1916

Wouldn’t what the BBC did attract the attention of media critics, letter writers and others even prior to social media being a thing? Sure, those methods would have been slower and perhaps easier to ignore but within the industry they would have been felt.

1917

Cancel Culture seems to be a broad and nebulous term that usually only serves to distract from the actual specific problems it sometimes touches on, like harassment on social media.

Just look at this thread. A somewhat tragic story of harassment was posted. Pretty much everyone agreed harassment like that is bad. Rather than a discussion of solutions, or just a simple end of discussion after everyone agreed this specific case was bad, things wander into generalizations and blaming and talking past each other. Heck, we even had a complaint that the discussion about events on social media was too focused on social media and we should be instead focusing on how this is “cancel culture”.

1919

I believe that harassment on social media is a key component of cancel culture. If you’re just talking about online harassment, then the response is generally “Well people get harassed all the time, so what can you do?” But if you talk about someone being harassed online to such an extent that it caused them health issues and they became suicidal, that’s when you’re talking about the actual consequences and the effect it has on people.

A bunch of people with a political agenda decided to scour James Gunn’s decade-old tweets and read them in the most unfavorable light possible, he specifically apologized for those tweets, and then they claimed that he was a threat and vocally criticized him until Disney fired him because of all of the bad publicity. Yeah, it’s pretty much the textbook example of cancel culture:

  1. Directed against a single person.
  2. Done by people acting in bad faith.
  3. Explanations and apologies not accepted.
  4. Applied pressure until subject was fired from his job.

Again, you’re worried about it being used to attack the left instead of focusing on what’s happening to the people who are actually being canceled/harassed/whatever.

1920

I’d agree with this as well. That Gunn eventually recovered and even got back in Disney’s good graces isn’t the point. It’s that Cancel Culture was weaponized against him and got him canned in the first place.

1921

I think an important element of “cancel culture” to point out isn’t that people are applying social pressure against obvious bad infractions but that social pressure is being applied for increasingly minor infractions.

I don’t think anyone sensible worries about getting racists ect “cancelled”. It’s that, parallel and entangled with a lot of other 'net-spread concepts, what counts as cancel worthy seems to have expanded to a very large range of items. And being ‘too old’ or have ‘poorly chosen’ words even then seems to be no acceptable excuse. It doesn’t help that for many people online everything is everything is everything - like the Tweet linked (now way) above, the woman mad that Lindsay Ellis was sucking air out of the room about issues about POC, and then goes off on a myriad of tangents that had, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with the issue at all.

To me, “Cancel Culture” isn’t a phenomenon of the right talking heads getting canned for saying racist things, or vise versa, but a particular phenomenon of liberal or progressive leaning people getting eaten by online mobs professing to be more liberal, woke and aware than they, often weaponized against them by their apparent culture-war enemies.

1922

Perhaps social media platforms could take the problem more seriously and provide people with tools to combat it as well as actively attempt to police such harassments. The devil’s in the details of how to do that of course, which is a ripe area for productive discussion.

1923

One point about the Lindsay Ellis thing (yes I know we’re past that) is that she was simultaneously accused of:

A) Being so racist that she sees Raya and the Last Dragon as the same as Avatar the Last Airbender because they’re both Asian-inspired; and
B) So ignorant that she doesn’t realize that Avatar the Last Airbender actually came from an American creative team.

1924

So, is this the definition of “Cancel Culture” then? I mean it’s not a bad one.

1925

So “Cancel Culture” seems to only exist in Internet comment sections (like Twitter). Is there a viable meat-space example?

1926

Pro athletes who do domestic abuse. Pro wrestlers accused but not convicted of pedophilia?

1927

I think a lot of this tends to take place on social media instead of the real world, because on social media it’s almost a game to express what you think are the correct views of “your team”.

If someone or there potentially violated the rules, you can win internet points by jumping onto the dog pile. Twitter thrives on this.

1928

The separation, and usually anonymity, the internet gives causes people to give into their basest tribal asshole instincts. Many of us here knew it in the 90s, the rest of the globe is learning it now.

I mean, “Cancel Culture” just keeps coming back to Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and social media is poison.

1929

Boycott declarations and death threats aren’t remotely in the same ballpark, but it’s hard to argue that the harassment is different. But harassment, including death threats, is already illegal, just ignored (among other times) when it’s thousands of people at the same time.
I mean, it’s not a hard line, being speech and all, but it’s one thing to criticize and another to mock; one thing to reply to something, another to constantly reply; it’s one thing to say you want no more commercial ties, quite another to wish they’d die (or, of course, worse).

How to do it, I have thoughts about timeouts (users, interactions, …), easier blocks, the algorithm not promoting the same people over and over again, even word filtering, but they all have limits and problems, and it’s hard to say without looking at data. Which I don’t have the will to do the work on, but certainly something the operators can do instead of clearly stupid ideas. Although, I’m pretty sure that’s on purpose to excuse doing nothing that damages engagement.
Well, that, and better public education. Why are you all laughing?

Lewinsky? Amanda Knox? Bullied children? Uppity people?

1931

Social media requires very little effort to be outraged. No letter writing, you don’t even have to e-mail. And in most cases you are anonymous in what you say.

Imagine if you had to use your real name on your social media accounts?

1932

If you get robbed and then you get your stuff back, that’s doesn’t mean you weren’t robbed.

1934

That’s not inconsistent at all. Rowling wasn’t fired from anything, removed from any contracts, or had to leave the internet. She’s never had to apologize, in fact, she’s doubled down on her transphobia. Gunn was literally fired from Guardians 3, even after apologizing, and only got to come back after Disney saw him signing contracts with WB.

1935

The Gunn situation is a good example. However the impression I get from it is not he was a victim of “Cancel Culture” but he was a victim of stupid corporate decision making. There was absolutely overblown criticism of him on twitter, there was bandwagoning , etc. but it would have come to nothing if the corporation hadn’t take it seriously instead of the social media bullshit it clearly was and proved to be.

Imagine if Disney didn’t take that ephemeral sparkling twitter outrage as if is were an actual capital C Cancel Culture movement and just ignored it. Imagine the days, if not weeks, of clickbait media outlets trying to make hay out of the bullshit the giant media conglomerate might have had to endure. How would it have survived? But clearly, culture, no, society is to blame, or at least those who believe we should act as if we are living in a society, instead of craven corporate decision making.

1937

That’s clear at this point. Shrug.

1939

Nah, but you do you. I’ve learned not to waste too much time arguing in P&R.

1940

But are you, Shuma, we, etc. actually arguing?

I clearly find the terminology of “Cancel Culture” kind of absurdist, not because nothing that can be classified as such can possibly be a real problem, but because it obscures real problems and distracts from actual discussion and solutions of them. It’s it often used as a thought terminating cliché. As far as I can see the term serves no purpose other than to obfuscate.

Online harassment sucks. The unlimited audience of social media creates unlimited opportunities for misunderstanding, for exposure to assholes, for harassment, mob mentality, for everything bad (and sometimes good too) about human nature.

Okay, we all agree, so? Is the answer to point to narrow specific instances from one nebulous category of people on social media and portray that as the whole problem? Seems like it’s kind of blame seeking not solution seeking. So, what are the solutions?