Or you could just use his name?
CAncel Culture is digging 40 years back in someones history to find a picture they have from their high school where they are doing something that in todays climate is considered anathema and using it to either put them on the defensive, silence them or get them to lose their income. This also acts as a ‘deterrent’ to anyone else against “stepping out of order” as they too will lose their income.
End result is that only those with a lot of money can freely open their mouths, and thus you end up with Drumpf as president.
Except that only happens to arseholes.
Arseholes who are now going to vote for Trump like they always were.
ZeTh1
3463
Haha. “I was racist 30 years ago, someone dug it up and shamed me for it, therefore I will vote for Trump”. You do realise that only makes sense if they never stopped being racist, right?
It’s not even that. Every week you can read columns written by people who say they are victims of cancel culture, published in places like…the New York Times; or watch them on major cable news shows making the same claim. I don’t know how many times you can write I come to this top-tier media outlet once again to complain how I am being silenced!, but apparently there is no limit.
I wonder, can you name anyone who has been silenced for something like this, or anything remotely like it?
Gov.Northam of Virginia last year?
The sitting governor of Virginia is a victim of cancel culture? Really?
The blackface scandal was something dug up from many many years ago. That’s the definition I was going with, as that was said above.
He did almost lose his job, and I truly believe he’s done a lot of good since that moment.
To me, cancel culture is trial by twitter (or forum) mob. Then again, I think cancelling is a tactic, and I am a believe in there are few wrong tactics, only wrong targets. Some folks deserve to be cancelled. Some don’t. There’s no real set criteria in my eyes. We often try to reduce things to a spreadsheet/checklist, when in reality so many things are judgement calls.
Sometimes you need naming and shaming to get good things done. Sometimes you need less, sometimes you need more.
The games I played the most in my life, a wave of cancellations are happening right now, and it’s a good thing. A lot of bad folks are getting outed, and while the law might not be able to get them, throwing them out and naming and shaming them is something, and might make things better in the long run if it gets to comeback.
There can be a downside/risk to cancelling someone though, if they see no path to redemption, they won’t even try. While some are irredeemable, not all are.
If Northam is the example you come up with, you’re kind of proving my point. He has most decidedly not been canceled. He has not been silenced, not been fired, not been hounded from public life, not lost any income. He remains in a position of substantial power and influence!
Aceris
3470
I’m not sure exactly what you;re talking about here, but I think there’s a difference between the #metoo style cancellations, which while I’m sure have caught a few innocents, are pretty much entirely about righting injustice and are not an extension of partisan politics by other means, and therefore don’t really have a chilling effect on speech, and some of the more political actions.
The big point of cancel culture isn’t that people will shout at you on twitter (although that’s intimidating enough). It’s that you might lose friends or a job. Combine that with the blurred line whereby anything that disadvanatges the left in any way can be portrayed as “helping the racists”. You are unlikely to lose your job over this (although in some industries it could well slow down your career, or stop it dead) but you might well lose friends.
I’ve increasingly started self-censoring myself. I don’t like it, but many of the people in my network aren’t interested in having their hypocrisies and willingness to believe untruths exposed, and they are increasingly being convinced that a political disagreement is a reason to personally dislike and exclude someone.
The highly publicised instances of cancel culture are not so much problematic because of the injustices (although there are injustices, Scruton and Shor being the ones I am most familiar with) but because they make it clear that this utterly unaccountable left wing social media mob is able to exact real consequences on those that it can unite itself against. It normalises the idea of judgement by the mob, and the idea that to get on the wrong side of the mob is, in the eyes of society, a crime. And that does have a truly silencing effect.
So, basically, you are acting like less of a jerk online? Sounds like an overall good thing, doesn’t it?
I think cancel culture is the realization that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has them, no one wants to see them.
Aceris
3472
So you want your allies to be able to get away with dishonesty and racism, and anyone who calls out their dishonesty and racism is “acting like a jerk”? Or have I misunderstood your comment?
Is it your place to tell people off? Are you the Truth Police?
Aceris
3474
Yeah, you are right, we should just ignore it when people lie on social media and not point it out. That couldn’t possibly have any kind of bad consequence(*)
(*: some people might have said before 2016).
Let’s be honest, in prior settings, comments that you disagreed with would be handled privately. You would have talks face to face or on the phone or email. These days, it seems like people are more interested in score points. When you shout at people online, all you are doing is drawing attention to it. You aren’t being an ally or a friend, just a jerk.
So, yeah, a bit of self censorship is probably a good thing. At least on public forums.
And sure this makes me sound like a bit of a hypocrite. Feel free to PM me if you think that is the case.
Aceris
3476
I have of course done this. But sometime people aren’t interested in correcting untruths, so how else to get alternate source across. Sometimes people want to have the argument about their racist views in public (and refuse to discuss it in private) so they can weaponise peer pressure to inflict consequences on those who point it out. And that was the eye opener for me - pointing out blatantly racist views and being attacked because I was criticising a left winger, and therefore implicitly on “the other side” and allied with all of their crimes (real and imagined).
Without a real life example, I could not tell you what was happening.
I do happen to know you have a rather abrasive style of argument that can turn a lot of people off. Perhaps you just aren’t very convincing?
Let’s face it, the one reason I shouldn’t argue with people online is that it rarely helps my cause. My righteous indignation isn’t exactly going to convince others of my cause. Perhaps it is the same for you. Not everyone can be Obama, and have a gift for words and phrases.
Aceris
3478
My QT3 persona is a bit different from my real socmedia persona. I think a lot of people are pretty abrasive on here. But people with heterodox views are held to a very different standard - which is basically my point.
Cancel culture - in its widest sense - raises the consequences for having heterodox views - not for naked racism or misogyny but merely for having heterodox views - from “is not welcome in discussions about politics” to “loses friends and jobs”.
“I might lose friends or my job because of my execrable opinions” sounds like…life?
‘Cancel culture’ is nothing more than a synonym for ‘political correctness’, the idea that it is a bad thing that we can’t say racist, bigoted things in polite company anymore without facing criticism for it.
Aceris
3480
FWIW, I find you one of the mroe persuasive left wingers on this forum :)
