The rise of pity marketing
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
The West and much of the rest of the world have built societies with few strong kinship bonds. Not everyone has a family they can lean on for support, and we tend to lose friends as we get older rather than make new ones. So, yes, of course people will resort to eliciting support from the internet, and when it works even once people will start to learn and game the dynamics. Framing it in these terms may make it sound malicious and disingenuous, but it needn't be either. Given functional kinship bonds, humans are generally good at eliciting support from the people around them and learning what needs to be done to get the support we need. This is just a generalization to strangers.
This isn't to say that there aren't disingenuous people lying to game these mechanics, of course there are. But for the sake of those that aren't, maybe let's leave them be and not raze to the ground what's emerged as a stand-in for actual social support and strong kinship ties?
In my experience, so much of what you do for kinship is based on guilt, that I find it hard to trust that my kin actually care for anything I ever did. (This could just be because I'm Jewish, but go with me here for a second). My first and last fans have always been my brother and my mom, since I was 12 years old strumming a guitar, all the way through sort-of-rock touring status with a few hundred people per show, up til I'm no longer playing music but for late night solo demos to a few people. One has to ask: Are my kin only kind to my efforts out of some sense of mutual support rooted in guilt if they don't respond?
I think that question kind of answers itself.
So then, what about people who don't have anyone who they can email music to at 3am who has to pretend to like it? What becomes of those people?
It all jives. I think you nailed it. The public pity party is directly related to lacking a family who'll bullshit and pacify you for your own good.
I am not sure what you expect from your relatives... do you expect them to tell you objectively whether you're good? Are they experts guitar critiques?? Even if they were, do you think asking them for feedback would get you the most honest answer?
Do you have children? Would you tell them honestly if you thought they sucked? And "honestly" here is impossible, you'll be totally biased if you're like most parents and will probably actually believe your children are great even when most other people would disagree.
If you truly wanted actual feedback, you would seek that from your peers, not your mom. That can of course be brutal, but that's what you should really seek if you're interested in knowing just how good you are. Your peers can be unjust, of course (and if they're your friends, they will also be too biased or too embarrassed to give you real feedback)... but at least you have a better chance of knowing the truth, and hopefully where you need to improve, by asking people who actually know the stuff and been through the same journey as you're trying to embark on.
Finally, to know whether you were actually good is impossible, and as the article says, perhaps you just weren't as good as you thought and having people cheer you on out of pitty would just prolongue your illusion?!
I used to play as well, and it did come as a shock when I finally understood that I (and my band - except one of the guys who went on to become moderately successful years later, and is still a professional musician) just weren't very good compared to the big bands getting more success than us, and that perhaps that outcome was not actually unfair at all.
I'm writing, in all earnestness, to say that I'm glad my 80 year old mom is still my biggest fan. For what it's worth, my father told me when I was 15 that I'd never be any good and I should give up music, so family isn't all roses. I was just drawing on this as an example of how family can alleviate that itchy need to be recognized which can lead people down a path of self-pity as opposed to a balanced view of their own importance (or lack thereof).
The people behaving like this are the ones who are begging for judgement, probably feeling "safe" that anyone condemning them for doing it will be mobbed by the majority who will not miss their chance to virtue signal their support for the self-pittying person.
the need for community hasn’t gone away, but I can’t help but wonder if we’re pursuing it in the wrong places.
Who is that "we" that could raze social media pity to the ground? In places infested by fake beggars we don't hold council meetings where we decide to stop giving them money.
When I see that my compassion is being taken advantage of, I become less compassionate. Chances are, so do you. Social media pity won't be destroyed by those that complain about it. It'll be destroyed by those that abuse it.
I never take pity on individuals, whether they are begging at the train station, a grocery store, or somewhere on the Internet. No pity for individual situations. I absolutely cannot and will not trust someone's claims and I absolutely cannot judge their worthiness for charity.
