respectability cascade
Article
respectability cascade is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 10, 2021 and May 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “The whole process was a very clear example of a respectability cascade”; “my best guess is something like a respectability cascade”. It most often appears alongside atheism, cancel culture, Gawker.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: May 10, 2021
- Last seen: May 12, 2021
Appears In
Related Pages
-
- atheism (2 shared issues)
-
- cancel culture (2 shared issues)
-
- Gawker (2 shared issues)
-
- “How do you do, fellow kids?” (1 shared issues)
-
- NotAllMen (1 shared issues)
-
- TheResistance (1 shared issues)
-
- 1950s (1 shared issues)
-
- 1950s - 1990s (1 shared issues)
-
- 1950s American consensus (1 shared issues)
-
- 1990s (1 shared issues)
-
- 2000s (1 shared issues)
-
- 2010s (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
The whole process was a very clear example of a respectability cascade. There’s some position which is relatively commonly held, but considered beyond the pale for respectable people. In the beginning, the only people who will say it openly are extremely non-respectable people who don't mind getting cast out of normal society for their sin. Everyone attacks them, but afterwards they are still basically standing, and their openness encourages slightly more respectable people to say the same thing. This creates a growing nucleus of ever-more-respectable people speaking openly, until eventually it's no longer really that taboo and anyone who wants can talk about it with only minor stigma. It's the same story as atheism, gay rights, and a hundred other things that were once taboo but eventually became mainstream. Except in this case it was kind of cannibalistic, because the main complaint the anti-SJWs had was that they couldn't talk about how much they hated SJWs. Once they could, their case kind of lost relevance, which is probably one reason the search term is trending down these days and nobody talks about the IDW anymore.
Inline links: respectability cascade
I still don't have a great sense for how 1950s-era conformity and repression failed, but my best guess is something like a respectability cascade and the barberpole model of fashion. The most interesting intellectuals of the era became disillusioned with the consensus, a few halting and dangerous attempts to speak up produced common knowledge of this, and the new set of ideas spread outward. First a few mad geniuses, then the coolest artists and writers, then the brightest academics, then journalists, then well-educated people in general, then the population in general, and the last step was reaching the government (still not really complete; marijuana remains illegal at the federal level).
Inline links: respectability cascade, barberpole model of fashion