The year is 2096. Galabba, 17, is chatting with his great-grandfather.

Grandpa: "Shame used to mean something different. It didn't used to mean being a proud underdog, like you guys say it now. To feel ashamed was an alarming feeling."

Galabba: "How did it feel like?"

Grandpa: "At the extreme, it can feel life-threatening. It most cases, you just feel like finding a hole to hide from being made fun of."

Galabba: "That's an interesting feeling. Why did people used to have such feelings?"

Grandpa: "It's built into evolutionary biology. People used to live in a tightknit group and depended on each other. To shame someone means to cast them out of a group. Being alone in the wild can mean certain death. The feeling of shame ended up being associated with severe danger."

Galabba: "So it was a passed down behavior, just like how animals are."

Grandpa: "Yeah well, but humans don't live that way anymore. We no longer live in tight groups in order to survive. We do depend on each other yes, but in a systematic but isolated way. Look at us, you and me are not even in the same physical space right now. Today, casting people out is not really a concept. For your Ethereum address to be blocked is at most an annoyance."

Galabba: "This all sounds very foreign to me. How did things change?"

Grandpa: "At some point when I was young, the meaning of shaming someone started to change. Rather than it being about the person being shamed, people turn their attention to the person doing the shaming. The act of shaming was considered predatory."

Galabba: "Wait, that's not how I understand shame at all. How did mankind manage to get rid of such an intense emotion?"

Grandpa: "It began when people started to experience the world via media more than the real world."

Galabba: "What does that mean?"

Grandpa: "It's hard for you to understand because that's how it's like since you're born. But stick with me."

Grandpa continues: "Here's something you and your friends know: the desire to be seen by millions. Why is it so important? Because to be seen is profit; to be clicked on is to stay alive. To achieve anything of note at all, it requires people's attention. Getting attention is incredibly important, isn't that what you learned in school?"

Galabba: "Sure."

Grandpa: "Soon it was discovered that doing socially unacceptable acts gains you attention. Any attention is good attention. Call it perverse incentive if you have to. With enough attention, you could make easy money by redirecting the attention to people who are willing to pay you. There was even a person who became the head of state with that strategy."

Galabba: "But how did that change the meaning of shame altogether?"

Grandpa: "Well, people who committed detestable acts gained status and wealth from it. People who did not had a hard time rising up. You see, low status people tend to copy what high status people do. In order to overcome their cognitive dissonance, they changed the meaning of shame over time."

Galabba: "Hang on. If feeling shame (using it as you mean it) is natural, why did we get rid of it?"

Grandpa: "Language is a weird thing. No one really invented it, but everybody invented it together by agreeing together about what words mean. After all, we do things to overcome our natural tendencies all the time. A negative emotion is no exception. The question is should we have done that."

Galabba: "Are you suggesting shame could be good?"

Grandpa: "In the past, to be called shameless was derogatory. That's true across cultures."

Galabba: "That's quite rare."

Grandpa: "For what it's worth, being ashamed affected my self esteem, it made me wanted to improve myself."

Galabba: "Improving yourself? That's so lame."

Grandpa: "I know that's not what people do now, but you'll get that eventually."

Galabba: "People must have felt so constrained back then. Like all the time."

Grandpa: "Not being able to feel ashamed became a superpower. It freed them up to do anything. As soon as people realized that, everybody wanted this superpower. And now everybody has it."

Galabba: "What used to be shameless acts started to be labeled as acts of empowerment. What used to get punished by public opinion now gets rewarded."

Grandpa: "You got it. As a result though, there were widespread behavorial problems that common societal protocols are no longer capable governing. To deal with that, laws got stricter as a result. And that's why you need to apply for a permit to go out to the street."

Galabba: "That's just a click. It's for everybody's good."

Grandpa: "If you say so."