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clown_strike | 9 months ago
I agree with all else but I get a different impression here.
The unethical behavior really ramped up not with participation trophies per se, but around the same time we started gamifying everything. People treated each other like NPCs in GTA to abuse for their own amusement or advancement. On the internet we stopped being people and became targets to destroy. Nothing appeals to psychopathic behavior like turning any environment into a feedback loop of reward-seeking.
"Gamifying" life should give anyone pause when you witness how people act within existing game systems. How much effort is spent policing fraud, abuse and antisocial behavior within zero-stakes environments of games themselves? Multi-player Minecraft is unplayable unless you band together into tribal cliques with private servers (de-facto ingroup "racism" with no inclusivity clause for trolls); otherwise random people will log in, destroy your world on purpose and leave. We see similar behavior in real life from terminally-online types committing arson and trying to bait law enforcement into killing people. It's not coincidental.
Gamifying anything drives a competitive environment in which people are compelled to win (dominate) by any means necessary. It's not ethical to force opponents into bankruptcy by ruthlessly exploiting them, but it's the literal point of Monopoly.
School itself is gamified through the reward of grades and privileges. The system you describe is the one we already have. People will always have incentive to cheat to get ahead, especially when competing for or trying to retain tenured positions.
dzink|9 months ago