28 ms·

Shame Storm

232 points by joebeetee 8y ago

api 8y ago
I had the thought the other day that what we're seeing here in the West is like an informal version of China's social credit system, and perhaps that something like China's social credit system is almost unavoidable when everything is hyper-connected like this. This is what humans do, and when you connect them all at scale they do it at scale. The specific mores and taboos don't matter. People get hung up on this being a "liberal" thing, but go to a very conservative part of the Borg hive mind and you get the same behavior. Criticize Donald Trump on Reddit's conservative forums and you are instantly brigaded, shamed, or banned.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  China's "human flesh search engine", with its attendant doxing and shaming culture, is perhaps even more famous than its social credit system - in fact, one of the points of the latter is to avoid the excesses of the former. There's nothing new here.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    From what I understand, they're closer to old anonymous, doing things because it's interesting. Alongside the bad, there's plenty of stories out there of various HFSE reuniting long-lost loved ones, stopping animal abusers, etc.
- matt4077 8y ago
  The mere existence of the emotion of „shame“ shows that this mechanism is old, probably older than Homo sapiens. It’s simply a way to get people to behave in a society, without invoking the heavier tools such as the law.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Conversely, that the mechanism is so old indicates that it evolved to work in groups of the size humans (or their ape ancestors even) formed back when it first appeared - i.e. dozens, not millions. It's not a given that the way we scale it is optimal, or even good.
    - api 8y ago
      That's sort of what bothers me. This stuff evolved to work in small tribes, not global societies. When you don't actually know the person the behavior is very different.
xbryanx 8y ago
Jon Ronson's book on this topic, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, is another insightful look at the wild world internet-fueled shaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Sham...
CydeWeys 8y ago
FYI, here's the agenda of these people: https://www.firstthings.com/about/ https://www.firstthings.com/about/ First Things is published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and educational 501(c)(3) organization. The Institute was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus and his colleagues to confront the ideology of secularism, which insists that the public square must be “naked,” and that faith has no place in shaping the public conversation or in shaping public policy. The Institute’s mission is to articulate a governing consensus that supports: * a religiously pluralistic society that defends human dignity from conception to natural death. * a democratic, constitutionally ordered form of government supported by a religiously and morally serious culture. * a vision of freedom that encourages a culture of personal and communal responsibility. * loyalty to the Western tradition that provides a basis for responsible global citizenship.
- api 8y ago
  Agendas are like you-know-whats... everyone's got one. I wouldn't say I agree with them on everything but this is definitely on the sane side as agendas go, especially these days when vast numbers of people seem to have eaten the brown acid. They also deserve a bit of credit for being pretty up front with it.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Yeah, everyone has an agenda, and I find theirs particularly noxious. You can immediately see their agenda shining through in the linked article once you know what to look for, like how they defend a man who was fired from the Atlantic for advocating for the death penalty for women who get abortions, and poo-pooed the notion that his presence might make his female coworkers very uncomfortable. I don't know about you, but if one of my coworkers were calling for people like me to get the death penalty for doing something that was legal, I too would feel uncomfortable being around them.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      So rather than debate the content of the article, you go for argumentum ad hominem instead? You should give pg's Hierarchy of Disagreement a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#/media/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#/media/File:Graham%...
alehul 8y ago
Really interesting read-- this reminds me a ton of the New Criterion, which is constantly publishing articles of a similar style [1]. It's composed in this verbose, sometimes satirical New Yorker-style of writing, and offers such a stark contrast to what's normally cited as a "politically right" source, like Fox News, which I find pretty abhorrent in quality. Thanks for linking to this; it's immensely important to learn >1 side to an issue, but with the quantity of shallow writing out there, it can often be a challenge. [1] https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/12/offense-archaeology https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/12/offense-archaeol...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  Fascinated with the concept, I subscribed to the New Criterion a year ago. I'm not right-wing by any measurement, and I didn't even know the mag was oriented that way, but the idea of a magazine with no ads, no glossy pictures, no 6th-grade reading level? Based around art and commentary? I had to try it. I like it a lot. It challenges me to be a more intelligent art consumer. It's not pumping stuff. It just wants to challenge me. I'm glad I tried it.
  - wrycoder 8y ago
    It’s a monthly review of books, art, classical music performance, the theatre, and the state of the world from the point of view of a classical liberal. There’s a refreshing lack of snark and partisan talking points. When I renewed, I gave a subscription to the local library.
tlb 8y ago
Public shaming can either become less common or more common over time. If it becomes more common, it might eventually become less damaging. Right now, because only 1000s of people have been targets, it's feasible for employers to search online and not hire people who've been shamed. A historic parallel of diminishing effect is posting identifiable pictures on the Internet. It used to be a big no-no, because when only a few people did it, you really did put yourself at additional risk from stalkers. But now enough people have personal information posted that you're just one in a large crowd. When Warhol said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, people thought they'd be celebrated for 15 minutes. But perhaps it'll be the opposite: everyone will be publicly shamed for 15 minutes.
- some_not_all 8y ago
  it'll be the opposite Why not both?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  This comment seems to woefully underimagine ways that public information can be used against you. Your public photos that are now just one in a large crowd are also subject to having your image deepfaked into revenge porn, used as a spam photo for bot account sign ups, scraped for facial recognition, found instantly by a background check seen by your employer, used to attach demographic info to your name in those shitty phone number / address aggregator sites. These are just things we know about today. Wait till your public photo is used to trick a self-driving car or biometric scanner. Or hundreds of other things that will be invented between now and forever (since your digital photos are instantly preserved and forever available). Hope no one analyzes your photo and charges you higher insurance premiums because you were holding a cigarette.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    The OP was saying that if shaming becomes common then being shamed can't hurt you relative to the general public, because most of them have also been shamed.
busterarm 8y ago
I think one of the biggest misconceptions that highly educated people have is to think that they are immune to the effects of an angry/unruly mob. As participant or as victim.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  That is because highly-intelligent people realize that some things may be true which are not palatable or acceptable to the masses, and vocalizing any of these brings on much consternation in the twitterverse, even if it's a simple rational observation
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shunned. There is much hand-wringing over the handful of people wrongly shunned, but many of the wringers give no thought at all to the victims who are forced out of their careers, families, and communities every day because the people around them refuse to consider the possibility that there is a wolf in their midst. Nieces absent from Thanksgiving while their uncle sits at the table. Talented women leaving tech while their spiteful coworkers are promoted. Should we allow abusers to hold power because there’s a shadow of a doubt that they might be innocent, thereby sending their victims to start over in a new city? Outside of the court system, shouldn’t we try to hit a 1:1 ratio of wrongful excommunications to failures to excommunicate? Or should it be 1:1,000,000 like the courts do? A million unpunished rapes for every wrongful conviction? A million women pushed out of their rightful career path for everyone one man who was wrongfully fired? When the information doesn’t exist to make perfect decisions, how do we decide who takes up the burden of our mistakes?
