Unwritten rules · Daily Email House

John Bejakovic

4d (edited) • Community META

Unwritten rules

This morning I watched a video about unwritten rules in baseball.

(Bear with me if you know nothing about baseball or care nothing for baseball.)

I had no idea, but baseball has had, for 100+ years, dozens of unwritten rules about player conduct, for example:

You cannot flip your bat after you hit a home run
You cannot have a beard (all teams, once upon a time, New York Yankees still today)
You cannot score from second base on a single if your team if the game is a blowout and your team is winning

Now here's what got me:

These unwritten rules are enforced BY THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES ON THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES... often by members of your own team!

If you break one of these unwritten rules, odds are great that you will be beaten up, ostracized, or sometimes worse (eg. have a 100mph baseball launched at your face on purpose).

Here's what else got me:

If you're a big star and you break a rule in a big moment, exceptions are made
If you're young or inexperienced, then you will be consistently and brutally punished by other players for breaking a rule

I remember reading in, I believe, Robert Cialdini's Influence about the importance of hazing rituals to form a sense of in-group identity.

That's what this reminds me of.

Seemingly arbitrary rules, enforced by group members, as a way of reinforcing the importance of the group and of recommitting their loyalty to that group.

Now I've really never belonged to any group, unless that group is the group of outsiders who don't really belong to any groups.

But without getting too weird about it... I'm curious:

What seemingly arbitrary rules have you experienced or seen in real-life groups you've been a part of? And in online groups you've been a part of?

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