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Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)
- tines 1y agoI think the shamelessness from Paris Hilton of a different kind than the shamelessness of the 2016 candidate. The former is of the "give them something to hate/gawk at/despise" whereas the latter is a byproduct (first), and results in (second), the breakdown of institutions. When our institutions can't be trusted, the advantage that we thought we were supposed to gain from playing by their rules (stability, fairness, equality) don't seem like they outweigh the disadvantages (waiting and thinking, instead of acting immediately). So we turn to greed and tribalism, and we like to see that legitimized by our role models.
- JSR_FDED 1y agoWeird contradiction in the article - it warns us not to complacently write off those who appear shameless… but also: > any major politician sticking to a pre-2016 playbook today is almost certainly not going to win.
- lubsch 1y agoI'm not sure where you see a contradiction. Could you explain it to me? As I see it, the author claims that those who appear shameless are increasingly successful in today's day and age. The second statement is a prediction that basically follows from that and I feel like the prediction is holding up.
- lowwave 1y agoShamelessly authentic might be what is causing the increasingly success now days. Doubt that shamelessly corrupt will have the same effect.
- mockingloris 1y agoNigerian here. > Shamelessly authentic might be what is causing the increasingly success now days. I 100% agree with this. It's hard to pull off; I've just the one example[0]. Also this buttresses: > Under open borders, sanctions will backfire, because they just serve as a signaling boost for the transgressor, attracting outsiders who resonate with that person’s message. What’s meant to be punishment instead becomes a flare shot straight into the night sky. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeryDarkMan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeryDarkMan
- harimau777 1y agoI mean, it seems to be working for MAGA so far
- JSR_FDED 1y agoWhat I meant was that on the one hand the article says that we shouldn’t underestimate the shameless. On the other hand it says that the person who employed shamelessness in the first election likely won’t win again (thereby underestimating the shameless).
- Spooky23 1y agoPolitics was in this weird stasis. The shameless showman broke the script where some evolution of 1960s Kennedy v. Nixon was displaced by whatever you call this era. Vice President Quayle was mocked endlessly for spelling the word potato incorrectly. Now we have a dude who can barely string a sentence together.
- wredcoll 1y agoPerhaps it wasn't really about the potato spelling after all. Or the emails.
- collingreen 1y agoBad faith!? In _politics _!?
- ctchocula 1y agoMy read of "pre-2016 playbook" was referring to someone using a traditional campaign like Hillary (rather than Trump using his pre-2016 strategy), and that they were saying Trump changed the entire game in 2016 so that shameless strategies would be the winning strategy going forward. So I don't see a contradiction.
- cat_plus_plus 1y agoThe implicit assumption of this article is that ideas approved by current members of community are good and ones expressed by the "shameless" outsider are bad. This would, for example, automatically invalidate Pride movement without considering merits of it's goals. It would be more fair to say that regardless of merit of ideas, stating them directly and forcefully despite community pushback can be a valid strategy to attract new members or shift Overton window.
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y agoYes - the author is biased against those behaviours and erroneously classifies it as "shamelessness" but it's really just authenticity.
- netsharc 1y agoI don't think that's the implicit assumption. She ends with: > But what I do know is when I see my peers rolling their eyes at someone or deriding them for being “shameless”, there’s a good chance that, instead of writing them off, we should examine their actions a bit more closely. What about Donald Trump shamelessly bragging about sexual assault? Incidentally he even has "shame" and is trying to disassociate himself from Epstein - so, it seems he still needs some social acceptance, but that's a curious point about LGBTQ and shame, because many cultures have made these things something bad and to be ashamed about - although I wonder where they've come from, homosexuality wasn't a big deal in Ancient Greece, and they were even the kind where adult men had relations with adolescent boys.
- rao-v 1y agoThis generally is a version of what economics and game theory knows as countersignalling. A classic paper is “Too Cool for School” https://host.kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf https://host.kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf Always worth pondering when it works, and when, for whom, and how it fails.
- pyman 1y agoI'd argue that shamelessness and countersignalling are different things but share the same foundation: confidence. Shamelessness is acting without embarrassment and countersignalling is deliberately downplaying because you're so confident you don't need to prove yourself. Using the example from the article, another person who comes to mind besides Paris Hilton is Trump. He uses countersignalling as a strategic tool, and sloppiness as a Swiss knife. The followers of both Paris and Trump interpret that sloppiness as confidence and authenticity, which is why it's so effective. And to pull off being deliberately sloppy, you need to be shameless.
