With the frequency these articles get posted here I feel like people have an axe to grind against "woke" people and I really don't appreciate it as someone whose well-being has been made a lot...
With the frequency these articles get posted here I feel like people have an axe to grind against "woke" people and I really don't appreciate it as someone whose well-being has been made a lot better by those people. This article is less bad than most, but it still ignores why this stuff happens. I'm not going to bother writing another novel about this because I don't have anything new to say.
Contrapoints did a great video on this topic. She is one of the more well known "woke"/leftist/breadtube youtube personalities, and her video was largely in response to herself being cancelled....
Contrapoints did a great video on this topic. She is one of the more well known "woke"/leftist/breadtube youtube personalities, and her video was largely in response to herself being cancelled. Cancelling can be very problematic with its assumption of guilt, exaggeration of crime, and guilt by association among other things. I'd recommend watching her video on the topic.
Considering her videos are still pulling a million views each I'd say she's doing alright for being cancelled. I'm not saying that people should be harassed or that they don't go overboard ever,...
Considering her videos are still pulling a million views each I'd say she's doing alright for being cancelled. I'm not saying that people should be harassed or that they don't go overboard ever, I'm saying that the entire idea of "cancel culture" is bullshit that's only applied to one side when everyone is prone to getting caught up in things and overreacting.
I'm sick of the phrase "cancel culture" and all of the phrases associated with it because it's it's taking something bad that happens (harassment) and associating it with something good that happens (people being held accountable in some way for being shitty). I am not ever going to say that no one got more flak than they deserved, but people finally starting to be held accountable for being shitty is the reason I as a trans person can be any amount of out and getting help, and it's the reason that the work climate for women is getting better.
The reason the phrase 'cancel culture' is a thing is because the process for both the good and bad outcomes is generally the same. To put it more bluntly, the system which allows for the good...
The reason the phrase 'cancel culture' is a thing is because the process for both the good and bad outcomes is generally the same. To put it more bluntly, the system which allows for the good outcomes ('cancelling' a person who deserves it) also allows for the bad outcomes (systematized harassment against someone who doesn't deserve it), and keep in mind it also allows for a lot of grey areas where the reaction may be disproportionate to the actions.
I like the phrase 'cancel culture' because these two things are inseparable, at least with the system as it is right now.
By system, I'm referring to social media such as twitter, which allow vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism. While this is the result of individual action, it's also the result of systemic...
But there is no "system" - it's individuals making individual choices and taking individual actions.
By system, I'm referring to social media such as twitter, which allow vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism. While this is the result of individual action, it's also the result of systemic behavior, and I think it's important to look at things through that lens.
Trying to use a phrase like "cancel culture" to wrap these individual actions up into a grand conspiracy against free speech
I never said there was a grand conspiracy against free speech, I'm just saying that the systems that allow this sort of behavior can have good and bad results, and I think it's important to remember that when discussing either outcome.
Taken from my other post, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun to occur more often due to the rise of social media and the increased interconnectedness of...
I'm curious as to what you think "cancel culture" implies, then.
Taken from my other post, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun to occur more often due to the rise of social media and the increased interconnectedness of the average person. This phenomenon being the vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism levied at some person (deserving or not). Regarding free speech, I would say that I think cancel culture is actually free speech taken to it's extremes, not a conspiracy against it.
I don't think the main problem with social media is that they "allow vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism"
I actually don't think this is a problem either, I'm a big fan of the ability to discuss thing anonymously. I do think it's important to recognize the problems it can result in though.
That seems like a pretty large generalization, considering 'cancel culture' is used very often by people throughout the political spectrum, and has become the de facto label to refer to this...
That seems like a pretty large generalization, considering 'cancel culture' is used very often by people throughout the political spectrum, and has become the de facto label to refer to this phenomenon.
Almost any controversial topic will have people mixing their baggage and opinions with the terminology. Personally, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun...
Almost any controversial topic will have people mixing their baggage and opinions with the terminology. Personally, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun to occur more often due to the rise of social media and the increased interconnectedness of the average person. I'm sure that anyone that says simply, "cancel culture is good/bad" is ignoring nuance, however I don't think the label as a whole is not valuable. It should be used as a place to start a discussion.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's important to roll up the reasonable critics, bad journalists, and hate tweeters. First, because as a larger concept, they are all integral in the...
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's important to roll up the reasonable critics, bad journalists, and hate tweeters. First, because as a larger concept, they are all integral in the process of either 'cancelling' someone that deserves it, or hurting someone that doesn't. Furthermore, I think that categorization is unnecessarily binary in the way that it classifies good and bad actors. Take, for example, Contrapoints being 'cancelled'. I believe that many of the people that participated in that would be on the 'good' side of another cancellation, even if they may have fallen into the category of 'hate-tweeters'.
Any phrase will do that because the reason "bad journalists" etc. apply it to themselves is because they don't see themselves as "hate-tweeters" and "bad journalists." They think what they're...
Any phrase will do that because the reason "bad journalists" etc. apply it to themselves is because they don't see themselves as "hate-tweeters" and "bad journalists." They think what they're doing is "reasonable criticism." The acceptability of the person complaining is in the eye of the beholder.