I give generously to charitable organizations that do the most good. This is my religious obligation, and it's also the best way to maximize my bucks. Any suitably large charitable organization will have policies and guidelines for determining who is in need, and how much they deserve. It's simply a matter of trusting that they know how to vet people's needs, and how to distribute aid most effectively in the region that they serve.
I have seen it myself first-hand. I volunteered for a charity that serves the poor, and right in the middle of downtown. It was my job to interview people to find out their immediate needs: socks, bag lunch, shower, bus ticket. And we had intricate and firm rules for how much they could get, and how often they could get it. Some people even received a bicycle, if their needs could be matched with its availability. But obviously, we only had so much to give, and needy people are, unfortunately, experts at squeezing free stuff out of everyone they could. So, we had rate limits and daily/weekly limits on everything. No bus passes without proof of need; that sort of stuff.
So it's the same with all the other charities I support, and they are often organizations I've worked with directly, and I know their reputation for service, and I trust their ability to manage money that I give them. No pity, no guilt, no stress.
And they maximize your bucks with outlandish purchases for executives and "fund raising" parties for their selected few. I stopped caring for large NGOs when I found out how deeply corrupt their management is, including middle management.
If you want to help, don't give them money, donate your time or goods, instead. The vast majority of your money goes into managerial salaries, bonuses and needless services and purchases.
Look up the red cross or any other large organisation you may have in your area, they all do this without exceptions.
So about two weeks into the COVID-19 lockdowns, one of my upstairs neighbors set his apartment, and the unit next door, on fire. Like a big fire. The resultant fire, smoke, and water damage affected six units altogether, and the American Red Cross was right there on the scene, to render assistance and ensure that these families would not be turned out onto the streets. I didn't look closely at the news reports, but I didn't see any mention of randunel being there to help.
Then last year, an ex of mine suffered a fire in her very own flat in SF. She has been disabled with a major stroke, and her roommate was also displaced, escaping with only what they could carry and their cats. After the fire was doused, thieves wasted no time in breaking in to take whatever wasn't nailed down. Again, the American Red Cross was on the scene (randunel conspicuously absent) and a GoFundMe was launched.
As I stuck to my principles of donating to the best agency possible, I decided to send a few bucks to the AMR. In fact, I accidentally donated first to my local AMR, and then I doubled that by donating to the correct regional one in charge of San Francisco. I thought it to be quite appropriate to give back a little, since after all, they had helped my neighbors in need not long ago.
So if it weren't for the American Red Cross and their good deeds, many Americans would be homeless and lost after disasters, and I'm thankful to them for being there in our times of need.
By not addressing the corruption it could be interpreted that you're okay with corruption as long as you benefit from it. Was that your intention?
If your goal is to support disaster relief then they are an inefficient use of your resources. However, they also run blood drives and then sell the blood which is part of their overall budget independent of donations. $921 million is just salaries for people running blood drives, with similar expenses for overhead on supplies and equipment.
It is basically impossible to design an organisation that directs resources to economically unproductive people. $700 / $3,000 going to the right spot could be reasonably effective. I mean, at least the Red Cross won't take a fraction of the money and use it to fund ruinous, murderous and pointless rampages across Afghanistan. So they're doing better than the US government. And I think they might be outperforming the major churches for number of abuse scandals although that sort of thing is hard to measure.
So it is less efficient than personally doing something locally, but if the local community is going OK then I could imagine the Red Cross might be the next best alternative.
Running blood drives is a major part of their mission, it’s also largely self sustaining because they are selling the blood.
Of course, you can't help the Ukrainians unless you're sporting the latest iphone.
Data supports that this works and simply giving money helps those people. The charity also openly publish their data on how efficiently they are operating, currently at about 90%.
I worked there for years and had intimate access to detailed branch financials and operations.
https://www.jurnaldevrancea.ro/noi-amanunte-despre-caminul-d...