- jocaal 1y agoI don't think it is that deep for Trump. His sloppiness is great for the media because his choices lead to endless content. He is great for the unofficial media because everything he does is meme worthy. It is no wonder he and Musk teamed up, both their successes come from following the same strategy.
- gadders 1y agoRory Sutherland had a good description of this: "If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car."
- cjs_ac 1y agoOther examples include the clothes that Rory Sutherland wears during interviews, the ways that Rory Sutherland sits on chairs during interviews, and the ways that Rory Sutherland rambles over others during interviews.
- jaimex2 1y agoThere's no news like bad news.
- nickpinkston 1y agoI kind of agree with Nadia's analysis of what's happening, but it's a fucking cursed reality. Here's hoping for a New New Sincerity to bring us back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_sincerity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_sincerity
- lowwave 1y agoAll for Post-postmodernism!!!
- nickpinkston 1y agoHave you seen Metamodernism? There's an art scene and political movement: Art (mostly): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism Movement: https://metamoderna.org/metamodernism/ https://metamoderna.org/metamodernism/
- rogerkirkness 1y agoIt's hard to unsee metamodern in movies once you see it. I did a 'self aware waldo' monologue in high school drama class, didn't realize it was meta modern.
- eszed 1y agoCan you give me an example or two?
- bc569a80a344f9c 1y agoNot a movie, but according to the wiki article linked a little further up the book “A Visit From The Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan has metamodern qualities, and I heartily recommend reading it. It’s fantastic. The section in the format of a PowerPoint presentation about her brother that one of the main character’s daughter gives at her school is incredibly beautiful. One of my top five experiences reading.
- borroka 1y agoThe article is way off base. Dorsey's playbook, if it even exists, isn't something to be ashamed of, especially in the context of Silicon Valley culture. Has the author never heard of Burning Man (obviously, she has and might have been more than once)? Zuck and Dorsey are two of the most common archetypes among tech company founders: the super nerd who only thinks about technology, and then money, and power, and the more romantic nerd, who seems to have some spiritual goals that technology only partially fulfills. A more curious case, although it became prominent years after this post was published, is that of the Bidens. Their son Hunter was a big liability, and even the most staunch Democrats, if they thought about it outside the context of the cultural battle between right and left, would have admitted it. But by all accounts, the whole issue became entangled in the cultural battle between left and right, and people took sides depending on where their vote was going. The same thing happened in Italy with Berlusconi and his interest in younger women whom he paid to have sex with him. He neither explained nor justified his behavior much (just dinner with friends, he said: can I relax the way I want after long days of work?), and the subject became one of many that his friends and enemies discussed daily. Zelensky allowed himself and his wife to appear in what I consider to be an incredibly misguided and glamorous photo shoot published in Vanity Fair, a shameless strategy, but he had cover from criticism, as any criticism of the photo shoot would have been interpreted as openly siding with Putin. But shamelessness doesn’t always save you. Strauss-Kahn, a prominent figure in French and European politics up until some 15-20 years ago, failed to weather the storm, but not because of his infidelity or his passion for escorts, but because he, a socialist, had treated some immigrants and low-status people with vicious contempt (in addition to allegations of sexual misconduct). If it had been just about the escorts or vanilla misconduct, the shameless strategy would probably have worked (after all, who doesn't like escorts?). Although it is always a matter of circumstances, I believe that the shameless strategy works for people of very low status, who do not fear criticism because they have little to lose, or for those of high status, especially when they manage to make it seem normal, that it has always been done, but that it has now become a problem because their enemies want to make it so, for political, financial, or cultural reasons. For mid-level managers in the tech industry, on average, it doesn't work very well.
- etothepii 1y agoWould another way of saying this be that while high expectation it's also high variance?
