Conversation

Ok i want to tease out a specific thing - there's a phenomenon i wish i had a term for, but it's where "when you place intense social judgment on a thing, this increases the likelihood that the only participation of that thing will be negative." For example, stigma against-

Quote Tweet

Aella

@Aella_Girl

May 24, 2020

People generally view self harm as a "very bad" thing that they will try to help you stop if they find out you do it. Can someone explain to me why it's bad? If it's done safely, with no lasting damage, and is an effective method of stress relief, why is it so bad?

4:37 PM · May 24, 2020

Replying to

prostitution means that most of the people who go into prostitution have to eschew society's blessing, and people who eschew society's blessing probably already have a lot of other things wrong with them, so we end up with "prostitution = desperate drug addicts." My question is,

Aella

@Aella_Girl

May 24, 2020

is this phenomenon at play with self harm? Like, is the intense social stigma against self harm causing a similar association, where the only people who finally go do the self harm end up doing it irresponsibly, unsafely, and out of desperation?

Replying to

Duncan Sabien has written a *darned* great article about exactly this type of self-reinforcing representation cycle; he calls it the representativeness heuristic:

medium.com

It’s Not What It Looks Like

Or, How The Representativeness Heuristic Is Ruining Every Fucking Thing

Replying to

and

oh of course duncan would have written this. thank you this is perfect!

Show replies

Replying to

a similar dynamic been described by

@ProfEmilyOster

: after "[vitamins] are healthy" becomes known, lots of health-enthusiasts take up vitamins and it starts to look like vitamins make you healthy, even if the two are unrelated.

aeaweb.org

Health Recommendations and Selection in Health Behaviors

(June 2020) - Consider a case in which a new research finding links a health behavior with good health outcomes. A possible consequence is take-up of this behavior among individuals who engage in...

Replying to

sorry if this is too spicy, but ozy points out a related phonomenon (thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/on-) where, if adults dating teenagers is stigmatized, then only unscrupulous adults will date teenagers, making adults dating teenagers worse than it necessarily is

thingofthings.wordpress.com

On Age of Consent

[content warning: discussion of sex with children and teenagers; tentative approval of the latter under some circumstances; brief discussion of rape] To be clear here: I am talking about whether it…

Replying to

Many activities result in incidental self-harm (like sports or getting a tattoo). But what society promotes harming yourself for its own sake or as a coping method?