I'm not so sure Hilton's strategy is shamelessness. It seems more like "owning" it. For example, the leak of the sex tape is the first I'd ever heard of her. I expected her to be mortified and sue and hide. But nope. She owned it, turning it into an opportunity for fame and fortune.
For an example of the opposite, remember the Star Wars Kid? The video of him twirling the light sabre was leaked online, and he was humiliated and sued. Another path he could have taken would be to "own" it, say "yep, that's me". I bet he could have made a lot of money off of that, and perhaps even gotten a cameo on a SW movie out of it.
I have a friend who underwent some major abdominal surgery for cancer. She didn't want to wear a swimsuit because she was embarrassed and ashamed of the large scars. I suggested that her scars were battle scars of her triumph over cancer, and she should be proud of them and show them off. She owned it, and told me later that it transformed her to turn those scars into a positive.
Similar things happen to bald men. The ones who try to hide it with wigs and comb-overs come across rather poorly. The ones who own it and flaunt it fare far better.
"Owning it" worked fabulously for her for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which are that she is rich and has an army of well-paid lawyers behind her. If you're rich and get laughed at and humiliated by the staff of a high-class restaurant, you have a ton of options. If you're Star Wars kid and you get laughed at and humiliated at a hiring interview, your options basically amount to "move on".
Having that kind of legal and financial backing shields you from most negative consequences of unwanted fame, and leaves you only with the good parts -- the attention, at least. Without that backing, you get to deal with all of it, and some kinds of fame have very little to show in the way of good parts.
Star Wars kid could have just stopped being poor (lol) of course but that's easier said than done :-).
You can own it without money or cred backing you up, but it requires courage and a willingness to go all in and double down in the face of the inevitable pushback.
Money just makes it so you can own it even with weak character. Owning it has always been an option for the courageous, the wealthy can pay instead of having to risk everything.
This is true and also, in a sense, very unfair; how our personality and who we happen to have as friends or parents can have such deep impact in how we perceive ourselves, the eyes of others, the world, and our options in it. Perhaps I am defeatist, but "choosing to own it" looks a bit like "have you tried to not be so sad" when facing depression
My impression is that the empirical psychology hasn't dealt properly with shame yet and that we must resort to psychodynamics or -analysis to properly understand its depth and impact. Perhaps someone here are familiar with good literature on the subject? Another observation is how unevenly shame is distributed; some people seem like they simply don't get it whereas others are drowning in it
> "choosing to own it" looks a bit like "have you tried to not be so sad" when facing depression
It's fundamentally a conscious choice - unlike depression, which has deep links with chemical equilibria.
> how unevenly shame is distributed; some people seem like they simply don't get it whereas others are drowning in it
Shame is essentially a social concept. A child raised by wolves would have no concept of what shame is (at least not human shame). It's clearly the case that early socialization with parents and peers is what shapes one's perceptions of the subject.
> It's fundamentally a conscious choice - unlike depression, which has deep links with chemical equilibria.
Just a heads up, I saw an article the other day talking about how new research might show that depression might not actually have deep links with chemical equilibria:
The fact is not rooted in it, doesn't mean there is no relation - if anything because the drugs do work to reduce or remove depression in a lot of people.
It is also possible (or likely?) that what we call depression is a collection of different conditions with similar presentation where some forms may be more related to chemical equilibria than others. E.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32521-z
As an alternative heads up, our entire experience of reality is subject to the whims of poorly understood chemical and physical homeostatic states. I just recently decided to pursue some genetic testing due to the night and day difference in my mood and motivation supplementing methylfolate (B9) and methylcobalamin (B12) had on me.
It turned a mild bout of depression and long standing un-medicated adhd on it's head to the point that I feel like telling anyone who is looking for a "strategy" to first make sure their biology is in order. It helps loads. In any case, if someone knows how sound the science around MTHFR is I'd love to be wrong on the internet and hear about it (about 1 in 5 is the rate I was quoted for abnormalities with that methylation cycle).
While I don't know much about the specific solution you recommend, I do appreciate what you said about us not knowing too much about the chemical an physical homeostatic states.
Maybe what I was originally pushing back against was what I thought was the expression of certainty over specific chemicals causing depression, when I think there's a lot more we don't understand about the chemicals and even depression itself than we may admit, including any causal links.
Thank you for pointing out that the analogy is not perfect, there are fundamental differences (such as depression being a defined pathological condition and shame being an emotion ranging from healthy and useful to pathological). But I will not be surprised if you can see structural or biochemical differences in the brains of people suffering from pathological shame.
My main point in both the statements you quote is that "choosing to own it" is too hard or difficult for some people and, in practice, not an option although it is in theory. And perhaps it can become a realistic option with enough psychosocial support or psychotherapeuric treatment. It is not about wanting enough or being stupid, see e.g. borderline personality organization (not the disorder);
> Healthy people might have trouble visualizing what it is like to live with this "borderline" level of personality organization. Healthy people understand that who they are is not determined by a particular action, in a particular moment in time. They know that if they behave poorly one minute, this one bad behavior, in this one moment of time, does not define who they are. They are still able to recall all the wonderful things they have done in the past, and plan to do in the future. People with a fragmented sense of self are not so fortunate. If they just did something "bad," they literally become a bad person (i.e., they start representing themselves as an entirely bad person with no redeeming qualities). When this occurs, they can no longer access any of their good qualities. This is a terribly painful state to endure. (https://www.mentalhelp.net/personality-disorders/three-level...)
In general, we should be careful to tell others to just choose differently (I am not accusing you of this) as it may often be rephrased as just be someone else - which is possible in some regards, difficult in others, and impossible in many cases
I think owning it can be a strategy, and maybe that is what Hilton did, but I think some people just aren't strongly motivated by social disapproval - in some cases to the point that they don't even realize it's happening.
For them, it's like the low murmur of other people's conversations at a restaurant. They instinctively ignore it and are generally so wrapped up in what they are doing that someone has to actively bring it to their attention.
This is a really interesting take on it, because I was thinking it was the opposite of owning it. Or at least different to "owning it" in an important sense: the thing that she's owning is some attribute that isn't intrinsic to her, and it's by it not defining her that she owns it.
Traditional shame seems like some kind of permanent personal curse: child out of wedlock, feckless, poor, and so on. Having any of these qualities used to basically be an indelible part of your character, best hidden away from view.
This modern shame is like an article of clothing: wear it well and it looks good, apologize for it and it looks bad (eg jeans with holes in them). You could say the same about any of the things I mentioned, turning it around: tireless fighter for her kids, work-smart-not-hard, rag-to-riches.
> Ahnold Schwarzenegger was told he had to lose the accent. Instead he owned it.
It did stop him getting certain work when trying to get into acting though, because to urban Germans he “sounds a bit like a farmer”. For those familiar with UK accents: think west country (oive godda bran-new combine'arvester…).
He could afford to pass on that work, rather than having to change himself, because he was already financially comfortable from his successful body-building career and having carefully managed & invested his income from that. For someone starting from nothing, standing by yourself and refusing to change, owning and controlling your identity on principal, can be a more difficult choice.
Of course Schwarzenegger's move to the American film industry got around the accent problem quite nicely: to a non-German ear the association of parts of his accent with particular places/work doesn't exist.
No slight on Schwarzenegger intended here, he worked himself into a position where he could take the risk of making those choices rather than being in a comfortable position from, for example, the luck of being born into wealthy circumstances.
That is not uncommon. I've heard Brummies and Yorkshiremen speak Spanish in what to my untrained ears¹ sounded like pretty good fluency, but by eck you could tell where they were originally from!
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[1] passed GCSE Spanish nearly three decades ago, can just about remember how to state my name, age, birthplace, and order food & drink.
They did voice overs on one (some?) of his early movies when he was known as 'Arnold Strong'. It's weird watching them since I know how he should sound.
