I think we all agree people are sometimes (often) bad, and that badness can cause great harm, and people can be hurt by it. Now what?
I don’t think anyone is tiptoeing around that. The questions seem to be, is this new? Is it caused by social media? Can it be fixed? If so, how? If not, then what?
I don’t actually think I’ve got any good ideas for fixing it, for me or for us at Qt3 or for society at large, but I do think there’s value in continuing to talk about it, both the serious examples and the people crying wolf, if for no other reason than becoming better at identifying which is which despite whatever our own biases push us toward in either direction.
That’s all I was trying to say by invoking your name, honestly, that cancel culture is a thing worth discussing and trying to solve, because while I sure as hell don’t have a solution beyond the seemingly impossible, “we need to do better about policing our own,” it would be really nice if more of us could maybe try and find a solution instead of deciding it doesn’t exist because Dave Chappelle invoked it, or if it were to exist that it’s not a problem because of people like JK Rowling or Dave Chapelle.
Since I’m one who says some versions of that, let me explain what I mean when I say it.
I mean that there is no new thing called cancel culture that did not exist in human nature and society before social media, and I mean there is no liberal plot called cancel culture designed to deprive people on the right of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
People get bullied on social media, but people get bullied in real life, face-to-face as well, and I don’t see much behavioral difference in humanity as a whole when comparing the one to the other. You may be far more likely to face an online mob than a real one, but on the other hand you are far less likely to be actually physically harmed by an online mob than a real one.
Sharpe
1832
I think the key takeaway here is that there IS pushback from the liberal/left against the liberal/left on topics like this. We are not condoning hair-trigger attacks and dogpiling and I think most liberal/left posters here would be willing to consider reasonable regulations or obligations on social media to attempt to reduce this sort of thing. In other words, we are willing to “police our own” and acknowledge the flaws in our own side. It’s not perfect, but it’s typically human.
By contrast, the right wing in the US these days is both far more extreme and far less willing to police its own extremes And in addition, the right wing routinely cherry picks, exaggerates and weaponizes allegations of “cancel culture” by the left for political purposes, while at the same time proposing all kinds of new censorship like all these “anti-CRT” laws and proposals regarding censoring school libraries.
The left has its flaws and we need to work on them. Meanwhile the right is off the rails in a dangerous way. We can walk and chew gum at the same time; we can acknowledge flaws on the left while also not giving in to right wing spin and denialism at the same time.
Yes, I’m saying it’s new. The speed, reach, and incentives of social media are combining with some of the worst but very old elements of human nature, and that’s created a new societal force to contend with. I hope I’m not mischaracterizing you when I say you seem very reluctant to agree to even that, that any element of this is new or distinct as a category within the broader “Well, humans can be bad”.
The thing is, I’m comparing this ‘new’ thing with how the actual law and society and bullies would have dealt with me were I a Black person in Louisiana in 1950, and I can’t actually convince my self that this is…new? Worse?
Societies have in-groups and out-groups, and the in-groups terrorize the out-groups and try to keep them down and out. Sometimes mobs form and do real violence to people. All of this is bad. What it is not is new.
Also, to be clear, I’m not saying let’s not talk about it.
CraigM
1835
I have written a few times on the topic here, but the most salient bits:
this is not new, it is merely a new technology and method of a very old thing.
Both of those things are well said, better than I can say them.
We were overlapping our responses for a moment there, so just to go back quickly:
To the point I just put in bold, I agree. Just making sure that was clear.
I fully admit that this first thing I’m saying is projecting on you something that may be inaccurate, but my impression is that you really don’t want this to be new, and I can’t understand why. As to if it’s worse, I don’t think anyone in this thread is claiming that, or if they did I tuned them out because I wouldn’t see much value in trying to make that comparison myself.
To use your example, do you think anything is different for a black person in Louisiana in 2021? If it’s better, what has changed that made it better? If it’s worse, same question? If your answer to either of those questions boils down to “the relative badness or capacity for badness in humanity has changed”, I’ll be both surprised, and have to bow out at that point. If you think nothing has changed, I guess we disagree in a different way.
I think I’m probably doing a terrible job responding because I don’t want to assume conclusions you’re not making, so I’m trying to mentally account for everything you might be saying, and that means I’m very likely to be setting up straw men. But I also can’t literally have a conversation with you with the quick back and forth to cut through that, because we’re just posting on a forum, so I’m sorry for that.
Alstein
1838
It isn’t anything new or different, just amplified by social media. Ask the Dixie Chicks.