- glenstein 1y ago>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. Everyone else had invested years into optimizing for the most legible version of the rules. They’d look silly if they were to admit she had found a better way of doing things. I had a co-worker who was addicted to verbally correcting everyone around him, which was super irritating but he seemed just quick enough and just technically correct enough that his formula kind of worked, for him. I would come into work and he would be in a middle of an argument where he insisted some distinction that everyone else that was asinine, he felt was important, and he always got the last word. Everything from pronunciation to definitions of ordinary concepts, and it was visibly important to his self esteem how right he was about all of these things. At one point he claimed I "didn't understand comedy" because I enjoyed Tim and Eric. If you don't know them, think adult swim style surrealist meta-humor but in lo-fi live action. And my theory for this particular co-worker is that something about what Tim and Eric make fun of must have hit too close to home, too close to his sense of normalcy, which in this case meant seeing them not as comedic personas but as familiar targets to "correct", only to realize they were part of a comedic persona satirizing a certain idea of normalcy, to his initial bafflement and then resentment. Because for a moment he could make a home in that world, and it was a world they were making fun of. These are all my assumptions of course, but I think they map on to this Paris Hilton analysis, which is that for some reason he needed to see their entire way of doing comedy as not real or not legitimate, because doing so would mean something fundamental about his psychology was something that could be turned into a joke.
- colechristensen 1y agoEh, I don't think your analysis of your coworker is correct, or it might be technically correct but missing the point. Some people are obnoxious because they never learned not to be. It's about empathy, bad habits, and never getting the right feedback. Of course there is accounting for people being different and your goal in life shouldn't be "never bother anybody", but some folks take things too far. In a work context a manager needs to take a dude aside and gently suggest they tone the behavior down. We don't want to be surrounded by either tone police or constant needless corrections.
- isaacremuant 1y agoIt's another pseudo intellectual article to thinly criticize "the other side in US politics" claiming populism and shamelessness. The mafia/werewolf example is certainly a bad analogy and maybe there'd be more consequences to labeling if labeling wasn't used all the time as a political maneuver to destroy an opponent. It's also ridiculously all over the place claiming Paris Hilton somehow popularized being out there. In the US, Fame and "larger than life" attitudes have always been successful provided they come together with money or power.
- Animats 1y agoThe person who popularized "famous for being famous" was Angelyne.[1] Her boyfriend had a display printing business in LA, and, in 1984, arranged for billboards in LA, with just Angelyne and her picture. By 1995, over 200 billboards. She wasn't a movie star. Or a TV star. She'd done some singing. Yet she became famous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelyne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelyne
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thr0w 1y agoUnaccounted for: the failure scenario. You had integrity, put in the work, and failed. Life is brutal - anyone can respect your effort. You tried to be the next Paris, and failed. You look like a fucking clown.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoThere's some survivor bias. But like a virus, the next strain will be stronger and more potent from those survivors. Very few people in 2004 could pull off the Paris. It's a lot easier in 2024.
- nextworddev 1y agoThe real underlying trend is the great shift in what’s good “taste” and Overton window
- nextworddev 1y agoWell who cares about looking like a clown, considering there’s millions of them on LinkedIn and TikTok. Shame is diluted every day and no one cares
- thr0w 1y ago> Well who cares about looking like a clown A lot of people, almost instinctively, and for good reason.
- nextworddev 1y agoPlaying devil’s advocate, but “clown” is subjective and relative, which means the most serious people are sometimes clowns unbeknownst to them lol
- aanet 1y agoThis is perhaps the best articulation on the rise of certain cantankerous people... in social media / politics / <everywhere> The metaphor of the game is a good one for general understanding (though the Signaling / Counters-signaling paper is a TIL for me) I was hoping that there would be a "solution" of sorts to tackle / handle this issue of when EVERYBODY seems to use this strategy, but perhaps there isn't one...? (My own way of dealing with this is to, uh, not read / watch any news / social media... but such ways are quite brittle, of course)
- lovich 1y ago> I was hoping that there would be a "solution" of sorts to tackle / handle this issue of when EVERYBODY seems to use this strategy, but perhaps there isn't one...? It’s called government regulation. There’s whole fields of research on how to solve an arbitrarily complicated Prisoner’s Dilemma. A lot of people are allergic to the idea because they don’t want to have limits on their behavior, only on others or on no one at all. So we get everyone picking the bad square in the Dilemma
- johnnyanmac 1y ago>A lot of people are allergic to the idea because they don’t want to have limits on their behavior, only on others or on no one at all. So are we doomed? if we don't vote in people who can properly regulate this, it seems the dilemma continues. But how does one convince an entire society to stop being so selfish and myopic?
