Houngan
1848
One solution is not to participate. I don’t mean that as “don’t use social media”, but rather as intelligent, decent people don’t add your voice to it even if you think it’s justified. If somebody calls someone out and makes a good point, then watch from the sidelines rather than amplify it with meaningless tribalism. If the argument goes to a place where there’s a question of which side has the most support, then sure, pitch in, but the senseless dogpiling is where the left seems as bad or worse than the right. It’s like the Left has just as much hate as the Right but fewer outlets for it, so when one shows up they absolutely go nuts, en masse.
Or such is my observation and opinion. If that woman had an intelligent argument with a single person on twitter, they would have arrived at the misunderstanding around the phrase “If you squint . . .” within the first two posts, and everyone would go home happy.
I’m getting lost in the transition here from the first sentence to the next. I don’t think saying something is speech is implying that it’s good or neutral. Lots of speech is bad.
I think many minorities would tell you that the arc of their life is one constant attempt by the majority to cancel them. It’s not like anyone here is ignoring that, either. The entire right-wing anti-CRT campaign is an explicit effort to ‘cancel’ people of color.
If I say I don’t know how to craft a law to prevent verbal bullying, I mean that regardless of who the bully is and who the bullied is. And the way to show me where I’m wrong is to explain how to craft that law.
I just wish someone could bother to enumerate the real-world consequences to “cancel culture” that don’t involve loss of social media followers, or possibly loss of corporate sponsorships or the like.
None of these things count as consequences, really. And honestly, if some people quit their jobs as social media influencers because they can’t deal with online criticism, then I don’t know what to say other than “boy, did you get into the wrong line of work”.
Thrag
1851
Exactly, which is why social media keeps being mentioned.
This is a statement about you, Andy. Your feelings. Not my intent.
It appears to me that for Right leaning folk to get cancelled by other Right leaning folk requires an act of god or showing leftist tendencies, while Leftists cancelling Leftists is much more common.
Or maybe it’s just the stuff I’m most exposed to.
Houngan
1854
I would certainly agree with that. Right wingish cancellations are few and far between and usually bipartisan, like Kathy Griffin. I’d also suggest that the Right only cancels its own when they fail to toe the line, the Left usually lets people get closer to the middle/other side before the knives come out.
The thing I’m trying to say, I think, is that a big problem of the current situation isn’t that people are getting called out, it’s that the speed and vehemence of how it happens makes it impossible for someone to simply misspeak, or just have an antiquated or ignorant opinion that is ripe for a change. By the time she said “If you squint” to the time she likely said something like, “Whoa, hang on!” there were probably thousands of people already emotionally invested in destroying her. At that stage, I don’t know what you can do that doesn’t seem like a reaction to the reaction (she’s only saying that because we’re trashing her now!) rather than ask a simple question or make a simple expansion/explanation.
And yes, I fall prey to this all the time, which is why I limit my social media to this site. For instance, I originally said, “violence” rather than “vehemence” and upon reading it again it occurred to me that calling online dogpiling violence was insensitive to those suffering actual violence, so . . . I corrected myself. If I had 200,000 Twitter followers, I’m sure in the ten minutes between post and edit there would have been hundreds of responses saying that I was being insensitive to those suffering from real violence, that I lived in a cis white male bubble of protection, etc. Then if I tried to backtrack, it would look like it was because of the uproar, and down the rabbit hole we go.
Lack of sleep. Constant stress. Eating disorders. Personal threats on their life. Fear of going out in public. Having friends or family members threatened and their personal information being revealed. These are all very real consequences that people are dealing with.
Yeah, I thought I made that pretty clear when I used the words “it feels like” in my sentence. I think you should be aware that your intent and people’s reactions don’t always match up.
I admit that I keep stopping myself from saying something very like this, because I don’t want people to think I’m insensitive to other people’s feelings. But it does need to be said: it’s mostly low-stakes consequences.
I guess the other thing I would say is that I’ve been on the social media internet — if Usenet ‘rn’ can be included in that broad descriptor — since about 1988, and it has always been like this. People were just as nasty to each other in talk.politics, as I recall.
Personal threats and harassment are already against the law. Those other things are things that everyone deals with for any number of reasons. I don’t see any way to legislate our way out of symptoms of anxiety.
Thanks. To be clear, my hope is that people will read what I write charitably, and not impute motives or views I haven’t expressed.
Thrag
1860
Yup. This conversation often seems just a rediscovery of greater internet fuckwad theory. Social media just brought it to everyone in the world. Like the AOL invasion of usenet on a more massive scale.
Suggest a viable solution.
There are plenty of levels of harassment that are ostensibly legal, but could lead to horrible consequences and are therefore stressful to the person being harassed. And I don’t think it makes sense to dismiss how these things can have drastic consequences (including suicide). Again, Lindsay Ellis expressed this in her post: She complains about how stressful things are, and she gets attacked for being too “thin-skinned”. What’s the level of harassment that people are allowed to complain about?
I mean, I think it should be clear that I think people are allowed to complain about anything they want. If you think the law doesn’t go far enough, suggest a better law.
It seems like a lot of people are interpreting your posts as being dismissive, so I hope you understand that it isn’t other people just assigning that view to you randomly.
Step 1: Acknowledge that it’s an actual problem, instead of just saying “This is nothing new.”
Well, to be fair, some of my posts are dismissive, because they are about things I think ought to be dismissed as real concerns. Others are not. I’m sure people struggle to distinguish between them, and that’s probably my fault, but I don’t care about ‘cancel culture’ if what you mean is some comedian gets criticized for performing a bigoted act, or for trying to gift someone his penis. I do think it’s bad that people get verbally harassed by an online mob. I just don’t know how to solve that problem, and I don’t think it’s new.
Are you saying that you could suggest a solution, but I’m somehow stopping you from doing that? Because that’s weird.
I don’t know, but I do know that she’s allowed (and should be enouraged!) to talk about the harassment and the problems it’s causing. Harassment is wrong, full stop. Doxxing people, wrong. Also illegal.
For the rest of it, well…social media problems have social media solutions. Her choices are many, ranging from total withdrawal (appears to be the path she’s taking) to going on the warpath and attacking her attackers.