  - weberc2 8y ago
    > I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shamed. You're conflating "shaming" and "mobbing". Mobbing includes shaming, but it also includes violence, threats, harassment, or the facilitation thereof. We should oppose mobbing, but shaming serves a useful social function and you can be "anti-mob" and "pro-shaming"; however, the anti-mob group probably does oppose the new trend in slandering overtly innocent people and then mobbing (including shaming) them on the basis of the slander.
zozbot123 8y ago
The rule for how to deal with this sort of "shaming" is quite simple: no matter what you may have been 'accused' of, always double down and never issue anything that might even loosely resemble an apology or an admission of weakness, no matter what the costs might be. Then simply wait until the mob gets bored and moves on to the next easy target. There are very high profile examples of this working quite well, but mentioning them here would cause undue controversy, so it is best to abstain.
- weberc2 8y ago
  It's hard to make heads or tails of this without a better definition of what constitutes "doubling down" or "working quite well". The example that comes to mind is James Damore and he "doubled down" in the sense that he stood by his original statements (which made sense because his original memo was clearly and explicitly not endorsing the things he was accused of endorsing). It "worked out quite well" in that he _only_ lost his job and endured a lot of harassment, abuse, and slander (although who knows what kinds of psychological scars this treatment could have left him with), but probably didn't have a hard time finding another job and the mob did eventually (mostly) move on. So either the Damore example satisfies your definition of "working quite well" but not mine (or probably most people) or this example illustrates that your prescription doesn't always work. Perhaps it is exceptional, in that most mobs aren't marshalled by major publications nor do they conspire with the CEO of one of the most prominent companies in the world.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    Do you think that James Damore would have been better off had he apologized and groveled to the mob of shamers? Even after he lost his job? (which there was no chance of avoiding - as you say, he went against the CEO of "one of the most prominent companies in the world".) That seems rather implausible if you know how these mobs generally behave. Forbearance - of the sort you might expect from an individual who has been wronged and sought appropriate restitution - never happens, because it's not a stable equilibrium. What happens is that the "storm" eventually blows over naturally, but that's a rather different dynamic.
motohagiography 8y ago
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." -- Cardinal Richelieu
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I'm 44, and either I'm just getting old enough to notice things I never noticed when I was younger, or there's something very concerning brewing - it seems to me like a small but growing subsegment of western society is working as hard as they can to escalate civilization to an actual violent conflict. And, based on my understanding of history, the biggest losers in that conflict will be the ones pushing the hardest for it right now.
  - Zelphyr 8y ago
    I don't think there's a concerted effort to escalate. I think it's more of an emergence phenomenon. But yes, the outcome you describe is likely inevitable if something doesn't change soon.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    This "small but growing subsegment of western society" was rioting on the street on a regular basis a year or so ago and had an actual date set for a violent revolution (in the US at least). They seem to have petered out though, probably because they were deemed a domestic terrorist organization.
jeremysalwen 8y ago
Don't really think the Kavanaugh example really fits in with the rest. Sorry, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, yes, you should should be held to a much higher standard. Yelling about "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" does indeed count as "partisan bitterness".
- manfredo 8y ago
  If allegation of a decades old crime at an unspecified date, time, and location, and with no corroborating evidence is enough to block a Supreme Court nomination then we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican).
  - perfmode 8y ago
    His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.
    - manfredo 8y ago
      Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation. While I probably won't agree with Kavanaugh's court opinions, the opposition to his appointment also has negative effects. It was correlated with a drop in trust for alleged victims of sexual assault, for example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-year-of-metoo-american-opinion-has-shifted-against-victims https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-...
      - lern_too_spel 8y ago
staunch 8y ago
One of the funny and snarky things Jordan Peterson has said is that he "figured out a way to monetize social justice warriors". Which is true in some sense. He's become well funded through donations and book sales even as groups of people direct a ton of hate at him. He can afford to almost totally ignore them, because for every hater there are ten fans. Which leads to a crazy thought: If the social media mobs knew that they were going to make their victims rich, might they moderate themselves somewhat? Would they tell each other to "stop talking about X, you're just making them more money!" I think some kind of meme like this might be a strong antidote in some cases. Maybe some benevolent person or organization could give a $100k patreon seed to each victim of the mob. Maybe one solution to hateful internet mobs spewing bile is loving internet "mobs" sending donations.
- anonymouzz 8y ago
  It was the same with Trump. I'm pretty sure the outrage directed at him (even though much more justified) was a big reason for his victory.
- Zelphyr 8y ago
  I don't think they would stop. I suspect what we're seeing is that the mobs shouting very loudly is being propped up by social media and the news media (who fall all over themselves to report it because of the controversy). The reality, I think, is that the population of mobs is otherwise quite small, but because of the social media and news media megaphones they appear larger than they are. We're at a point now where everybody else is in fear of being attacked by those mobs so they quietly fund whoever they perceive to be in opposition of the mob. But at the same time, because of the media megaphones, the mobs incorrectly believe they are having success and thus the negative cycle continues.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Thus, after I shame you in an unjustified way, I also get to shame you some more for profiting off of your newfound victim status, thus proving that I was morally right about you all along, even when I wasn't. This is exactly what's already happening - coming from both sides, in fact.
bdz 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left
- tashi 8y ago
  The central story is about how a conservative author was publicly shamed by her conservative ex-boyfriend, so I'm not sure how illuminating your link will be.
warp_factor 8y ago
The issue is also that people got more and more sensitive over ybrast decades. Political correctness seems to be at a all time high. Try to say openly in the bay area that you support Trump and you will be shamed like never before. Shaming is now always in our mind and I find myself thinking more and more about redacting what I say to make it "unshameful" in order to avoid any possibility of shaming.
- vkou 8y ago
  > Political correctness seems to be at a all time high. Do you think it has something to do with all sorts of common, abhorrent behaviours that were tolerated, or encouraged in the past becoming unacceptable today? Sixty years ago, it wouldn't be out of place to tell the ------ to go to the back of the bus. Social expectations change, and there's always a few people who double down, dig in, and drag their heels, and insist that everyone around them is being too fucking sensitive.
- beat 8y ago
  I don't think that's the same thing. It does point to a basic intellectual failing of the modern right, though... conflating being judged with being censored. Nobody's taking away your right to free speech. We just reserve the right to think you're an asshole for saying it.
  - olleromam91 8y ago
    When it comes time for decision making, everyone wants to be heard, and everyone wants their opinions considered. Treating/dismissing someone as an asshole doesn't facilitate any sort of basis for discussion, debate, agreement, compromise. Then, when the ignored and dismissed get so fed up that they are boisterous and riotous, and their opponents still don't acknowledge or address their voice...what is next? Answer: Violence
  - warp_factor 8y ago
    Well, this is why the country is so divided. Instead of having a debate, the new way of doing is to directly go to the conclusion that "you must be an asshole". Good Proof of openmindness... Not targeting a specific side btw, this is a trend on the left as well as on the right.
blattimwind 8y ago
Why is this dated January 2019?