But not with respect to his acting career and therefore his accent, as referenced in the comment I was replying to.
At that point in his life he was definitely not starting from nothing (though he was starting from a good position he had built for himself from an earlier nothing point).
At the point of starting out in the film industry, he also had the benefit of his previous career giving him exposure to the complexities of contract negotiations and other such. They are not doubt a little different for Mr Universe compared to Mr Action Actor, but there would have been enough common ground for the experience to be useful to him.
Another example is the original Star Trek cast. We love them, but let's be honest - they are C list actors. They complained that ST had ruined their careers because they were typecast. Nimoy even wrote a book "I Am Not Spock".
It took years, but eventually they realized that ST had not cursed their careers, but had made them. They'd unintentionally struck into a lifetime vein of gold. Nimoy then wrote another book "I Am Spock". All they had to do was own it to cash in.
Hard disagree about their acting chops. I’ve been watching Star Trek original series and Shatner & Nimoy were damn fine actors. The memes and mockery are unjustified. (Some of the scripts, otoh, not good.)
I think she’s savvy to be able to use it to her advantage, but I get the impression that if she could change her history she wouldn’t choose the path that she experienced.
When it aired I was a big fan of The Simple Life (and later Paris Hilton's My New BFF) so I guess you could say I was a fan.
In TSL so much focus was on the comedy of Paris and Nicole being put in ‘everyday’ situations, but what strikes me was how she treated every person she met with respect and (IMO) humility and without any sense of irony. Despite the persona, I think we saw a lot of who Paris is, which I think makes TSL unique in the genre of reality TV.
How would you define the difference between shamelessness and owning it? I guess one could be seen as passive and one as active, but they seem like they're basically the same thing to me, or maybe two sides of the same coin. I guess you could be void of the emotion of shame without taking a resulting action.
Shamelessness doesn't have to only be used for nefarious purposes. I know engineers on my team suffer from imposter syndrome. I do not because I just always assume I know nothing :) I have no problem in a meeting or architecture review saying "Can you explain that a bit simpler for me" or something to that effect. Having the team understand the tasks at hand is way more important to me than what people think about me.
> I do not because I just always assume I know nothing :)
What you likely do have is a sense of certainty that "knowing nothing" will not cause you to be rejected by your peers. It's easy to say you don't understand something when you don't fear that others will find your ignorance makes you unworthy.
But those with imposter syndrome feel that unworthiness directly. They don't have that intrinsic sense of belonging that allows them to reveal a flaw without fear of rejection.
What he said resonates with me. I take the same stance and there is nothing you can exclude me from that will hurt me. If I'd lose a job or the chance to get a job because of this attitude then I'd be happy to not be put into that anxiety-inducing context. Actually, I'd rather die than be a part of this coercive system that manufactures problems so I am a bit on the hardcore side (especially since this has been put to the test and I have in fact almost died for this reason).
Natural selection will find the right environment for people who employ this approach. We will eventually be selected out of any environment that doesn’t value this behaviour, and will eventually succeed in an environment that does.
I definitely agree that the ability to admit when you don't understand something is extremely helpful. My favorite coworkers are the ones that I'm sure understand things because they're very willing to say when they don't.
I think the difference here is identifying with your work. I have no problem asking stupid questions, because being a software dev is just a job for me, and while I'd like people to think that I'm good at it, it doesn't affect me deeply if they don't. I have co-workers whose competence at their jobs is tied up with their own sense of self-worth, and it's much more difficult for them
This is a good post but I wasn’t sure at first where it was going.
I have a … colleague (not actually in my organization) who is “shameless” as described. Not a Paris Hilton, but moves the Overton window in a (morally) good and useful way. He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong. He’ll strike ip a conversation with anyone he thinks can help his cause. He pisses people off, and I have had uncomfortable conversations where people have said they don’t want to work with people who put up with him. But I won’t disavow him.
Actually this describes rms as well, and he’s a good example of someone who’s been willing to go to extremes to get things done, and has been quite influential. I would never disavow him either.
For both people (hmm, both males, both from the MIT “community”, and with other characteristics in common as well) I’ve admired them while simultaneously not wanting to be them. And remained friends.
> Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s young lover between his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, and his next mistress, Dora Maar, later hanged herself; even Roque [his second wife] eventually fatally shot herself. “Women are machines for suffering,” Picasso told Françoise Gilot, his mistress after Maar.
I wanted a clear example without going into details that might distract from the point.
But you are correct that "not very nice" is a significant understatement. He was horrible to them and I honestly don't think his art balances out his behaviour.
If life was justified, he would have been in gaol quick smart and his art career never would have happened.
But after the fact, we can take what we can from his art - which others seem to do more than I - while acknowledging his deplorable behaviour and sanctifying the respect and dignity of his victims.
This has always been a thing I've struggled with. Not getting into the politics of cancelling famous people that behave badly...I hate that something like JK Rowling's body of work, which I really liked, has taken such a turn, and within certain circles, admitting you like the original series...is a risky thing to do.
I like Dave Chapelle, seen him live twice, and consider him a fantastically intelligent person.
I think an underlying fault of our current situation is a lack of nuance, an inability to compromise, and a desire to weaponize differences of opinion.
I'd say Dave Chapelle and JK Rowling have pissed people off based on their controversial public statements.
Which is very different from actual physical harm; for example the actions of Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby.
What is "controversial" vs "harmful"? Obviously there is a thin line here. But most of these people are being lumped into the same "cancelled" bucket. It depends on which online community you ask.
Has an actual crime been committed? That's a good starting point for nuance.
> haven't seen really resolved well in modern life.
I'm agreeing with your sentiment. It is something we used to do much better, before we got politicized into tribes which are always trying to prove that the other tribe is evil.
I disagree that this is a modern thing. I think the usage of "tribe" in your comment is telling that this kind of thinking has long predated modern political interactions.
Most any article on Picasso and the women in his life term them as "muses". I think that ties them in to his art pretty closely.
I agree that a "bad person" can get positive things done. This is pretty much exactly what I am saying.
But I am also saying to separate the action from the person when it comes to admiration or disavowal. In the context of multiple actions of varying perceived moral quality then understandably this will lead to mixed feelings. But still hold a person responsible for their actions, especially when it comes to judging to how to interact with them in future.
IE you CAN hate fossil fuels and enjoy plane trips. But the hate should reduce the enjoyment. If you claim to hate burning fossil fuels with every fibre of your being AND claim enjoyment from a long plane trip then one claim or the other is not a true statement.
I don't care much for art. So to me, Picasso's wrongs weigh much more than his societal contribution. He is a despicable person of history. But I can understand that others may not see him as a despicable person of history if they really think his art was a cosmically great contribution - maybe they seem him as a terribly flawed genius. But if they deny his wrongdoings altogether, we're in for an argument of facts.
Yes some people are good/bad. Its very trendy now "not to think in absolute terms". A Russian general ordering bombs at a school is bad. Very bad. Not gray, not politically incorrect. Plain bad.
I would argue that I am thinking in absolute terms.
Your very example is of a bad action. I am not arguing that a person not be responsible for their actions. But that one action does not a person make.
Objects - including people - are NOT inherently good or bad.
A tree propping up a book is not good or bad. A person reading a book is not good or bad.
When that person puts down their book and starts "ordering bombs at a school" then badness is perceived.
After a day of ordering bombs that same person may then go volunteer at a soup kitchen for the homeless in the evening. Or more likely go home, be kind to their children and tuck them in at night.
The person themselves are not inherently bad. Some of their actions are.
When time comes to judge the person you may well indeed say they should be removed from society because on the whole their actions balance for the worse (responsibility for their actions) AND/OR they are likely to continue to do so (rehabilitation for their behaviour). And that is fair.
But they are not inherently bad simply for existing.
This viewpoint means that you are perfectly allowed to distance yourself from others with the viewpoint they are not worth interacting with. Alternately, you are also allowed to keep interacting with them knowing well the cost of the bad vs the benefit of the good.
