GenZ’s Shame Kink Is Getting Out of Control

In the days following a stabbing in Times Square that left a 32-year-old woman dead, a significant portion of the online reaction was not sympathy but celebration. The victim, Aaryn Payton, was a VP at Bank of America who had just returned from maternity leave. Commenters called her death a "win" and invoked the name of Luigi Mangione, the man charged with killing a health insurance CEO. Brett Cooper uses this moment to argue that Gen Z has developed a "shame kink"—not about sex, but about politics. The drive to punish strangers online, she claims, has become a psychological addiction that masquerades as activism.

Moral policing as a scapegoat for self-hatred

Cooper draws heavily on a TikTok video by an account called Momo Pill, which she says "hits the nail on the head." The core idea is that "morality is a scapegoat"—a justification that no one can question. People online adopt rigid moral positions not because they genuinely believe them, but because those positions give them a free license to punish others. Cooper argues that the people celebrating Payton's death are not motivated by a coherent political ideology about capitalism or exploitation. Instead, they are driven by "self-hatred" that they have nowhere else to direct. Punishing strangers online gives them a fleeting sense of control and importance.