This happened for me at a bar in Seattle when I was sitting next to two women when were literally giggling about how the Gates Foundation paid them $300k a year for nothing.
https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/offerings
One tool they offer is a calculation of AFR, which is the Administrative and Fundraising Expense Rate. It basically measures the overhead you're talking about. You can look it up for any charity that's part of the CFC at the link above.
The EFF's AFR is over 30%. The Red Cross's AFR is a touch over 9%.
American Red Cross - 90% of funds spent on program; 3% on admin/staff
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/530196605
Feeding America - 98% of funds spent on program; 0.3% on admin/staff
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/363673599
United Way Worldwide - 95% of funds spent on program; 2.6% on admin/staff
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/131635294
St. Jude Hospital - 95% of funds spent on program; 3.9% on admin/staff
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/951643325
Charities an both be effective and useful while also paying executive staff handsomely, these are not mutually exclusive. There's no rule that says non-profit/not-for-profit employees have to live as chaste or castigated monks.
Lies. The West had boundless kinship bonds as deep as they were wide, in fairly recent memory. The West brazenly wrecked them in the name of the profit motive.
This pity culture stuff is utterly despicable and no self-respecting individual should have any patience for a society where such blatant decadent is excused.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-32420070
Or the folks documented here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03...
Or the example that reminded me of this, when a Super Mario World modder faked having cancer so famous YouTubers like ProtonJon and Raocow would play his ROM hack on their channels.
I guess that would be the logical extreme of this behaviour. Just flat out making up a sob story to get attention for your work if you don't have an actual one to market.
At first, there was legitimately bad movies being made by honest crews trying to make something.
Then, once cringe got popular, a hundred made-to-be-bad movies popped up immediately which were actually just bad because they lacked authenticity.
“Local homegrown <country you are in> company going bust! Thanks to all our loyal customers. We are selling the last of our stock at 50% off!”
There then follows a link to a shopify shop selling stuff from aliexpress, marked as “50% off while stocks last!” but in actuality marked up 300% or more.
I find it massively scummy, and clearly it works because there’s no end of replies to most of them saying stuff like “so sorry to hear that. Can you ship to…?”
Meta really does profit off the lowest, most deceptive crap.
Begging is the world's [second?] oldest profession. It relies on our innate social instinct, and is pretty effective.
Like most ways of making money, it gets abused.
It's my thought that people who live in relative abundance, may not necessarily understand the levels of desperation that extreme poverty can engender. I have family that was very involved (and still is, into their seventies) with addressing poverty. They (I believe rightly so) think that poverty and wealth inequality may be the most pressing issue in humanity, these days, as it directly, or indirectly, affects almost all the other issues.
I grew up in developing countries, and remember the "beggar pimps," that would deliberately mutilate and cripple children, in order to send them out begging. It was pretty horrifying.
But I also help people that no one else wants to help (for good reason). Tough crowd. I need to enforce my own boundaries, and am pretty damn good at saying "no." Also, some of the folks we help, can turn around, and become fairly vile, once they have their asses out of the sling. Just comes with the territory.
"Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know."
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
- Mark Twain
I'd never play the pity card, though. One has to live with oneself, even if most people pretend they don't.
But maybe it's worth challenging the question a little; what exactly is wrong with doing such a thing? What are the potential positives and negatives if one were to be more open with their failures? Are there any situations where a failure still yields positive results and an analysis of such a failure is useful?
The article itself is not very good and I think the article's author tries to hard to take an alleged social media story where an emotional outburst resulted in a performer getting better sales. Already the article is extremely light on details for this story, and the story itself doesn't seem as important as the author's segue into their point about "sob stories"; I read this as a trite example to vault to a larger point that I don't think the author ever makes, but their opening sentence is quite revealing:
> "There are few behaviours considered more unflattering than actively seeking pity."
This premise is too much for me to accept without further elaboration from the author, as it introduces a lot of questions on this view point that I don't think the article even tries to answer. The focus on how failure should be something we don't show is very unusual, since there are so many fields where failures are part of the expected process, and you're supposed to learn and discuss failures, not hide from them.