- lovich 1y agoIf you want everyone to be able to do what they want without limit, and enough people are choosing a route to destruction, then yes we are doomed. I have no idea how to convince anyone anymore. Even people who claim to care about things beyond themself immediately round up the wagons the second they have a limitation imposed. Already in this thread there’s someone mocking government regulation with a strawman argument. I’d just find some people you can make a community with and hole up. The Curtis Yavins, Thiels, and Musks of the world appear to have willed their post democracy state into existence without how much anti democratic sentiment they pull. Gonna have to figure out what their “post constitutional” world is going to look like before anyone has any idea what a good oath forward will be
- johnnyanmac 1y ago>much like any cult or counterculture, that person’s goal was to attract a following, regardless of who the members are. The disgust of one’s peers doesn’t matter anymore, because that disgust forms the basis for an entirely new community. Well that's an unfortunately dangerous effect. But thinking about it, it really only takes a few dozen active members to kindle a community, and then they use that to grab in any vulnerable people who they pitch their scam to. >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. Yeah, fair enough. People just see a catalyst and it will attract a whole swarm of people who will use it to fit their agenda. I suppose it explains a lot of the clshing reports within the US administration this year. Lots of sabetours all trying to do their thing, but they are wrangling a mascot around who they need to keep pleased. ---- As usual, I don't even know how to start to address this. This article was in 2019, and for my country it definitely torpedoed down this decade. It just feels like the few powers left to check it are ransacking the country, and some part of the country is cheering on the destruction of everything. You can't really fight that kind of nihilism.
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y agoIt's not shamelessness, it's authenticity. In today's curated, hyperreal society people desperately crave imperfections, cracks in the armour, they want something real, something human. They desire vulnerability, in part because it gives them courage to also be vulnerable, to not be afraid of judgement and rejection, and the freedom to be themselves. And I think it's actionable advice for all of us. Be genuine, be vulnerable, and don't be afraid to be your true self. People like that.
- SeanSullivan86 1y agoSenior management doesn't like it, in my experience. But I agree it makes sense for many interactions.
- mmaunder 1y agoThe legal fiction that is the corporation is the antithesis of authenticity, and the brand they invest so heavily in, its mask. Having an authentic employee risks removing the mask.
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y agoThe rise of corpo-culture is a big factor in the loss of authenticity in society.
- ebcode 1y agoDing ding ding ding!
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y agoNot everyone will appreciate your authentic self, that's the inherent risk which requires bravery to overcome. It might also be simply not worth the risk, but either way you should act in a way that you can respect. There are things I wouldn't do because I consider them too risky, but I can still respect myself because I'm the one making the judgement call. It's when I act inauthentically because of the fear, not the risk, that I lose respect for myself and I do my best to avoid it.
- socalgal2 1y agoThe latest South Park (Season 27, Episode 2) seems to be related or tangentially related A student is on social media saying things that upset people solely to make money
- wredcoll 1y ago> Increasingly, I think the “shameless” approach is becoming a dominant strategy today. It was first popularized in modern canon by Paris Hilton, who played the “dumb blonde heiress” stereotype so smoothly that everyone assumed she really was as stupid as she seemed. This seems wildly unsupported. I lived through that era, and admittedly I wasn't breathlessly tuned into the latest celebrity gossip, but from a sort of second hand (or third or fourth) she seemed to say and do the exact same things as any other rich young socialite. She went to parties with other celebs, had her fashiom choices reported on and occasionally said something mildly vapid. The biggest moment, of course, was her ex-boyfriend selling their sex tape, but she wasn't the first or the last person to have someone publish private material. Is the argument that she was the first woman to not commit suicide when that happened and there for she's shameless? Or just that she was famous despite acting like an average wealthy child and that made people real mad? It seems like a truly Reed Richards level stretch to get to someone like Trump who says and does a bunch of awful things most people thought were off limits for a politician and was rewarded by a bunch of awful people.
- tw04 1y agoI’m guessing he’s more referring to the television show with Nicole Ritchie where they both acted shamelessly stupid for the attention. I supposed it’s possible she’s really as dumb as she portrayed on her “reality” tv show, but I find it extremely unlikely given the money and education.
- wredcoll 1y agoYou know, that's fair, I completely forgot that show even existed. I guess I sort of categorize it as "a tv show" and thus fictional.
