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Those People We Tried to Cancel? They’re All Hanging Out Together
- djohnston 7y agoThis isn't unexpected at all. This is exactly what critics of cancel culture said would happen
- shadowgovt 7y agoQuestion is if it's a bad thing or not. I mean, people with questionable morals or worldview have been hanging out for all of human history. We could complain that ostracizing people who became members of the Klan makes the Klan happen, but at least then they're over there being racist at Klan rallies and not in the middle of the public square.
- smt88 7y agoIf you think that Klan members were ostracized from society (rather than being local centers of power) and that all they did was harmlessly rally outside of public places, you seem not to know the first thing about the Klan. Even if that was just a hastily/poorly chosen analogy, there's still a point to be made: groups of powerful, immoral people do not stay on the sidelines of society for long.
- shadowgovt 7y agoBad example. The Klan was very empowered.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoThe problem is when all of the progressives opponents start banding together, there might just be more of them than there are progressives and then, whoops, game over. There are a lot of centrists and liberals that the progressives have alienated. (You know you have a problem when even Barack Obama is stepping up and criticizing "woke" people: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261)
- thrower123 7y agoThe pendulum always swings
- shadowgovt 7y agoIf that's the case, then it's a fight that was going to happen sooner or later, because it's not as if progressive opponents were sitting back and letting culture change without protest. If anything, calling out people for bad behavior is a reaction to the realization that a lot of "centrists" were just closet racists, who may not advocate for some form of supremacy or other but sure were donating and voting for it when the opportunity came.
- maxerickson 7y agoYour "when even" isn't particularly accurate. Obama was always a relative centrist. It's just that many consider it radical to think that we should do simple things like provide most people with access to healthcare.
- finnthehuman 7y agoThe "even" in "even Barack Obama" isn't about him being super far left, then "even" is about the fact a former president has to be the one telling people their tactics aren't working. And then they go on to ignore his advice because he is insufficiently left. Which ironically proves how prescient his advice is.
- Pfhreak 7y ago> even Barack Obama I mean, he's not particularly leftist, is he? If anything he represents a pretty centrist liberal (as in Liberalism) position?
- DeusExMachina 7y agoAdmittedly anecdotal, but this woman was deradicalized thanks to online dialogue: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/unfollow-deradicalization-twitter https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/unfollow-deradicalization... I would say that isolating people definitely does not work.
- sudosteph 7y agoThe problem here is that the popular perception of which ideologies are considered "radical" is swiftly expanding. The Westboro Baptist Church has been held up as an example of the "radical" Christian right for over 10 years. They know that they are reviled and play it up to keep getting attention. Meanwhile, if you read the stuff that Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal wrote (both are mentioned in this article) - it's clear that they both thought they were not taking positions that are out of the mainstream liberal view of acceptability. And if you talk to people who would not consider themselves "woke" they would find their writings to be very tame as well. This is why this situation is so interesting - these so-called "radicals" didn't begin to consider themselves different until they were suddenly isolated for expressing things that didn't seem very radical at all.
- bsamuels 7y agoWho gets to decide what a questionable moral is? The offenses in the article seem to be a whole lot less severe than being a member of the KKK. Where is the line? If I make a donation to the Republican party, does that mean I have questionable morals? Roughly half the country is Republican, do they all have no morals? That is what the article is trying to grapple with.
- shadowgovt 7y agoRight now, in this era, with this Republican party? Yes, yes it does. ;) It's obvious half the country has questionable morals (or at least values or sense). A little under half the voters elected Donald Trump president.
- bsamuels 7y agoDemonizing people who have a different upbringing, culture, and worldview as being wrong just because they don't share a set of values with you is to be part of the problem. It's a modern analog of a European explorer viewing native Africans as savages because they don't have the same culture and values that you do.
- shadowgovt 7y agoThat's an interesting point of view that ignores the fact many of us grew up in conservative Republican families.
- kerkeslager 7y agoI grew up in a socially conservative Republican family, and became liberal in my late teens. And that's exactly why I am against ostracizing people who hold conservative Republican views. I became a liberal today because liberals took the time to have civil conversations me about my intolerance, and I realized that liberals were right. I am grateful to the people who did that for me, and I want to extend the same courtesy to others. Pragmatically, if liberals had ostracized me or "canceled" me, it's quite likely that I would still hold those intolerant views today. By taking the stance that "we don't talk to Republicans", liberals are cutting off the only mechanism by which Republicans become liberals. And those people who you alienate instead of converting become angry, and that anger motivates them to go to the polls. Do you want Trump to get re-elected? Because what you're doing is contributing to Trump getting re-elected.