Example, you may well never wish to interact with the general ever again. But a fellow prison inmate may decide it is worth playing chess with him rather than not. And I would judge that prison inmates actions as being ok.
This is thinking in absolute terms. But at a level of detail most people prefer not to engage, either through lack of capability, capacity or desire.
I think you are confusing a non-thinking tree with a human with will and planned actions.
I understand where your stoic ideas come from but I just disagree. They imply just observing randomness instead of actively trying to make society better. But if you will, I consider a person with a negative society balance through their actions bad. I guess the definition strikes a nerve. I don't get why people get triggered though. A green tree is a green tree, a bad person is a bad person (through the definition.
I think we largely agree but I am arguing points of detail.
By labelling a person "bad" - as a cause of one action - the natural inclination is to think everything they do is bad - the notion of badness flowing from person -> action.
I am simply arguing that should flow in reverse. If a person's actions cause more harm than good, then on balance, they are "bad" - the notion of badness flowing from action -> person. But one - or even a series - of bad actions does not make a bad person if they have a balance of actions in the positive.
It makes the difference between Cancel Culture and as treating people as flawed humans who may or may not learn over time.
Sure, some people deserve to be shunned by society, on the whole their actions in the past and likely trend for the future are that bad. But societal shunning is a powerful thing. Are we going to shun people who said something anti-gay in the 60's despite their change in attitude since? This is a path to serious social chilling.
The false dilemma in this post is this postulate: people who do bad things, must necessarily do those things so we can get valuable things they do.
This is what those people sell as their image though: and they have to sell it, because otherwise they'd have to stop doing those things - or risk it being discovered that they're just not that valuable and likely replaceable.
> He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong.
Your whole post is completely empty of details, so how can we decide?
Are the disagreeable things disputes about some software thing? Or does this guy feel that homosexuals should die, that trans people are sick, and women inferior?
Or something in between?
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To be frank, I believe the reason that you don't even give a hint as to exactly what he's saying is because if you told the details, people would be disgusted.
RMS had a long history of saying annoying things about the computer industry, and that's a good thing - that's his job.
But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein because one of the girls he trafficked was as old as 17 and had been pimped out to Marvin Minsky whom RMS admired!
A lot of people simply didn't want to be in the same room with him after that. "One of these girls was close to not being underage" is a terrible argument.
An example in my real life - a friend of mine called me up out of the blue during the pandemic and made a big play for the message, "There are too many old people on the planet, so many of them need to die."
I don't think she realized how old I was, but it makes no difference. We never really spoke again, because depraved indifference to others is horrifying.
He didn't defend Epstein did he? I recall him (clumsily) trying to defend Minsky though. Basically saying "Maybe Marvin Minsky didn't know those girls were underage"
> > He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong.
> Your whole post is completely empty of details, so how can we decide?
I didn't ask you to decide, and deliberately left the specifics out to avoid distracting from the point I was trying to make.
> Are the disagreeable things disputes about some software thing? Or does this guy feel that homosexuals should die, that trans people are sick, and women inferior? Or something in between?
But since you ask: one of his strongly held opinions is that the global population needs to decrease and that the way to do it is not through coercion but persuasion, through an approach I consider vaguely paternalistic and reminiscent of an aspect of colonialism. I don't think he feels specifically that the population needs to decline only among a subset of people meeting some specific criterion 'X' (i.e. it's not some sort of racist belief), simply that the global birth rate needs to go down.
For my part, I don't really care much if the population goes up or down; I certainly don't see a declining birth rate as a bad thing, but I feel that making everybody richer will tend to do that anyway so let's work on that instead because it's an absolute good thing.
The problem is that when he talks about this it alienates some people.
> But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein because one of the girls he trafficked was as old as 17 and had been pimped out to Marvin Minsky whom RMS admired!
RMS's argument was absurd and thoughtless, but I have four friends who were on the island trip at the same time as Marvin and his wife who can't understand how it could have happened just from a timing POV. Plus it's pretty unlike him (though who knows anyone that deeply?). I am dubious that it occurred, but do realise: why would the woman make up the story? That seems even more unlikely. It's not like Marvin was the kind of famous person it might be even remotely worth making up a story about. So really I don't know what to think.
I followed the whole affair, and I don't recall him defending Epstein.
> An example in my real life - a friend of mine called me up out of the blue during the pandemic and made a big play for the message, "There are too many old people on the planet, so many of them need to die."
> I don't think she realized how old I was, but it makes no difference. We never really spoke again, because depraved indifference to others is horrifying.
The grievous or depraved indifference of many people cost 6.3m lives worldwide during the pandemic. The US has had > 1m deaths. Yet people had only to wear a mask, distance, and receive a vaccination.
It's easy to be brazen when others are paying for the consequences.
But she is right. After some time, the old has to make way for the new. There is no way around this. The pandemic has taught this lesson to many people while they were forced to sit alone at home.
Shamelessness, if used correctly is a superpower that I will place it in the same pedastal as concentration, curiosity and tenacity. A lot of people including me seem to lose out because a sense of shame holds us back, not renegotiating our compensation multiple times, or to job hop as often as possible or to shamlessly promote and market ourselves and I can go on and on.
Trouble is, shame is not a decision, its an emotion. While one definitely can adjust ones emotional responses, it requires a lot of time and effort, and cannot be rushed too much.
Whenever I feel “shame” I can ignore it and perform the action anyway, but at least for me that incurs a cost - the feeling of said shame can intensify. Even if I know that it was totally justified and there’s nothing I _should_ be ashamed for - I can’t directly control my emotions.
This leads to my “rationing” of shame, where I pick my battles to make sure the outcomes are mostly good - where I feel the shame feeling was not justified. Overtime that can extend the range.
Alternatively I can “exert” myself - forcing me to perform a lot of shameful actions in succession, which can _easily_ lead to “burnout” where I don’t want to do any other action other than joy seeking and relaxation for a while.
A cute but still relevant example: I was urged and I went to a dance congress for a dance I was just a beginner of. Now I am generally an experienced dancer, just not that dance in particular.
It took me a lot of mental effort to ask partners for a dance since I know I’m much less skilled than most and I felt a bit of shame every time.
Now logically this is weird, since most dancers would prefer dancing with a beginner, rather than not dancing at all (I’m doing the leading part of the dance so I’m expected to ask followers to the dance-floor). Some would actually enjoy dancing with a shy guy and showing him the ropes. Buuut I still felt shame and each time I asked someone it became harder and harder. Two days into the event I just couldn’t force myself to do it and had to bail early.
A more shameless person would have stayed and danced and learned a lot, and thats rational. But we are emotional creatures and need to take that into account, when making rational decisions too.
So I try to be shameless when possible, but keep some “shamelessness” in reserve for when I really need it.
Agree, people have much more control over their emotional responses than they believe. One may not be able to turn off emotion in particular situations or exactly when they want to, but it's possible to tone down (or up) the response to similar situations over time through practice. In time, it becomes much more voluntary than we'd think.
This is the point of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Stoicism, and Mindfulness.
Only with some people, but it probably works on the majority.
> Blatant shamelessness does not really get us very far, I think.
Collectively, no. Individually, yes. It's like lying in a society that hasn't discovered lying yet and takes everything you say as truth. It will leave that society worse off, but it's practically a super power for you.
About compensation there is an easy trick: decide on your limits before starting to negotiate and stick to them, really stick to them. Don’t be insulted if the other party doesn’t agree, that’s your price, and it’s their decision to take it or leave it. And tell yourself you deserve the compensation you decided on.
There is the risk that you fail at a negotiation, but you have to take it. If the job is not very well paid, there is probably another one just like that, you can still take as a backup.
