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Politically-correct witch-hunt is killing free speech

376 points by 737min 6y ago

joeax 6y ago
I hate to remind everyone but PC culture is here to stay. We can all complain about but the fact is no one has a solution, except for staying off social media (which I generally have been doing, and I've never been happier). Need proof? Go watch the movie PCU, made in 1994.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  PC culture has always existed, in different forms. You couldn't say that you were gay or even supported same sex marriage, without effective excommunication from society 50 years ago in US.
phnofive 6y ago
Thesis needs work. There is a dearth of mass capitulation to lawful orders for sheltering in place or wearing masks, and booing isn’t censorship (and before you argue that it’s another form thereof, tell me again that gentrification isn’t a term charged with meaning beyond the OED).
dkdk8283 6y ago
I’m thrilled to see this article here. Politically correct culture has gone way too far. Privacy and free speech are quickly eroding and it seemed like not many people are willing to get loud about it.
- tijuco2 6y ago
  perfect
baggy_trough 6y ago
Unfortunately, the totalitarians are already in control.
rvz 6y ago
I have to say that the web in its early days never had this level of politically correct moderation or witch-hunting acts until YouTube, Facebook and Twitter rose in popularity and were used beyond their intended purpose; as tools used to dox and cancel opponents. Fast-forward to 2020, it has gotten too far and out of control. One could say that social media has definitely accelerated this nonsense to new heights, taking everyone who disagrees with the PC-crowd underground.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  Social media empowered the mob, and gave them an inflated sense of worth for their own opinions. Because your opinion can instantly be broadcast to millions of people, it must have value. But along with this came the mob mentality, where this new power will be used to silence opposition. The fault really lies in the companies, politicians, and media outlets who have given credence to what "the mob" on social media has to say. Example: a comedian/author makes a tweet that is mildly offensive to some small minority, but they didn't mean anything by it, or it was just a joke. Somebody sees the potential to kick up a stink, and retweet it with "can't believe they just said this. apologise now". It gets maybe 10% the "likes" of the original tweet. A media outlet sees this tweet (some intern is browsing "latest tweets") and writes an article saying "Internet in an outrage: is x a racist?". Author immediately issues an apology, resigns from their job, and goes into hiding, their career destroyed forever. What could have been done differently? The company they worked for could've stood by them. The author/whoever could have just ignored it. The media outlet could have had higher quality standards of publication. And almost nobody would even know what was said in the first place! Our society thrives on conflict, and any small hint of a conflict is blown up beyond all proportion.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > I have to say that the web in its early days never had this level of politically correct moderation or witch-hunting acts until […] Let me tell you about Usenet, especially pre-Eternal September …
- adventured 6y ago
  Not everybody should have a bullhorn and social media has given everyone the ability to weaponize de facto threats & intimidation so as to destroy lives. The social terrorist behavior that has become routine on Twitter et al., needs to be extinguished by giving the behavior a financial cost to the corporations in charge of enabling or stopping it from being broadcast on their services. Twitter as a prominent example needs to be made financially liable for what happens on their service. They're a biased broadcast platform that censors and restricts based on their own subjective rules, they stopped being a mostly non-biased utility ~8-10 years ago. Since they're the opposite of neutral, they're properly entirely responsible for everything broadcast on their platform. You can watch hordes of malevolent actors on Twitter emotionally masturbate in the open to the notion of harming people, wildly lusting for who they're going to hurt next. Cancel some person next, destroy this person next. It's all over Twitter. The entire service has become a platform for social terrorists to organize and attack with. The first step is to make it prohibitively expensive for Twitter to continue to abet the social terrorists (they're terrorists - and yes the definition fits - because they intentionally, specifically seek to terrorize other people) and to force the social platforms to apply their terms of service equally for all users. The fines should be large enough that Twitter should be bankrupted if they fail to comply. And if someone can come up with a better term for the criminals on services like Twitter that use it to terrorize, threaten, intimidate, and destroy, that'd be great, given the obvious problems with the terrorist label. This is a new class of criminal cooperation that has never existed before, as these types of open, massive broadcast platforms have ever existed before. It used to be extremely difficult to organize thousands of people together to try to destroy someone's life, it was a mostly impractical concept previously. That type of weapon (it's a weapon because eg intimidation & threatening people with harm to their life is an act of violence; intimidation at the scale of Twitter is a machine gun version) should not only be illegal, it should cost the corporations to an epic degree if they abet it. Fortunately politicians have begun to figure out how to neuter the socials using these approaches. The only problem now, is that they're not going big enough yet. The fines have to be crushing to be effective.