- philwelch 7y agoThe problem is when you start canceling more and more and more people to the point where they have nowhere else to go.
- shadowgovt 7y agoThis is why cancel culture isn't actually real. https://youtu.be/szybEhqUmVI https://youtu.be/szybEhqUmVI
- thebigspacefuck 7y agoI watched and it has me convinced to a certain extent. However, he mostly looks at well known comedians/actors on TV or in movies. There are other people on YouTube that have been taken off the platform or demonetized and that is another issue. To the extent that it ruins someone life, I’m sure most people can handle being taken down or having to change their career aspirations, but it led one individual to shoot up YouTube and take their own life. Looking at several of the better scenarios doesn’t make the worst case scenario not real.
- the_enigma 7y agoPlease stop posting paywalled articles.
- grepthisab 7y agoReally interesting!
- kbjjkgvg 7y agoOn the other hand, being forced to Gab/Quillette means these people get far less mainstream exposure. Furthermore, those on the path to radicalization often see the true spirit of the ideology when the leaders move to more extremist-accepting platform and are able to reject the beliefs. When reddit banned /r/fatpeoplehate the problem moved around for a little bit, but it promptly died. Or when the white nationalists were forced to move to Voat, their numbers dwindled.
- kerkeslager 7y ago> When reddit banned /r/fatpeoplehate the problem moved around for a little bit, but it promptly died. Or when the white nationalists were forced to move to Voat, their numbers dwindled. I don't buy this. Do you have any actual evidence for this?
- detaro 7y agoThey're probably referring to this study: http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
- kerkeslager 7y agoThat study shows that bigots didn't move from r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown to other subreddits. That study does not show that bigots simply disappeared or became less bigoted. Nothing in that paper indicates that the bigots didn't simply move to other online communities (i.e. Voat), or take their bigoted conversations offline.
- thrower123 7y agoQuillette being a white nationalist publication is either a joke, or the definition has been stretched so far out of shape that it is unrecognizable. They will publish anything well-argued.
- shadowmore 7y ago> Cancellation does present a question about power, and who has it. Neither side has it. The people with money have it, as always. Follow the money, and you can predict who gets cancelled and who doesn't. Though there is an argument to be made for companies vastly overestimating the short-term negative financial impact of "offending" the various tiny, non-conformist factions in society due to how loud they are, and underestimating the long-term loss of faith caused by acting in league with those small factions against the majority of the population due to the "silent" in "silent majority".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spodek 7y agoGossip and all its moralizing and social consequences used to happen over the back yard fence. Now it's major stories in the paper of record, such as this one. Another unintended side effect of the internet.
- dannykwells 7y agoMy favorite quote: “Woke progressives are a pretty miserable bunch,” he said. “Try joking with that group.” Too true. And they don't have a clue.
- shadowgovt 7y agoHumor is a tool to diffuse emotional tension. Woke progressives aren't interested in diffusing it, because emotional tension breeds change. They don't want people laughing; they want them angry and out in the streets. They do have some funny jokes though. Did you hear the one about the guy who voted for Trump because Clinton was going to bring universal healthcare? I hear his GoFundMe for his cancer treatment is coming in a bit short. Hilarious.
- emsy 7y ago„Woke“ people are not interested in change, because it takes away their purpose.
- kbjjkgvg 7y agoI'm a leftist and all the leftists I hang out with have some grubby-ass humour that wouldn't fly anywhere 'civil'. We just don't make racist/transphobic/etc jokes. It's honestly not that hard and this idea of the oversensitive progressive is overplayed and not grounded in reality.
- akvadrako 7y agoThe phrase grubby-ass humor itself sounds like trying too hard to stay on the safe side of the line.
- kbjjkgvg 7y agoJesus christ you people are insufferable. You just can't imagine a leftist being anything other than a blue-hair university student eh? I'm a fucking communist, not a woke scold. Eat my ass you insufferable little dweeb.
