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In medieval Germany, a “schandmaske” was a punishment for social transgression
- neilv 4y agoTwilight Zone related episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMGJLZDLpUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMGJLZDLpUg
- neilv 4y agoThe headline doesn't reflect an aspect of this that the article calls out: it being used as a tool by upper classes, to keep lower classes in their place. With that in mind, a "gossip" might be someone who speaks an unflattering truth about an upper class person. A "narcissist" might be someone who presumes to affect some symbol of an upper class, or otherwise disrespects an upper class person.
- moremetadata 4y agoIronically the DSM suggests a narcissist is "A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions. A need for excessive admiration" How times have changed, or rather should that be definitions? Now where does royalty and politicians fit into all of this?
- PeterisP 4y ago> Now where does royalty and politicians fit into all of this? That's simple - the admiration that royalty gets is appropriate admiration for their status; but when someone who isn't royalty wants the same level of admiration, that's a need for excessive admiration.
- hutzlibu 4y agoI cannot tell if that was sarcasm, but in case not: so if a king declares, he has "unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty" and is basically a god and wants to worshiped as such, than this is demanding appropriate admiration and not getting laughed at as narcism?
- etherael 4y agoThey make a profession out of what is typically only a hobby.
- schandmasked 4y ago[dead]
- scns 4y agoMaybe that definition is flawed or better incomplete. In my experience narcissistic people react highly allergic to having their flaws shown to them/their flawless self image scratched. They'll do everything do everything to gain a sense of superiority again, when i continued with logically correct argumentation they got enraged and in the end responded with violence. I learned my lesson though, me wanting to be right/winning the argument was an attempt to dominate the other person. Life is way more fun if i get along with others.
- moremetadata 4y ago>I learned my lesson though, me wanting to be right/winning the argument was an attempt to dominate the other person. This isnt a Rorschach test. >Life is way more fun if i get along with others Not in my experience it hasnt, but maybe thats the people I attract and forced to work with.
- arthurofbabylon 4y agoA crucial distinction. The contemporary shame mask in the US is declaring former signifiers of prestige "trashy" as soon as lower-class or less-cultured people gain access.
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThat's more of a supply and demand law in action than any sort of systematic top down enforcement of "class". People aren't ever going to be impressed with the things they can easily have too.
- rob74 4y agoOr, otherwise said, back then, bullying someone who "didn't know his (or her) place" or "didn't fit in" was not only normal, but encouraged.
- hulitu 4y agoNot only back then. Today is also common. Especially in politics.
- scns 4y agoThe pecking order/dominance hierarchy is everywhere. Even if you don't believe it. Lobsters get their status signalled by serotonin, humans with depression have low serotonin levels.
- gladiatr72 4y agoWow. Really? I dumped social media in 2017. Please let me know what rock you've been living under. It sounds nice.
- eldritch_4ier 4y agoIs this really true? On stuff like this I'm kinda torn on whether this is our modern interpretation on stuff like this or genuinely their intention. These kind of traditions and laws were often implemented even in place where nobles / the upper class had little presence. Why? Is it because the peasants had internalized oppression? Or could it alternatively be because working together as a community was important to their very survival then, and so punishing subversive members creating discord was a matter of community survival? Which seems more reasonable: that the peasants had so much time and mindspace to focus on trivialities like making sure poor people didn't dress like rich people, or that they dedicated time to it because a raging narcissist actually posed a real threat? I guess I'm trying to say: maybe the people of the past weren't just all assholes preoccupied with making sure poor people knew their place and were instead much like us in that they focused on getting through the day (and their intentions aligned with that). That they spent inordinate amounts of time making fancy garbs just to humiliate random people in their village because "they're too poor to dress that way" just sounds like a fantasy we place on them because to take them seriously would run against a lot of cultural vogues (like that shame could have any possible value in society).
- hahahamemory 4y agoIn high school my teacher would put a pig's nose on me during class because I would call her Madame Vagina. They still do it but they don't use masks now.
- ackbar03 4y agoI would say she was quite lenient on you
- HeckFeck 4y agoWas that a pun based upon her name? We'd do the same but just without the courage to say it before any teacher's face.
- Digit-Al 4y agoI'd call that prudence rather than lack of courage lol
- Digit-Al 4y agoWhen I was in junior school, many years ago, we had a head teacher that none of us liked called Mrs Wildee (not sure if that was the correct spelling). We called her "the Wildebeast", but we were prudent enough not to call her that to her face :-)
- rideontime 4y agoThat's a very rude thing to say. What did she do to deserve that?
- fxtentacle 4y agoThose "prank" "content creators" that act in anti-social ways and then film the reactions... oh I wish we could punish them with such a mask :)
- Freak_NL 4y agoThey'd just monetize it. I WAS MADE TO WEAR THIS HORRIBLE MASK: LOOK HOW THIS OLD LADY REACTS!
- sorokod 4y agoThe rooster mask is amazing but sumptuary laws were common and not just in Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoOh, there were colorful cloth wearers, they were mostly prostitutes. Which basically ment baby murdering and rotting from the inside out from sexually transmitted diseases. Its a good thing, todays civilized society left the moral compass from that era far behind. Can anyone even imagine somebody being so barbaric, as to be still stuck in the late middle ages, in a time of contraceptives and anti-biotics.