fake-name 6y ago
[citation needed] > The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show. Wow, this article literally doesn't understand what free speech is. Aaaand it more horseshoe theory of politics, references the quillette, and says they're now libertarian. Nothing of value here.
Thorentis 6y ago
I hope people realise this sooner rather than later. No matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, it is clear that PC culture is making the world a worse place for everybody. Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an enemy? Does that ring any bells? I swear there's another regime in human history that made you hang flags outside your house to show your clear support. This comparison is made to death so I won't name it, but the similarities - despite accusations flying in the other direction constantly - are constantly increasing. Removing TV shows from Netflix because somebody covered their face in black paint, with no regard for context or what was being made fun of it? (hint: it wasn't black people). "Cancelling" somebody's career because their daughter said something that might be deemed racist? "Cancelling" somebody because they said something 10 years ago that might be racist? Absurd. I honestly think our society is getting soft. You cannot disagree with somebody without them immediately deciding whether or not they can publicly shame you or if you broke any laws in the process of hurting them. Comedy is getting less and less funny, debate is increasingly meaningless because you have to tip-toe around everything. We are making society blander and less diverse in the name of diversity. Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion.
- cma 6y ago
  > Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an enemy? Does that ring any bells? Are you talking about Kapernick being cancelled from the NFL by conservative cancel culture and the Vice President's staged NFL walkout to support conservative cancel culture?
  - waheoo 6y ago
    Cherry picked whataboutism is really boring.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please read and follow the site guidelines when commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
aklemm 6y ago
Culture cancels abhorrent ideas, same as it ever was. Notice how it’s COMPLETELY unacceptable to suggest slavery should be made legal. Or children sent to work in factories. All commonplace 150 years ago and we only benefit from the ideas being practically unutterable.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Notice how it’s COMPLETELY unacceptable to suggest slavery should be made legal. Only if you use the word "slavery". Suggesting that "workers should be able to sell an equity stake in their future earnings“ isn't just acceptable, it's fashionable.
  - aklemm 6y ago
    I’m failing to see how that’s a sensible comparison.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Holding an equity stake in a freelancer's earnings is a very common form of slavery, including slavery in the American South.
- nilkn 6y ago
  Cancel culture is completely unnecessary for the examples you gave. Supporting slavery was essentially unutterable long before cancel culture existed.
  - random314 6y ago
    Supporting slavery being unutterable is a perfect example of the benefits of cancel culture.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
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blacksqr 6y ago
"We’re supposed to have a First Amendment right to freedom of the press, but this phenomenon is ruining it." Writer of linked article claims to be a lawyer, but strangely seems unaware that the First Amendment protects speech and the press from the government. No examples of government restricting free expression were given.
- waheoo 6y ago
  Id say the stance on platforms is stifiling free speech. Private companies should not be able to moderate speech and claim to be a platform. You're either a publisher or your not. If you're a public platform, your users should be protected by public laws. For rhe most part the current state of affairs has worked so far but i would suggest it hasnt for some and is starting to show its weaknesses in a more polarized environment. For the downvoters, this isnt some new opinion of mine because of the talking points from trump, ive had this view since the torrent debates of the early 2000s and other similar situations with people like snowden. If you disagree because with what i have to say, please explain.
  - OminousWeapons 6y ago
    Are you implying that if I stand up a small public forum or message board for some niche interest using my own assets that I am unable to boot people off it or moderate in any way without being deemed a publisher and being liable for content?
