illegal, or difficult, both parties and well enough funded organizations and individuals (see reputation management agencies) will all engage in this astro turfing. If you don’t like it when the other political party does but you don’t care when it’s your own political party, there are words for that.
For those interested in how Share Blue spun up some of it's troll farming, here is a great write-up:
https://shareblueastroturf.netlify.app/
I thought shame was more associated to one's future "self". Guilt on the other hand is more associated to one's present "self".
So when you don't live up to the expectations of your future self, you are ashamed. When you don't live up to your current expectations, you are found guilty.
There's various examples in this article that seems to use shame as the catch-all. It feels like many of these online examples are rather guilt than shame?
Humiliation is typically an underserved feeling. Shame on the other hand is internalized and thus deserved.
Shame = I am bad
Guilt = I did something bad
Humiliation = I didn't deserve that
Embarrassment = I deserved that
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6143989/
Oh look, I don't have to worry about this crap any more. Yay :)
For some people it's an easy choice to make: the benefits clearly out weight the risk, or vice-versa. For whatever reason, some people decide that they wish to be online, but don't agree with the risk of being shamed - a fool's errand. It's easier to move the world than to reshape the social order. Simply wishing for something to be true is the product of an immature mind.