Bonus Episode on Snitches, Tattletales, and Whistleblowers

Bonus Episode on Snitches, Tattletales, and Whistleblowers is the 14th episode of the Very Bad Wizards podcast, released on February 08, 2013.

Show Notes

In a break from tradition, we recorded a 25-minute episode on the morality of tattletaling, snitching, ratting, and whistleblowing. We discuss why these people seem especially despicable (except for maybe "Bubbles" from "The Wire" and the guy from "The Insider"), and David gets Tamler to agree that he'd never turn him into the police. We also puzzle over the existence of porn theaters, and the origins of the expression "flip a bitch."

Opening Quote

Yeah, but this kind of junk make real junk look bad

—Fred G. Sanford, Sanford and Son

Sanford and Son

Transcript

Eliza Sommers (disclaimer)
"Very Bad Wizards" is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
Fred G. Sanford (quote)
Yeah, but this kind of junk make real junk look bad.
[ Begin Music ]
[ End Music ]
Dave Pizarro
Welcome to "Very Bad Wizards." Today we're doing something a little different. Since it's taking us some time due to technical error and the busyness of life and currently snowpocalypse to get a full-length episode out there, Tamler and I thought we'd do a little one-off short podcast.
Tamler Sommers
Snowpocalypse?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, that's—
Tamler Sommers
You have like 6 inches. You have like a dusting.
Dave Pizarro
It doesn't mean that it's not going to be more. It's a claim about the eventual magnitude of the storm, not about how much snow is currently on the ground.
Tamler Sommers
But how is that preventing us from putting out a podcast right now? It just—
Dave Pizarro
It's actually enabling us to put out a podcast. Exactly. That's the only reason we're talking right now is because you have this free time. That's because I can't go in I'm actually outside watching like the Sisyphean snow shoveling of Canadians.
Tamler Sommers
Because you can't get to your local Canadian porn theater. Can you believe that people used to go to theaters? And I think they still do.
Dave Pizarro
I was just showing my daughter Pee-wee's Big Adventure for the first time. And I thought to myself, one day she will realize that Pee-wee was caught jerking off in a porn theater and she will have so many questions about why this is the case.
Tamler Sommers
But I mean, it's not just her. I have questions about why that's the case. Like, that was even then, that was at the time of videos. Like, what—
Tamler Sommers
That just shows you how desperately horny men are that they would actually go— this is before the years of VHS, you know?
Dave Pizarro
No, it wasn't before the years of VHS.
Tamler Sommers
Well, it started before, right? I mean, it was a throwback. Like, it continued into the—
Dave Pizarro
But when Pee-wee Herman did it, there were—
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, there were definitely VHSs.
Dave Pizarro
There were definitely VHSs, which means he actually made the choice to go out into a theater—
Tamler Sommers
Is it like an impulse buy? Is it like, you know, how like Times Square used to be filthy? And is it just that you're walking down the street and you see like an adult theater and you're like, you know, I haven't jerked off to porn in a while. Like, why not?
Dave Pizarro
I mean, that's fine. Like, I, you know, I've had that thought probably. And it's very simple. You go back to your house and where you're in the privacy of your own home.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, no, I— if you cannot— if your imagination is not powerful enough to allow you to do something like that without having to walk or drive or take public transportation—
Dave Pizarro
No, you don't need an imagination. You have a screen.
Tamler Sommers
No, no, no, I know, but I'm saying like, suppose that you didn't have access to any porn currently. That's what I still think that the wrong answer to current state of sexual arousal is to drive to a theater in which there— the other thing is, I mean, there are—
Tamler Sommers
Completely cleared out.
Dave Pizarro
He had made a bank run the week before.
Tamler Sommers
Here's the two greatest expressions: spank bank and flip a bitch for making a U-turn.
Dave Pizarro
See, I've always been intrigued by the origins.
Tamler Sommers
I have no idea. I get spank bank. I get the origins for spank bank. That's not hard. But flip a bitch, I don't know why that means a U-turn.
Dave Pizarro
I don't either. But it's very funny. Like to just say when you're— I'm going to flip a bitch right here.
Tamler Sommers
I wonder if Urban Dictionary has something to say about it. Actually, I just turned to Urban Dictionary, which is to look up the topic that I wanted to discuss today.
Tamler Sommers
So today we want to talk about snitching.
Dave Pizarro
Yes. We've been wanting to do an episode on this and we may still do like a long episode, but this is—
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, we may still do a long episode, but I just had to get these thoughts out. So I actually was talking to a grad student of ours, Emily Rosenzweig, about doing some studies and we did collect some data on the topic. But the only other psychologist who I know who's done research on anything like snitching is my friend Jesse Bering.
