The hidden assumption of "always punch up, never punch down" is that there is a total order that can be applied to humans, by which who is up or down can be det

The hidden assumption of "always punch up, never punch down" is that there is a total order that can be applied to humans, by which who is up or down can be determined. As many victims of crime, faulty legal proceedings, false accusations, or their parents or relatives can attest, this is not the case. What is even more insidious is that the public spectacle of "punching" (which usually means describing behavior or status, in one manner or another) is how we determine up and down in the first place. The more someone gets "punched", the more we believe they deserve it, based on the information in those "punches" - "Look what villains they are! How unfairly or violently they behave!" This is all enabled by calling the transmission of information (in the form of a joke, a meme, gossip, a lecture,..) an act of violence, tricking your mind into thinking of it as such.