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  The site seems to be for a print magazine so this article is slated to appear in the January 2019 issue.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    I wonder if this improves or harm the SEO for these articles.
yosefzeev 8y ago
An opinion that is politically fueled should not allow this form of "shaming" unless we want to throw free speech out the window. Our small church was "Targeted" because I gave some advice to a gay woman who asked for it about her kids. She then tried to wreck our lives over the asked for advice. You can read the account here: https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-Western-Kentucky https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-We... Others got on the "Band wagon" at different intervals. Whatever the justification is for such behavior, ultimately there is no justification.
hopefulengineer 8y ago
progressives have taken us back in time to the days of the inquisition where heretics must be removed from society. These beliefs have absolutely taken on a religious fervor James watson, the man who discovered DNA structure, has been excommunicated for saying intelligence could be genetic and that would ruin the equality movement so he had to be removed It reminds me of galileo and his imprisonment related to heliocentrism "and yet it moves" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Wats... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves
- sethrin 8y ago
  You should read more about Gallileo. He was wrong in many ways, and it's entirely likely that he was punished for his tendency to be a jerk as much as anything else. Actually, the analogy isn't half bad, come to think... http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    It's not good that people who come up with important new scientific theories should be forced to recant if they're jerks. Seriously, the progress of civilization depends on unreasonable men. Galileo's ideas about planetary motion weren't perfect but they were the seeds of our present understanding of planetary motion. And really he was persecuted more for saying that the planets were mutable with weather and so forth rather than perfect and eternal than he was for the whole heleocentrism thing. And he was perfectly right about that last bit.
    - sethrin 8y ago
      That's really not a very accurate description of events, in any particular. In addition to the linked article, you may want to read Dolnick's The Clockwork Universe.
- 8y ago
sethrin 8y ago
I think that the actual issue is the collective desire for punishment, and our inability to forgive others. From what I can see, forgiveness is something that we should strive to achieve as soon as possible after an offense. It's far too easy to hold people in public contempt, or prison, far longer than their just deserts.
- overgard 8y ago
  I think forgiveness assumes that most of these “righteous“ crusaders are actually personally angry though, which is rarely the case. It’s frequently just virtue signalling in a way that sociopathically ignores that a real human beings’ reputation is at stake and the massive consequences of that.
  - sethrin 8y ago
    I'm sorry, I'm not sure how you could know that, or why it would be a precondition to forgiveness. Assuming that large numbers of people are dishonest and sociopathic may not be incorrect, but acting as if that were true seems pretty misguided. The problem of forgiveness is forgiving atrocity. Yeshua bar Youssif suggested that one should "turn the other cheek," that is, not just to immediately forgive the offense, but to immediately give the perpetrator the opportunity to commit the same offense again. The application of this precept to persons such as Robert Bowers is a sickening thought -- clearly we must not condone atrocity in the name of forgiveness. Yet we must come in time to forgive, and indeed, sooner than our wont. The matter is a frequent and weighty concern for me; I don't have any answers.
BryantD 8y ago
I have a pretty simple algorithm for articles about the dangers of public shaming. If they fail to catalog GamerGate and the online shaming of Zoe Quinn as an example of the problem, they are probably not a balanced look at the phenomenon. I find Justine Sacco's case is a reasonable metric for the other half of the equation.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > If they fail to catalog GamerGate and the online shaming of Zoe Quinn as an example of the problem One word: /v/ So yes, the online shaming of Zoe Quinn is a crystal-clear example of the problem we're dealing with here! And this fact alone (though a seldom-acknowledged fact) actually explains much of how a lot of the "censorship" that fed the GG controversy originally came about.
- AcerbicZero 8y ago
  My understanding of the GG drama was that it started fairly unsavory, but rapidly became about something entirely unrelated to Zoe and her relationships. The reaction from the gaming media organizations being accused of serious (if video games can be serious) lapses of journalistic integrity, complete with multiple examples of it just poured fuel onto the fire. After that, I stopped following it, but it does seem that more gaming media organizations put effort into disclosing conflicts, so perhaps some good came out of it in the end.
  - BryantD 8y ago
    Agree in part, disagree in part -- but nonetheless it's a pretty significant episode of public shaming, and I have a hard time imagining a really high quality article about the subject that doesn't cite it.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    Funny, how the misogynistic mob finds a defender here, seeing the good within the hate. Meanwhile, the dozens of incidents cited of sexists and racists rarely get more than a "I, too, believe this is the end of free speech".
matt4077 8y ago
So anything concerning, for example, racism or sexism in Silicon Valley is flagged to hell as too „political“, but this is not? It‘s already triggering comments comparing „progressives“ to the inquisition, just in case anyone thinks this is just neutral griping about the death of free speech, or whatever.
jerf 8y ago
As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern social media encourages cheap virtue signalling by its nature (if nothing else, because there isn't really a way to demonstrate an expensive commitment to anything, everything is cheap words). So, as an interesting constructive exercise rather than just bemoaning the situation, how could a social system be engineered in a way that it might address the staggering ease with which this sort of shame storm arises, feeds itself, and flings itself against individuals? You can either start from an existing system and try to tame it, or start from scratch. It's worth thinking about both because it's fun, and because the people who may actually someday fix it may well be here.
- all2 8y ago
  One does not simply 'engineer' a moral foundation. While the law of the land hints at what the morality of a people is, the people themselves are responsible for their behavior. While systems can amplify or dampen certain behaviors, they cannot, without brutal authoritarianism, enforce behavior.
  - jerf 8y ago
    "While systems can amplify or dampen certain behaviors" That is the topic I'm opening, yes. We're clearly amplifying it right now. How can that be changed?
    - all2 8y ago
      HN lacks some features that allow (and focus) conversations in a single medium. At the very least, we could take notes from this interface for social interaction: things like 1) lack of notifications, for anything, 2) lack of PMs, 3) lack of any sort of 'personalized' stream of information. We have to pick and choose what we consume, rather than being spoon fed. Coming from the other side: what allows these storms to form? I think part of the root cause is the ease of sharing information. It is very easy to re-blog/tweet/share on many platforms. In some cases (like Twitter or Facebook) a person doesn't even have to interact with the stuff they're passing on. The act is nearly passive. I think my thesis is this: things are better here (in part) because it is more difficult to interact with content and people. A partial solution could then be: add friction to things you don't want to see (or disallow them outright, like HN). Alternatively, make the stuff you want to see very easy.
ohiovr 8y ago
This is a great essay on reviling. Revilers are mentionable in the last book of the christian bible.
agentultra 8y ago
So the author of this piece appears on a panel to defend a book by an author who had published another book called, Liberal Fascism [0]. This piece is supposed to make me feel sorry for her? Well I don't fully understand the entire context of this person's story but I do know something about being publicly shamed. When I was a kid in high school I had to suffer being called a fgot every day. By every one. I had been hospitalized in an altercation and had been involved in several more. My car had been vandalized on more than one occasion. People would openly point, yell the word, and laugh until the whole crowd had joined in. It was an exercise in torture. No side eye on the train. No wondering what people were shaming me for. The police couldn't do anything about it. I used to think public shaming was a bad practice given my poor experience with it. When I heard the first stories of people using social media to shame serial offenders of the social norms of public life I thought... who are these people to judge and decide? What if that person had a reason? Do we really want to lower ourselves to this vigilante justice? However this is 2018. This world has books like, Liberal Fascism. It has platforms for people with radical opinions to gain an audience from the comfort of their living room. Instead of limiting the spread of anti-LGBTQ sentiments it has fostered them and allowed them to spread. Instead of reducing racially-charged crimes and hate speech, social media and the Internet has enabled it. On a whole new level. I think you should count yourself lucky that the people hurt by your conservative views have made you feel ashamed. You felt the discomfort of someone who doesn't fit in. Welcome to the club. How will you change now? [0] https://www.amazon.ca/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189 https://www.amazon.ca/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Pol...
