17 votes

Those people we tried to cancel? They’re all hanging out together

5 comments

  1. [3]
    Akir
    Link
    It's going to be very difficult to explain why I don't like this article. Let me start with the easiest part; I hate that it's expanding the definition of the word "canceled" (which is a term I...

    It's going to be very difficult to explain why I don't like this article.

    Let me start with the easiest part; I hate that it's expanding the definition of the word "canceled" (which is a term I already kind of hated, but that's beyond the point). If you get flack because you tell your friends that all trans people are insane is not them wholesale rejecting you, it's them telling you that you are wrong and spreading a hateful ideology. There is a world of difference between the two.

    That leads me to believe that these are not poor people who have been abandoned by their friends and collaborators, but people who have themselves abandoned their friends and collaborators because they would not yield to the fact that they might be wrong about something. I may not be the average person, but when I find that a friend or coworker has a bad or offensive opinion, I neither stonewall nor harass them.

    One of the huge things I hate about this article is the title and subtitle. "Depriving people of a platform works — in unexpected ways." The very first "canceled" person they cover has an article in The Stranger - the very platform they have been 'canceled' from - published literally two days ago. This article is not even about deplatforming! It's about social dynamics!

    The entire article is full of quotes from people who sound extremely out of touch with reality:

    “When I went to law school, in the ’90s, the presumption of innocence was seen as a progressive value,” Mr. Kay said. “Because who is mostly wrongly accused of crime? Racialized minorities. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor. More often than not, it protects marginalized communities. And now the presumption of innocence is seen as a conservative value. And that troubles me.”

    I'm sorry, I thought this was fundamentally agreed upon. I didn't know that conservatives had control over the fundamental building blocks of our country's justice system. Good for them from taking it from those progressive scum.

    “SJWs don’t have friends, they have allies,” Ms. Smith said. “And your allies leave as soon as you’re not speaking the ideology anymore.”

    Honestly, this quote is so fundamentally insane that you can't even make jokes about it. It's like a DJT tweet.

    I'm honestly not even sure what message the author is trying to convey. Are we all really so terribly tribal at this point that we are completely abandoning people who have vaguely different opinions from our own? Because that's what the author is implying. But what's worse than that is that these stories are entirely from the perspective of people moving from the left to the right, when it seems to me that this kind of thing is much more common when people move from the right to the left. How many politicians have faded away for being RINOs? The entire Republican party runs entirely on ideology - why else would they all be there at CPAC? This entire article feels like an exercise in Hypocrisy.

    30 votes
    1. [2]
      Death
      Link Parent
      The right-leaning media has latched on hard to the word "cancelled", which is somewhat weird given it originated (as I understand) in the spheres LGBT+ people of color. I guess the pull is that,...

      The right-leaning media has latched on hard to the word "cancelled", which is somewhat weird given it originated (as I understand) in the spheres LGBT+ people of color. I guess the pull is that, because people are likely unfamiliar with it, it's just vague enough to become the repository for a bunch of grievances and victim complexes.

      The other thing which weirds me out is how readily they assert that this is some kind of recent phenomena, as if public or localized outrage has not always been a thing. Did we just magically forget the word "paparazzi", are we going to pretend that never existed because now the population has a more public means to voice their displeasure and have it be seen by celebrities and public intellectuals? Even if you boil it down to just the academic world: people becoming social and academic pariahs isn't new either.

      15 votes
      1. moocow1452
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        I can't pull a quote from whoever it was, but it boiled down to as women fear for their safety, men fear they will be ignored. It kind of checks out that if the conservative mindset typically has...

        The right-leaning media has latched on hard to the word "cancelled", which is somewhat weird given it originated (as I understand) in the spheres LGBT+ people of color.

        I can't pull a quote from whoever it was, but it boiled down to as women fear for their safety, men fear they will be ignored. It kind of checks out that if the conservative mindset typically has a fear of losing standing over their own safety, than deplatforming is outsized in how terrifying it is.

        8 votes
  2. mike10010100
    Link
    Not surprising. If they were capable of self-reflection, they would work to change themselves for the better and reflect on feedback instead of doubling down and saying, essentially, "no, it's...

    Not surprising. If they were capable of self-reflection, they would work to change themselves for the better and reflect on feedback instead of doubling down and saying, essentially, "no, it's everyone else who are wrong". Instead of improvement, they seek out affirmation and find it in the right-wing.

    8 votes
  3. moocow1452
    Link
    Obvious disclaimer, I don't explicitly endorse the author or the people interviewed for the article, just kind of curious what happens to the people the internet has seemed worthy of scorn, and...

    Obvious disclaimer, I don't explicitly endorse the author or the people interviewed for the article, just kind of curious what happens to the people the internet has seemed worthy of scorn, and then this popped up.

    4 votes