The reason you here more complaints about it now is because it’s no longer just the right who can cancel folks.
Yes, the left has flaws. So does the center.
The right scare the shit out of me these days though, and feel like an existential threat.
I think things are somewhat better, and I think that is mostly to do with the fact that a Black person in Louisiana enjoys quite a bit more protection under the law than her/his grandparent did in 1950. So this suggests some part of an answer to online bullying, which is better ‘laws’ and better ‘law enforcement’; but the ‘legal regimes’ that provide social media don’t really want to do that, so it doesn’t really happen.
I don’t think very much has changed from the standpoint of the impetus to do bad things. I think the capacity has changed somewhat, because it is somewhat more regulated.
I dunno how new it is, I imagine being shunned is an old thing for humans, it’s just that before the village wasn’t the whole world, and there was a theoretical possibility of moving x kilometers and people not knowing to shun you.
That’s closer to agreement than I expected!
To the extent things have improved in your example, it was some version of legal protection. If we want to work toward that kind of improvement for some of the examples of online mobs we’ve discussed here, do you think the laws would need to be appropriately tailored for the specifics of social media and the internet? I do, that’s what I mean when I say cancel culture, or whatever you want to call it, is a new problem. It’s a new implementation of harm, it’s going to need new implementations of something (laws, likely) to protect against it, it probably deserves new consideration for how we care for those harmed by it.
It’s driven by the same capacity for harm in humanity, I’m not suggesting that changed, but the methods, opportunities, and consequences of acting on that capacity have changed innumerably as society and technology change, and I don’t understand the resistance to labeling these problems as new or distinct when discussing how to address them.
I’m probably about to Godwin’s law this whole thing, but guns didn’t change human nature either, but they dramatically changed our ability to inflict harm. There’s a reason we have (some) laws about gun control and are always discussing more, and that those laws are different from laws about knives (or baseball bats, or whatever), and acknowledging that doesn’t mean we don’t care about non-gun violence, or are suggesting violence is new.
I tend to think actual laws border on the impossible. What possible law consistent with broadly-agreed notions of fundamental human rights would have protected someone like Lindsay Ellis? She would be protected by law from…speech? I don’t say there can be no protection of law, but I can’t actually think of any way to do it.
This is why I referred to the service providers. They could police this stuff, but they don’t seem to want to. And policing would be wildly imperfect, and you’d still have verbal bullying, just as you have it among school kids and in workplaces and in communities and so on today. Social media ‘cancel culture’ is, in the end, speech. What got marginally better for my example of a Black man in Louisiana doesn’t have much to do with verbal bullying. It is far more about physical violence, restraint of commerce, suppression of rights, repression, etc.
That said, I understand why you consider this problem ‘new’, and I appreciate the perspective and your effort to explain it.
Enidigm
1843
I think the problem here is that there’s kind of a certain willingness to accept certain kinds of Cancel “free speech” on the Left because it’s after all, free speech. (And, so it goes unspoken, it’s right to attack those who need to be attacked).
It’s pretty easy though to come with counterfactuals, like if everyone used free speech to attack someone because of their ethnicity. And it’s harder to figure out where “good canceling” and “bad canceling” lies, especially if the bad canceling’s underlying bias isn’t explicit.
Thanks, I think I better understand your position as well and appreciate talking through it.
Thrag
1845
I’m not sure who you are arguing with or what you are arguing. Everyone seems to agree harassment is bad from any source regardless of the beliefs that may drive the harassment.
Enidigm
1846
I think it’s pretty clear that it’s often put in terms of “free speech”, and so you can’t “oppose” free speech, so what do you do? So the implication that the views being expressed are in general either neutral or good. We wouldn’t - or couldn’t - have that same conversation in the other side of the spectrum if people were being “cancelled” because of their ethnicity explicitly. There’s absolutely no one here who would be shrugging their shoulders and saying “free speech, watcha gunna do?” if there were explicit campaigns by majorities to “cancel” minorities for being minorities.
I think this is exactly what makes cancel culture “new”: You have technology to amplify any attacks on someone, it’s one global game of telephone, and any defense or opposition to said attacks is seen as a sign of weakness and causes the attacks to increase. I don’t think it does any good to just look at these things and say, “People have been bullied forever, whaddayagonnado??” The problem is exacerbated by the new technology, so maybe there’s a technological solution.
Every time you steer the discussion to “I don’t think this is anything new”, it feels like you’re implicitly saying “let’s not talk about it.”
