5 ms·

Cancel Culture in 1974

38 points by riverlong 6y ago

Kephael 6y ago
The primary difference between 2020 and 1974 is that smartphones and social media greatly increase the number of people who can (and do) serve as the tabloid reporter from the article.
buzzkillington 6y ago
>For no fault of her own, Katharina’s life is in shambles: her career is over, and her friends distance themselves for self-preservation. In desperation, she tries to meet with the reporter who has been hounding her. The reporter tries to extort her for sex, whereupon she shoots him. Remorseless, she turns herself in to the police for justice. I think this describes Gawker more than the current howling mob. There is someone to blame at the end of the day, and there is a clear malevolence in motives. Today what we have is closer to the medieval village in winter where there is nothing to do but go to the town square and watch the witches be humiliated.
lobocinza 6y ago
Your rss feed isn't working.
- riverlong 6y ago
  Hey, thank you for pointing it out! I've hidden the Feed from the navigation bar for the moment. It's probably an issue with the Jekyll template that I'm using -- I've been trying to fix it. (As a stopgap, I do also post updates on my twitter.)
- riverlong 6y ago
  Hey, I think I've fixed it. Want to try again?
grawprog 6y ago
>The left is in a curious, self-damaging position, where lots of center-leaning moderates who are genuine progressives – are not meeting the ideological standards of those further left, which functions to their exclusion, thereby weakening the left overall. I try to avoid placing myself on the political spectrum, I tend to believe politics need to take a well rounded view on things, so I guess that would place me center or something. I tend to believe in a decent amount of personal freedom while believing the government exists to serve and provide social systems for the population. I tend to find both the 'left' and 'right' push me away. Both are so extreme and exclusive in their views that they're blind to whatever common ground they might have with eachother if they have even the slightest difference in views. It's ridiculous. Both far left and far right of the political spectrum have become caricatures of themselves. They've both lost all reason and critical thinking abilities and resort to black and white, yes or no, all in or out, fuck on or fuck off statements. Human beings aren't like that, society isn't like that. Humans are a million shades of grey ans everyone likely falls somewhere not so extreme when asked candidly and given time to think on their beliefs. Too much time is spent on alienating eachother, finding the smallest faults with eachother to show why they are 'them' and we are 'us' and not coming together over common ground. I truly believe, the average person wants what a good majority of other people want and if people were given time to think and understand rather than react, the majority of us, whatever side you fall on, where ever you're from would likely have more in common then we all think, were we more able to look past all our differences.
- foolfoolz 6y ago
  don’t equate internet ramblings with political beliefs. the majority of all posts on political topics are just trying to maximize the internet points
  - catalogia 6y ago
    I agree partially, internet point systems give people a metric to optimize for (any metric that can be gamed, will be gamed) and it happens that sensationalism is an efficient strategy for accumulating internet points in most extant internet point systems. However, I think what people say online will leach into what they truly believe, particularly with repetition. I believe humans have a cognitive bias towards consistency, particularly with respect to their self-image. If there's a large disconnect between what you truly believe and what you say online, I think there's probably a psychological pressure to alter your self-image to be more inline with what you've been saying.
  - apta 6y ago
    Could very well be the case, however, they are at some level affecting the safety and well being of the population. E.g. see what happened to Bret Weinstein simply for refusing to be part of mass hysteria.
- aahhahahaaa 6y ago
  This seems like a vast generalization based solely on media (social and traditional). The companies running these platforms have a lot to gain by scaring you while maintaining business as usual. I don't think it's an intentional outcome lead by one individual or some conspiracy, but they've optimized for profit and it's where it's lead them. They're incredibly successful at it.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    I don't think it's necessarily a case of optimizing for profit, although that's certainly a valid way of framing it. Rather, I think it's likely the engineers responsible tried to create systems they earnestly thought would be good at suggesting interesting content. A system that promotes interesting and sensational car videos to car enthusiasts seems ethically sound and quite cool; I think that's probably the sort of scenario the architects of these systems were considering. They neglected to consider the deleterious effects such a system could have on society when applied to some higher-stakes topics, like politics. Maybe they did this because they were optimizing for profit and blinded by dollar signs, but I think this might also have happened if the individuals involved were simply naively unaccustomed to considering the possibility that software could harm society.
wellpast 6y ago
While cancel culture may not be new it certainly seems amplified by new conditions of media and the digital era, which seem specially able to manufacture larger polarized mobs and hermetic ideological bubbles. He points a ginger finger at the left and its tendency of late toward puritanism, but I think this is too polite. (The modern right has its own tendency and gets no pass, by the way.) One thing I find interesting amid the modern polarization of ideologies is how clearly the essence of "conservatism" and "liberalism" can be seen in their extreme lights. You get a much clearer picture of "where" each ideology goes when taken to its extreme. Embarrassingly I grew up tacitly seeing "conservatism" as the "bad guys"; I reject that simplistic thinking these days. People are people: the right and the left are cut from the same cloth, and both are subject to fundamentalist thinking. I'm speaking not just from media but how certain ideas falling from it have been trickling directly into my friend circles over the years without any kind of thoughtful skepticism or individualization.

