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The social stigma of such youthful indiscretions will be reduced once everyone's are documented online.
by marze 16y ago
The social stigma of such youthful indiscretions will be reduced once everyone's are documented online.
- ibejoeb 16y agoDoes it follow, then, that when we learn of all of the egregious, unsavory things the collective "we" all have done, those acts will become less so? For example, most have used ugly words at one point or another, and we can assume this. However, we don't know the precise language, context, or intention. Once those attributes are all recorded and accessible, though, will the ability to aggregate and expose them give rise to significant new social norms? Will we all speak like 4chan is written? :)
- salemh 16y agoOne would hope..or rather, the next generations "back lash" will be a more puritanical response, as most generation swings hit a full 180 from the previous.
- ibejoeb 16y agoI don't know if I hope so. There are certain behaviors for which one ought to be embarrassed and that we don't want to encourage. Shame on you for groping the girl at the bar; for that you got punched in the eye and consider it a lesson learned. But if we come to realize that this type of thing happens frequently because it's all over youtube, and it's all real, I'm not sure it's a good idea to accept it. On the other hand, you're probably right that there are some benefits in accelerating the acceptance of oddly taboo things. I'll take my privacy, though.
- philwelch 16y agoIt's hard to talk about this all in full generality, because it varies from taboo to taboo. There are a lot of taboos (homosexuality, polyamory, kinky sex) which thrive under the social consensus of "what people do in private is their own business", and once there is no privacy anymore, hopefully people will stop caring entirely about those matters. Other taboos (adultery, racism, displays of anger) won't be as easily accepted.
- gojomo 16y agoWe might hope. But hypocrisy is as old as the hills. We hold people to unrealistic standards; they pretend to meet them. And there will always be some subset of people who manage to minimize their paper trail -- by never creating it, or destroying it afterwards. (Notably, in Europe, privacy laws seem to be evolving to require sites to take such material down.) We may wind up giving the most-skillful hypocrites and those with the pull to cover up their private lives even more power over the rest of us.
- philwelch 16y agoOr maybe the people who don't have any secrets to hide will be seen as weird and vaguely suspicious, and hence less trustworthy when they try and tell the majority of people to stop doing what the majority of people do all the time.
- shadowfox 16y agoI dont know how likely that is. As a group humans seem to value idealism and places that on a pedestal while individually failing to meet those standards.
- philwelch 16y agoAs a group, humans also seem all too eager tear anyone down who seems to achieve perfection. Though this is worse in some cultures, it's present to some extent everywhere.
- gaius 16y agoIf you're in your 30s or 40s now, and a geek, then there's a high probability that your youthful discretions are documented online but your peers aren't because they simply weren't online in the the 80s and 90s. What you say may be true, but it only applies to people who are teenagers right now.