Dave Pizarro
Oh, he has?
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, so he actually did a study on tattletaling in kids.
Dave Pizarro
Awesome.
Tamler Sommers
So I'll put a link up to that, yeah. But so—
Dave Pizarro
And I want to just get it out there, I want to write like a philosophical treatise on snitching.
Tamler Sommers
Do you want to say the conditions under which it's appropriate or not?
Dave Pizarro
To call someone a snitch, to snitch.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, or when you should properly express the emotion of gratitude and when it should be resentment.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, what's it go— snitching versus whistleblowing.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, well, so, okay, that's actually gives— that leads me to a set of distinctions that I think that we should make. So snitching obviously is telling on somebody who's done something, presumably done something wrong. So there are at least 3 ways in which I think snitching comes up in everyday discussion, and one is when kids tattletale. So I'm actually curious, Tamler, to hear what you would think if your daughter came up to you and said, you know, I saw this boy, he hit his friend, and so I went and told the teacher. Right. So in this case, I think that qualifies as tattletaling.
Tamler Sommers
Yes, that's correct. Or snitching.
Dave Pizarro
Or snitching. And now I don't— yeah, you know what?
Tamler Sommers
No, let's see.
Tamler Sommers
Let me just say, because I've had this conversation with my daughter. Right? And what I always tell her is, if somebody does something that's mean to you, right? Like, if somebody does something that's mean to you, the first thing you do is you talk to that person if you think you can. You know, unless it's like a 6th grade sleazy boy with like a beard or something like that. Then you just talk— the first thing you do before going to a teacher is talk to that person. And I'm thinking, you know, in her school, this issue is more like a girl is being mean or something like that. You know, it's not like she's getting picked on or bullied or something like that. And then if that doesn't work, then you go to the— then you go to the teacher. But what you're saying is somebody else, right?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. And then I tell her if she can, she should go in and tell that person to stop it if she thinks that that person really should stop it. And then if the person doesn't, then you could tell the teacher. But again, the idea is to go to the person first, then to—
Tamler Sommers
Right, right.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
And certainly— I think that in the case, like if a kid is like lighting matches next to a garbage can or something, and like, that's like, you know what, swallow whatever trepidation you might have about telling on someone and that's actually putting people in danger. So go ahead and do it. There is a way in which I think tattletaling— and so here's what I want. I'm gonna use the term snitching to refer to all kinds of telling on other people. And then I wanna distinguish between tattletaling, the kind of snitching that you would do as an adult for, like, if you were— if the cops wanted you to be a snitch, right? That, or if you want to reduce your own prison sentence, or if you just live in the community and part of your gig is to tell the cops whenever you see something that goes wrong. And then there are whistleblowers, people who are actively in, in like a company and they see bad things that are going on and they— nobody's saying anything, so they go and say it. So one of the things that I think is relevant to determining whether— so to me, the interesting question is, under what conditions is it actually wrong to tell on someone, and under what conditions is it actually obligatory to tell on someone, and in what conditions is it just permissible? So I actually think that—
Tamler Sommers
You really should be a philosopher.
Dave Pizarro
I know, I know.
Tamler Sommers
And at what point— you forgot to add when it's supererogatory.
Dave Pizarro
Supererogatory, that's right.
Dave Pizarro
By snitching, I refer to this, this, this, and this.
Tamler Sommers
Right, well, so what are—
Dave Pizarro
In this paper, I will examine.
Tamler Sommers
So here are my intuitions.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
When self-interest is clearly involved, so suppose that you actually tell on another inmate because it might reduce your sentence.
Dave Pizarro
Right.
Tamler Sommers
I see that as just being a snake, like being a rat, a ratfink. Actually, that's an old term for— When you tattle, when you become a tattler in elementary school because you're trying to gain points with the teacher—
Dave Pizarro
Those are the worst kids in the school.
Tamler Sommers
Those are the worst kids, right?
Dave Pizarro
Bullies are better than those kids.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, exactly. So this is some attempt to acquire power in this weird elementary political kind of way.
