Can Public Shaming be Useful? https://quillette.com/2020/09/01/can-public-shaming-be-useful/

More thinking to be done. There’s the all-or-nothing shame of social media, which as the author says is retributive but doesn’t allow for redemption. There’s the power of the individual who refuses to be shamed (see our President). There’s the emerging societal shame of not wearing a mask during a pandemic, cross-cultural and not about the individual. And there’s the related concepts of forgiveness, sin, conformity in a time when religion is not a power.

I’ve been thinking about shame as a social force lately, and the Catholic idea of the default position of sin and easy redemption before that. The article has some interesting insights on both these things.