It happened in a grocery store line last Tuesday. A guy was screaming at a teenage cashier—full-on vein-popping rage—because his digital coupon didn’t load. Ten years ago, the collective "look" from the rest of the line would have shrunk him. He would have felt that prickle on the back of his neck, realized he was being a jerk, and muttered an apology. But not now. He didn't care. He actually looked around for validation. That's when it hit me: we have lost the impact of shame in our society, and we aren't exactly better off for it.
Shame is a heavy word. It feels gross. We’ve spent the last decade rightfully trying to dismantle toxic body shaming and the kind of "shaming" that keeps people in the closet or suppresses their identity. That’s good progress. Honestly, it’s vital. But in the process of throwing out the toxic stuff, we accidentally tossed the social guardrails, too.
The disappearance of the "social brakes"
Think of shame as the physical sensation of a social correction. It’s the "internal burn" that tells you that you’ve crossed a line. Psychologists like Joseph Burgo, author of Shame: Free Yourself from the Secrets that Keep You from a Deepening Self-Esteem, argue that shame is a primary emotion. It’s baked into our DNA. It’s supposed to protect the tribe. If you did something that threatened the group's cohesion, shame was the signal to stop.
But now? The signal is jammed.
We live in a "main character" era. You see it in the way people film TikTok dances in the middle of hospital hallways or how public officials lie about things that are easily disproven by video evidence. There is no "blush." The physiological response of being caught in a lie or a moment of cruelty has been replaced by a weird kind of defiance. When we say we have lost the impact of shame in our society, we are talking about the death of the "oops, I shouldn't have done that" instinct.
Why the internet killed the blush
The digital world is a shame-free vacuum. It’s simple physics, really. In a physical community, you have to look at the eyes of the person you hurt. You see the flinch. You see the hurt. That triggers empathy, which triggers shame. On a screen? You just see pixels.
The Paradox of Online Shaming is real. While we see "cancel culture" everywhere, it’s not actually shame. It’s performance. When a thousand people pile on a stranger on X (formerly Twitter), the stranger doesn't usually feel a healthy sense of "I should reflect on my actions." They feel under attack. They go into survival mode. They double down. They find a sub-culture of people who agree with them and they become a hero in that little bubble.
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Digital life allows us to "niche down" our morality. If I do something objectively crappy, I don't have to face the music in my town square. I just find a Discord server or a subreddit where people think my crappy behavior is "based" or "alpha" or "disruptive." We’ve replaced universal social standards with tribal high-fives.
The rise of the shameless influencer
Let’s talk about the "prank" videos. You’ve seen them. Some kid goes into a hardware store and starts throwing paint on customers for "clout." In a shame-based society, the sheer embarrassment of being that guy would stop him. But when the algorithm rewards "shamelessness" with millions of views and a brand deal, the internal compass gets smashed.
Money and attention have become a powerful antibiotic against shame. If you’re rich enough or famous enough, you don't have to feel bad. You just hire a PR firm to "pivot the narrative." We’ve reached a point where being "cringe" is a bigger sin than being unethical.
The biological cost of losing our limits
Brene Brown, probably the most famous researcher on this topic, makes a very clear distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is "I did something bad." Shame is "I am bad." We definitely don't want a world where everyone thinks they are fundamentally broken. That leads to depression, addiction, and some pretty dark places.
However, a society with zero shame is a society without accountability.
When we lose the impact of shame, we lose the ability to self-regulate. We start relying entirely on external laws to tell us how to behave. If there’s no social cost to being a loudmouth or a liar, then the only thing that stops us is a police officer or a lawsuit. And that’s a miserable way to live. A healthy society runs on the "unwritten rules." It runs on the idea that I won't cut you off in traffic or steal your parking spot not just because of a ticket, but because I’d feel like a jerk if I did.
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That "feeling like a jerk" is a mild form of shame. It’s the grease on the gears of civilization.
Cultural shifts and the death of the apology
Have you noticed how nobody actually apologizes anymore? Not a real apology, anyway. It’s always the "I’m sorry if you were offended" non-apology. This is a direct result of the fact that we have lost the impact of shame in our society.
A real apology requires you to sit in the discomfort of your mistake. It requires you to own the shame for a minute, process it, and move forward. But because we now view all shame as "toxic," we refuse to sit in it. We deflect. We blame "the haters." We call it a "learning journey."
Specifically, look at the political landscape. Regardless of your "team," it is objectively true that the "scandal" is dead. In the 1980s or 90s, a politician caught in a blatant, verifiable lie would often resign out of a sense of public shame. Today? They just wait for the next news cycle. They know that if they just refuse to feel ashamed, the consequences rarely stick. It’s a superpower of the modern age: if you simply refuse to be embarrassed, you can get away with almost anything.
Where do we go from here?
We can't go back to the 1950s version of shame. That was a weapon used to keep marginalized people in their place, and we should be glad it’s dying. But we do need to find a way to bring back "pro-social" shame. We need to value the "blush" again.
It starts small. It starts with calling out friends when they’re being cruel, not in a "I’m canceling you" way, but in a "hey, man, that’s not who we are" way. We have to stop rewarding shamelessness with our attention. If an influencer does something sociopathic for views, we have to stop watching—even to hate-watch.
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We also need to distinguish between "judgment" and "discernment." It’s okay to discern that someone’s behavior is unacceptable. It’s okay to let them know that their actions have distanced them from the community. That’s not being a "hater." That’s being a neighbor.
Actionable steps for a post-shame world
If you feel like the world is getting a bit too "wild west" and you want to cultivate a better environment for yourself and your kids, here is how you handle the shift.
- Practice "Internal Check-ins": Before you post that snarky comment or do something "for the bit," ask: "If my grandmother was standing right behind me, would I do this?" If the answer is no, that’s your healthy shame talking. Listen to it.
- Reward the "Good Blush": When someone messes up and actually says, "I am so embarrassed, I really messed up and I'm sorry," give them grace. We have to make it safe for people to feel shame and then find redemption. If we punish the honest apology as harshly as the lie, people will just keep lying.
- Curate your digital intake: Unfollow the "shameless." The people who thrive on conflict, public freakouts, and "pranks" at the expense of others. They are training your brain to think this is normal. It isn't.
- Model accountability: When you’re wrong, own it loudly. Don't make excuses. Show the people around you that feeling a little bit of "social heat" is a part of being a grown-up.
The goal isn't to make everyone feel miserable. The goal is to bring back the "ouch" that happens when we hurt the collective. Without that "ouch," we aren't a society; we're just a bunch of individuals bumping into each other in the dark. We need to care about what others think of our character again. Not our "brand," not our "reach," but our actual, boring, old-fashioned character.
Focus on building "inner-directed" integrity. In a world where the external guardrails are gone, your own internal compass is the only thing left. It has to be calibrated to something more permanent than the current trending topics. Stop looking for the "main character" moment and start looking for the "good neighbor" moment. That's where the real impact lives.
Audit your own reaction to public bad behavior. Instead of just scrolling past or laughing at the latest public meltdown, take a second to recognize the loss of social cohesion it represents. Talk to your kids or your peers about why that behavior is actually a failure of character, not a "win" for "freedom." By re-establishing the lines of what is and isn't acceptable in our own circles, we start to rebuild the very impact of shame that we've lost. It won't happen overnight, but the "blush" can come back if we value it enough to let it.