The damage to productive discussion happens when one listens to respond rather than listening to understand. If you just make a good faith attempt to understand what a person intended by using the terms they used instead of insisting they must mean whatever you want to impose on them there isn't much ambiguity. People are able to use the term "socialism," for example, to talk about everything from Stalin to the Canadian Healthcare system. But it's generally easy enough to parse what is intended with some basic reading of context around who the speaker is and what they're trying to say.
And Richard Stallman The problem isn't calling people out for being shitty. It's for utterly destroying lives without a shred of evidence (including blatant outright lies), shouting down anybody...
The problem isn't calling people out for being shitty. It's for utterly destroying lives without a shred of evidence (including blatant outright lies), shouting down anybody who does provide contrary evidence, and calling to takedown everyone associated.
If that's not a digital lynch mob, I don't know what is.
If I got fired from my job because someone got outraged about some words I spoke 2 decades ago I'd be pissed. Because I'm not that person anymore.
There is no digital lynch mob because nobody is actually getting lynched and I really resent the comparison. Nobody's getting dressed up in their Sunday best and killing these people. Stallman is...
There is no digital lynch mob because nobody is actually getting lynched and I really resent the comparison. Nobody's getting dressed up in their Sunday best and killing these people. Stallman is still just as rich and famous as he was before, his life hasn't been destroyed. I found this article which is sympathetic toward him and assuming the email Stallman wrote in it is right:
“deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting
one of Epstein’s victims [2])”
The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.
Only that they had sex.
We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
This is a really bad take on its own, and the article at least says this is what prompted him to be "cancelled". How is defending a guy who you even admit had sex with a harem girl by saying "well we don't know that the harem girl was literally assaulted" ok? You could argue that Minsky didn't realize that it was a harem but he's not doing that, he's being overly literal about the definition of the word assault.
Because you, along with everyone else saying these things, are taking those statements horrendously out of context and claiming he said things he did not say. Please read this link I provided...
. How is defending a guy who you even admit had sex with a harem girl by saying "well we don't know that the harem girl was literally assaulted" ok?
Because you, along with everyone else saying these things, are taking those statements horrendously out of context and claiming he said things he did not say.
Please read this link I provided elsewhere in this topic. It includes an extensive interview with Nadine Strossen, one of the most renouned civil rights lawyers of our time.
And the reason I called it a digital lynch mob is because it was. It was an unruly mob that demanded harsh response for trivial non-crimes. It was functionally equivalent to a lynch mob, just instead of a physical murder, somebody's livelyhood was decimated to the point they likely can't publicly speak again because the ignorant will repeat these falsehoods every time his name is spoken.
You mention not having a shred of evidence, but I also think it's problematic that, in general, there is no ability for a measured reaction. Even if you did do something wrong and deserve some...
You mention not having a shred of evidence, but I also think it's problematic that, in general, there is no ability for a measured reaction. Even if you did do something wrong and deserve some sort of public consequences, it is generally all or nothing. There is no mechanism to make it proportional to the crime, per say.
OK, but what do you do about it? I mean - it's not like this is a formalized system you can protest against. There's no Cancel Nonprofit. Individuals are simply deciding that they don't want to...
OK, but what do you do about it?
I mean - it's not like this is a formalized system you can protest against. There's no Cancel Nonprofit. Individuals are simply deciding that they don't want to associate with, work with, or consume the work of a person because they think that person is unpleasant. A person is not morally obligated in some way to continue interacting with someone they have decided they do not want to interact with, for whatever reason, and I do not believe they can or should be compelled to do so. People have the freedom to choose what and who to engage with based on their values.
I can understand the argument more behind not intentionally (or even ignorantly) spreading old information (provided the person involved has actually changed since then and it's not an ongoing issue). That to me feels obviously true. But if I decided that I don't want to go to any conference that Richard Stallman will be speaking at, I am not responsible if a bunch of other people also find it uncomfortable to be around him. That is not being "lynched", that is just a natural consequence of making others upset and uncomfortable around you.
You write articles like the OP and hope people read it and are more critical of digital lynchings, especially when they don't have much evidence to support one, I think.
Exemplary
You write articles like the OP and hope people read it and are more critical of digital lynchings, especially when they don't have much evidence to support one, I think.
That's true. Again, of course the cases where misinformation is being spread are obviously bad, and people shouldn't spread things that are untrue (or really only questionably true). The article...
That's true. Again, of course the cases where misinformation is being spread are obviously bad, and people shouldn't spread things that are untrue (or really only questionably true). The article absolutely has a few good examples of specific cases that I agree were not justified.
But good comes of bringing bad behaviour to public light as well. It is in the interest of abusers for things to be handled quietly, and I think the movement towards openly calling it out and drawing attention to bad patterns is also responsible for bringing a lot of serial abusers to actual real justice. It keeps vulnerable communities safer over the "missing stair" approach and empowers victims to speak out.
I don't really know if I have the time or desire to write more, honestly, because I think like most subjects it comes down to "be thoughtful and judge case-by-case, there is no one simple rule that will give you the right answer or course of action." Sigh. In conclusion 'cancel culture' is a ~ land of contrast ~.
That was not just a job. That was literally his sole passion and his life's work. He has been stripped of it and is now a 'toxic' figure because of an ignorant internet hate mob that had some hurt...