    - Thorentis 6y ago
      I think it is about scale. If you stand up a public forum and you have 100 users, do your moderation choices actually sway a large percentage of public opinion? Consider instead a social media platform with a billion users and its moderation choices. It is time for us to use some common sense and not just dissolve everything down to that simplistic binary terms. Having a forum doesn't make you a publisher. Moderation isn't always bad. There are many other nuances like reach, scale, trust, etc. For instance, there is a huge difference between me posting disinformation of my private blog, and me publishing disinformation is a newspaper read by hundreds of thousands daily. My responsibility and influence over the public increases with the reach I have. We need to think the same way about social media.
pcurve 6y ago
I think the move towards real identity killed free speech online. Anonymity was easy for regular folks back in the 2000s. I'm actually baffled at how some people so willingly express their personal views online these days.
- yepthatsreality 6y ago
  It’s called being discovered. You want your tweets discovered so that you can have a sense of something earned by writing it.
awb 6y ago
Appreciate the article, but a few points I feel are off the mark a bit: > But despite his killer getting fired and arrested, the protests became more violent, more destructive, and more divisive. A lot of rioting and violence came in the early days, even before the arrest and murder charges. The vast majority of protests were peaceful. And this seems to insinuate that the protesters and rioters were the same people, which I don't think is a widely held belief. And maybe the protests are about more than just the murder of George Floyd... If this was an isolated incident, maybe expectations of a quick return to civility would make sense, but it's almost like people (including white people) are tired of this happening. > If you aren't posting #BLM, you’re racist. If you ARE posting #BLM but you say it in the wrong way, you're racist. If you're white and you're silent, that's violence. If you're white and you're speaking up, you're talking over black voices and only they should be heard. Maybe this is several folks trying to take the culture wheel. The debate is messy right now and that's OK. It's a messy topic and people are tossing out their ideas. If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too. I'm glad we're having a conversation about it even if it's just to simply say we're all confused. Props to the author for sharing her views. If folks take issue with what you've said, don't sweat it. And if you're looking for other folks on direction on how to "do it right", you're looking in the wrong direction.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  > If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too. Anecdata: in a company all-hands 2 weeks ago, an employee asked the CEO why the company hadn't yet made a public statement about BLM. The CEO looked visibly agitated, almost fearful, and stumbled through some response that equated to "will we do that by the end of the week". Whether or not the pressure actually exists, people are scared of what will happen if they don't conform. People have been fired over tweets, roasted in the media over not speaking out "when they should", and for things they said 10 years ago. Nobody wants to be on the front page of buzzfeed for being outed "as a racist". There is a collective societal fear that is driving us faster and faster off the PC cliff.
  - mike503 6y ago
    This. I sometimes worry about anything I may have said years ago or anything I say now that could be construed as offensive by ... almost anyone at this point. Early on (day after the riots started) I posted an article about a POC business owner’s business being destroyed due to protests (rioting) - I had someone call me gross and “where was your outrage when a Black man was killed by a cop? I didn’t see you post anything then” After that I started having to make a risk analysis before doing anything. At this point you HAVE to say something about everything and cover your bases, or you’re complicit; oddly enough you can say something AGAINST the movement, be called out, and apologize, and that’s acceptable. But trying to stay out of the shitstorm? No, you’re complicit. Say something positive, or say something negative and then retract it. But say something...
glenda 6y ago
You're still free to write whatever you want, no one is taking that away. However, just because you have something to say doesn't mean that I or anyone else has give it the time of day. I am also free to respond however I'd like, and in some cases there may be many more people that share my opinion rather than yours!
- xfitm3 6y ago
  I can write whatever I want but there's a good chance I'll get fired for voicing unpopular opinions.
  - glenda 6y ago
    That may be the case depending on the opinion you've expressed but that also seems like a conversation between you and your employer at that point.
    - 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
      No one should get fired for voicing wrong political opinion, America needs stronger workers rights.
    - xfitm3 6y ago
      Absolutely not. It's a discussion between me and my peers whom my employer predicts will react negatively if I stay on board. It's my fellow human who wants me to lose my livelihood because I disagree.