38 points by riverlong 6y ago

The primary difference between 2020 and 1974 is that smartphones and social media greatly increase the number of people who can (and do) serve as the tabloid reporter from the article.

buzzkillington 6y ago

>For no fault of her own, Katharina’s life is in shambles: her career is over, and her friends distance themselves for self-preservation. In desperation, she tries to meet with the reporter who has been hounding her. The reporter tries to extort her for sex, whereupon she shoots him. Remorseless, she turns herself in to the police for justice. I think this describes Gawker more than the current howling mob. There is someone to blame at the end of the day, and there is a clear malevolence in motives. Today what we have is closer to the medieval village in winter where there is nothing to do but go to the town square and watch the witches be humiliated.

lobocinza 6y ago

Your rss feed isn't working.

riverlong 6y ago
Hey, thank you for pointing it out! I've hidden the Feed from the navigation bar for the moment. It's probably an issue with the Jekyll template that I'm using -- I've been trying to fix it. (As a stopgap, I do also post updates on my twitter.)
riverlong 6y ago
Hey, I think I've fixed it. Want to try again?

grawprog 6y ago

>The left is in a curious, self-damaging position, where lots of center-leaning moderates who are genuine progressives – are not meeting the ideological standards of those further left, which functions to their exclusion, thereby weakening the left overall. I try to avoid placing myself on the political spectrum, I tend to believe politics need to take a well rounded view on things, so I guess that would place me center or something. I tend to believe in a decent amount of personal freedom while believing the government exists to serve and provide social systems for the population. I tend to find both the 'left' and 'right' push me away. Both are so extreme and exclusive in their views that they're blind to whatever common ground they might have with eachother if they have even the slightest difference in views. It's ridiculous. Both far left and far right of the political spectrum have become caricatures of themselves. They've both lost all reason and critical thinking abilities and resort to black and white, yes or no, all in or out, fuck on or fuck off statements. Human beings aren't like that, society isn't like that. Humans are a million shades of grey ans everyone likely falls somewhere not so extreme when asked candidly and given time to think on their beliefs. Too much time is spent on alienating eachother, finding the smallest faults with eachother to show why they are 'them' and we are 'us' and not coming together over common ground. I truly believe, the average person wants what a good majority of other people want and if people were given time to think and understand rather than react, the majority of us, whatever side you fall on, where ever you're from would likely have more in common then we all think, were we more able to look past all our differences.

foolfoolz 6y ago
don’t equate internet ramblings with political beliefs. the majority of all posts on political topics are just trying to maximize the internet points
- catalogia 6y ago
  I agree partially, internet point systems give people a metric to optimize for (any metric that can be gamed, will be gamed) and it happens that sensationalism is an efficient strategy for accumulating internet points in most extant internet point systems. However, I think what people say online will leach into what they truly believe, particularly with repetition. I believe humans have a cognitive bias towards consistency, particularly with respect to their self-image. If there's a large disconnect between what you truly believe and what you say online, I think there's probably a psychological pressure to alter your self-image to be more inline with what you've been saying.
- apta 6y ago
  Could very well be the case, however, they are at some level affecting the safety and well being of the population. E.g. see what happened to Bret Weinstein simply for refusing to be part of mass hysteria.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
This seems like a vast generalization based solely on media (social and traditional). The companies running these platforms have a lot to gain by scaring you while maintaining business as usual. I don't think it's an intentional outcome lead by one individual or some conspiracy, but they've optimized for profit and it's where it's lead them. They're incredibly successful at it.
- catalogia 6y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily a case of optimizing for profit, although that's certainly a valid way of framing it. Rather, I think it's likely the engineers responsible tried to create systems they earnestly thought would be good at suggesting interesting content. A system that promotes interesting and sensational car videos to car enthusiasts seems ethically sound and quite cool; I think that's probably the sort of scenario the architects of these systems were considering. They neglected to consider the deleterious effects such a system could have on society when applied to some higher-stakes topics, like politics. Maybe they did this because they were optimizing for profit and blinded by dollar signs, but I think this might also have happened if the individuals involved were simply naively unaccustomed to considering the possibility that software could harm society.

wellpast 6y ago

While cancel culture may not be new it certainly seems amplified by new conditions of media and the digital era, which seem specially able to manufacture larger polarized mobs and hermetic ideological bubbles. He points a ginger finger at the left and its tendency of late toward puritanism, but I think this is too polite. (The modern right has its own tendency and gets no pass, by the way.) One thing I find interesting amid the modern polarization of ideologies is how clearly the essence of "conservatism" and "liberalism" can be seen in their extreme lights. You get a much clearer picture of "where" each ideology goes when taken to its extreme. Embarrassingly I grew up tacitly seeing "conservatism" as the "bad guys"; I reject that simplistic thinking these days. People are people: the right and the left are cut from the same cloth, and both are subject to fundamentalist thinking. I'm speaking not just from media but how certain ideas falling from it have been trickling directly into my friend circles over the years without any kind of thoughtful skepticism or individualization.