The Industrialization of Shame
When Moral Outrage Becomes Currency
Four years ago, I wrote an article titled "What Do Brené Brown and Donald Trump Have in Common? Does Shame Have Utility in a Shameless Culture?" In that piece, I explored how the past decade had witnessed an all-out war on shame, with voices across the spectrum denouncing its destructive effects on human life.
Brené Brown became perhaps the most recognizable figure in this battle when her TEDx talk in Houston went viral, describing her research on shame and identifying vulnerability as its antidote. But parallel to Brown's shame-eradicating efforts, there emerged an unexpected darker side to this war on shame, one embodied by Donald Trump. As Judith Butler observed, his appeal to nearly half the country depended upon "cultivating a practice that licenses an exhilarated form of sadism free from the shackles of moral shame or ethical obligation."
That article still generates clicks today, but recent events have me thinking differently about shame's evolution in our culture.
The Coldplay Incident and What It Reveals
Consider the recent viral moment involving the CEO of Astronomer and his director of HR, caught enjoying Coldplay on a Kiss Cam. The internet's response was swift and merciless, shaming not just the apparent hypocrisy of their situation, but even their musical taste. This incident soldified something I've been observing: we're witnessing the industrialization of shame in our late-stage capitalist environment.
Shame has undergone a fundamental transformation. It's no longer communal but transactional, no longer a moral compass but a monetized spectacle. It has become part of the attention economy.
Shame as Commodity
In our current system, shame operates as a tool for control, marketing, and profit. Consider how this plays out:
Social media call-outs become revenue-generating spectacles, driving engagement and platform profits. Brands weaponize shame to sell wellness, perfection, and productivity solutions. Self-help markets capitalize on personal defect narratives, turning our insecurities into profit centers.
The Astronomer incident revealed something particularly troubling: the anti-capitalist left joining forces with capitalist clickbait culture to publicly shame. This created a perfect storm where opposing ideologies converged on a shared practice of commodified outrage.
What we're witnessing is shame becoming the performance of values rather than their reflection. Even critiques of capitalism now follow capitalism's own logic—prioritizing virality, branding, and clout. We've commodified critique itself, turning moral superiority into currency.
This represents a profound shift: outrage has become a lifestyle rather than a practice. Shame operates as a new currency of legitimacy, doled out in digital courtrooms where attention equals power and power equals profit.
Toward Post-Capitalist Shame
So where does this leave us? I find myself wondering what it would mean to reclaim shame as a moral faculty rather than a market instrument. How might we restore shame to its proper relationship with mutual accountability rather than performance?
This points toward developing practices of "calling in" that resist algorithmic incentivization, approaches to moral engagement that prioritize relationship and growth over spectacle and punishment. It suggests the possibility of what we might call post-capitalist shame.
The industrialization of shame represents more than just a cultural shift; it's a symptom of how late-stage capitalism colonizes even our most intimate moral experiences. Recognizing this is the first step toward reclaiming shame's proper function.
True moral accountability requires moving beyond the performative dynamics of digital outrage culture. It demands that we distinguish between shame as a tool of mutual growth and shame as a weapon of social control.
The question isn't whether shame has utility, it's whether we can rescue it from the forces that have turned it into just another commodity in the attention economy.
Peace.