- jeffdavis 7y agoSocial exclusion is an overused form of punishment. It eliminates any chance of education or understanding on either side. Done often enough, and it polarizes everyone.
- shadowgovt 7y agoI believe that is the point.
- goldcd 7y agoI think it's worse than that. "Cancellation" is often used in the same way the pillory used to be - making an example of one, as a warning to the rest. Whilst it's still bouncing around as a thing, discussions simply aren't happening. You can't query aspects of cancel culture, without fearing that you'll be next...so you type something banal.. you decide it's safer to say "N-word" even in contexts where you're directly quoting ... nope, I'm definitely not going to say it here.
- ben509 7y agoI think it's a vicious cycle. If you harshly punish people for saying certain things, you create taboos. That causes people to avoid discussing these taboo topics. Everyone knows that they're bad things, but there's none of the debate where you can practice fleshing out exactly what your objections to those ideas are. Then when someone says those things, you have trouble articulating why they're bad, and then you fall back on the threat of social exclusion.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 7y agoIt's a lot more than social exclusion. It's purposeful social polarization, functionally driven by virtue-signaling and popularity-contest dynamics. And this is just as true wrt. the "canceled" as wrt. the "cancelers" - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
- marvin 7y agoWhy was this flagged? I found this an incredibly interesting view into this 'cancel culture' that I've heard referenced vaguely, but never described explicitly. With an added bonus of getting an up-to-date view on the "things you can't say" in 2019. I would love to see the smart folks of HN discuss it.
- sudosteph 7y agoI didn't flag it, but have you seen the comments on this thread? I don't blame whoever did flag it. There are many people in here not discussing this topic in good faith, and one person in particular who is flooding the comments with intentionally inflammatory and low-effort comments. I wish HN could have an adult conversation on this topic too, but it's not going that way so far. Maybe someone can re-post this on a weekday so we don't ruin Saturday for one of our mods.
- yabadabadoes 7y agoSo anything a lobby doesn't want discussed requires nothing more than a few spam comments? At a minimum HN should separate blocking comments from delisting posts..
- sudosteph 7y agoUnfortunately, yes. This is not the first time I've seen this pattern play out here. Any popular article where the main subject is gender typically goes the same way. If the mods are around, they can sometimes step in early enough to encourage good dialogue and nip the bad actors early on. But when that doesn't happen, these threads will usually be dominated early-on with bad content from ideologues, and end up even worse because those comments end up shaping the dialogue into a flame war. So many HN readers just flag the whole post when it's obvious that the comments have strayed too far outside of the HN guidelines for discourse. I don't do that myself or condone it, but it's not uncommon. Sometimes the article will end up being re-posted with greater mod oversight to prevent both agenda-flagging (when people really do flag on-topic articles to prevent others from seeing it) and to fix the problem caused by lousy comments where the good replies need to be de-coupled from low-effort parent comments. This thread clearly needs moderation for both of those issues, but it may not happen today.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dannykwells 7y agoLove that this article is flagged now, too. Maybe it's ironic - an article from NY Times (liberal bastion), "cancelled" for discussing cancellation in a neutral light?
- KozmoNau7 7y agoYou mean "milquetoast centrist" and "oh those poor intolerant conservatives aren't allowed to be intolerant anymore", right?
- dannykwells 7y agoThis fundamentally comes down to a difference in opinion: do you change minds by rejecting people and making them outcasts (your approach, I'd guess) or continuing a dialogue while maintaining your principles? The former approach, um, isn't working (even if it might make you feel warm and fuzzy inside for being morally righteous).
- cazum 7y agoThe latter approach certainly hasn't worked either. Look at the rise of white fascism in America. It grew out of the free-speech open dialogue wild west internet (4chan, 8chan etc) and became so radical that it's racked up quite a body count thus far. I don't think cancellation is about changing the person-being-canceled's mind on a given opinion. I believe it functions entirely to signal to the rest of society and culture that such positions and actions are unacceptable.
- dannykwells 7y agoBut like, that's not working because the approach isn't being used judiciously. Weinstein was cancelled, as are YouTubers who cancel them selves. Its used when someone messes up a pronoun, and when someone is a serial abuser of women for 30 years. So the term and the approach is broken. If everyone can be accused, without evidence, of anything and end up being cancelled, that is sending a signal. Just not the one you want.
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/Bcblr http://archive.is/Bcblr