With the payment thing, isn't the main 'shamelessness' on the side of the business that will employ people, and not pay them what they're worth so they can cream off the excess? Only offering market prices when forced to attract new staff but already planning to not maintain that unless forced to?
It reminds me of my cable company and how they advertise all these great deals that aren't available for me because I'm an existing customer, and I have no negotiaton leverage as I don't currently have two competing providers that I can play off against each other.
So, shouldn't we be aiming for more shame on that side, rather than stooping to their level and celebrating shemelessness as a way to fight fire with fire? Or at least some sensible system that better rewards people for their effort, not for disloyalty to their colleagues (and I mean that in both directions, paying less than people are worth and job-hopping for more money don't seems like socially useful behaviours) and customers?
"They’d look silly if they were to admit [shameless people] had found a better way of doing things."
This isn't true. When someone cuts in line no one thinks 'oh, they found a better way - wish I thought of that'.
And better for who? It's not better for anyone, including the cheater, when society ultimately becomes less functional. And it is cheating, just applied against social convention. As more and more people employ shamelessness the returns will diminish. If one football player cheats they score some points for a while and make a name. When all players cheat the game is over and fans stop watching.
It depends crucially on the game you want to play instead.
The problem with this article is the example. When the article says:
> It’s important to note that people were dismissive of Paris because validating her playbook would mean admitting that they were playing an inferior game.
It has failed to establish conviction that Paris was playing a superior game.
Suppose however you are working on a design team for the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri. You've found yourself taking longer than expected on verifying the structural properties of the walkway.The game your boss wants to play is "get this project done on-time and under-budget". The game you want to play is "do respectable reliable engineering work."
You could feel ashamed about your work being behind and over-budget and take actions to wrap up the project. Or you could decide that your game is superior and act shamelessly to get more time/budget. Shamelessness as a strategy relies on well-founded conviction that you are playing a superior game.
That's an interesting way to look at it. I took it to mean ignoring the shame imposed for choosing a selfish path that makes things worse for everyone else.
In your sense, sure, since shame is not serving a greater purpose.
> "This isn't true. When someone cuts in line no one thinks 'oh, they found a better way - wish I thought of that'."
Somebody does; "inspirational speaker" Simon Sinek has a talk[1] segment where he's praising himself for how great he is because, after a charity run event when there were free bagels for the participants, he pushed through the queue and took two bagels and nobody stopped him.
And he is trying to teach queuejumping to the audience as some kind of "think outside the box" concept.
But still, it's not like everyone in the line failed to consider queue jumping. It's an obvious strategy, they just forgo it for everyone's benefit. Hence the outrage.
Economics actually teaches that the most efficient queuing system involves people joining at the front, because that way they endure the wait in proportion with their internal system of preferences. Societal sense of propriety literally leads to an inefficient outcome across the board because for cultural reasons we pretty universally join a queue at the back.
But then if you are in a queue already the most efficient response is to leave and rejoin at the front. Quite soon you don't have a queue, you have a brawl.
It works when joining the queue has a high enough transaction cost.
For example, a website or phone support line cutting off a pending connection, forcing the requester to notice and then reconnect, or give up and leave (which makes service faster for others waiting)
So you can never leave a queue? Queuing would then be discouraged, wouldn't it? Making the move to buy something would often ensure you can't buy it but can also not buy anything else because someone else will cut in front of you and if you're out of luck, you'll be stuck in the queue forever, abandoning it is not allowed. Enjoy starving for greater efficiencies.
I'm not well versed in queuing theory, but I would assume that's rather the point. The existence of an unboundedly growing queue implies an inability to keep up with demand, so someone has to lose. The most shameless queue jumpers get served earlier because they have the highest priority. Anyone stuck in the queue didn't have a high enough priority in the first place.
From a utilitarian standpoint it makes sense :shrug:
With normal queuing, you get served eventually and can calculate the time it will take to get what you need. I fail to see how removing both of those parts makes it more efficient, and intuitively it seems that it would mostly lead everyone to avoid queuing unless absolutely necessary or to only try to buy things that surely nobody else wants. Mean wait time down, only the least desired products get bought, and even those only when starvation is the alternative.
I don't get it either. My understanding is that with a queue, we are trading our time to get what we want. Is he saying instead of trading time, we should fork out cash to jump the queue?
Here is a TWO hour long documentary on Youtube that talked all the machinations/tweaks Disneyland made to queueing. TLDR, you have to stay at a Disney Hotel to really jump the queue, buy some crazy app, and make reservations months in advance. It is really stupid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE
Is this one of those purely theoretical economics thing or Does this assume there is a different queuing stage from a moving stage? Otherwise it seems like there are too many physical mechanics at play, like should I be able to join the line as soon as I see the line for the roller coaster start moving. How are ties broken if everyone tried to join the line at the same time.
With enough queue jumpers the line collapses into a crowd shouting for service - a crowd that is bigger than the line. Meaning the average service rate has fallen - that is, a less efficient system.
you only need to look at the effect this is having on politics to see that it can drag us towards a miserable equilibrium where cheating happens because it gives an advantage even though the outcome is worse for everyone.
Well, it's a prisoner's dilemma, innit? Shamelessness (cheating) is always the ideal immediate option, even though it would be better if everyone cooperated. And given the high-stakes, winner-takes-all elements of life under late capitalism, no one can afford to not take the immediate win, even though it will make things worse in the long run, even for them.
Shamelessness [1] [2] worked very, very tragically [3] for John MacAfee, for example.
Please think three times before you follow these ideas as advice for your life choices.
Analyzing implemented shamelessness strategies can easily lead to some biases. You don't see, for example, many winning strategies that are the opposite: based on discretion.
In today's world, being discreet about everything has the best "cost-effectiveness". Shamelessness is too risky.
Anecdotally, this also seems like a good strategy for dating. Being up-front and clear about your intentions rather than beating around the bush, frequent shameless flirting, and complete honesty about who you are make for a good recipe. If the person suits you it accelerates things, and if you're not compatible you can move on quickly.
I haven't seen it having a "flare" effect like the article mentions, but could see it working that way in the right circumstances.
Not sure I agree.. maybe shame and shyness are being conflated here. My read of the article was that this shamelessness was in context of society at large -- kind of sociopathic almost.
In dating, there is no shame that way -- it's a perfectly acceptable behaviour many people engage in.
It reminds me of my favorite personal rpg game: One can find himself surrounded by superior minds which is quite humbling but what if this is not at all the case? You are to play the shining beacon of intellect in the room? Not much fun at all. Thus in stead one asks carefully crafted dumb questions until everyone is 100% convinced yours is the worse disposition. You still have to solve all the puzzels on the quest of live or whatever the mission your party of heroes gathered for but to avoid being discovered a nerd you quickly insert a dumb question. Is there alcohol in this beer? What day is it? etc Let them win with chess. Think deeply if you want sugar in your coffee.
People make the funniest faces. After a few reasonably dumb questions you can get away with slightly more stupid and work your way towards outlandish!
I suggested one time to take turns looking at google earth to see if someone walked out of a building.
I worked with someone who obviously put little effort into understanding things, and shamelessly and "tirelessly" asked others to help him do things, help him make decisions, etc. no matter how incompetent or illiterate it made him look.
The coin he paid for unending assistance was charm, humor and a posture of humbleness and appreciation.
This strategy was such a constant, that the people around this person ended up self-selected to be people who genuinely liked to help others, and who had a deficit of positive recognition of their value that they appreciated being filled.
Counterintuitively to me, this occasionally involved some good things coalescing around this person - as there are a lot of talented under appreciated people and bringing them together can spark serendipity.
Part of growing up, is the epiphany people can't actually make you feel or care, as this is purely an internal choice one makes for themselves. Accordingly, one can choose to get angry about something irritating, but it is often futile in a business context.
When one meets thousands of people in a year, a very different perspective evolves on what individual behavior even means... After awhile the antics you observe people repeatably engage in become all too predictable, and wholly tiresome.