That was not just a job. That was literally his sole passion and his life's work.
He has been stripped of it and is now a 'toxic' figure because of an ignorant internet hate mob that had some hurt feelings because they can't read and belittle anybody who highlights why they are in the wrong.
You took 29 words out of a 659 word comment in order to respond to something completely out of context. You ignored all the other examples actually provided in that comment to insert this notion...
You took 29 words out of a 659 word comment in order to respond to something completely out of context.
You ignored all the other examples actually provided in that comment to insert this notion that wasn't at all being referenced in the original comment, which was pretty clear about what kinds of examples were in discussion.
And you did it all to imply that that person is okay with someone committing suicide.
How is your comment an argument that's not in extremely bad faith?
EDIT: @JackA I reported that comment for the exact reason here. If you'd like transparency, then here it is. This wasn't about shutting down opposing viewpoints, it was about shutting down falsely portraying what someone's position was to the point that you edit what they're really saying to imply that they're okay with making someone else kill themselves. I reported no other comments in this thread, and no other "opposing viewpoints" have been removed.
It's more that if you're going to use the anecdotal evidence of "cancel culture helped me, so stop being so harsh on it" then he's free to use other anecdotal evidence for where it failed...
Exemplary
It's more that if you're going to use the anecdotal evidence of "cancel culture helped me, so stop being so harsh on it" then he's free to use other anecdotal evidence for where it failed horrifically and why we still need to criticize it.
If even some people's lives are completely destroyed by the movement then it doesn't matter if "a lot" of the people come away from it fine. The comparisons to a lynch mob are at least worth discussing and completely dismissing them is projecting that you don't care about the lives of people like Alec just because the movement helped you. That's disgusting to me.
I'm sorry if this comes across as more hostile than usual here on Tildes but I really hate that a large portion of my political allies have come to endorse a "guilty first" mob mentality.
Edit: I also need to add, possibly to my own detriment that I am strongly against this parent comment getting removed. While it may have been fairly argumentative (no more than others here) it essentially said "What about Alec Holowka" while pointing to a contradicting piece of the original comment. That is in no way warranting a removal and I believe moonbathers took more offense from it than was even close to intended.
The lack of any transparency regarding removals and its removal for seemingly bringing up an opposing viewpoint makes me seriously question the sustainability of this website even though I've come to love the community. I hope we can work on this in the future. You're allowed to fight the paradox of tolerance, but there needs to be openness in what was removed and why otherwise we have no way of concluding whether a removal was fair.
I should also add that the exemplary was given before this edit, they may not endorse what I'm saying here.
I wrote 659 words by @TheJorro's count about cancel culture and it's a lot more than just anecdotes. You should read what I wrote since you clearly haven't:...
I don't know anything about that situation so I went back and looked at the Tildes thread about it. The consensus that I'm seeing on that thread is that he committed suicide because he was fired from the company, not directly because of whatever harassment came his way. I'm sure that harassment didn't help, and the general outcry over the situation probably contributed to him being kicked from the group, but that wasn't the principle cause. He should not have been harassed, and maybe you could argue that he shouldn't have been kicked off the project so quickly, but you're not doing that, you're making an assumption about a case that I knew next to nothing about until this morning. For the record, one of the people involved in making that game (Scott Benson, according to Deimos) said this:
I'm not going to root through everything in there and give a line by line analysis, but I'll say that enough of the allegations are extremely plausible and just about all of it we've corroborated with other sources.
So I repeat: I don't appreciate being told that I don't care about someone who died. I have made every effort to talk about this subject in good faith and the first thing I saw when I got on the internet this morning was someone putting words in my mouth and now you're doing it too.
I don't appreciate the comparisons to lynch mobs because Alec Holowka wasn't lynched. What happened was sad for everyone involved, but it all started because he abused people. He didn't deserve to die for what he did, but no one else killed him. What do you think should have been done? He was clearly creating a hostile work environment, should he have been allowed to stay instead of all the people who say he abused them?
I really hate that a large portion of my political allies are ok with putting the concerns of people who have been assaulted and harassed and forced out of their jobs and other positions second to the people who did the assaulting and harassing just because the accused is someone they like. I hate that issues of harassment and abuse are dismissed as social media drama or a culture war right up until that harassment and abuse are directed at someone they care about, at which point it's a witch hunt or a lynch mob or an authoritarian religion that ostracizes everyone who isn't in lockstep with it. "What about Alec Holowka?", you and another person ask me, but you're not asking "what about the people whose lives he made worse?" When you're actually interested in talking about this I'll actually talk with you about it.
I have never said harassing people is ok, and no one should do it.
This is an often-discussed topic and we just talked about it so the timing is unfortunate, but I thought this article was more in-depth than most. It starts with a review of a 2015 book, So You’ve...
This is an often-discussed topic and we just talked about it so the timing is unfortunate, but I thought this article was more in-depth than most. It starts with a review of a 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and goes on to talk about the structure that contributes to the phenomenon. A few quotes:
The phrase “cancel culture” doesn’t seem to have been coined until a few years ago, but everything that it now refers to is there in the incidents described in Ronson’s book. Even the now-all-too-familiar spectacle of cancelers insisting, mid-cancelation, that no one is ever really canceled was present in the pile-on against Lindsay Stone.