- yywwbbn 4y ago> were colorful cloth wearers Also coincidentally noblemen…
- LatteLazy 4y agoI actually think "weird and humiliating" punishments like this, or the stocks etc would be more effective, cheaper and more humane than prison. We've defaulted to prison (and fines, which aren't really enforced) as the only forms of punishment and that a mistake.
- tomohawk 4y agoIndeed. And more appropriate. Elizabeth Warren made a lot of hay off her false heritage claims - a punishment like this seems more appropriate than what's currently available.
- bentobean 4y agoThere are actually modern examples of judges doing something kind of like this. The convicted were required to walk around town wearing a sign that described their crime. I’m OK with it. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/31/public-shamings https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/31/public-shaming...
- addandsubtract 4y agoOnly difference is, that people back then had to leave the house and show themselves in public wearing the mask. Today, you can just stay inside and order everything online. That being said, the masks would still fulfill their purpose of highlighting criminals out on the street. At least until social media turns it into a trend and people willingly start wearing the masks to be edgy.
- dTal 4y ago>Today, you can just stay inside and order everything online Then think of the punishment as essentially house arrest, with the small relaxation that you may leave your house if you wear something humiliating.
- actionfromafar 4y agoYou have to wear it in the FB Meta-verse too. Zuck is going to be all over this idea!
- BurnGpuBurn 4y agoFunny how mask wearing was totally not a way to denigrate people or shut them up by the upper classes a year ago.
- GistNoesis 4y agoMaybe they should try that at meta : Instead of a certified badge for 10$ a month for yourself, it would be great to be able to put some "schandmaske" on someone else for a few bucks a month to expose their sins to the world. Bots and bad behavior will be quickly tamed.
- tarotuser 4y agoI had a similar idea of "Reddit Pot Metal" which someone could buy for another account to "punish" them. And "Reddit gold" would be the only way to remove them or to wait 1 day per pot-metal. Reddit gold lasts a week. I wold propose a "Reddit pot metal" to last 1 day.
- prepend 4y agoThe Scarlett letter approach is tempting as it seems effective on the surface. As a high school reader of Hawthorne, I was taught that the second order effects were worse than the benefit gained. That being said, I think that it’s hard to devise punishments that let the transgressor continue to function in society. You can’t put the blacksmith in jail or they can’t work. And finding people with limited means is extra cruel or ineffective. I wonder if some version of this schandmaske can apply to social media where you want to have some formal notice and punishment but don’t want to cut them off from their livelihood or connection to social relationships. Although I doubt that our society can agree on transgressions that would warrant the mask. Saying someone is ugly is a big deal to some people and less so to others.
- ben_w 4y ago> I wonder if some version of this schandmaske can apply to social media where you want to have some formal notice and punishment but don’t want to cut them off from their livelihood or connection to social relationships. > Although I doubt that our society can agree on transgressions that would warrant the mask. Saying someone is ugly is a big deal to some people and less so to others. We kinda do, but because the community is global, the standards against which you're measured for shame are so broad you can't avoid saying something that someone considers appalling (recent examples "vaccines are a good idea" and "I like the idea of my local shops being a 15 minute walk away"), and yet the opposite side of the same coin is that you're always going to be able to find people who think you're speaking truth to power, that you have no need to be ashamed, and that any attempt to criticise you is just "cancel culture". So, massive pile-ons no matter what — even when your action is to block someone so you don't have to deal with them any more.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>(recent examples "vaccines are a good idea" and "I like the idea of my local shops being a 15 minute walk away") Statistically nobody considers those things offensive on face value. It's the nuts and bolts of the implementations and adjacent more extreme positions they can sometimes be dog-whistling for that piss some people off. You're complicating things that don't need to be complicated by picking examples like that where something that is potentially offensive or not on its face value would have sufficed.
- jdmtheNth 4y agoWouldn't work nowadays, because too many people are proud of their transgressive behaviour and build entire cultures on the freedom to be obnoxious.
- tpoacher 4y agoI was going to express a similar sentiment. Not only would it not work, but it would quickly devolve into "Wearing vs not wearing a mask is above all a political statement, and given the whole 'not with us == against us', not wearing one means choosing a side."
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoPretty much this. Only would work on Germsny. With that in mind, I always wondered if there was someone who would get paddled in school and would mock the principal for doing it, "You like spanking me big boy?".
- schandmasked 4y ago[dead]
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThere has to be a contradiction somewhere between "proud of their transgressive behaviour" and "build entire cultures". Well then the behaviours musn't be transgressive within those cultures, for if they transgressed cultural rule including their own how can they have a culture at all? They aren't going up to each other and being as obnoxious and loathsome the same way they go up to everyone else. That's the only way to make sense
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThis is a reflection of the fundamental incompatibility of the beliefs and morals of various subsets of society. People proudly do things that piss you off because negative cred with your tribe is positive cred in theirs.
- Claude_Shannon 4y agoSocial transgression, i.e You're not to think you are anything special. You're not to think you are as good as we are. You're not to think you are smarter than we are. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are. You're not to think you know more than we do. You're not to think you are more important than we are. You're not to think you are good at anything. You're not to laugh at us. You're not to think anyone cares about you. You're not to think you can teach us anything.
- schandmasked 4y ago[dead]
- lakomen 4y agoGermans are a special breed.