Nietzsche was a nutjob, but observed people that felt shame about "who they were supposed to be" often masqueraded with a deceptive persona. Thus, never really able to escape the cycle of misery they inflict, and or "playing the victim" to exploit the naive.
Maybe that's the key to shamelessness, or just shedding social anxiety in general. I should get out more, the thought of meeting so many people so often though seems crazy to an introvert like me.
The introvert temperament will likely find such processes exhausting, but after a few trade-shows one may become more engaged with peers and random people. ;)
Shameless seems like a strange way of putting it. As a cursory read of my comment history shows I struggle with keeping my lips zippered when someone is aggressively “wrong on the Internet”, which is immature and I work on it.
With that said, I’m one of those heretics who believes that openly aggressive is dramatically less bad than passive aggression.
It’s better to just not be an asshole ever, but if you’re going to slip up, own it. I post under my real name precisely because I know I lack sufficient discipline to be world-class polite and diplomatic, and if there were no consequences, I’d try way less hard to improve.
Our community/society is beginning to develop “plausible” deniability around snark and condescension and sucking up to powerful people to an art form.
The shamelessness of asking whatever you need or need to know, is quite powerful. I have a friend, that has the strategy to always ask for help. Whatever he needs to do, he just asks friends, coworkers, strangers, and whoever is around for help.
Of course he is blown off most of the time, and that’s fine for him, he doesn’t hold any grudges if you refuse to help him. He just keeps asking, until he finds someone.
I don’t want to be a leach like him, who just lives on other peoples good faith. But it’s really impressive how well this strategy works. And what kind of things he got out of it already.
That strategy works well up to a point, but the big limitation on that is in iterative scenarios. If you come across a stranger and ask them for help, they'll probably help, at worst they don't. If you continually ask for help as your first move at work you'll quickly develop a reputation, people will start avoiding you, offering help less, refusing help when you actually need it, and give bad feedback about you when it comes to promotions/salary discussions.
Sure. But it still gives more impressive results as you would think.
If you’re smart, you use this strategy much more rarely, and just in the cases it’s really needed. But a lot of people forget to use the „please help me card“ in those situations, because they feel ashamed.
> Whatever he needs to do, he just asks friends, coworkers
They say "Asking doesn't cost us anything.", but if I recognize a pattern of repeatedly asking for help without offering something in return (emergencies excluded), it may cost them my sympathy.
Absolutely. Shameless friends asking for help repeatedly with nothing in return become irritating and perhaps avoided after some time. Contrast that with someone who is shameful and know they can’t return the favor and don’t abuse their position because they’re ashamed to.
The meaning is to build a trusty connection and normally it would be a great benefit for both parties. But the shameless breaks the ballance, takes advantage and wins in the short term and in their minds of course. But I am not sure they’d fare well in the long run.
I have seen this pattern before. It works, especially when it works.
Leech off someone, have a small degree of success. Future victims of ones leeching are then drawn in because this person is a winner. Repeat and rinse.
I am more curious to find out what is the basis of the article’s assertion that Paris Hilton’s “dumb blond heiress” was a brilliant high level strategy and not exactly what it appeared to be?
If I were a fortunate wealthy narcissist of middling intelligence I too would rather prefer for the masses to interpret my frequent displays of abject stupidity as a high-wire ploy of a stable genius.
I think the author addresses this near the end of the article:
> A common critique of shameless people is questioning their intelligence. But one of the most bizarre aspects here is it doesn’t actually matter how aware that person is of what they’re doing. The concept of a “genius mastermind” is itself outdated, because it assumes that someone needs to be in control. The shameless person is simply a host for a set of ideas, which, like any virus, will continue to propagate as long as there are willing hosts to receive it.
The point isn't so much that she did or didn't fit that description, but that her actions were effective regardless of the intentions, so criticizing them on those grounds doesn't really do much to combat them.
I think it does though, because the whole point of the article is shamelessness as a strategy, which means it has to be done knowingly to achieve the purpose.
If she was unaware of it but reached the end result, good for her, but it doesn't support that she herself was knowingly following the strategy, which makes a big difference
I see what you are saying, and at first I agreed. Thinking on it more, there are lots of things that when examined rationally we can all agree is a strategy but it's not being done with any forethought. Or thought at all. Puffing your chest up and getting loud when getting into a fight, mirroring behavior, basically social strategies are not the same thing as war game strategies and you can blunder into doing the right thing and just keep doing it.
They are strategies and they are very effective... much to my dismay, but they don't require intelligence.
Why is this a big difference? I might argue that the idea that you need to intellectualize a strategy may be one of the points dismissed by the article..
What does 'knowingly' mean in your case. A lot of high-performance work is about tuning your intuition, not your intellect.
From the article: "The concept of a “genius mastermind” is itself outdated, because it assumes that someone needs to be in control. "
“Her actions were effective regardless of the intentions” - effective in what way? Stupid actions effective to reinforce others perception that the actor is stupid? I don’t get it.
I must have missed the “ta-da” moment at the end, the big reveal, the one where the shocked naysayers are left humbled by the surprise transformation…
The second hand narrative I’ve heard is that she was emotionally abused as a child and went away to boarding school. She used the dumb blonde persona to escape criticism both from the public and her own family as she maneuvered into the life she wanted.
All of her classmates and close friends seem to say she is very intelligent.
There is just a very strong sentiment (including yours) that she has to be stupid. She gave you and everybody else what you wanted.
I was very relieved to find out she was intelligent, because that was my theory from the start. I could not believe someone that stupid would make it that far.
Make it how far? End up in a reality show, joining the likes of Honey Booboo? Born into money with all of the trappings, benefits, opportunities it presents and likely eventually to be able to steer her life taking advantage of her situation?
This reply seems to paint me in a negative light asserting that I “expected her to be stupid”, which you will have to take my word for, I had no such expectations. Whatever impressions of her I have acquired were born of an observation of her public persona.
I am not Paris Hilton watcher, I haven’t heard of her since the show, and have made no notice of some feat of intelligence associated with her name.
I would welcome some evidence of her alleged high intelligence, but I guess I’ll look it up myself if such exists.
I think it's ultimately because the "dumb blonde heiress" thing has made her oodles and oodles of money. She's far from a "started from nothing story," given her family. But that said, she's incredibly successful beyond that, at least in part because of her ability to generate free publicity at will.
Her perfume line brings in $2.5 billion in revenue. Her retail businesses bring in $4 billion in sales. That's on top of her music career, and being paid six figure sums just to show up at parties.
If she'd been sensible, I'm sure she could've gone off to Harvard or Wharton, taken over the family empire, and be sitting next to her vaguely-abusive father in a board meeting right now. But being a coked-out ditz is apparently very, very profitable, and has given her decades of staying power in the public consciousness.
That said, I do think it's harder to say if it was a conscious strategy (i.e. a publicity team sitting around saying, "Ok Paris, tonight you're going to throw a drink at Bill from TMZ, we've already set it up") vs the fact that one can be both a complete mess in some aspects of your life and well put-together in others. If the checks keep rolling in, and you're still having fun with it, I'm sure that "all publicity is good publicity" becomes a pretty reassuring mantra over time. Our obsession with Spectacle does the rest.
To draw a parallel: look at Elon Musk. He's built a personal brand around posting cringy memes on Twitter. Is he a moron? Possibly, in at least some senses. Has his public persona made him buckets of money and contributed to Tesla having a PE ratio that confuses the hell out of analysts? Undoubtedly. One's just targeted at twenty-something women who watch too much reality TV, and the other at twenty-something men who read too much Reddit.
> But that said, she's incredibly successful beyond that, at least in part because of her ability to generate free publicity at will.
For an honest comparison you should compare what she did vs. the alternative scenario of her disappearing from public life after the porn video, not working a single day further at all and just scouting for a good money manager (her family know plenty for sure..both for real estate business and for capital markets at large). Compounding money in the markets is very powerful, even if her carrer made her just as much money, she still had to do some work.