In between comments calling Lindsey the c-word and hoping for her death, and the relatively tame ones like, “Send the dumb feminist to prison,” Ronson quotes this intervention: “HER FUTURE ISN’T RUINED! Stop trying to make her into a martyr. In 6 months no one except those who actually know her will remember this.” Of course, this turned out to be wrong.
[...]
[T]here is a serious tension between the defenders of cancel culture who sternly talk about “accountability” and the need for “consequences” for reactionary behavior, while at the same time insisting that cancelation is just “criticism.” If angry denunciations from thousands of strangers didn’t have an adverse psychological effect on the average human being that ordinary criticism did not, then “criticism” couldn’t add up to any substantive “consequence” for bad behavior.
[...]
[S]everal insights come up in the course of his journey that add up to the raw ingredients of an analysis that steers clear of both the right-wing hysteria about cancel culture — which hypes it up as a force of evil emerging from somewhere within the dark hearts of the cultural Marxists who have stealthily grabbed hold of the levers of power in our culture — and the “cancel culture doesn’t exist” denialism of too much of the Left.
[...]
A more grounded explanation of the psychology of online pile-ons is suggested by a passage near the end of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, in which Ronson compares the incentive structures built into social media platforms with the “Your Speed” signs tested in California in the early 2000s. The signs, which are now common around the country, automatically tell drivers how fast they’re going and place that number next to the posted speed limit.
There’s no reason in principle why these signs should work. Every car has a built-in speedometer, and regular low-tech signs have always told drivers the speed limit, so the Your Speed signs don’t give us any information we wouldn’t otherwise have. Nor does the sign come with any kind of enforcement mechanism.
Yet according to numerous studies, the signs do work. That’s because instant feedback loops are effective.
In the case of Your Speed signs, that’s a good thing. Seeing your speed come down until it matches the posted limit is a small psychological reward that slows everyone down and thus reduces accidents, injuries, and deaths on the road. But the instant feedback loops built into social media platforms, designed by the near-monopolistic corporations that own them to be as addictive they can make them, reward our worst impulses.
[...]
The writer didn’t bother taking a few seconds finding out the most basic information about the man whose name he was about to drag through the mud because the incentives built into platforms like Twitter reward denouncing first and researching later (or not at all). Don’t stop. Don’t think. Just denounce — and bask in the instant validation coming your way from tens of thousands of strangers.
I feel that this article is just a bit too ready to blame social media for this. I agree with them that a big part of this is reaction, and that is part of human nature. I don't think that taking...
I feel that this article is just a bit too ready to blame social media for this. I agree with them that a big part of this is reaction, and that is part of human nature. I don't think that taking over social media platforms will make any difference; we just need to raise our expectations of people so that they know they should avoid basic reaction, and we need to call people out when they act this poorly.
That being said, if I said that the very impersonal zero-stakes world of Twitter wasn't lowering the bar for people to act impulsively, I would be lying. So I don't necessarily disagree with the author either.
It seems to me that forums designed to dampen impulsive reactions will likely succeed. The problem is that unless carefully balanced, they will also have a hard time getting people to post...
It seems to me that forums designed to dampen impulsive reactions will likely succeed. The problem is that unless carefully balanced, they will also have a hard time getting people to post anything. It’s like designing a game that’s fun and yet not addictive. The most likely result is that you don’t get the balance right and the game just fails by not being fun. Most games fail this way.
Typically you need to succeed first and then deal with the consequences of success, and this is an ongoing process. Often, successes look more secure from the outside than they do from the inside.
There is a similar tradeoff with financial support for nonprofits. Trying to make enough money to keep the organization afloat (and avoid layoffs) and trying to make a profit are not as different as they sometimes look. It’s money-grubbing either way.
The discussion, as I've seen it on Tildes and the internet as a whole, often misses out on two crucial components of how people react to someone being cancelled and to a lesser extent whether they...
The discussion, as I've seen it on Tildes and the internet as a whole, often misses out on two crucial components of how people react to someone being cancelled and to a lesser extent whether they get cancelled in the first place.
First off, communication is never a one-way street. When people are rightfully upset by actions taken by an individual, the individual has a chance to respond and interact with their audience. I've seen Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) mentioned in here several times for many good reasons. She was arguably 'cancelled' over some LGBTQ+ infighting and said some harmful things. But she made an attempt at reconciliation and even did an entire, fantastic episode, on cancel culture where she wasn't simply decrying the fact that she got cancelled and even spent some time empathizing with those who cancelled her. Her willingness to engage with the problematic behavior she had shown and taking action to fix the damage she had done (emotional or otherwise) is a crucial part of why she's still successful today. If you take her situation and contrast it with others who have been cancelled and have had their careers destroyed such as Alex Jones, you'll see that not only were they not apologetic, in many cases they doubled down on their problematic behavior. There are some cases where individuals are apologetic on the face of things, but never take any real actions to atone for their misdeeds and in today's culture, people have grown wise to this kind of deception. Whenever I hear about people being 'unfairly' cancelled, they usually fall into the latter group and make no real attempts at reconciliation. In the case that they don't, it's usually because of the second component, reach and impact.