Dave Pizarro
In this like slave morality kind of way.
Tamler Sommers
Right, right. So I think those are just— wrong. So I would try to influence my daughter not to tell on people unless there was really nothing, as you say, there was no other way around it. It was putting people in danger. It was harming her. It was harming somebody else. Right. So, you know, in hip-hop, a snitch, it probably just in general, in whatever sort of criminal underworlds, being a snitch is the worst of the worst, right? Yeah, and you save the hollow tips for the snitches. Yeah, because it really violates the code of honor that they have. So I think at least—
Dave Pizarro
But there's a— I mean, yeah, the worst— and then there's the worst kind of snitch, which is doing it to just reduce their sentence, or they're going undercover to help the cop, or like the cop is paying you $20 to tell them when a crime occurs. But even a snitch that doesn't get any benefit from it is still a snitch. And even a snitch that like goes to the cops because he was like beaten up, or something like that, because an actual crime was committed against him, right, is still a snitch, right?
Tamler Sommers
That's right. And they get punished. It's a dangerous thing to do. You know, there's a great— in The Wire, it's great when— I can't say this without talking about a spoiler, but there's a character who just by dint of being seen with the cops, pretty much gets punished.
Dave Pizarro
But then there's one of the most lovable characters, Bubbles, right? Who's just a professional snitch.
Tamler Sommers
He's a professional snitch.
Dave Pizarro
It's funny, it's funny how nobody has any bad feelings against Bubbles for doing what he does. And he's doing exactly— and he's doing exactly like what you said and what we both said was the worst thing, right? He's snitching for a personal benefit.
Tamler Sommers
He is like this— he's introduced to such a lowlife. I think one of the things that prevents him from being despicable is that one of the first times that he tells the cops is because his friend, that guy who ends up getting AIDS— yeah, sorry, spoiler alert— gets beat up so badly that he— at least we see him fighting with himself about like whether or not to go to the cops. And in that scene when he finally does, and then he visits his friend in the hospital, he's like, "Bubs, you went to the cops?" You remember that?
Dave Pizarro
Like, we don't do that.
Tamler Sommers
He's laid up in the hospital. He was an inch, like close to death. And he's like, "Bubs, what did you do that for?"
Dave Pizarro
Here's what— if I had to guess why we don't hate Bubbles, it's just because that's his hustle, right?
Tamler Sommers
Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
Like, you know, it's like, and that almost trumps anything. Like if you're down and out, you do whatever you can to scrape your way up to the top. That's why we like the drug dealers. That's why we like—
Tamler Sommers
And he's not claiming any allegiances either, right?
Dave Pizarro
Right.
Tamler Sommers
It's pretty much, you know, it's not like he's in the organization.
Dave Pizarro
Right. He's not betraying anybody.
Tamler Sommers
Right. That is a big thing. tension because on the face of it, if you see something very, very, very wrong being done, it should be the case that I feel like my intuition should be, okay, preventing that wrong thing from being done is the right thing to do. And then this is why the case of snitching really interests me because it's like, no, even if— Like even if somebody murders somebody else, to take an extreme case, and that person is like part of your crew or your friend, you just keep quiet. And that just seems like a weird tension. Like, don't I believe that you should stop bad things from occurring.
Dave Pizarro
But the point is— here's the thing, it's like you should handle your own business. I mean, that's the thing that it's driving. Like, if somebody murders your friend, you don't go to the police, you go out there. And this is where, like, it's like an act of cowardice to snitch, right? It's like, I don't want to take the chance of avenging what happened.
Tamler Sommers
So, right, it very much gets to your point about the impersonal nature of third-party justice. Right.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Okay, so now the most interesting case I think are whistleblowers.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. Because there seems to be this weird thing where— so these, you know, big evil corporations, multinational corporations stealing money and doing horrible things. Like, let's just assume that that's true. Okay. Now finally, somebody within the organization gets the—
Tamler Sommers
In some weird possible world, like these corporations are doing bad things.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. I just don't want it to sound like I think that profit is evil or whatever. But you know, what are you, Obama running for president? No, I just need money.
Tamler Sommers
All right, you're like bound to these business people. School.
Dave Pizarro