I can't really get what the article is meaning to express except a general rant about "sob stories", but the rest of the text just seems to go on regarding something about social media, and while I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to understand from it, what I did understand was the author maybe just doesn't like the format of discussion on social media and common habits on social media.
That is fine, I am not big on the social media format as well, and I just choose not to use it a ton as a result. So there is something about 'sob stories' and social media we're supposed to understand, but I'm not really sure what it is. Tying it to an artist that "used their sob story to fill seats" and implying that this was a scam with extremely light details is not convincing to me.
Why share that reaction on social media? I don't really get it either but I assume the same motivations that lead them to share everything else
> While it may be true that Grier only had one audience member at her initial preview, people soon realised that she had posted a nearly identical tweet at the start of the Fringe in 2022. Pity moved tickets both times.
It seems the article is talking about "pity marketing" as a whole, even if true.
I don’t know that the article says the events were fake. It questions the motivations of the people posting the events.
My comment was that many of these posts may not be part of deliberate “pity, marketing” efforts.
And it's not pity. It's because they're ducking tired of the money they spend ending up in some billionaires pocket or returned to the shareholders. These posts are an opportunity to see your money go to actually help someone.
Like maybe it's the difference between them having to work some shitty job or getting to have their hobby pay their bills. That's a good feeling and that's the value people are chasing. Even if they tell crappy jokes or write boring books... who cares?
It's not like some marginal comic eeking out a living telling bad jokes is such a tragedy. Whatever economic waste there is in letting some marginal comic eek out a living on bad jokes pales in comparison to billionaires.
They'll skip over half the competitors just to show us how poor and sick some athlete's mother is or whatever.
Sometimes you even miss the winner while the person they were talking about doesn't even medal!
It's a cold joke. My mom had cancer. It's not the having of cancer i'm annoyed of obviously. How in the hell is this relevant to... oh right. it's a fucking national televised show. It's competing with The Bachelorette.
sigh. curmudgeons unite. i enjoyed your comment. feel seen!
"Here is my new idea. It's a diaper for parakeets."
"Why would anyone want that?"
(crying) "Because, because, sorry guys. My mom passed this year and I promised myself I wouldn't cry. She just loved parakeets"
"OK, here is a million dollars"
The whole schtick is so ridiculous I find it pretty offensive.
This poor fool still believes that social media has a shred of authenticity left. There is no such authenticity on social media platforms, the entire system is designed to generate content that creates engagement.
I think it says more about our society that people have found success in begging online than it does the beggars themselves.
But from individuals? Sure, there's astroturfing, but there's also genuine messages with no ulterior motives.
Or do you think everyone posting here on HN has ulterior motives?
As far as HN goes, I find myself posting for upvotes sometimes instead of having the more nuanced conversation. It’s why I typically abandon my account around 2-3k upvotes. Even these systems reinforce our beliefs that we are always correct or more correct than someone else because we have more upvotes/karma/whatever.
I don’t think everyone has ulterior motives in the sense that there’s a hidden agenda to adhere to. But I also think it’s impossible not behave in a way that reinforces the clout mechanisms that exist on all of these platforms, which ultimately does detract from authentic behavior.
I’ve done the same thing about three times. My rough limit is 5k. It’s time. I think HN is better than many forums but posting for karma is a motivation everywhere it is possible.
the insight is that our culture is consumed by capitalism and so individual people actually do mimic corporations because the corporation is all mighty.
hustle culture, influencers, content creators are all very literally trying to make a business of their identity.
i am not judging, i am saying it's very clear what's going on.
To your point, not to say authenticity is dead. There are still voices. It's by no means a given. i don't think it's unreasonable to default suspect everyone posting content online has a commercialized agenda.
For instance, if you're talking about the Instagram Explore page or the Tiktok For you page, its all marketing. Literally nothing is real, everything is made to maximize engagement.
If you're talking about your followers who you know in person, that will be 80% authentic at least.