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Mannig and Bradley covered this phenomenon extensively in The Rise of Victimhood Culture Much like the literal "loudness war", the race to be "outraged", turn

Mannig and Bradley covered this phenomenon extensively in The Rise of Victimhood Culture Much like the literal "loudness war", the race to be "outraged", turn every conflict to 11, and the refusal to accept people's shame as a sufficient response, has all but eliminated shame as a useful weapon against public transgressions. When shame is no longer a meaningful self-regulating mechanism in daily life, you are left with a nihilist Manichean arms race of immediately having both sides of an argument declare the other as an absolute evil - with no middle ground to stand on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_Culture?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_Culture...

croissants 6y ago
I promise I'm not trying to be cutesy and meta here, but I read this comment itself as participating in "turn[ing] every conflict to 11". Unless you're focusing on certain parts of the internet, I do not see most discourse as "a nihilist Manichean arms race of immediately having both sides of an argument declare the other as an absolute evil".
- loopz 6y ago
  It's just an attempt to explain modern social trends, and relate it to a more interpersonal level of shame. We need to acknowledge this conflict is inherent in latest modern trends: autonomy vs social control. It's a change of governance happening, hence the change of strategies actually become forced. Shamelessness is nothing new, but was previously found only in rulers and jesters.
  - laughinghan 6y ago
    This seems like...word salad. What are you actually trying to say here? Autonomy vs social control is a modern trend? That's not what totalitarianism was? What change of governance? From who to who? (Or what to what?) Shamelessness was previously only found in rulers and jesters? There weren't ordinary people who were assholes, and shameless about it?
- oa335 6y ago
  One possibility is that all human discourse has ALWAYS had a “Manichaean” character... previously this low quality discourse was restricted to people in your in group in private conversations, whereas now due to the internet a larger portion of total communication takes place in a more public setting.
wpietri 6y ago
That doesn't strike me as a very useful explanation here. Shame has long been a part of American discourse. For example, you could look at the attitude toward divorce. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was hugely shameful to get divorced. In the 1960s and 1970s, the divorce rate spiked to something like 5x the earlier rate. Was that because outraged moralist scolds just pushed marriage too hard, ending the use of shame generally? Not at all. The rising legal freedom and economic prosperity of women, a change that had been ongoing since the suffragettes, finally allowed women to survive on their own. A measure of independence from the shamers was what made the difference. But at the same time, the Moral Majority increased their social power. The use of shame certainly continued. For example, a lot of the post-Nixon reforms were built on shared moral standards and shame. An obvious example is presidential candidates publishing their tax returns. It was never a law, but it would have been shameful for a person wanting to run the government to conceal their financial interests. Even now you still see shame being effective. Trump uses it extensively on the right, for example. Today he's trying to shame a governor into quitting. And as Campbell and Manning would surely agree, it's still effective on the left, even if it takes very different targets than it would have in 1950. I think what's changed is not the amount or effectiveness of the shame, but changes in who people feel accountable to. Political polarization is one part of that. Rising inequality [1] is another; the 2008 financial crisis made it clear that the ultra-rich were basically unaccountable no matter the damage they caused. And a big one comes from technology. At least from the age of Hearst through the 1990s, getting heard on a national scale required a fair bit of capital. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV: all of them required significant, long-lived organizations. And the bigger the audience, the more capital was at stake. That drove a sort of natural centrism. But between cable and dropping production costs, that changed. The 1990s saw the introduction of reality TV, which eventually gave us both Trump and Paris Hilton. The Internet drove that further. Now that the capital required to be heard on a national scale is approximately $0, it's very easy for people to build niche audiences. And with a sufficiently large niche audience, there's little material incentive to care what other people think. Now anybody can be a reality TV star all on their own, just as long as they keep getting people to smash that like button. In that light, we can look at Trump as the first influencer president. [1] https://datatrekresearch.com/us-income-inequality-latest-data/ https://datatrekresearch.com/us-income-inequality-latest-dat...
tthhrroowwaway 6y ago
So, I think I can empathize with this viewpoint comes from, and I think it is shared by a lot of people. Talking or debating issues involving inequality is hard and it is easy to feel like the "bad guy". But I must say, I cannot take seriously the idea that there is a "victimhood culture". It just screams propaganda/dog-whistling to me. And "culture war" is such dangerous and empty language that is primarily used by the right to talk about the fact that historically marginalized people today want to be respected and treated as equals under the law. Historically marginalized people who have been portrayed in the media using stereotypes for decades which has, in my opinion, lead to many well-meaning folks having socially harmful unconscious biases. Historically marginalized people who have been denied wealth. This rhetoric is holding everyone back. Sure, culture will change as more people are empowered. Please stop calling it a "culture war". I guarantee you, people who believe others are acting as "unreasonable victims" are not good students of history. That loudmouthed girl talking a whole lot of shit on Twitter is angry for a reason, even if you don't think they are "articulating" it right. So is the Trump voter. Reality is nuanced.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  Mannig and Bradley's book isn't just a buzzy blog post / porpaganada, it's a well researched and nuanced piece of academic literature. It also resonates with our modern conception of how the state and power centers "repurpose" legitimate mechanisms of dissent and discourse for their own ends. For example, the "respectability politics" of the civil rights era gave way to the toxic myths of the "welfare queen" and "Ebonics" - if we can demonstrate you're not respectable, we can deny your rights. If you've heard about "the War on Christmas" or "the most discriminated against people in America are straight white men", then you know there absolutely is power in declaring yourself a victim in 21st century America.