I know. Um, so a whistleblower tells on all of the sort of shady things that are going on in the organization. And they're championed as a hero, right? Publicly. Yeah. I don't think that we actually really think that they're heroes.
Tamler Sommers
Oh, I disagree. Like, did you see The Insider?
Dave Pizarro
I didn't see The Insider. Yeah. But this is a real special case where tobacco companies are seen as so evil that— but like, take the, I don't remember the name of the woman. She was like on the cover of Time for like ratting out one of these big corporations. Like, I don't know. She's just like a famous whistleblower. I should probably look this up before I talk about it. I actually think— I kind of am like, okay, that's fine. Somebody had to do it. But I don't know that I would hire her.
Tamler Sommers
Right.
Dave Pizarro
Well, why don't we take a quick break and keep talking about this when we get back?
Dave Pizarro
Okay, here's why I think whistleblowing— here's what I think distinguishes whistleblowing from snitching is that there's a huge power imbalance between the whistleblower and who they're blowing the whistle on, right? And this is maybe why we forgave Bubbles, right? If he was just snitching on some other, like, down-and-out heroin addict, we would have had no sympathy for Bubbles.
Tamler Sommers
That's right. That's right.
Dave Pizarro
But he was—
Tamler Sommers
In fact, it's courage because they're putting themselves at serious risk. Like, what if you whistle blew and no one believed you and they squashed you? You are now for sure going to be fired and maybe not hired by anybody else.
Dave Pizarro
No, that's exactly right. That's exactly it. It's essentially— we measure it by courage. And the cases of whistleblowing that we love are the ones where they took a lot of courage. That's why The Insider, the guy, you know, like, that took a lot of courage. And the whole movie is about all the sacrifices and all the risks that he took to make that point. Whereas the worst cases of snitching are when it's an act of cowardice, right?
Tamler Sommers
And when you don't snitch out of courage, my intuition is it gets rewarded. Like in Goodfellas, when he gets nicked for the first time, and he doesn't say anything, and they just like throw him a party, like, congratulations! Like, they're so proud of him that he took it like a man and didn't say a word.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
You popped your cherry.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, exactly. So, but what's interesting about Goodfellas is why is it that we forgive him what he does at the end? That was pure cowardice. That was purely self-serving. I mean—
Tamler Sommers
I don't know that we forgive him. Well, I think that my feelings about him at the end are really, really much more mixed then he becomes— he becomes like a— he becomes pathetic at the end. And at the end it's like, this one move will be, you know, whatever. At least he brought some bad people down. But like, he's a sort of a pathetic man.
Dave Pizarro
And at that point, Jimmy, the De Niro character, was pretty much out of his mind, just killing people and, you know, paranoid. And also, here's a big thing too, which I bet can get you off the hook: threatening family. Like there's that long scene where she's walking down the alley and stuff like that. And it's like all bets are off if somebody's threatening—
Tamler Sommers
It's true. Yeah, that's true. That's, you know, that's a master of a movie, you know, and it really— you— to construct it that way so that you're not hating Jimmy at the end. Or is it whatever?
Dave Pizarro
No, not Jimmy. Uh, yeah, um, Henry.
Tamler Sommers
Henry at the very end. is just, to me, it's good storytelling. So—
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, it is. While I actually think that whistleblowers sometimes are acting courageously, I still can't shake my feeling that they are a source of betrayal. I guess it would change if I knew that they had tried really hard to confront all of the people in the organization. And that this was their last way out. But like, I don't feel good when we champion the people who just sort of come out and turn everyone else in.
Tamler Sommers
Well, I mean, it just— I think it's— again, this is going to be something that I would think resists systematization and theories and is more of a case-by-case basis where the best you're going to be getting is some trends. But like, I think it really depends on, A, how much harm this company is doing. Yes, how much risk the person is taking and also to what degree they tried to resolve it internally, I think is also an important question.
Dave Pizarro
Right. So resolving internally, there has to be, to me, no real motive of self-interest. Right? Like, you're not trying to get something.
Tamler Sommers
Although it can be in your family's interest, under some circumstances.
Dave Pizarro
Right. Well, you know, presumably, yeah, yeah, yeah. And indirectly.
Tamler Sommers
But not your family's interest, like, if you do this, they'll be able to go to Aruba for 2 weeks.
Dave Pizarro