EDIT: I realize people need a purpose and so not working at all could be very bad for you.
Sorry, but spare me. Yes, it's quite obvious, in this day and age, that "shamelessness" works. But one of the reason I think it works is that most people have some sense of dignity, so if you're willing to forgo that dignity, more power to you I guess, but let's not try to pretend it's some sort of brilliant "strategy". You're just willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel that other people aren't.
Simple examples:
1. Leaking sex tapes certainly worked to get Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton more exposure. Congrats!
2. I remember seeing a couple minute clip where Lance Bass was talking to Kris Jenner about his recent (like the day before) wedding to his husband, which was of course televised. The only thing Kris Jenner was focused on was "what the ratings were". So, again, congrats, if you want to take your most intimate, important moments and hock them to the highest bidder, knock yourself out.
3. Trump definitely saw the discontent that was boiling just below the surface in the US that the political elite ignored. But taking advantage of discontent by playing to people's worst fears, their xenophobia and racism, making it OK to always play the victim and how those bad guys on the other side are out to "replace" you - let's not pretend this is some sort of genius.
So yes, I think shameless people can be quite "successful". I'll prefer to keep my soul.
This article has the right facts, but the wrong conclusion.
Shamelessness by itself won't take you anywhere.
Take the Paris Hilton story for example. It was never about Paris, but always about the public. A certain perception of her made the news, so she just played along and amplified.
Same for the Merlin-as-Percival tactic. Don't try it with a bunch of kids.
Since people here like to start companies: it's never about you, your idea or product. It's always about the others, their feelings, their perceptions, and how you are able to play along an amplify.
Isn’t that what he writes in the second to last paragraph?
> But one of the most bizarre aspects here is it doesn’t actually matter how aware that person is of what they’re doing. The concept of a “genius mastermind” is itself outdated, because it assumes that someone needs to be in control. The shameless person is simply a host for a set of ideas, which, like any virus, will continue to propagate as long as there are willing hosts to receive it.
I think this still sounds very negative, and what the author says is basically "It's not that the person is smart, it's that the followers are stupid". I don't agree with that.
For me, it's about public demand, and some smart person playing into it.
> Zuckerberg’s strategy makes him increasingly unlikeable and untrustworthy
It's not his strategy that makes him unlikeable, but his personality and his actions. Especially that quip of his in the last all-hands where he basically said staff attrition through overwork was OK.
I think Peter Thiel is masterful at this. It reminds me of my favorite poem by Rumi:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
I always thought that surrendering to the notion of categorizing right and wrong led to stoicism, but this article got me thinking: in order to be effective at shamelessness, deep inside you need to be a stoic of that shame -- without that you're just a poor player strutting and fretting.
As an aside, that’s more of a much later creative reinterpretation of the poem. Since it’s your favorite, you might be interested in knowing a more direct translation of the original poem:
—
Beyond heresy and faith, there's another place,
we yearn for what's in the midst of that desert plain.
When the gnostic arrives there, he prostrates his face,
there's no heresy, faith, or place in that domain.
—
The originals are definitely worth checking out, and to be honest (imho) make those later reinterpretations look a little suspect because they are just so wildly different.
This attack would be much improved by referencing another translation. As written your comment is impossible to understand; if you read the linked article the implication is that the quoted poem is divorced from historical, cultural or religious context and hence in some way inauthentic. As an attack on the entire corpus of the most popular interpreters of Rumi in English it lands wonderfully. If you can’t read Farsi or Arabic you can’t translate.
But as a veiled attack on those who like the poem, why bother? The authenticity is irrelevant to whether the poem speaks to people.
Would you like to rethink some of the weird and unmerited 'attack' rhetoric from your first post, btw? Seems - really weird, idk. There was no attack, just information.
As with a lot of classics if one wants to really dive into it there is no royal way around working your way through the references / original (critical editions).
In Rumi's case the translator's stereotype of a western audience as the addressee (by trying to deliver "the spirit of Rumi") imho heavily butchers the rich culture underneath. I guess the justification is that the structure of the poem has to be broken anyways so why not "westernize" it, unfortunately that interpretation got stuck.
Here is the paragraph how it is read in Farsi[0] right to left:
از کفر و ز اسلام برون صحرائی است
ما را به میان آن فضا سودائی است
عارف چو بدان رسید سر را بنهد
نه کفر و نه اسلام و نه آنجا جائی است
Transliteration:
az kāfr-o ze ʾeslām borun sahrā-ye ast
mā-rā be mijān-ān fazā sewdā-ye ast
āref čou badān resid sar-rā benah-ad
na kāfr-o na ʾeslām-o na ānğā ğā-ye ast
Word-by-Word:
From disbelief/heresy/atheism (kāfr) and from islam/belief/faith (ʾeslām) outside desert/sahara/plain (sahrā) is
For us in the middle of that world-space/expanse (fazā) trade/ bargain/agreement/(melancholy) (sewdā) is
The knower of God/the Mystic (āref) who reaches to that, his head/top (sar) prostrates
No disbelief/heresy/atheism (kāfr) and no islam/belief/faith (ʾeslām) and no 'here' (ānğā) 'there' (ğā) is
Obviously the structure can now be appreciated in its simplicity also heavily facilitated by the fact that Farsi itself is a Indo-European language.
The culturally loaded terms like کفر(kāfr),اسلام(ʾeslām),صحر(sahrā),فضا (fazā),سودا(sewdā),عارف (āref) stand more out and have different possibilities in being 'translated'.
سودا(sewdā) for example is an interesting choice, because it also could mean '(deep) melancholy' but in that context resolves to 'come to an agreement', but now with the possible undertone of an existential sadness/yearning.
Another example is reading / referencing the greek/latin originals of the stoic texts which gives a much deeper insight into the times and a more finetuned view of the 'conditio humana'. By translating into our language and our times unavoidable ambiguities arise and one has to interpret at times very heavily.
TL;DR:
I highly encourage everyone deeply impressed by those classical texts to also take a look into the references/originals.
That's the crappy thing about internal comms is it's permanent (me looking like an idiot). But I'll get stuck on something/spin in circles and I'm just like "f it I'll ask" and I tell myself don't be poor/ready to be fired. I'm not a stellar dev that's a fact.
Future devs who see your history of asking questions will benefit. They'll realize that asking questions is normal, even for people they now consider to be wise and experienced. At the very least, if you forget you can go back to that historical record and find the answer again. Knowing how to find the answer is almost as good as knowing the answer itself.
Let's not confuse shamelessness with confidence. Modesty and humility is the glue of civilization. We are already seeing how things fall apart once people collectively decide that "nothing matters", the rules are not for them, and that shamelessness is a superpower.
If you look at the opposite, shame as a strategy, it's basically 'whatever you're doing must be understood and accepted by your peers or it's worthless'.
That's a kind of heuristic, yes, but it's got problems.
I do an open source project called Airwindows. It's basically coding, but I'm not much of a coder. It's a (long) series of DSP effects put out as MIT open source, and I'm branching out into creative commons sample libraries: been doing this for years.
Sometimes the stuff I do sounds amazing, but it doesn't have visual interfaces or marketing etc to properly productize it, and it raises a lot of eyebrows. The thing is, I'm a designer, not a programmer. I struggle with porting tasks and keeping the coding environments working properly, and don't have the training for many things, but I have intentionality and a direction to go in, so I've made hundreds of plugins for people to use (or indeed re-work into their own things: MIT license). I also save a lot of time and energy not having to make each plugin meet particular standards or look spiffy, and that turns into workflow.