- weberc2 8y ago
  I agree that public shaming can and does serve a useful function in dissuading fringe right-wing ideologies (among others); however, the whole reason we're seeing an uptick in these fringe ideologies is because public shaming has lost its potency after it was repeatedly abused (mobbing moderate liberals and conservatives for violating far-left moral tenets under the overtly false pretenses of fascism/racism/white-supremacy). Basically TL;DR, if you (like me) really want to push back against dangerous ideologies like racism, fascism, white-supremacy, etc, then you should oppose groups who try to combat moderate ideas by conflating them with the aforementioned dangerous ideologies. NOTE: The author of "Liberal Fascism" is a moderate conservative, by the way, and trying to associate him with extreme right-wing views is exactly the problem (and we can acknowledge as much without endorsing his ideas).
pmarreck 8y ago
It's almost like informal fallacies are taking over the entire Internet: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum come directly to mind. I would love to suggest that things like https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ should be mandatory teaching in the school systems of the world, but I've unfortunately seen evidence that trying to teach critical thinking only seems to work for already-intelligent people.
beasteurope 8y ago
https://www.wired.com/story/viral-call-out-culture/amp https://www.wired.com/story/viral-call-out-culture/amp It's not going to stop because it works.
ballenf 8y ago
I'd recommend people having kids give them very common names and consider giving them modifications of the last name if it's rare. It's depressing advice and a bit like paying a lifetime of insurance premiums that's likely never to be needed. Unless the concept of a search changes in the next couple decades, getting lost in a sea of similar names is the only defense against unfounded accusations. (Changing one's name after the fact doesn't work as you're required to give prior names for many jobs.)
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  When I registered for a library card as a kid, there were five other people with my exact first + last name. The doctor's office my parents used when I was an infant had to modify their policies to ask for my middle initial because there was another infant with the same first + last + birth month. Definitely recommend it. The first ten pages of Google results for my first + last show like at least 50 other people that aren't me. Only issue is that it can be difficult to use your name as an email handle - fortunately my parents were tech savvy enough to grab concat(firstName, middleInitial, lastName) as a gmail address and domain name for me.
- prepend 8y ago
  It’s pretty awesome to have a common name. There are five people in my company with my name. There are at least two in my very small city.
- CM30 8y ago
  Not just names, usernames too. People will find it much harder to dig up information on someone going by a generic sounding name like 'cat' or 'computer' compared to someone with a more unique handle. Combine that with a generic name like John Smith, and you've got someone who's basically impossible to dox.
monkeydreams 8y ago
This article, if written by someone else, might be more impactful for me. This is the story of a woman who fled half-way across the world from a Twitter-storm, but who, when confronted by a refugee who had been shot and tortured in his home country, that his suffering did not mean he had the right to seek asylum. This is a woman who admires Marine Le Pen and Trump, but is happy to seek her own asylum when a minor shit-storm goes down. But to address the articles concern - the reason we all seek mob justice is because a) it works, and it hurts, and it can ruin the lives of even the richest of us and b) we have no other buttons left. We mash the twitter/facebook/HN button because it is the last place we have any agency. Corporate interests have taken over out politics, rendering even the power of the ballot box moot since most parties appear to be in someone's pockets, the power of our consumption is dulled by decades of moribund growth, our ability to protest curtailed by an ever-present state of surveillance. This is what we have and, by god, we will keep mashing those buttons until things change.
- gowld 8y ago
  Stories like this are collected at reddit.com /r/selfawarewolves
- mcguire 8y ago
  I admit I am a little curious about what she thought about living in Australia.
  - subpixel 8y ago
    I’m sure she found some pleasure and imspiration in the news coming out of Nauru.
- subpixel 8y ago
  The author of this article is a cunning, dangerous person. She was not shamed as she would like her reader to believe - she was “outed” for her inflammatory political views and she only stayed in self-imposed exile until the current administration made those views vogue among a certain set of deplorables. Now she’s skmething if an influencer in Trump-world. Which is to say: shameless.
colinprince 8y ago
For a more gracious treatment of the subject of public shame, try listening to Monica Lewinsky [0] "[I was required to] listen to my sometimes catty, sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth; listen, deeply, deeply ashamed, to the worst version of myself" [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame
yters 8y ago
Also known as mob rule, one of the main reasons philosophers like Plato and Aristotle didn't like complete democracies.
viburnum 8y ago
Buruma deserved to get fired because he had no idea what he was doing or what his magazine's audience was.
emerged 8y ago
It's becoming increasingly clear that a fully connected graph is not the ideal form for productive human social organization.
phs318u 8y ago
A few thoughts just bubbled up while reading this. 1. Everyone is potentially a journalist. Smartphone & social media = capture & comment. 2. Everyone is potentially a celebrity. Virality = celebrity. 3. Everyone is potentially a publisher. Share, post, retweet = publish. 4. Almost no one is (cares to be) an editor. It seems to me that though the obvious impact of these is exactly what you'd expect (a permanent social shit-stain), the times they are-a-changing. Belief is no longer a matter of truthiness but almost a lifestyle/fashion choice. People are learning to tune-out whatever it is they consider fake-news. I suspect that the amplified impact of modern "shame storms" will be discounted by the levels of latent disbelief held by people. i.e. people could (soon) care less. Maybe? EDITED: fixed line-break formatting. Why do I keep falling for the same thing?
maconic 8y ago
I don't know if there is a good fix for it, but labels are a very potent weapon. In the U.S. a few decades ago, calling someone a communist sympathizer was a dangerous label. In China in the 1950s being called a rightist was a dangerous label. Today being called a racist, a pedophile, a Nazi, etc. are still dangerous labels. In this article cited the author was labeled a sociopath by an ex-boyfriend and also of being cruel ("cruelty-based view of the world"). These labels are difficult to undo because they are so easy to remember. If you live in a small village and, let's say, get labeled a derogatory term like a "slut" ... that quickly propagates until every villager accepts it as common wisdom that you are. So I do like the discussion about how to engineer a better social system, but it would require censoring label accusations until they had been proven, and this goes up against another part of the social system of supporting free speech. So I think you'd have to ban negative labels in the way that we don't legally allow hate speech (in the U.S.) despite the First Amendment because of the way it causes disproportionate and long-term harm to the victim. I don't see any other realistic solution to a problem that has existed ever since humans formed social groups and speak languages... being ostracized, exiled, or worse has been the outcome of shaming for the last 100k years. I don't see a great way to avoid it other than to just walk on eggshells and always be really nice to everybody or develop the reputation of a maverick... tough but honest and fair (like Sen. John McCain was known for). Regardless, you have to fit yourself into some admirable persona that society values to avoid shaming. If there are other people that get shamed because they don't fit into one of the socially admirable personas, perhaps the best way to address it is to expand the list of socially admirable personas.