      - spopejoy 6y ago
        Nope, it's your bosses' call, 100%. Businesses are dictatorships. What you describe is your read of what you might think your boss will do, but if it is in their interest to keep you, they will keep you, even if your "peers" are hurt and offended. OTOH, if the people you've offended are more important than you, then maybe your job is at risk. But it's at risk anyway in that case. People think "calling HR" is some kind of loaded weapon, but the fact is there are harrassers and all sorts of losers who get called to HR over and over and keep their jobs. HR exists for one reason: protect the management. If you're expendable and easy to fire, then _maybe_ they'll can you, but if you're actually a decent employee they definitely won't if all we're talking about is a brush fire on Slack.
hintymad 6y ago
It's far more than free speech being killed. "If you're not with us, you're against us". "Silence is violence". Remember Pol Pot? If you're not a revolutionist, then you're counter-revolutionary. That said, isn't this logical under the moral framework of our political correctness? You're either correct or you are not, after all. It's a binary decision. If you're not correct, why do you insist staying incorrect? If you do, of course you're a bigot, a racist, a xenophobia, a fascist, or an evil person. So, all conservatives "should be jailed". All republicans "are evil". A black police is a "black Judas", as yelled by a protester. A group of protestors can trespass private property, and the property owner is public enemy no. 1 if he stands in front of his house with a rifle. Residents in Seattle CHAZ have nothing and "should not have nothing to complain" because CHAZ "is Summer of Love", and because "personal loss is nothing compared with fighting justice". Really, there's really no boundary under the current moral framework of the US progressives. And isn't this what we really want? All the media I read or used to read, be it The Atlantic, the WAPO, the New Yorker, the NYT, the NBC, the CNN, the ABC. They all tell me that we should brace such moral framework. We should join such progressive movement. We should ditch law and order when a nation is hurt and sinned. We should examine what we believe and cancel what's evil. See, if "math is racist", what else is not? And really, isn't this what we choose? We chose to vote Kshama Sawant, for instance. Then, it shouldn't be a surprise that she led hundreds of people to break into Seattle City Hall, and why is it a surprise that she or someone leaked the mayor's home address even though the address is classified by law? Either we have a better moral framework, or we probably will have to accept what we have now and more in the future.
ropable 6y ago
Eh. In my observation, people who whinge "PC speech is out of control!" are often really saying "I don't like being called out for saying whatever I like!".
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  The article was a lot more nuanced than most people who say “PC speech is out of control”. And I think they have a good point. Pulling up tweets from ten years ago to get people fired is horrible. Ten years ago, I hated gay and trans people because of the way I was raised. I’ve changed significantly in those ten years. Hell, I had a psychotic break. Should the things that I said then be forever held against me? I clearly wasn’t in my right mind. The people that have held those things against me were all from the “far left”. That’s one data point but it’s something I’ve seen over and over. I ran a convention where I had to fire a volunteer because they said something “unacceptable” on Facebook. Defending them was not an option if the convention was going to survive. I’ve seen what happened to conventions that tried to defend people who had said similar things. It’s still ugly years later. I say this as someone who would march in the protests here if I wasn’t at sufficient risk Of dying from COVID. I’ve been in the pride parade here despite my sensitivity to heat and poor physical condition at the time.
tbabej 6y ago
The author has a point. When going to upvote the article, I caught myself subconsciously running the risk analysis of HN DB getting hacked and the upvote data getting publicly exposed.