So the shamelessness question becomes, 'should I be so ashamed of my work not acting like other people's developed products, that I should stop doing it?' and the answer is nope: and I've learned a lot of interesting things about that, not least the fact that people will pay for the polish and chrome of a thing way out of proportion to functionality, and will pay for your effort to meet them where THEY are at. To do stuff that is where I am at is sustainable, but it's not a big marketing win. This is an acceptable trade-off when I cannot produce the same kind of results others (in proper companies, with dedicated programmers etc) are able to produce.
I guess shamelessness is genuinely good when there are some aspects of your stuff that are worth having, and you're not capable of following through and making ALL aspects exactly the way society expects them to be. You also get the bonus of eccentricity: when everything's the same, it's boring, but willful difference is often just annoying. When it's authentic, that becomes kind of a nice thing to have around :)
The Jack Dorsey comment in the article was very strange. Fasting and meditating are not "obviously stupid", and I doubt Jack was playing some twisted meta game for social clout. If one finds themselves thinking like this, they should perhaps pause for thought and try to be more open minded and maybe less cynical.
More likely is that Jack was under an enormous amount of stress and pressure given his position, and he found those practices to be actually helpful.
Observed this tactic in more mundane circumstances - our kids school has punishing traffic access, leading to gridlock and frustration when dropping them off. Certain parents however just drive right up to the access strictly forbidden zone in front of the door and park there, despite all the complaints and stares. For them, drop off is a breeze. I've often thought how much easier life must be if you don't care what others think of you.
We actually walk in, just my observations. No need to sermonize at me, and the goings on in Nicaragua are not remotely germane to the discussion of using shameless actions to advantage.
This is may be not a productive comment, but I just wanted to chime in that Avalon is my favorite game, and it's a delight to see its strategies discussed here.
"Today, it seems like punishing shamelessness only increases social rewards to the transgressor. What’s changed?"
Welcome to the Aeon of Horus, we've been expecting you; we just weren't sure when. In the vocabulary of the Native American Hopi's the signs of the times point toward the fourth world.
> One explanation might be that it’s an expected effect of the blurring of social boundaries today. In the past, if the size of your community was finitely bounded (like a village, or an aristocratic social class), people didn’t enter or exit these communities as frequently. Under these conditions, sanctions are probably still effective, because members of the community want to be liked and accepted.
This is the center thesis of the article, we haven't evolved beyond our evolutionary physical bounds. We look at likes of Kardashians/Paris Hilton/Kanye and react with knee jerk reactions rooted deep in our biology. But it doesn't matter. Tribes exist in ways we can't see or touch, and the "shameless" understands how to harness that power.
Shamelessness is in fact the reason that our civilization is in freefall. The fear of shame in one's community used to keep people's behaviors in line. Now that nobody cares what anyone thinks they will do anything they fucking feel like.
The fact that society is different from what it was when you were young doesn't mean "civilization is in freefall", let's not get overly dramatic, as you're probably just having your own "get off my lawn" moment as other generations before you have.
I'd also argue that it's consequences and not shame that keeps people's behavior "in line".
I know the “kids these days” thing is a trope, but I can’t help but think there’s something to it. The younger generations are far more neurotic and anxious.
Yes, every generation laments how things are different but I really can’t help but think the Internet and Social Media are legitimate new factors which are fundamentally different from the kinds of concerns past generations brought up about the youths. (Things like Rock n’ Roll, letting kids watch too much TV, spanking vs. not spanking, that sort of thing).
I have that concern too. Many things in history are easy to say: "simply apply good critical thinking skills and you will be fine"
But social media in particular clearly subverts the discipline behind good critical thinking. The dopamine hits, the need to feel connected yet people don't want to verbally talk if they can message instead. And the doomscroll is literally never ending.
It all makes it harder to communicate with meaning and apply good critical thinking. One can't but wonder if Social Media is different.
But I have hope that the "social media natives" will have their own strategies (shamelessness being discussed here).
Probably because it's from 3 years ago, and at that point, Elon hadn't yet fully crossed over into shamelessness. Not that there weren't some early signs.
Shame is the worst self-censor there is. I often talk to myself to ignore a sense of shame while imploring for a due payment etc. Things do work that way, but I admit, it's not a happy process.
This is kind of a romantic view of shamelessness, but really the way the examples provided seem to play out is more like a carnival barker whipping up a mob for short term ends or for a grift. I am sure we can all think of various examples like that.
Where a low level of shame is actually helpful in my own experience is when it is used along with transparency, as a way to get honest feedback early. “I’ve been working on this, and I’m not sure about it, but what do you think?” It works for creative as well as practical ends.
That having a low level of shame means you can show incomplete work while you’re still learning, so you can get feedback, without feeling ashamed of it.
It started with reality shows in the 90s, then on to digital reality shows (facebook) and now it's normalized. Old moral codes are being abandoned, as technology allows people to be more individualistic, more free to act. This was inevitable as technologal change is monotonic, and has been subject of books like brave new world. The idea of "community" as a moralizing entity is nice but also very limiting and newer generations will have a very ambivalent relationship with it.
I think yes, the technology is the enabler -- but the driver isn't a need to be individualistic, if anything the opposite is happening (memes and echo chambers). I think what really enables this turbo shamelessness online is the relative lack of consequences, combined with a disconnect between user/avatar as a representation and the real human on the other side.
I think there's more to it than meets the eyes. Shamelessness is interpretative. Today's celebrity culture is rampant with it. Art is not celebrated for its symbolism but more like a PR strategy. For example, Ranveer Singh the Indian actor went ahead and published his nude pics for a magazine. He calls it 'baring it all' but is it a strategic move to showcase himself and create controversy. In fact, controversy is the other name of shamelessness. So yes, it is strategic.
This is one of the more interesting reads I have done lately. The idea isn't really all that earth shattering or novel, but I liked how Nadia articulated the whole idea. While Trump isn't mentioned I cannot help but think of him.
He also seems to get away with one crime after the other by doing them brazenly in the open. It is almost as if the voters or his followers don't think it can be that bad because after all he is admitting it openly on camera.
A lot of them love that he "tells it like it is," even when he's spouting nonsense. They've noticed that inoffensive, press-release-style messages are often bullshit. So they believe that someone being a jerk must be telling the truth.
Trump was a build your own candidate. He said so many things you could pick what you wanted and ignore the rest as pandering to get votes. Turns out he probably was always pandering.
Trump's followers forgive his behavior because he's perceived to be sticking up for them against a culture and society that they view as becoming increasingly hostile and condescending to their identity, values and way of life. Someone that plays dirty and packs a strong counter punch is a good thing.
The mindset is like this: you're an unpopular kid that feels bullied, and some bigger kid starts defending you. You aren't going to question the quality of his character.
Right-wing populism seems to always be like this. They make people who feel under siege (wounded national pride, whatever) feel safer and feel respected. That improvement in feeling swamps everything else.
Yes, I also really enjoyed this piece. It has a nice and loose style... just throwing ideas out without trying to "prove" them, but nonetheless presenting interesting ideas and likely some useful mental models.
Trump is interesting as an example of someone who is wiling to wield shamelessness in a way that others are not. He is much more shameless than almost anyone else in politics.
But the thing is, it is high risk, and this is why others are unwilling to be as shameless. You risk being a social Pariah. The one thing that seems to have eluded Trump his whole life is genuine acceptance. Even the Republican party now, it really feels like people see him as a tool more than a person. He will go down in history, but for Trumpism, not for being Trump. He'll never been see as being loved for his person the way someone like Reagan might (to a degree, I don't know that presidents can ever be truly seen as a person more than as a movement).
There's some debate in the comments about the validity of the strategy and whether so and so was using the strategy in earnest. I think what's more interesting is the recent and current relevance of such strategies in a world of increased media, decreased privacy etc.
The term 'based' is currently used by de youths to refer to a person who employs this strategy.
I call it outrage marketing. I twerk, talk about my pp and spent about $20M on luxury stuff just for flex value. I bought the world's largest diamond, $10M of watches and $3M of cars. People hate it and keep watching. I wish that people cared at all about the $27M I raised for charity. They do not.