Reach and impact are terms I'm using to describe the depth and breadth of one's cancellation. If you manage to piss off a very small group of individuals on the planet unlikely to have many allies, such as a terrorist organization, the reach of your cancellation is quite small - it may even win you support among people which you would not have thought of as allies before. At the same time, the potential consequences of that cancellation are rather large, as someone might cause physical harm to you or your family. However, if you manage to insult or cause harm among a much larger group of individuals, such as a group of minorities, the reach of your cancellation might balloon quite quickly as word spreads and many individuals decide to comment upon or specifically avoid interacting with you in the future. In this case, the depth can also still be quite large, but it really depends on the audience you are catering to and whether them cancelling you will have any real effects. Chik-fil-a had to be cancelled quite a few times (and is still cancelled in my book) because they didn't feel a ton of downstream effects from being cancelled and it took multiple PR issues for their cancellation to reach a sufficient depth for them to make promises (many of which turned out to be false promises and they repeated their morally reprehensible behavior). In articles such as the one posted by the OP and in discussions in which only conservative individuals seem to be 'unjustly' cancelled, either the breadth or depth of cancellation is over-exaggerated.
It strikes me that the combination of the actions of the offender and the breadth and depth of the potential backlash are what determines if something should even be considered a cancellation. In discussions such as these on Tildes (which are alarmingly becoming more common), there are often a few individuals spending an inordinate amount of time on the 'unjust' cancellations that exist. It's telling that there are so few examples that they can give, and of the examples they do give, I would argue that they were in fact, not really cancelled - Natalie Wynn suffered for a short period of time over some hurtful words she made, but she made an effort to redeem herself and was rewarded because she is a genuinely nice and kind person who made an understandable mistake. The individuals that she is often compared to when people want to make the argument of unjust cancellations have vastly different responses to their cancellation and are either not cancelled to the same extent (depth and/or breadth is significantly less) or do an extremely poor job at actually making up for their misdeeds.
The most egrarious case of this for me was Richard Stallman's character assasination. He was made out to be a monster because of lazy clickbait 'journalism' and internet rage mobs. Edit: Read this...
The writer didn’t bother taking a few seconds finding out the most basic information about the man whose name he was about to drag through the mud because the incentives built into platforms like Twitter reward denouncing first and researching later (or not at all). Don’t stop. Don’t think. Just denounce — and bask in the instant validation coming your way from tens of thousands of strangers.
The most egrarious case of this for me was Richard Stallman's character assasination. He was made out to be a monster because of lazy clickbait 'journalism' and internet rage mobs.
I would urge you to read this: https://www.wetheweb.org/2020/08/13/cancel-we-the-web/ I would like to know what Stallman did that was so terrible it warranted ousting him from his life's work and...
Yes. Yes I am. Because I haven't seen any mysoginistic stuff. Only things that sound mysoginistic when taken out of context. And even then, yes, because mysoginistic words are not an unforgivable...
Are you looking for specifics on that
Yes. Yes I am. Because I haven't seen any mysoginistic stuff. Only things that sound mysoginistic when taken out of context.
And even then, yes, because mysoginistic words are not an unforgivable offense.
And his stance on pedophillia, while wrong (and he has admitted so), does not make him a pedophile, and should not be treated as one. As far as coworkers being uncomfortable with his behavior, I...
And his stance on pedophillia, while wrong (and he has admitted so), does not make him a pedophile, and should not be treated as one.
As far as coworkers being uncomfortable with his behavior, I would like some examples. Because 'I find his mannerisms weird and creepy' is a very different thing from 'he actively harrassed me'.
With the frequency these articles get posted here I feel like people have an axe to grind against "woke" people and I really don't appreciate it as someone whose well-being has been made a lot better by those people. This article is less bad than most, but it still ignores why this stuff happens. I'm not going to bother writing another novel about this because I don't have anything new to say.
Contrapoints did a great video on this topic. She is one of the more well known "woke"/leftist/breadtube youtube personalities, and her video was largely in response to herself being cancelled. Cancelling can be very problematic with its assumption of guilt, exaggeration of crime, and guilt by association among other things. I'd recommend watching her video on the topic.
Considering her videos are still pulling a million views each I'd say she's doing alright for being cancelled. I'm not saying that people should be harassed or that they don't go overboard ever, I'm saying that the entire idea of "cancel culture" is bullshit that's only applied to one side when everyone is prone to getting caught up in things and overreacting.
I'm sick of the phrase "cancel culture" and all of the phrases associated with it because it's it's taking something bad that happens (harassment) and associating it with something good that happens (people being held accountable in some way for being shitty). I am not ever going to say that no one got more flak than they deserved, but people finally starting to be held accountable for being shitty is the reason I as a trans person can be any amount of out and getting help, and it's the reason that the work climate for women is getting better.
The reason the phrase 'cancel culture' is a thing is because the process for both the good and bad outcomes is generally the same. To put it more bluntly, the system which allows for the good outcomes ('cancelling' a person who deserves it) also allows for the bad outcomes (systematized harassment against someone who doesn't deserve it), and keep in mind it also allows for a lot of grey areas where the reaction may be disproportionate to the actions.
I like the phrase 'cancel culture' because these two things are inseparable, at least with the system as it is right now.
By system, I'm referring to social media such as twitter, which allow vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism. While this is the result of individual action, it's also the result of systemic behavior, and I think it's important to look at things through that lens.