232 points by joebeetee 8y ago

api 8y ago

I had the thought the other day that what we're seeing here in the West is like an informal version of China's social credit system, and perhaps that something like China's social credit system is almost unavoidable when everything is hyper-connected like this. This is what humans do, and when you connect them all at scale they do it at scale. The specific mores and taboos don't matter. People get hung up on this being a "liberal" thing, but go to a very conservative part of the Borg hive mind and you get the same behavior. Criticize Donald Trump on Reddit's conservative forums and you are instantly brigaded, shamed, or banned.

zozbot123 8y ago
China's "human flesh search engine", with its attendant doxing and shaming culture, is perhaps even more famous than its social credit system - in fact, one of the points of the latter is to avoid the excesses of the former. There's nothing new here.
- Izkata 8y ago
  From what I understand, they're closer to old anonymous, doing things because it's interesting. Alongside the bad, there's plenty of stories out there of various HFSE reuniting long-lost loved ones, stopping animal abusers, etc.
matt4077 8y ago
The mere existence of the emotion of „shame“ shows that this mechanism is old, probably older than Homo sapiens. It’s simply a way to get people to behave in a society, without invoking the heavier tools such as the law.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Conversely, that the mechanism is so old indicates that it evolved to work in groups of the size humans (or their ape ancestors even) formed back when it first appeared - i.e. dozens, not millions. It's not a given that the way we scale it is optimal, or even good.
  - api 8y ago
    That's sort of what bothers me. This stuff evolved to work in small tribes, not global societies. When you don't actually know the person the behavior is very different.

xbryanx 8y ago

Jon Ronson's book on this topic, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, is another insightful look at the wild world internet-fueled shaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Sham...

CydeWeys 8y ago

FYI, here's the agenda of these people: https://www.firstthings.com/about/ https://www.firstthings.com/about/ First Things is published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and educational 501(c)(3) organization. The Institute was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus and his colleagues to confront the ideology of secularism, which insists that the public square must be “naked,” and that faith has no place in shaping the public conversation or in shaping public policy. The Institute’s mission is to articulate a governing consensus that supports: * a religiously pluralistic society that defends human dignity from conception to natural death. * a democratic, constitutionally ordered form of government supported by a religiously and morally serious culture. * a vision of freedom that encourages a culture of personal and communal responsibility. * loyalty to the Western tradition that provides a basis for responsible global citizenship.

api 8y ago
Agendas are like you-know-whats... everyone's got one. I wouldn't say I agree with them on everything but this is definitely on the sane side as agendas go, especially these days when vast numbers of people seem to have eaten the brown acid. They also deserve a bit of credit for being pretty up front with it.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Yeah, everyone has an agenda, and I find theirs particularly noxious. You can immediately see their agenda shining through in the linked article once you know what to look for, like how they defend a man who was fired from the Atlantic for advocating for the death penalty for women who get abortions, and poo-pooed the notion that his presence might make his female coworkers very uncomfortable. I don't know about you, but if one of my coworkers were calling for people like me to get the death penalty for doing something that was legal, I too would feel uncomfortable being around them.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    So rather than debate the content of the article, you go for argumentum ad hominem instead? You should give pg's Hierarchy of Disagreement a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#/media/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#/media/File:Graham%...

alehul 8y ago

Really interesting read-- this reminds me a ton of the New Criterion, which is constantly publishing articles of a similar style [1]. It's composed in this verbose, sometimes satirical New Yorker-style of writing, and offers such a stark contrast to what's normally cited as a "politically right" source, like Fox News, which I find pretty abhorrent in quality. Thanks for linking to this; it's immensely important to learn >1 side to an issue, but with the quantity of shallow writing out there, it can often be a challenge. [1] https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/12/offense-archaeology https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/12/offense-archaeol...

deleted 8y ago
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DanielBMarkham 8y ago
Fascinated with the concept, I subscribed to the New Criterion a year ago. I'm not right-wing by any measurement, and I didn't even know the mag was oriented that way, but the idea of a magazine with no ads, no glossy pictures, no 6th-grade reading level? Based around art and commentary? I had to try it. I like it a lot. It challenges me to be a more intelligent art consumer. It's not pumping stuff. It just wants to challenge me. I'm glad I tried it.
- wrycoder 8y ago
  It’s a monthly review of books, art, classical music performance, the theatre, and the state of the world from the point of view of a classical liberal. There’s a refreshing lack of snark and partisan talking points. When I renewed, I gave a subscription to the local library.

tlb 8y ago

Public shaming can either become less common or more common over time. If it becomes more common, it might eventually become less damaging. Right now, because only 1000s of people have been targets, it's feasible for employers to search online and not hire people who've been shamed. A historic parallel of diminishing effect is posting identifiable pictures on the Internet. It used to be a big no-no, because when only a few people did it, you really did put yourself at additional risk from stalkers. But now enough people have personal information posted that you're just one in a large crowd. When Warhol said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, people thought they'd be celebrated for 15 minutes. But perhaps it'll be the opposite: everyone will be publicly shamed for 15 minutes.

some_not_all 8y ago
it'll be the opposite Why not both?
deleted 8y ago
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mlthoughts2018 8y ago
This comment seems to woefully underimagine ways that public information can be used against you. Your public photos that are now just one in a large crowd are also subject to having your image deepfaked into revenge porn, used as a spam photo for bot account sign ups, scraped for facial recognition, found instantly by a background check seen by your employer, used to attach demographic info to your name in those shitty phone number / address aggregator sites. These are just things we know about today. Wait till your public photo is used to trick a self-driving car or biometric scanner. Or hundreds of other things that will be invented between now and forever (since your digital photos are instantly preserved and forever available). Hope no one analyzes your photo and charges you higher insurance premiums because you were holding a cigarette.
- twblalock 8y ago
  The OP was saying that if shaming becomes common then being shamed can't hurt you relative to the general public, because most of them have also been shamed.

busterarm 8y ago

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that highly educated people have is to think that they are immune to the effects of an angry/unruly mob. As participant or as victim.

pmarreck 8y ago
That is because highly-intelligent people realize that some things may be true which are not palatable or acceptable to the masses, and vocalizing any of these brings on much consternation in the twitterverse, even if it's a simple rational observation
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shunned. There is much hand-wringing over the handful of people wrongly shunned, but many of the wringers give no thought at all to the victims who are forced out of their careers, families, and communities every day because the people around them refuse to consider the possibility that there is a wolf in their midst. Nieces absent from Thanksgiving while their uncle sits at the table. Talented women leaving tech while their spiteful coworkers are promoted. Should we allow abusers to hold power because there’s a shadow of a doubt that they might be innocent, thereby sending their victims to start over in a new city? Outside of the court system, shouldn’t we try to hit a 1:1 ratio of wrongful excommunications to failures to excommunicate? Or should it be 1:1,000,000 like the courts do? A million unpunished rapes for every wrongful conviction? A million women pushed out of their rightful career path for everyone one man who was wrongfully fired? When the information doesn’t exist to make perfect decisions, how do we decide who takes up the burden of our mistakes?
- weberc2 8y ago
  > I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shamed. You're conflating "shaming" and "mobbing". Mobbing includes shaming, but it also includes violence, threats, harassment, or the facilitation thereof. We should oppose mobbing, but shaming serves a useful social function and you can be "anti-mob" and "pro-shaming"; however, the anti-mob group probably does oppose the new trend in slandering overtly innocent people and then mobbing (including shaming) them on the basis of the slander.

