Shaming as a social engineering tool

BaldieMonkey · 2025-04-14T21:15:53+00:00

The things is, when all the three points are faced, the shaming is deemed "understandable" ; "legit" or even "deserved" by society.

Your first example was "being short", well gusess what, short men know they are short ; they have issues being shamed for that, as it gives them struggles in most aspects of life ; they care because it makes them feel insecure and actually impact their lives.

Now guess what ? Shaming short men is actually deemed understandable, acceptable and in some cases deserved, and no one bats an eye.

As long as one of the point is not faced in shaming, the shamers will be rejected and the people who were shamed will be considered victims.

justdontsashay · 2025-04-14T20:35:49+00:00

You’re missing a big supporting point here, which is that generally shaming actually is more likely to backfire.

Say you do effectively shame someone for being fat, you make them feel terrible about themselves, that person is actually more likely to develop disordered eating that results in weight gain (pattern of deprivation followed by binging, etc). They’re not going to suddenly have energy and motivation to hit the gym because they feel bad about themselves, it’s actually the opposite.

Shame is a truly terrible motivator, if it does produce any results, they’ll likely be temporary and come with a lot of mental health decline.

So thankfully the people who post here frequently suggesting a mass shaming of (whatever behavior in the opposite sex they don’t like) are usually not in a position to actually affect the feelings of the people they want to target, so they’re not usually capable of inducing any shame.

Remarkable-Salt1074 · 2025-04-14T22:01:21+00:00

Your premise is untrue based on many studies that you literally can just ask a GPT to reference. The numbered points are factual though. Shaming is an effective tool in so many areas especially ones that are not about dating. Unfiltered CHRONIC shame is pretty maladaptive. Shame in moderation or shame accompanied with positive reinforcement and autonomy are also effective. For example, the obesity rate in America steadily increased when we lessened shaming obesity and stopped promoting fitness (ie the fitness crazes in the 80s/90). In low obesity rate countries, you will still be shamed for being fat and they are slowly adopting "Western" views on this. I personally don't care if your BMI is 25 or 55. I should also say that I personally do not believe in shaming women into liking undesirable men nor would it be effective or optimal at this particular point in time per you bullet points. The demographics aren't in place to start collectively shaming in this manner however the population of people who would start this steadily increasing.

efficientaficionado · 2025-04-15T00:11:47+00:00

It's not individual-individual shaming that matters in this discussion, but the view of the group. You don't seem to be looking at it as such. Women lean heavily on the approval of the group, where men have classically been the trend-setting type that doesn't seek approval of the tribe at large.

Women are actually probably the best vector for social engineering because of this, and social-engineering doesn't necessarily have to be a deliberate and/or negative thing...

I think it was a net negative to socially engineer women to be sluts with more modern feminist talking points, but now we're seeing the pendulum swing in real time - towards the positive of women being more selective towards, and selecting earlier for, that "husband-material" type of guy, instead of "having fun" and "needing no man."

According-Tea-3014 · 2025-04-15T02:00:00+00:00

Your first example is like THE most acceptable forms of shaming, lmao

Fichek · 2025-04-15T12:09:27+00:00

You are making a mockery of shaming :D !! But seriously now, that's not how shaming works and never did. You aren't virgin shaming a woman who had 100 partners (as in shaming her for being a virgin the same way men are shamed). It's kinda telling that you are strawmaning from the get-go. Shaming is setting up an environment in which it's acceptable and encouraged to castigate someone for certain behaviors/characteristics. And completely opposite of what you said, it's practically required that you have that behavior/characteristic for you to be shamed. It can also be used to imply that you belong to the group being shamed for something, but it's never used to shame you if you are the complete opposite of what's being shamed. Shaming works.
Your first sentence is completely untrue. It's completely irrelevant if the person is ashamed of something; the role of shaming itself is to instil shame. That's the entire point of it. If you are already ashamed of something, what's the point of shaming you for that? Interestingly enough, the functional example you provided proves the opposite of what you are claiming. LGBTQ historically had TONS of issues with shaming. Why do you think "coming out" is a thing? It's specifically and primarily because of shame they felt because they were shamed and beaten into submission. But for some time now, the pendulum has swung on the complete opposite end, and now people are shaming people who would previously voraciously shame members of the LGBT community. And now you can't be openly homophobic; otherwise, you would face societal backlash (shaming). Shaming works.
People may not care what you specifically think of them, but people do care what society as a whole (or a significant chunk of it) thinks. You would be kinda dishonest if you said that you don't care what MANY people in society think of you and are willing to openly express that. As for your functional example in this point, again you are missing something important. You can't shame someone if there is a significant pusback. And in your example the intensity of pusback is practically the same as the shaming itself so they cancel eachother out. Shaming works exactly because there is not enough pusback to the shaming tactics.