I never said there was a grand conspiracy against free speech, I'm just saying that the systems that allow this sort of behavior can have good and bad results, and I think it's important to remember that when discussing either outcome.
Taken from my other post, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun to occur more often due to the rise of social media and the increased interconnectedness of the average person. This phenomenon being the vast amounts of pseudonymous criticism levied at some person (deserving or not). Regarding free speech, I would say that I think cancel culture is actually free speech taken to it's extremes, not a conspiracy against it.
I actually don't think this is a problem either, I'm a big fan of the ability to discuss thing anonymously. I do think it's important to recognize the problems it can result in though.
No one who unironically uses the phrase cancel culture is arguing in good faith though.
That seems like a pretty large generalization, considering 'cancel culture' is used very often by people throughout the political spectrum, and has become the de facto label to refer to this phenomenon.
Almost any controversial topic will have people mixing their baggage and opinions with the terminology. Personally, I think "cancel culture" is just a label for a wider phenomenon that has begun to occur more often due to the rise of social media and the increased interconnectedness of the average person. I'm sure that anyone that says simply, "cancel culture is good/bad" is ignoring nuance, however I don't think the label as a whole is not valuable. It should be used as a place to start a discussion.
I agree with all of this, I just wanted to advocate for the usefulness of the phrase 'cancel culture'. :^)
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's important to roll up the reasonable critics, bad journalists, and hate tweeters. First, because as a larger concept, they are all integral in the process of either 'cancelling' someone that deserves it, or hurting someone that doesn't. Furthermore, I think that categorization is unnecessarily binary in the way that it classifies good and bad actors. Take, for example, Contrapoints being 'cancelled'. I believe that many of the people that participated in that would be on the 'good' side of another cancellation, even if they may have fallen into the category of 'hate-tweeters'.
Any phrase will do that because the reason "bad journalists" etc. apply it to themselves is because they don't see themselves as "hate-tweeters" and "bad journalists." They think what they're doing is "reasonable criticism." The acceptability of the person complaining is in the eye of the beholder.
The damage to productive discussion happens when one listens to respond rather than listening to understand. If you just make a good faith attempt to understand what a person intended by using the terms they used instead of insisting they must mean whatever you want to impose on them there isn't much ambiguity. People are able to use the term "socialism," for example, to talk about everything from Stalin to the Canadian Healthcare system. But it's generally easy enough to parse what is intended with some basic reading of context around who the speaker is and what they're trying to say.
And Richard Stallman
The problem isn't calling people out for being shitty. It's for utterly destroying lives without a shred of evidence (including blatant outright lies), shouting down anybody who does provide contrary evidence, and calling to takedown everyone associated.
If that's not a digital lynch mob, I don't know what is.
If I got fired from my job because someone got outraged about some words I spoke 2 decades ago I'd be pissed. Because I'm not that person anymore.
There is no digital lynch mob because nobody is actually getting lynched and I really resent the comparison. Nobody's getting dressed up in their Sunday best and killing these people. Stallman is still just as rich and famous as he was before, his life hasn't been destroyed. I found this article which is sympathetic toward him and assuming the email Stallman wrote in it is right:
This is a really bad take on its own, and the article at least says this is what prompted him to be "cancelled". How is defending a guy who you even admit had sex with a harem girl by saying "well we don't know that the harem girl was literally assaulted" ok? You could argue that Minsky didn't realize that it was a harem but he's not doing that, he's being overly literal about the definition of the word assault.
Because you, along with everyone else saying these things, are taking those statements horrendously out of context and claiming he said things he did not say.
Please read this link I provided elsewhere in this topic. It includes an extensive interview with Nadine Strossen, one of the most renouned civil rights lawyers of our time.
And the reason I called it a digital lynch mob is because it was. It was an unruly mob that demanded harsh response for trivial non-crimes. It was functionally equivalent to a lynch mob, just instead of a physical murder, somebody's livelyhood was decimated to the point they likely can't publicly speak again because the ignorant will repeat these falsehoods every time his name is spoken.
You mention not having a shred of evidence, but I also think it's problematic that, in general, there is no ability for a measured reaction. Even if you did do something wrong and deserve some sort of public consequences, it is generally all or nothing. There is no mechanism to make it proportional to the crime, per say.
OK, but what do you do about it?
I mean - it's not like this is a formalized system you can protest against. There's no Cancel Nonprofit. Individuals are simply deciding that they don't want to associate with, work with, or consume the work of a person because they think that person is unpleasant. A person is not morally obligated in some way to continue interacting with someone they have decided they do not want to interact with, for whatever reason, and I do not believe they can or should be compelled to do so. People have the freedom to choose what and who to engage with based on their values.
I can understand the argument more behind not intentionally (or even ignorantly) spreading old information (provided the person involved has actually changed since then and it's not an ongoing issue). That to me feels obviously true. But if I decided that I don't want to go to any conference that Richard Stallman will be speaking at, I am not responsible if a bunch of other people also find it uncomfortable to be around him. That is not being "lynched", that is just a natural consequence of making others upset and uncomfortable around you.
You write articles like the OP and hope people read it and are more critical of digital lynchings, especially when they don't have much evidence to support one, I think.