zozbot123 8y ago

The rule for how to deal with this sort of "shaming" is quite simple: no matter what you may have been 'accused' of, always double down and never issue anything that might even loosely resemble an apology or an admission of weakness, no matter what the costs might be. Then simply wait until the mob gets bored and moves on to the next easy target. There are very high profile examples of this working quite well, but mentioning them here would cause undue controversy, so it is best to abstain.

weberc2 8y ago
It's hard to make heads or tails of this without a better definition of what constitutes "doubling down" or "working quite well". The example that comes to mind is James Damore and he "doubled down" in the sense that he stood by his original statements (which made sense because his original memo was clearly and explicitly not endorsing the things he was accused of endorsing). It "worked out quite well" in that he _only_ lost his job and endured a lot of harassment, abuse, and slander (although who knows what kinds of psychological scars this treatment could have left him with), but probably didn't have a hard time finding another job and the mob did eventually (mostly) move on. So either the Damore example satisfies your definition of "working quite well" but not mine (or probably most people) or this example illustrates that your prescription doesn't always work. Perhaps it is exceptional, in that most mobs aren't marshalled by major publications nor do they conspire with the CEO of one of the most prominent companies in the world.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  Do you think that James Damore would have been better off had he apologized and groveled to the mob of shamers? Even after he lost his job? (which there was no chance of avoiding - as you say, he went against the CEO of "one of the most prominent companies in the world".) That seems rather implausible if you know how these mobs generally behave. Forbearance - of the sort you might expect from an individual who has been wronged and sought appropriate restitution - never happens, because it's not a stable equilibrium. What happens is that the "storm" eventually blows over naturally, but that's a rather different dynamic.

motohagiography 8y ago

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." -- Cardinal Richelieu

commandlinefan 8y ago
I'm 44, and either I'm just getting old enough to notice things I never noticed when I was younger, or there's something very concerning brewing - it seems to me like a small but growing subsegment of western society is working as hard as they can to escalate civilization to an actual violent conflict. And, based on my understanding of history, the biggest losers in that conflict will be the ones pushing the hardest for it right now.
- Zelphyr 8y ago
  I don't think there's a concerted effort to escalate. I think it's more of an emergence phenomenon. But yes, the outcome you describe is likely inevitable if something doesn't change soon.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  This "small but growing subsegment of western society" was rioting on the street on a regular basis a year or so ago and had an actual date set for a violent revolution (in the US at least). They seem to have petered out though, probably because they were deemed a domestic terrorist organization.

jeremysalwen 8y ago

Don't really think the Kavanaugh example really fits in with the rest. Sorry, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, yes, you should should be held to a much higher standard. Yelling about "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" does indeed count as "partisan bitterness".

manfredo 8y ago
If allegation of a decades old crime at an unspecified date, time, and location, and with no corroborating evidence is enough to block a Supreme Court nomination then we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican).
- perfmode 8y ago
  His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation. While I probably won't agree with Kavanaugh's court opinions, the opposition to his appointment also has negative effects. It was correlated with a drop in trust for alleged victims of sexual assault, for example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-year-of-metoo-american-opinion-has-shifted-against-victims https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-...
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago

staunch 8y ago

One of the funny and snarky things Jordan Peterson has said is that he "figured out a way to monetize social justice warriors". Which is true in some sense. He's become well funded through donations and book sales even as groups of people direct a ton of hate at him. He can afford to almost totally ignore them, because for every hater there are ten fans. Which leads to a crazy thought: If the social media mobs knew that they were going to make their victims rich, might they moderate themselves somewhat? Would they tell each other to "stop talking about X, you're just making them more money!" I think some kind of meme like this might be a strong antidote in some cases. Maybe some benevolent person or organization could give a $100k patreon seed to each victim of the mob. Maybe one solution to hateful internet mobs spewing bile is loving internet "mobs" sending donations.

anonymouzz 8y ago
It was the same with Trump. I'm pretty sure the outrage directed at him (even though much more justified) was a big reason for his victory.
Zelphyr 8y ago
I don't think they would stop. I suspect what we're seeing is that the mobs shouting very loudly is being propped up by social media and the news media (who fall all over themselves to report it because of the controversy). The reality, I think, is that the population of mobs is otherwise quite small, but because of the social media and news media megaphones they appear larger than they are. We're at a point now where everybody else is in fear of being attacked by those mobs so they quietly fund whoever they perceive to be in opposition of the mob. But at the same time, because of the media megaphones, the mobs incorrectly believe they are having success and thus the negative cycle continues.
zeroname 8y ago
Thus, after I shame you in an unjustified way, I also get to shame you some more for profiting off of your newfound victim status, thus proving that I was morally right about you all along, even when I wasn't. This is exactly what's already happening - coming from both sides, in fact.

bdz 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left

tashi 8y ago
The central story is about how a conservative author was publicly shamed by her conservative ex-boyfriend, so I'm not sure how illuminating your link will be.

warp_factor 8y ago

The issue is also that people got more and more sensitive over ybrast decades. Political correctness seems to be at a all time high. Try to say openly in the bay area that you support Trump and you will be shamed like never before. Shaming is now always in our mind and I find myself thinking more and more about redacting what I say to make it "unshameful" in order to avoid any possibility of shaming.

vkou 8y ago
> Political correctness seems to be at a all time high. Do you think it has something to do with all sorts of common, abhorrent behaviours that were tolerated, or encouraged in the past becoming unacceptable today? Sixty years ago, it wouldn't be out of place to tell the ------ to go to the back of the bus. Social expectations change, and there's always a few people who double down, dig in, and drag their heels, and insist that everyone around them is being too fucking sensitive.
beat 8y ago
I don't think that's the same thing. It does point to a basic intellectual failing of the modern right, though... conflating being judged with being censored. Nobody's taking away your right to free speech. We just reserve the right to think you're an asshole for saying it.
- olleromam91 8y ago
  When it comes time for decision making, everyone wants to be heard, and everyone wants their opinions considered. Treating/dismissing someone as an asshole doesn't facilitate any sort of basis for discussion, debate, agreement, compromise. Then, when the ignored and dismissed get so fed up that they are boisterous and riotous, and their opponents still don't acknowledge or address their voice...what is next? Answer: Violence
- warp_factor 8y ago
  Well, this is why the country is so divided. Instead of having a debate, the new way of doing is to directly go to the conclusion that "you must be an asshole". Good Proof of openmindness... Not targeting a specific side btw, this is a trend on the left as well as on the right.

blattimwind 8y ago

Why is this dated January 2019?