In conclusion, shaming has been working from way back when, is working now, and will work long in the future unless we drastically change how society, as we know it today, works.

Schleudergang1400 · 2025-04-15T18:31:08+00:00

You don't understand shame.

Life-Income2986 · 2025-04-14T21:57:07+00:00

1) True, but did you know that despite how tall you are, if EVERYONE you met started laughing at you and calling you short... Well, have you seen the 'facing the wrong way in an elevator' experiment?

2) See above.

3) Wrong, see above.

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desiringyouall8 · 2025-04-14T23:12:10+00:00

Shame has its place in the cultivation of an individual and a community. Like all emotions, while they arise outside consciousness they can be organized by and ordered towards what we know to be true and reasonable. It is good for those who do undesirable things to feel shame for doing so, and it is not good for those who do innocent things to feel shame for them, and, it is not good for those who do shameful things but feel excessively ashamed of them —feel more ashamed of them than the extent of their actual shamefulness— and it is not good for those who, while they do feel ashamed of actually shameful things, don't feel ashamed enough as they should.

Shame in a sense holds an intermediate place in moral development: while doing good for its own sake is the ideal, nevertheless we don't begin in such a state, but rather by the time we become self-aware enough to know, we find that we do some good things for selfish reasons, and we avoid evil things out of fear of externally imposed punishments. Shame is the first internalization of morality, where we avoid evils not merely out of fear of punishment but because we recognize, on some level, that we are actually undesirable, to others and to ourselves, to the extent that we engage in evils. In other words, shame is the medium through which we begin to experience doing evil as its own punishment, as undesirable in itself, and not merely because we won't "get away with it." Shame is therefore the glue that holds the majority of our communities and society together, especially since we are all, to some extent or another, on the path to moral maturity. This is because shame is the emotion concerned with the judgement of others, which inevitably makes it a part of any social order, since the purpose of moral judgements is to facilitate communion with others as part of a community and society at large.

So, yes, shame is a part of "social engineering," but this is not necessarily a bad thing (nor is every expression of shame a good thing either, as I've explained), since we want to and cannot help but share our lives with others. The proper way to understand shame is that we should, as individuals and as a community, cultivate our sense of shame to be in between excesses where, on one hand, we are ashamed of things we shouldn't be ashamed of, or more ashamed of something than we should be, and on the other hand, we are not ashamed of things we should be, or not ashamed enough of them. For the former, to be too ashamed works to suppress good qualities of individuals that actually could have a beneficial place in a community, while for the latter, to be shameless keeps us unaware of others' judgement of us and why they might have a point with their judgements.

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Hot-Impact-5860 · 2025-04-15T12:14:46+00:00

I'll die on the hill that it doesn't work on men. Has little to no effect on me, on the contrary, I'm tempted to do the opposite.

Saturn-Returns-Real · 2025-04-14T20:17:05+00:00

Usually ppl who do outlandish and vile things actually have paper thin egos you can shred like paper and fear public exposure more than anything so its very effective.

Title	Shaming as a social engineering tool
Author	Lonely_Cycle4757
Upvotes	13
Comments	45
Date	April 14, 2025 7:32 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1jz7qmx/shaming_as_a_social_engineering_tool/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/shaming-as-a-social-engineering-tool.1549596 https://theredarchive.com/post/1549596

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