- dang 1y agoRelated. Others? Shamelessness as a strategy (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233451 - July 2022 (214 comments) Shamelessness as a Strategy (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25591066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25591066 - Dec 2020 (213 comments)
- yalogin 1y agoShamelessness is the guiding mantra in politics too, I guess the author wanted to stay away from the most obvious and egregious example. I don’t think we will be able to turn the tide here though. The hustle culture of Silicon Valley tried to draw a fine line for a while but it was never going to last. As a society we are an attention economy and that only values shamelessness, not ethics and morals.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoI kind of hated this essay. Not because I really disagree with the conclusions, but it seems to lump all forms of "shamelessness" into the same bucket. I'm fine with "shamelessness" if it's just bucking societal norms and conventions that have often been there so long that we've forgotten what they were ever about in the first place. But I find it deeply, deeply sad when we see so much shamelessness these days that is fundamentally about treating other people like shit because you like the feeling of selfishness. I also disagree how the author essentially defined "success" as some sort of follower count. I can't remember how I saw this clip, but it was about Lance Bass' wedding to his boyfriend, and he was talking about it with the Kardashian mom. All the Kardashian mom wanted to know about were what the ratings were for their televised wedding, because that's all that mattered to her. I mean, if that's how you want to be "successful", knock yourself the fuck out. I happen to think it's disgusting and the actual opposite of "success", but what do I know, I actually value my relationships for the people I get to know and care about. Maybe I would like this essay better if it were titled "psychopathy as a strategy". Psychopathy certainly works, at least from the perspective of the psychopath, but it's not exactly something I want to aspire to.
- tsukikage 1y agoYou suggest there is an important difference between "just bucking societal norms and conventions" and "treating other people like shit", but in practice all too often the entire difference is whether or not you are one of the people getting screwed over by the behaviour in question.
- blargey 1y agoThat distinction boils down to thoughtfully considering whether or not an act ought to invoke shame - if you can, in good faith towards others, conclude the act shouldn't be shameful in the first place, then it could hardly be called "shameless" to do it. Contrast that with acting out specifically because it's shameful, as a social/media tactic instead of a considered moral stance.
- jongjong 1y agoI'm shameless but it's not a strategy, it's just that I have no pride (or shame) left. I've been reduced to a pair of eyeballs drifting through space and time. If I avoid shame, it's to avoid consequences, not to maintain self-image.
- highfrequency 1y ago> The “establishment” mistakenly assumes that a shameless person wants the approval of their community, when it turns out that, much like any cult or counterculture, that person’s goal was to attract a following, regardless of who the members are. The disgust of one’s peers doesn’t matter anymore, because that disgust forms the basis for an entirely new community. This is a great point, and we can push it further. Perhaps the more powerful effect is that once the supporting fringe communities grow large and influential enough, the original establishment will move over to the shameless person’s camp. This happens swiftly, like dominoes falling, because the establishment’s opposition was actually not ideological to begin with but rather based on perception of the most socially acceptable / financially beneficial position at every moment.
- abc123abc123 1y agoAt least in politics, I'd argue that it is not shamelessness. It is a reaction to the fact that our political nobility have sunk so low in terms of achievement and results, that they made a mockery of democracy. As a reaction, the public makes a mockery of them. As a bonus, getting a politicians that speaks his mind in the common way, is an added spice! Seeing the revulsion in the faces of the political nobility when Trump opens his mouth, gives many satisfaction. So in politics, this is a sign of health. It is a kind of catharsis. Trump was one of the first in the modern era, and he'll get copy cats, and the strategy will then start to lose its efficiency, but, it will have recalibrated politics away from the previous state where it was a toy for the nobility and commoners were not welcome. This is also something they fear. That commoners, not part of the nobility, might gain entrance to their domain. So this is a healthy sign for democracy!
- endoblast 1y agoDoubling down and doubling down on some feeling (or lack of feeling) repeatedly isn't merely a strategy. It is the selling of ones's soul. There's no one left inside by the end of it, just a shell, with no creative power or freedom. Don't envy them!
- hermitcrab 1y agoIf you want to see shamelessness in action, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19OaCHOLoxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19OaCHOLoxI (long, but fascinating)
- k0ns0l 1y agokek >_<
- roland35 1y agoShamelessness works great with our attention economy. Say some real divisive stuff, get eyeballs, monetize.
- nektro 1y agothe political takes here couldn't be more off. wow.