croissants 6y ago

I promise I'm not trying to be cutesy and meta here, but I read this comment itself as participating in "turn[ing] every conflict to 11". Unless you're focusing on certain parts of the internet, I do not see most discourse as "a nihilist Manichean arms race of immediately having both sides of an argument declare the other as an absolute evil".

loopz 6y ago
It's just an attempt to explain modern social trends, and relate it to a more interpersonal level of shame. We need to acknowledge this conflict is inherent in latest modern trends: autonomy vs social control. It's a change of governance happening, hence the change of strategies actually become forced. Shamelessness is nothing new, but was previously found only in rulers and jesters.
- laughinghan 6y ago
  This seems like...word salad. What are you actually trying to say here? Autonomy vs social control is a modern trend? That's not what totalitarianism was? What change of governance? From who to who? (Or what to what?) Shamelessness was previously only found in rulers and jesters? There weren't ordinary people who were assholes, and shameless about it?
oa335 6y ago
One possibility is that all human discourse has ALWAYS had a “Manichaean” character... previously this low quality discourse was restricted to people in your in group in private conversations, whereas now due to the internet a larger portion of total communication takes place in a more public setting.

wpietri 6y ago

That doesn't strike me as a very useful explanation here. Shame has long been a part of American discourse. For example, you could look at the attitude toward divorce. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was hugely shameful to get divorced. In the 1960s and 1970s, the divorce rate spiked to something like 5x the earlier rate. Was that because outraged moralist scolds just pushed marriage too hard, ending the use of shame generally? Not at all. The rising legal freedom and economic prosperity of women, a change that had been ongoing since the suffragettes, finally allowed women to survive on their own. A measure of independence from the shamers was what made the difference. But at the same time, the Moral Majority increased their social power. The use of shame certainly continued. For example, a lot of the post-Nixon reforms were built on shared moral standards and shame. An obvious example is presidential candidates publishing their tax returns. It was never a law, but it would have been shameful for a person wanting to run the government to conceal their financial interests. Even now you still see shame being effective. Trump uses it extensively on the right, for example. Today he's trying to shame a governor into quitting. And as Campbell and Manning would surely agree, it's still effective on the left, even if it takes very different targets than it would have in 1950. I think what's changed is not the amount or effectiveness of the shame, but changes in who people feel accountable to. Political polarization is one part of that. Rising inequality [1] is another; the 2008 financial crisis made it clear that the ultra-rich were basically unaccountable no matter the damage they caused. And a big one comes from technology. At least from the age of Hearst through the 1990s, getting heard on a national scale required a fair bit of capital. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV: all of them required significant, long-lived organizations. And the bigger the audience, the more capital was at stake. That drove a sort of natural centrism. But between cable and dropping production costs, that changed. The 1990s saw the introduction of reality TV, which eventually gave us both Trump and Paris Hilton. The Internet drove that further. Now that the capital required to be heard on a national scale is approximately $0, it's very easy for people to build niche audiences. And with a sufficiently large niche audience, there's little material incentive to care what other people think. Now anybody can be a reality TV star all on their own, just as long as they keep getting people to smash that like button. In that light, we can look at Trump as the first influencer president. [1] https://datatrekresearch.com/us-income-inequality-latest-data/ https://datatrekresearch.com/us-income-inequality-latest-dat...

tthhrroowwaway 6y ago

So, I think I can empathize with this viewpoint comes from, and I think it is shared by a lot of people. Talking or debating issues involving inequality is hard and it is easy to feel like the "bad guy". But I must say, I cannot take seriously the idea that there is a "victimhood culture". It just screams propaganda/dog-whistling to me. And "culture war" is such dangerous and empty language that is primarily used by the right to talk about the fact that historically marginalized people today want to be respected and treated as equals under the law. Historically marginalized people who have been portrayed in the media using stereotypes for decades which has, in my opinion, lead to many well-meaning folks having socially harmful unconscious biases. Historically marginalized people who have been denied wealth. This rhetoric is holding everyone back. Sure, culture will change as more people are empowered. Please stop calling it a "culture war". I guarantee you, people who believe others are acting as "unreasonable victims" are not good students of history. That loudmouthed girl talking a whole lot of shit on Twitter is angry for a reason, even if you don't think they are "articulating" it right. So is the Trump voter. Reality is nuanced.

kthejoker2 6y ago
Mannig and Bradley's book isn't just a buzzy blog post / porpaganada, it's a well researched and nuanced piece of academic literature. It also resonates with our modern conception of how the state and power centers "repurpose" legitimate mechanisms of dissent and discourse for their own ends. For example, the "respectability politics" of the civil rights era gave way to the toxic myths of the "welfare queen" and "Ebonics" - if we can demonstrate you're not respectable, we can deny your rights. If you've heard about "the War on Christmas" or "the most discriminated against people in America are straight white men", then you know there absolutely is power in declaring yourself a victim in 21st century America.