I came across this reel on Instagram this morning, and it spoke to me:
I think we’ve completely lost shame. And I genuinely find that terrifying, because there used to be shame. There used to be things you simply didn’t do because they were shameful. Not illegal, not because you’d necessarily get caught or get punished for them. You just had enough shame not to do them. There are ways you didn’t behave in public and things you didn’t say about people and things you didn’t expose about your family and things you simply wouldn’t do for attention. There were certain lines where something inside you went, “No, I’d be ashamed of myself.” And that mattered.
Because today I genuinely don’t know if that line exists anymore. We’ve become obsessed with this idea that nothing should embarrass us, and nothing should make us feel ashamed, and no one gets to judge us, right? The whole “I don’t care what anyone thinks“. Ok, but what happens when nothing is shameful anymore? What happens when there’s nothing you wouldn’t do because you’d be too ashamed to do it? I think that’s terrifying, because here’s the reality: laws can tell you what you’re not allowed to do. Consequences can tell you what you might pay for doing. But shame used to tell you, even if no one ever finds out, I still wouldn’t do that. And I think we’ve completely underestimated how important that is.
And listen, I’m not talking about being ashamed of who you are. I’m talking about having enough dignity to know there are certain ways of behaving that are beneath you. We’ve spent so long teaching people don’t let anyone shame you. Fine. But maybe we went a bit too far. Because a world where people are ashamed simply for being themselves, that’s horrible. But a world where absolutely nothing is shameful anymore, where there’s no behavior beneath us, no line where embarrassed to cross, nothing we’d be scared for being known for. That’s an absolute nightmare.
Because if absolutely nothing is shameful anymore, then what exactly are we too ashamed to do? And if the answer is nothing, that’s the problem.
Hot take: The rise of influencer culture and (in a broader sense) social media itself are both the cause and serve as examples of this phenomenon. He’s right. It is a (huge) problem.