That's true. Again, of course the cases where misinformation is being spread are obviously bad, and people shouldn't spread things that are untrue (or really only questionably true). The article absolutely has a few good examples of specific cases that I agree were not justified.
But good comes of bringing bad behaviour to public light as well. It is in the interest of abusers for things to be handled quietly, and I think the movement towards openly calling it out and drawing attention to bad patterns is also responsible for bringing a lot of serial abusers to actual real justice. It keeps vulnerable communities safer over the "missing stair" approach and empowers victims to speak out.
I don't really know if I have the time or desire to write more, honestly, because I think like most subjects it comes down to "be thoughtful and judge case-by-case, there is no one simple rule that will give you the right answer or course of action." Sigh. In conclusion 'cancel culture' is a ~ land of contrast ~.
That was not just a job. That was literally his sole passion and his life's work.
He has been stripped of it and is now a 'toxic' figure because of an ignorant internet hate mob that had some hurt feelings because they can't read and belittle anybody who highlights why they are in the wrong.
You took 29 words out of a 659 word comment in order to respond to something completely out of context.
You ignored all the other examples actually provided in that comment to insert this notion that wasn't at all being referenced in the original comment, which was pretty clear about what kinds of examples were in discussion.
And you did it all to imply that that person is okay with someone committing suicide.
How is your comment an argument that's not in extremely bad faith?
EDIT: @JackA I reported that comment for the exact reason here. If you'd like transparency, then here it is. This wasn't about shutting down opposing viewpoints, it was about shutting down falsely portraying what someone's position was to the point that you edit what they're really saying to imply that they're okay with making someone else kill themselves. I reported no other comments in this thread, and no other "opposing viewpoints" have been removed.
It's more that if you're going to use the anecdotal evidence of "cancel culture helped me, so stop being so harsh on it" then he's free to use other anecdotal evidence for where it failed horrifically and why we still need to criticize it.
If even some people's lives are completely destroyed by the movement then it doesn't matter if "a lot" of the people come away from it fine. The comparisons to a lynch mob are at least worth discussing and completely dismissing them is projecting that you don't care about the lives of people like Alec just because the movement helped you. That's disgusting to me.
I'm sorry if this comes across as more hostile than usual here on Tildes but I really hate that a large portion of my political allies have come to endorse a "guilty first" mob mentality.
Edit: I also need to add, possibly to my own detriment that I am strongly against this parent comment getting removed. While it may have been fairly argumentative (no more than others here) it essentially said "What about Alec Holowka" while pointing to a contradicting piece of the original comment. That is in no way warranting a removal and I believe moonbathers took more offense from it than was even close to intended.
The lack of any transparency regarding removals and its removal for seemingly bringing up an opposing viewpoint makes me seriously question the sustainability of this website even though I've come to love the community. I hope we can work on this in the future. You're allowed to fight the paradox of tolerance, but there needs to be openness in what was removed and why otherwise we have no way of concluding whether a removal was fair.
I should also add that the exemplary was given before this edit, they may not endorse what I'm saying here.
I wrote 659 words by @TheJorro's count about cancel culture and it's a lot more than just anecdotes. You should read what I wrote since you clearly haven't: https://tildes.net/~humanities/qpl/cancel_culture_is_the_marketplace_of_ideas_at_work#comment-5de9 .
I don't know anything about that situation so I went back and looked at the Tildes thread about it. The consensus that I'm seeing on that thread is that he committed suicide because he was fired from the company, not directly because of whatever harassment came his way. I'm sure that harassment didn't help, and the general outcry over the situation probably contributed to him being kicked from the group, but that wasn't the principle cause. He should not have been harassed, and maybe you could argue that he shouldn't have been kicked off the project so quickly, but you're not doing that, you're making an assumption about a case that I knew next to nothing about until this morning. For the record, one of the people involved in making that game (Scott Benson, according to Deimos) said this:
So I repeat: I don't appreciate being told that I don't care about someone who died. I have made every effort to talk about this subject in good faith and the first thing I saw when I got on the internet this morning was someone putting words in my mouth and now you're doing it too.
I don't appreciate the comparisons to lynch mobs because Alec Holowka wasn't lynched. What happened was sad for everyone involved, but it all started because he abused people. He didn't deserve to die for what he did, but no one else killed him. What do you think should have been done? He was clearly creating a hostile work environment, should he have been allowed to stay instead of all the people who say he abused them?
I really hate that a large portion of my political allies are ok with putting the concerns of people who have been assaulted and harassed and forced out of their jobs and other positions second to the people who did the assaulting and harassing just because the accused is someone they like. I hate that issues of harassment and abuse are dismissed as social media drama or a culture war right up until that harassment and abuse are directed at someone they care about, at which point it's a witch hunt or a lynch mob or an authoritarian religion that ostracizes everyone who isn't in lockstep with it. "What about Alec Holowka?", you and another person ask me, but you're not asking "what about the people whose lives he made worse?" When you're actually interested in talking about this I'll actually talk with you about it.
I have never said harassing people is ok, and no one should do it.
