What are the pros and cons of public shaming?
What are the pros and cons of public shaming?
Shame and praise are the tools a parent uses to steer a child. Adults, however, accept that other adults have freedom of thought and are therefore entitled to maintain their own beliefs without this controlling emotional harassment. Instead, intellectually mature adults use data and arguments to influence one another.
Pros: Shame and praise work on immature people. And likely, it is the only thing that works. Unfortunately, shame and praise, because they were once used on us as children, work even on us as otherwise rational adults (this being also a Con—just spend some time with a narcissist to see).
Cons: it degrades the discussion environment broadly. That is, everyone starts behaving like children. We are there now.
Nevertheless, I use shame and praise explicitly in my social media efforts, but ONLY to shame or praise childish individuals in the direction of a more mature discussion. For example:
I never use shame or praise to move people in the direction of my opinion.
And you are a loser if you cannot see that. Just kidding. 🙂