ThrowawayR2 8y ago
The site seems to be for a print magazine so this article is slated to appear in the January 2019 issue.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  I wonder if this improves or harm the SEO for these articles.

yosefzeev 8y ago

An opinion that is politically fueled should not allow this form of "shaming" unless we want to throw free speech out the window. Our small church was "Targeted" because I gave some advice to a gay woman who asked for it about her kids. She then tried to wreck our lives over the asked for advice. You can read the account here: https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-Western-Kentucky https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-We... Others got on the "Band wagon" at different intervals. Whatever the justification is for such behavior, ultimately there is no justification.

hopefulengineer 8y ago

progressives have taken us back in time to the days of the inquisition where heretics must be removed from society. These beliefs have absolutely taken on a religious fervor James watson, the man who discovered DNA structure, has been excommunicated for saying intelligence could be genetic and that would ruin the equality movement so he had to be removed It reminds me of galileo and his imprisonment related to heliocentrism "and yet it moves" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Wats... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves

sethrin 8y ago
You should read more about Gallileo. He was wrong in many ways, and it's entirely likely that he was punished for his tendency to be a jerk as much as anything else. Actually, the analogy isn't half bad, come to think... http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
- Symmetry 8y ago
  It's not good that people who come up with important new scientific theories should be forced to recant if they're jerks. Seriously, the progress of civilization depends on unreasonable men. Galileo's ideas about planetary motion weren't perfect but they were the seeds of our present understanding of planetary motion. And really he was persecuted more for saying that the planets were mutable with weather and so forth rather than perfect and eternal than he was for the whole heleocentrism thing. And he was perfectly right about that last bit.
  - sethrin 8y ago
    That's really not a very accurate description of events, in any particular. In addition to the linked article, you may want to read Dolnick's The Clockwork Universe.
8y ago

sethrin 8y ago

I think that the actual issue is the collective desire for punishment, and our inability to forgive others. From what I can see, forgiveness is something that we should strive to achieve as soon as possible after an offense. It's far too easy to hold people in public contempt, or prison, far longer than their just deserts.

overgard 8y ago
I think forgiveness assumes that most of these “righteous“ crusaders are actually personally angry though, which is rarely the case. It’s frequently just virtue signalling in a way that sociopathically ignores that a real human beings’ reputation is at stake and the massive consequences of that.
- sethrin 8y ago
  I'm sorry, I'm not sure how you could know that, or why it would be a precondition to forgiveness. Assuming that large numbers of people are dishonest and sociopathic may not be incorrect, but acting as if that were true seems pretty misguided. The problem of forgiveness is forgiving atrocity. Yeshua bar Youssif suggested that one should "turn the other cheek," that is, not just to immediately forgive the offense, but to immediately give the perpetrator the opportunity to commit the same offense again. The application of this precept to persons such as Robert Bowers is a sickening thought -- clearly we must not condone atrocity in the name of forgiveness. Yet we must come in time to forgive, and indeed, sooner than our wont. The matter is a frequent and weighty concern for me; I don't have any answers.

BryantD 8y ago

I have a pretty simple algorithm for articles about the dangers of public shaming. If they fail to catalog GamerGate and the online shaming of Zoe Quinn as an example of the problem, they are probably not a balanced look at the phenomenon. I find Justine Sacco's case is a reasonable metric for the other half of the equation.

zozbot123 8y ago
> If they fail to catalog GamerGate and the online shaming of Zoe Quinn as an example of the problem One word: /v/ So yes, the online shaming of Zoe Quinn is a crystal-clear example of the problem we're dealing with here! And this fact alone (though a seldom-acknowledged fact) actually explains much of how a lot of the "censorship" that fed the GG controversy originally came about.
AcerbicZero 8y ago
My understanding of the GG drama was that it started fairly unsavory, but rapidly became about something entirely unrelated to Zoe and her relationships. The reaction from the gaming media organizations being accused of serious (if video games can be serious) lapses of journalistic integrity, complete with multiple examples of it just poured fuel onto the fire. After that, I stopped following it, but it does seem that more gaming media organizations put effort into disclosing conflicts, so perhaps some good came out of it in the end.
- BryantD 8y ago
  Agree in part, disagree in part -- but nonetheless it's a pretty significant episode of public shaming, and I have a hard time imagining a really high quality article about the subject that doesn't cite it.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Funny, how the misogynistic mob finds a defender here, seeing the good within the hate. Meanwhile, the dozens of incidents cited of sexists and racists rarely get more than a "I, too, believe this is the end of free speech".

matt4077 8y ago

So anything concerning, for example, racism or sexism in Silicon Valley is flagged to hell as too „political“, but this is not? It‘s already triggering comments comparing „progressives“ to the inquisition, just in case anyone thinks this is just neutral griping about the death of free speech, or whatever.

jerf 8y ago

As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern social media encourages cheap virtue signalling by its nature (if nothing else, because there isn't really a way to demonstrate an expensive commitment to anything, everything is cheap words). So, as an interesting constructive exercise rather than just bemoaning the situation, how could a social system be engineered in a way that it might address the staggering ease with which this sort of shame storm arises, feeds itself, and flings itself against individuals? You can either start from an existing system and try to tame it, or start from scratch. It's worth thinking about both because it's fun, and because the people who may actually someday fix it may well be here.

all2 8y ago
One does not simply 'engineer' a moral foundation. While the law of the land hints at what the morality of a people is, the people themselves are responsible for their behavior. While systems can amplify or dampen certain behaviors, they cannot, without brutal authoritarianism, enforce behavior.
- jerf 8y ago
  "While systems can amplify or dampen certain behaviors" That is the topic I'm opening, yes. We're clearly amplifying it right now. How can that be changed?
  - all2 8y ago
    HN lacks some features that allow (and focus) conversations in a single medium. At the very least, we could take notes from this interface for social interaction: things like 1) lack of notifications, for anything, 2) lack of PMs, 3) lack of any sort of 'personalized' stream of information. We have to pick and choose what we consume, rather than being spoon fed. Coming from the other side: what allows these storms to form? I think part of the root cause is the ease of sharing information. It is very easy to re-blog/tweet/share on many platforms. In some cases (like Twitter or Facebook) a person doesn't even have to interact with the stuff they're passing on. The act is nearly passive. I think my thesis is this: things are better here (in part) because it is more difficult to interact with content and people. A partial solution could then be: add friction to things you don't want to see (or disallow them outright, like HN). Alternatively, make the stuff you want to see very easy.

ohiovr 8y ago

This is a great essay on reviling. Revilers are mentionable in the last book of the christian bible.

agentultra 8y ago

So the author of this piece appears on a panel to defend a book by an author who had published another book called, Liberal Fascism [0]. This piece is supposed to make me feel sorry for her? Well I don't fully understand the entire context of this person's story but I do know something about being publicly shamed. When I was a kid in high school I had to suffer being called a fgot every day. By every one. I had been hospitalized in an altercation and had been involved in several more. My car had been vandalized on more than one occasion. People would openly point, yell the word, and laugh until the whole crowd had joined in. It was an exercise in torture. No side eye on the train. No wondering what people were shaming me for. The police couldn't do anything about it. I used to think public shaming was a bad practice given my poor experience with it. When I heard the first stories of people using social media to shame serial offenders of the social norms of public life I thought... who are these people to judge and decide? What if that person had a reason? Do we really want to lower ourselves to this vigilante justice? However this is 2018. This world has books like, Liberal Fascism. It has platforms for people with radical opinions to gain an audience from the comfort of their living room. Instead of limiting the spread of anti-LGBTQ sentiments it has fostered them and allowed them to spread. Instead of reducing racially-charged crimes and hate speech, social media and the Internet has enabled it. On a whole new level. I think you should count yourself lucky that the people hurt by your conservative views have made you feel ashamed. You felt the discomfort of someone who doesn't fit in. Welcome to the club. How will you change now? [0] https://www.amazon.ca/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189 https://www.amazon.ca/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Pol...

