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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31492 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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You have the kind where everyone picks on the weakest member and we should get rid of that.

Should we?

As a form of enforcement of a culture's values is a target approach relative to the person's individual failure to meet it not efficient. I know experiencing the opposite where everyone in a group is punished for the actions of one person is brutal.

The direct feedback on your actions this elements of 'hazing' provide both the course correction for the individual and assuming it's free association a group selection effect that maintains the groups identity.

I was in a fraternity, but lived in the dorms as a freshmen during the hazing period. While my experience hazing was comparable to many who were live in freshmen pledges the fact that they could not reasonably say know I felt their experience to just be far more grotesque than mine.

So in areas where free associating is low such as compulsory K-12 school it probably should be regulated.

That being said 'homophobia' & machismo is rampant enough in this male groups that I'm highly doubtful that this is close to the real story.

they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room.

I'm guessing this either an extremely rare occurrence or just a flat out fabrication.

Freshmen being forced to strip naked and perform various acts, including bear crawling and slingshotting themselves across the floor with exercise bands.

Also, what exercise bands have the force to "slingshotting" D1 athletes?

This sport allows transfers, they aren't under contract. Are none of these outbound transfers incentivizes by modern culture to speak out in some way? I think three ex players have complained about micro-aggressions type racism, but that's it.

I'd bet there was hazing but a large amount of hyperbole.

Should we?

As a form of enforcement of a culture's values is a target approach relative to the person's individual failure to meet it not efficient. I know experiencing the opposite where everyone in a group is punished for the actions of one person is brutal.

I think "don't shit on the weak for fun and self-aggrandizement" is a cultural value of the Western civilization, so people violating it should be counter-bullied by Society.

But that's not the only thing happening. There are the people making mistakes on the team. A culture of minimizing mistakes is being enforced. A bar is being raised so to speak.

I don't doubt there is also a sphere of ill-intended harassments being laundered into the system or that a machiavellian type isn't attracted to doing the enforcement, but there is an enforcement happening that provides value.

I'd bet there was hazing but a large amount of hyperbole.

I kind of doubt it. That is only really one order of magnitude worse than we'd get up to at the high school level on some teams. Especially the dry-humping thing. Team bonding is taken seriously by the teams and dry humping isn't exactly going to leave lasting scars. I played sports pretty seriously through highschool and the dynamic really isn't so nefarious unless some guy takes it way too far.

It's hard to really explain how it works but think about it like this, one player isn't being serious about their role and you as a group need to show your disapproval as a group. This isn't a relationship where firmly worded letters or a talking to by the team captain is likely to give you the range of expression or properly signal that the whole team agrees in the way to getting together and making everyone participate would. It also produces shared weird experiences that help with bonding. It's really hard to explain in rational terms what the value there is but in a team culture it makes a kind of sense. These aren't white collar business units and they would perform worse if they were.

I'm guessing this either an extremely rare occurrence or just a flat out fabrication.

dry humping a guy is pretty tame compared to the horror stories from other sports. junior hockey in particular has hazing rituals that sound like they came from ancient cults.

And it went far beyond a little innocent fun at the expense of the new guy. In Kamloops it was particularly humiliating. Rookies there would regularly and repeatedly have the knobs of hockey sticks covered in heat liniment inserted into their anuses. Toothpicks covered in liniment were inserted into their urethras. They were made to read pornographic magazines and were hazed on whether or not they got erections. Veterans would defecate and force the rookies to throw it at each other. Players would tie a skate lace to the end of a rookie’s penis, throw the lace over a pipe and tie the other end to a pail in which they would toss pucks, allowing the rookie free only after there were 25 pucks in the bucket. In Seattle, Ledlin said the veterans hired out prostitutes and forced the rookies to have sex with them.

or from the nba, shaq proudly recounted how he once spent an entire week shitting in a bucket, then dumped it on a rookie's head.

Gary Payton embellished a story about Shaq in a podcast ~30 years later. Shaq denies it ever including shit, never more than a day of piss, and claims it often was fake piss. The story hasn't been corroborated by others at all, so I'm trusting Shaq here.

That hockey story is from 1980s for example and culture has refined. The base level of 'hazing' that acceptable by society has radically changed.

Individual 'power-spikes' where incidents get out of hand and people get too into the hazing in a sole incident I find more plausible than an tradition-based repeat thing. Especially where it's homoerotic in nature. The myth of something like that never dies & tends to lead to a large impact than reality.

they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room.

I'm guessing this either an extremely rare occurrence or just a flat out fabrication.

Sounds like the kind of thing that happens once as a practical joke/scaring someone, which then gets mythologised.

A similar thing happened in my club and it was definitely not a common occurrence, it happened once and was then talked about for a decade.

Less spectacular stuff happens all the time though and I imagine just regular lockerroom stuff would be unpalatable to (some) people if it was written down.

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