This is an often-discussed topic and we just talked about it so the timing is unfortunate, but I thought this article was more in-depth than most. It starts with a review of a 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and goes on to talk about the structure that contributes to the phenomenon. A few quotes:
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I feel that this article is just a bit too ready to blame social media for this. I agree with them that a big part of this is reaction, and that is part of human nature. I don't think that taking over social media platforms will make any difference; we just need to raise our expectations of people so that they know they should avoid basic reaction, and we need to call people out when they act this poorly.
That being said, if I said that the very impersonal zero-stakes world of Twitter wasn't lowering the bar for people to act impulsively, I would be lying. So I don't necessarily disagree with the author either.
It seems to me that forums designed to dampen impulsive reactions will likely succeed. The problem is that unless carefully balanced, they will also have a hard time getting people to post anything. It’s like designing a game that’s fun and yet not addictive. The most likely result is that you don’t get the balance right and the game just fails by not being fun. Most games fail this way.
Typically you need to succeed first and then deal with the consequences of success, and this is an ongoing process. Often, successes look more secure from the outside than they do from the inside.
There is a similar tradeoff with financial support for nonprofits. Trying to make enough money to keep the organization afloat (and avoid layoffs) and trying to make a profit are not as different as they sometimes look. It’s money-grubbing either way.
The discussion, as I've seen it on Tildes and the internet as a whole, often misses out on two crucial components of how people react to someone being cancelled and to a lesser extent whether they get cancelled in the first place.
First off, communication is never a one-way street. When people are rightfully upset by actions taken by an individual, the individual has a chance to respond and interact with their audience. I've seen Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) mentioned in here several times for many good reasons. She was arguably 'cancelled' over some LGBTQ+ infighting and said some harmful things. But she made an attempt at reconciliation and even did an entire, fantastic episode, on cancel culture where she wasn't simply decrying the fact that she got cancelled and even spent some time empathizing with those who cancelled her. Her willingness to engage with the problematic behavior she had shown and taking action to fix the damage she had done (emotional or otherwise) is a crucial part of why she's still successful today. If you take her situation and contrast it with others who have been cancelled and have had their careers destroyed such as Alex Jones, you'll see that not only were they not apologetic, in many cases they doubled down on their problematic behavior. There are some cases where individuals are apologetic on the face of things, but never take any real actions to atone for their misdeeds and in today's culture, people have grown wise to this kind of deception. Whenever I hear about people being 'unfairly' cancelled, they usually fall into the latter group and make no real attempts at reconciliation. In the case that they don't, it's usually because of the second component, reach and impact.
Reach and impact are terms I'm using to describe the depth and breadth of one's cancellation. If you manage to piss off a very small group of individuals on the planet unlikely to have many allies, such as a terrorist organization, the reach of your cancellation is quite small - it may even win you support among people which you would not have thought of as allies before. At the same time, the potential consequences of that cancellation are rather large, as someone might cause physical harm to you or your family. However, if you manage to insult or cause harm among a much larger group of individuals, such as a group of minorities, the reach of your cancellation might balloon quite quickly as word spreads and many individuals decide to comment upon or specifically avoid interacting with you in the future. In this case, the depth can also still be quite large, but it really depends on the audience you are catering to and whether them cancelling you will have any real effects. Chik-fil-a had to be cancelled quite a few times (and is still cancelled in my book) because they didn't feel a ton of downstream effects from being cancelled and it took multiple PR issues for their cancellation to reach a sufficient depth for them to make promises (many of which turned out to be false promises and they repeated their morally reprehensible behavior). In articles such as the one posted by the OP and in discussions in which only conservative individuals seem to be 'unjustly' cancelled, either the breadth or depth of cancellation is over-exaggerated.
It strikes me that the combination of the actions of the offender and the breadth and depth of the potential backlash are what determines if something should even be considered a cancellation. In discussions such as these on Tildes (which are alarmingly becoming more common), there are often a few individuals spending an inordinate amount of time on the 'unjust' cancellations that exist. It's telling that there are so few examples that they can give, and of the examples they do give, I would argue that they were in fact, not really cancelled - Natalie Wynn suffered for a short period of time over some hurtful words she made, but she made an effort to redeem herself and was rewarded because she is a genuinely nice and kind person who made an understandable mistake. The individuals that she is often compared to when people want to make the argument of unjust cancellations have vastly different responses to their cancellation and are either not cancelled to the same extent (depth and/or breadth is significantly less) or do an extremely poor job at actually making up for their misdeeds.
The most egrarious case of this for me was Richard Stallman's character assasination. He was made out to be a monster because of lazy clickbait 'journalism' and internet rage mobs.
Edit: Read this one too if the first link was unconvincig:
https://www.wetheweb.org/2020/08/13/cancel-we-the-web/
I would urge you to read this:
https://www.wetheweb.org/2020/08/13/cancel-we-the-web/
I would like to know what Stallman did that was so terrible it warranted ousting him from his life's work and shaming him out of the public eye.
Yes. Yes I am. Because I haven't seen any mysoginistic stuff. Only things that sound mysoginistic when taken out of context.
And even then, yes, because mysoginistic words are not an unforgivable offense.
And his stance on pedophillia, while wrong (and he has admitted so), does not make him a pedophile, and should not be treated as one.
As far as coworkers being uncomfortable with his behavior, I would like some examples. Because 'I find his mannerisms weird and creepy' is a very different thing from 'he actively harrassed me'.