I think what the discussion around "narcissism" and "shamelessness" in recent years (apparently occasioned by the rise of Trump) consistently misses is that narcissism as understood by psychologists isn't characterized by lack of, or imperviousness to, shame; rather, the narcissist's acute and formative experience of shame is thought to be at the very core of the disorder, with the subject's pathological behaviors all aimed at suppressing or hiding that emotion.
This is accurate in my experience, coming from an unloving household where shame was the name of the game.
My coping mechanism became to ignore shame and shaming attempts, first in defiance, later "on principle", at any cost (so what if I don't get that toy I always wanted, I won't be manipulated in this way). Obviously this has caused some social problems in adulthood, as I struggle to be critical to myself and others without invoking feelings of shame. Or give a friendly advice without thinking I will hurt someones feelings (because they are doing it "wrong").
That said, I'm not sure whether the distinction matters in practice. It's certainly frustrating for my friends who can't playfully shame me into action, without me becoming all fight/flight, pretending to be oblivious, or outright ignoring them for months after...
I'm lucky enough to have found friends and (other) family that taught me positive reinforcement and nonviolent communication, as I'm seemingly incapable of handling negative feedback (at least openly).
These things can often be a mirror image / opposites of each other -- like for example people with abandonment issues can often sabotage relationships by abandoning their partners. Seems counter-intuitive but it makes perfect sense once we see the fear that drives it, and the coping mechanism of "I will abandon you so you cannot abandon me".
This article needs a liberal sprinkling of phrases like "my opinion is", "it is possible that", "one could speculate that" etc to counter all the shameless assertio-- oh, I see what she's done there.
nobody here able to shift this up on a meta level?
society has rules. sub-criminal behavior breaking rules is responded to with open dismissal by some observers. the unfolding situation triggers shame in most people. those people will avoid these situations and stay in line. those who are shameless can break rules of sub-criminal relevance and if they do so intelligently can benefit from it.
this obviously only works if only a small subset acts shameless. otherwise reaction to rule breaking might also be more shameless and by that more painful.
there you go. have a nice day.
ps: the intro with parcival is total nonesense by the way and serves no relevant purpose illustrating the concept.
Shamelessness == Societal Decomplexification. Simplify a industrial society and you arrive after a mass death back in a rural community, were shame controls everything. To celebrate Decomplexification is to celebrate the downfall.
This article really resonated with me. I've worked 25 years in a small startup for a guy who was maddenly successful in everything he did. He was a technically smart, expert leader, charismatic, drew a following, could motivate a team etc. The problem was that he broke every single rule. Brazenly. When I first met him I couldn't stand him, but in time I began to appreciate him and his skillset, and eventually (now) I admire him and consider him one of my closest friends.
After watching him for a long time I finally figured out that his secret was his ability to brazenly break social norms - totally unashamedly. This gives him the power to change the rules of engagement on the fly. It's incredibly disorienting, as internally your brain asks itself "did he really just do that?". Doing so essentially "stuns" the counterparty, like a deer in headlights they're caught up trying to figure out exactly what is going on. You now have two choices: 1) call out his behavior and escalate, or 2) capitulate.
I'll share a story demonstrating how this works in practice. Early on in the startup 4 of us shared a small office and we all overheard everything. We all shared the same phone line, and would answer as "hello, <company name>". So one day we're sitting there and the phone rings and he answers the phone in his regular voice "hello <company name>". Pause as the other person talks. He then changes his voice and says "let me get you to accounts payable". Without skipping a beat he switches back to his regular voice and says "hello this is <name>". He did it so quickly it's obvious to anyone he didn't transfer the phone call at all. There was just no time. It's also obvious he's is pretending to be two people! I remember my colleage and I looked at each other with the "did that really just happen?" face and "who is he kidding?" The genius of it is that I know for a fact the person on the other line was just as disoriented and now had to stop and take stock of the situation.. They're now second guessing themselves, which puts them at a disadvantage for the rest of the "accounts payable" conversation. It's a great disarming technique. It's genius.
His brazenness also made him an expert of being unapologetic, and I've learned you are very unlikely to win by escalation... He will continute to break norms until you reach a point where it's too uncomfortable (and exhausting) for you to continue calling him out. So in the end it's far easier just to pretend "whats happening" isn't really happening, and (as the article says) you don't want to publicly acknowledge and expose that you are in fact playing an "inferior game".
It's maddening at times, but it definitely gets results. I've never seen anyone beat him at his game, we're all too caught up playing by the rules.
The most amazing thing is that he's not a "bad person" otherwise, he's one of the most kind, generous and ethical people I know, which is odd because at face value it wouldn't appear to be that way. He's sucessfuly built and sold a company that is currently taking care of 400 people. I've long since given up trying to "win" and his close friends simply tolerate the behavior, we love him in spite of it.... I'm not even sure he's concious of it. It's a skill I admire and recognize my own shame is often a deficiency.
So yeah, the strategy of shamlesness definitely has it's advantages.
Shameless generates attention. surprise, surprise. Does that mean we should start watching the kardashians so we learn to be more shameless, generate more attention so we become vastly more successful attention whores? Don’t we have other, more pressing matters to deal with?
when will hackernews grow up? silly love affairs with boring billionaires
Is this shamelessness or fake honesty? Both Trump and Paris constructed public personas that appeared honest, but actually had hidden motives.
Paris is probably a moderately intelligent person, that learned from an early age it was easier to play dumb. Trump is well, Trump. No further comment.
Trump's use of this strategy far predates Paris Hilton. In the 80s and 90s, he was a master of living rent free in everybody's head because of his ability to constantly create scandal and spectacle.
> I’m not really sure what the long-term implications of shamelessness will be.
The best we can hope for at this point is that there will be a backlash. Otherwise, I fear it’s a form of nihilism and sociopathy that will bring down everything.
It’s important to note that people were dismissive of Paris because validating her playbook would mean admitting that they were playing an inferior game.
This might make sense if Paris Hilton was a small town-girl who had clawed her way to the top of Hollywood with ruthless determination only to go in a quite unexpected direction - as opposed to the sole heir of a vast commercial fortune who could afford to act like a spoiled princess in public because it was going to have exactly zero impact on her future.
tl;dr if you already have a ton of money there are no consequences for being an ass because you can just buy new sycophants.
Most known examples of “shamelessness” today, as defined in the article, are probably Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The strategy worked incredibly for both.
For Trump maybe, he got 4 years as the POTUS by saying crazy things in a crazy manner and with a crazy delivery.
Musk net worth however peaked before he started saying crazy things. What got him there was selling pie-in-the-sky ideas which never come to fruition, BS-ing investors and the ever powerful Us v. Them (oil companies, Wall St. shortsellers, hedge funds etc.)
Nobody does it better than the Russian propaganda, specifically the export version. This is perhaps best summarized in the statement "don't believe anything until the Kremlin denies it". And it works so well, there is a non trivial portion of the population that believes obvious nonsense such as "Ukraine is west/NATO fault". It's amazing.
Say your nonsense and it will resonate with people. Some people.
For an example of the opposite, remember the Star Wars Kid? The video of him twirling the light sabre was leaked online, and he was humiliated and sued. Another path he could have taken would be to "own" it, say "yep, that's me". I bet he could have made a lot of money off of that, and perhaps even gotten a cameo on a SW movie out of it.
I have a friend who underwent some major abdominal surgery for cancer. She didn't want to wear a swimsuit because she was embarrassed and ashamed of the large scars. I suggested that her scars were battle scars of her triumph over cancer, and she should be proud of them and show them off. She owned it, and told me later that it transformed her to turn those scars into a positive.
Similar things happen to bald men. The ones who try to hide it with wigs and comb-overs come across rather poorly. The ones who own it and flaunt it fare far better.