weberc2 8y ago
I agree that public shaming can and does serve a useful function in dissuading fringe right-wing ideologies (among others); however, the whole reason we're seeing an uptick in these fringe ideologies is because public shaming has lost its potency after it was repeatedly abused (mobbing moderate liberals and conservatives for violating far-left moral tenets under the overtly false pretenses of fascism/racism/white-supremacy). Basically TL;DR, if you (like me) really want to push back against dangerous ideologies like racism, fascism, white-supremacy, etc, then you should oppose groups who try to combat moderate ideas by conflating them with the aforementioned dangerous ideologies. NOTE: The author of "Liberal Fascism" is a moderate conservative, by the way, and trying to associate him with extreme right-wing views is exactly the problem (and we can acknowledge as much without endorsing his ideas).

pmarreck 8y ago

It's almost like informal fallacies are taking over the entire Internet: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum come directly to mind. I would love to suggest that things like https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ should be mandatory teaching in the school systems of the world, but I've unfortunately seen evidence that trying to teach critical thinking only seems to work for already-intelligent people.

beasteurope 8y ago

https://www.wired.com/story/viral-call-out-culture/amp https://www.wired.com/story/viral-call-out-culture/amp It's not going to stop because it works.

ballenf 8y ago

I'd recommend people having kids give them very common names and consider giving them modifications of the last name if it's rare. It's depressing advice and a bit like paying a lifetime of insurance premiums that's likely never to be needed. Unless the concept of a search changes in the next couple decades, getting lost in a sea of similar names is the only defense against unfounded accusations. (Changing one's name after the fact doesn't work as you're required to give prior names for many jobs.)

ThrustVectoring 8y ago
When I registered for a library card as a kid, there were five other people with my exact first + last name. The doctor's office my parents used when I was an infant had to modify their policies to ask for my middle initial because there was another infant with the same first + last + birth month. Definitely recommend it. The first ten pages of Google results for my first + last show like at least 50 other people that aren't me. Only issue is that it can be difficult to use your name as an email handle - fortunately my parents were tech savvy enough to grab concat(firstName, middleInitial, lastName) as a gmail address and domain name for me.
prepend 8y ago
It’s pretty awesome to have a common name. There are five people in my company with my name. There are at least two in my very small city.
CM30 8y ago
Not just names, usernames too. People will find it much harder to dig up information on someone going by a generic sounding name like 'cat' or 'computer' compared to someone with a more unique handle. Combine that with a generic name like John Smith, and you've got someone who's basically impossible to dox.

monkeydreams 8y ago

This article, if written by someone else, might be more impactful for me. This is the story of a woman who fled half-way across the world from a Twitter-storm, but who, when confronted by a refugee who had been shot and tortured in his home country, that his suffering did not mean he had the right to seek asylum. This is a woman who admires Marine Le Pen and Trump, but is happy to seek her own asylum when a minor shit-storm goes down. But to address the articles concern - the reason we all seek mob justice is because a) it works, and it hurts, and it can ruin the lives of even the richest of us and b) we have no other buttons left. We mash the twitter/facebook/HN button because it is the last place we have any agency. Corporate interests have taken over out politics, rendering even the power of the ballot box moot since most parties appear to be in someone's pockets, the power of our consumption is dulled by decades of moribund growth, our ability to protest curtailed by an ever-present state of surveillance. This is what we have and, by god, we will keep mashing those buttons until things change.

gowld 8y ago
Stories like this are collected at reddit.com /r/selfawarewolves
mcguire 8y ago
I admit I am a little curious about what she thought about living in Australia.
- subpixel 8y ago
  I’m sure she found some pleasure and imspiration in the news coming out of Nauru.
subpixel 8y ago
The author of this article is a cunning, dangerous person. She was not shamed as she would like her reader to believe - she was “outed” for her inflammatory political views and she only stayed in self-imposed exile until the current administration made those views vogue among a certain set of deplorables. Now she’s skmething if an influencer in Trump-world. Which is to say: shameless.

colinprince 8y ago

For a more gracious treatment of the subject of public shame, try listening to Monica Lewinsky [0] "[I was required to] listen to my sometimes catty, sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth; listen, deeply, deeply ashamed, to the worst version of myself" [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame

yters 8y ago

Also known as mob rule, one of the main reasons philosophers like Plato and Aristotle didn't like complete democracies.

viburnum 8y ago

Buruma deserved to get fired because he had no idea what he was doing or what his magazine's audience was.

emerged 8y ago

It's becoming increasingly clear that a fully connected graph is not the ideal form for productive human social organization.

phs318u 8y ago

A few thoughts just bubbled up while reading this. 1. Everyone is potentially a journalist. Smartphone & social media = capture & comment. 2. Everyone is potentially a celebrity. Virality = celebrity. 3. Everyone is potentially a publisher. Share, post, retweet = publish. 4. Almost no one is (cares to be) an editor. It seems to me that though the obvious impact of these is exactly what you'd expect (a permanent social shit-stain), the times they are-a-changing. Belief is no longer a matter of truthiness but almost a lifestyle/fashion choice. People are learning to tune-out whatever it is they consider fake-news. I suspect that the amplified impact of modern "shame storms" will be discounted by the levels of latent disbelief held by people. i.e. people could (soon) care less. Maybe? EDITED: fixed line-break formatting. Why do I keep falling for the same thing?

maconic 8y ago

I don't know if there is a good fix for it, but labels are a very potent weapon. In the U.S. a few decades ago, calling someone a communist sympathizer was a dangerous label. In China in the 1950s being called a rightist was a dangerous label. Today being called a racist, a pedophile, a Nazi, etc. are still dangerous labels. In this article cited the author was labeled a sociopath by an ex-boyfriend and also of being cruel ("cruelty-based view of the world"). These labels are difficult to undo because they are so easy to remember. If you live in a small village and, let's say, get labeled a derogatory term like a "slut" ... that quickly propagates until every villager accepts it as common wisdom that you are. So I do like the discussion about how to engineer a better social system, but it would require censoring label accusations until they had been proven, and this goes up against another part of the social system of supporting free speech. So I think you'd have to ban negative labels in the way that we don't legally allow hate speech (in the U.S.) despite the First Amendment because of the way it causes disproportionate and long-term harm to the victim. I don't see any other realistic solution to a problem that has existed ever since humans formed social groups and speak languages... being ostracized, exiled, or worse has been the outcome of shaming for the last 100k years. I don't see a great way to avoid it other than to just walk on eggshells and always be really nice to everybody or develop the reputation of a maverick... tough but honest and fair (like Sen. John McCain was known for). Regardless, you have to fit yourself into some admirable persona that society values to avoid shaming. If there are other people that get shamed because they don't fit into one of the socially admirable personas, perhaps the best way to address it is to expand the list of socially admirable personas.