Thrag
2055
Huh, so what you’re saying it is an often misused term? I’ll have to think about the implications of that one.
You know, if it’s so often misused, perhaps it’s a poor term insist on your own definition of and then insist everyone adopt your definition.
Na, that’s crazy talk.
CraigM
2057
@Thrag doing the yeomans work.
I don’t know how to discuss the problem of “bad-faith weaponized online harassment that is amplified and any apology causes doubling down on the attacks until the person suffers material consequences” without using a shorter term for that. I’m open to suggestions.
People go “well it’s just bullying” but it’s more than that. Or “I blame the weak-willed companies” but it’s more than that. It’s the presence of social media but also the Likes system and also the performative aspect of it and so many different things.
French fries and peanuts have been cancelled!
Jumping into a discussion to post random pictures is pointless and unnecessary.
I’m saying that some people intentionally misuse the term to absolve themselves of guilt. It’s like people complaint about that masks remove their freedom; we don’t stop using the term “freedom” because some people use it incorrectly.
If people are asking me what I consider to be “cancel culture” (as you did), how am I supposed to answer that without explaining how I’m using the term?
Maybe don’t treat it as a monolithic issue but rather understand there’s nuance with every instance of Internet dog-pile? (Hey, there’s a shorter and intentionally more vague term everyone can use without getting hung up on pedantry and semantics!). Accepting that nuance will hopefully lead to more constructive, actionable dialogues because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to situations which can be dramatically different from one another.
Defining the term is my attempt at cutting through that nuance. But there has to be a way of discussing the topic of people driven off the internet by harassment without devolving to “JK Rowling said she was harassed but she’s rich so it must not be a real problem.”
Thrag
2065
This is the huge assumption you seem to be making of everyone’s replies to you. Even people who have outright said it is a problem.
Is this the root of your obsession with having to use the term cancel culture? That you are assuming any statement against the loaded and often misused term is tantamount to denying any social media harassment issue exists?
Sharpe
2066
He is a Meyer’s parrot. Genus Poicephalus, related to the Senegal Parrot and others.
Edit: 30 years for a cockatiel is very impressive. He looks pretty spry for a codger.
I don’t normally invoke any kind of authority or expertise when talking about anything more than my own opinions, but please allow me to say this much; as someone who literally wrote and published a peer-reviewed academic study on Internet harassment cited countless times, cutting through nuance is not helpful. Rather, embrace it and find individual solutions. If individual solutions start to align, that’s how you start to find classes to address more generally.
I’m not making that assumption of everyone who replies to me. I was specifically talking about people (like you specifically) saying that we shouldn’t use the term because it’s misused. JK Rowling says she was a victim of “cancel culture” because she’s playing the victim; it doesn’t mean we have to accept her definition.
I’ve already explained why I use the term. But no, it has nothing to do with what you’re claiming.
CraigM
2071
Realistically the problem is fundamentally one of incentives. Social media platforms have incentives that encourage them to prioritize certain types of behavior, ones that are socially bad.
What needs to happen from outside is shifting the incentive structure. How best to do that is the trick. There is potential for legislative solutions to change the incentives for the social media companies, where legislative solutions on individuals is incredibly fraught and infeasible.
This seems right to me, in that I think only the service providers can police any of this without running afoul of free speech protections. But I also think they’ll do a terrible job of it. Consider Twitter’s recent policy change which says you can’t post an image of anyone (except a public person) without their permission. People are deliberately using it to shut other accounts down. Or consider how badly Twitter has managed rules and penalties for people spreading harmful information. They’re simply not going to spend the money to even try to do a decent job, and I can’t see any way to force them to.
There are many people who spoke out of - and in support - of Lindsay during this period. Not least the many people who support - and continue to support her - on Patreon. It doesn’t really solve the problem, though.
As Lindsay herself very clearly points out:
She forgot schools. All of this is textbook and occurs every single school day in probably most schools in the world. It’s smaller scale, obviously, but the mechanisms are exactly the same. And they can be just as damaging for the kids who are targeted in this way. Support from friends is important to get through mobbing without too much damage, but there is no good way to handle mobbing other than to get it to stop. Which is extremely hard to do even in the “real world” when mobbing occurs face-to-face.
The problem with social media is that once mobbing starts up on the internet, it is literally impossible to stop it and near impossible to escape.
Alstein
2074
If folks want to see a real time cancel attempt: Tony Khan might be a good example right now.
He was a dumbass on Twitter today, and is getting roasted, despite most likely only being guilty of being a thinskinned billionaire who said something dumb on Twitter.
Basically, a black wrestler was complaining about issues she had in Tony Khan’s wrestling company.
To give a little background: He’s the first person since Ted Turner to give a legitimate challenge to Vince McMahon’s empire, and he’s largely got support from the “woke” fanbase, at least until today.
His response was: “we have plenty of examples of diversity. She was fired because she sucked.” This was factually true all around, but the wrong thing to say for obvious reasons.
Great example of correct but not right from someone who I believe is well-meaning but said something incredibly wrong.
FYI, IMO, the bullying, mob justice, and even obsession over replying (at least if you’re not being directly attacked) aren’t right against anyone.
But, yeah, let’s be real, the term is an overly broad political mess that no one is going to redefine. Let it go, @Andy_Bates, you can’t win against the world. If you want to talk about bullying, talk about bullying, and so on. Instead, redefine (or try to) the discussion to be on things that are tangible.
That’s what smarter people than me say about discourse, at least.
There is no other way. Bang goes Wagner, Gesualdo, Caravaggio, for starters, otherwise. Dickens was a monster to his wife. Plenty more great artists who did terrible things. That way lies madness. This does not mean artists should be protected from the consequences of their bad actions in their lifetimes, naturally. Artists are people and subject to the same rules as anyone else.