Right. Right. Is it preventing harm— that gets to your preventing harm, right? Yeah, preventing harm. To me, it can be the lesser of two evils, I guess. That's as far as I am willing to go. That's kind of extreme because obviously when somebody is doing a really bad thing, I think that it's your duty to— so, so here, let me pull your intuition. So, okay. You are walking down the street, you see a car swerve around the corner, hit somebody. Or let's say hit a car. Let's say hit another car and then continue going. You actually got a really, really good look at the license plate because let's say it was like a personalized license plate. So there's no problem that you had memorizing. So do you— and the person left and the car was really damaged. Do you call, pull out your cell phone and call the cops?
Tamler Sommers
I mean, do I— or should I is the question.
Dave Pizarro
No, do you?
Tamler Sommers
Okay. I'm not sure. So they just hit the car and it's the person's— there's nobody in the car.
Dave Pizarro
Nobody in the car.
Tamler Sommers
So it's just property. It's just physical property damage. And the guy drives off.
Dave Pizarro
And the guy drives off. I mean, maybe somebody—
Tamler Sommers
Why, I'm not sure. I kind of hope that I would in some ways because— Oh, yeah. But I also— I mean, so a couple of things that's interesting about this. There's no loyalty. I have no loyalty to some guy that's driving recklessly.
Dave Pizarro
That was going to be my next example. And then runs into my kid again. My next example was— My next example was you see the personalized license plate and it says Pizarro and you know it's me.
Tamler Sommers
Oh, well then I definitely wouldn't. Right. What I would say— it's like, it's obvious, right? Like, dude, you gotta go back there and, uh, right. You have a personalized license plate?
Dave Pizarro
No, I don't. I don't. But just assume that— Let's assume that you knew it was me, right? Um, yeah. So you would confront me—
Tamler Sommers
Is there any other way— the only way I would know that was you is that I saw the personalized license plate.
Dave Pizarro
Well, let's say it was dark. Um, so, okay. So now it's a person. Okay. I hit a person. Do you turn me in yet?
Tamler Sommers
Again, I would first go to you. Yeah. And if you're like, dude, I'm not doing it. I'm not. Then I don't know. That's a good question. Probably not. I hate to say it, but probably—
Dave Pizarro
I know, I know. It's— I think that I wouldn't. I think that I would really, really plead hard for you to like go to the police, but I don't know that I could turn you in.
Tamler Sommers
What about the other cases?
Dave Pizarro
The other case, I feel like I might call the police if I don't know who it is and I got a good look, just out of being a good citizen. So the interesting thing to me is sometimes I think that as a policy, maybe it should be true that everybody ought to call the police when they see somebody do that, and they can— except for I want to reserve the right to not do it if it's somebody I have any loyalty to. So in a weird way, I think that I would want to do what I think is wrong, you know?
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. Well, that's an interesting— you know, this is— I think, you know, sometimes there are other values besides moral values. Right? This is a great Susan Wolf article, "Moral Saints." Oh God, I'm fucking up.
Dave Pizarro
Oh yeah, that is great.
Tamler Sommers
Where she says there are other values besides moral values, and loyalty is a huge value. And sometimes loyalty trumps morality. And so this might be a case of that.
Dave Pizarro
It is. I want to point to one last case that I think really, really makes your point about courage being central to your evaluation. And that is, there is a slang term called dry snitching. Dry snitching means when you snitch without really saying— you don't— not actually calling out names, but you're saying enough stuff to like get someone in trouble. So you're not—
Tamler Sommers
you don't even have the courage to like—
Dave Pizarro
Exactly. You're even worse than a snitch. Like, cuz if you actually said someone's name— But imagine like on this podcast, I was like, well, you know what? I saw this guy, like I won't name him, but he's a philosopher at University of North Carolina. And I saw him cheating on his wife. And people would be like, oh my God, you know, it's like, I didn't even have the courage to say his name. But nonetheless, I'm trying to get whatever crew, whatever credit for actually—
Tamler Sommers
It's like gossip cred too. No, that's a— yeah. So why is— Here's what I don't understand. Why is it called—
Dave Pizarro
Why is it called dry snitching?
Tamler Sommers
Explain to our listeners.
Dave Pizarro
I believe that it's because you don't get the full pleasure of both parties.
Tamler Sommers
The full contact.
Dave Pizarro
You don't get the penetration of real snitching.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, I dry snitched until I was about 16. And then I started really doing it for real.
Dave Pizarro
All right. That was our 25-minute take on snitching in our one-off episode. Maybe we'll talk about something in a longer episode.
Tamler Sommers
Thanks for joining us.
Tamler Sommers
For more information about this episode, including show notes and links, and to listen to other episodes, please visit us at www.verybadwizards.com.