DavidVoid 6y ago
Well that was a really biased article. The more toxic parts of cancel culture are a problem yes, but to blame the left for Netflix deciding to remove episodes they shouldn't have removed is just silly, especially when the vast majority of people on the left don't agree with Netflix in those cases. I'd argue that the part complaining about "the liberal media" is even more applicable to right-wing media. What she's complaining about has been done by Fox News and Murdoch owned tabloids for ages now. And I have a very hard time taking anyone who recommends PragerU seriously. PragerU is an awful and dishonest propaganda outlet and should be treated as such. The fact that someone who claims to be pro choice, pro LGBTQ, and pro environmental issues would even claim that PragerU is "rational" makes me seriously doubt that person's judgment. Honestly, the idea of abandoning your social political viewpoints just because you think that some people on the left are mean is a really dumb way to go about deciding your political opinions and who to vote for. It's reactionary and inevitably leads to putting more shitty people in positions of power. You should stand for your beliefs even if that means having to agree with some dumb-asses. --- For a view on cancelling from someone on the left, and talk about experiences with it, I can recommend Contrapoints' video on the subject [1]. It's long but worth a watch if you want to hear someone talk about it who doesn't just suggest that people abandon the left and vote against their interests. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
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dtornabene 6y ago
yeah, uh, maybe flag this one
ipv6ipv4 6y ago
Social media is the Babel fish: "... the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
Miner49er 6y ago
I don't get the argument here. Is the Twitter mobs not entitled to their free speech? To me this seems like she just doesn't like that a majority of people's opinions are changing and is trying to silence them.
- adventured 6y ago
  If it's intimidation, threats, etc. then it isn't free speech, it's violence. That's why maliciously yelling fire in a crowded theater isn't covered by freedom of speech, the action is intending to violently harm other people. That's also why placing a bullhorn next to someone's ear and blasting a screed through it in a way that destroys someone's hearing isn't a behavior protected by freedom of speech (it would be considered assault, it's an act of violence; the person could easily express their screed without harming someone in that manner). The mobs on Twitter frequently cross over into committing mass acts of criminal behavior through threats and intimidation, organizing to harm people. They don't hide it, this criminal behavior is all out in the open. Hurt this person next, no no no hurt this person. Threatening to harm people is violence (it doesn't have to be a physical threat to be violence), not freedom of speech.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    I see what you're saying, but that sort of comes down to opinion. If you ask these Twitter mobs, I'm sure they'd say that are only responding in kind. They'd say that the people they're attacking are already attacking them or attacking others.
- spopejoy 6y ago
  She's a rich VC so by definition her viewpoint is more important than the twitter mobs, yes.
newacct583 6y ago
The end gives it away: > I’ll end with some quality, free-thinking people and resources who aren’t afraid to post their views. I have found it immensely helpful to diversify my feeds with different opinions and people. Which is, of course, why it's almost 100% right-leaning libertarians, mixed with a token handful of reliably leftward-shooting people like Taibbi and Tracey. There's not a legitimate progressive voice in that whole list that I can see. Not one. This author, and this article's intended readership, isn't interested in legitimate online discussion. She just wants a different echo chamber than the ones she's being presented.
- DavidVoid 6y ago
  For someone claims to be pro LGBTQ, pro choice, and pro environmental issues, she sure recommends a lot of "quality" resources that certainly aren't pro any of those things.
  - kayodelycaon 6y ago
    Just because the author has an axe to grind, that doesn’t invalid everything they say. It’s possible to read critically and decide what’s worth discussing.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      An appeal to free speech made insincerely isn't much of an appeal. The question is whether she feels strongly enough about the inherent value of contrasting enough to preserve them in her own recommendations. And she doesn't. She's Just Another Angry Libertarian, only protesting when "her" side is criticized. If you agree with her, she makes sense. If you don't, she seems... duplicitous. To wit: I don't trust this woman (or most of the posters here) to preserve my speech. Or that of many others. I mean, we're literally seeing armed suppression of peaceful protestors in the news. And what's the Real Problem in her head? The protestors. Because they yelled at people on the internet.
      - throwaway2048 6y ago
mythrwy 6y ago
The thing I bemoan the loss of is general politeness. Somehow folks have gotten the idea that it's ok to scream "Fuck You!!" at the top of their lungs in public or on social media if the victim is perceived to somehow be mildly racist for instance. And the entire cancel mob is impolite and unmannered. No charity, no nuance, no stopping to think or consider what is being said. Just rabid mouth frothing. And really racism itself is impolite. It makes others feel bad for no good reason. It's anti social. So is sexism. It's extreme impoliteness and dis-consideration of others. Ya, we get it, we should have the legal freedom to be impolite. But good people just shouldn't do it. For most any reason. We can always invent excuses why we should be disrespectful to others. It seems the media really got on this trend early with a lot of right wing folks starting with Rush Limbaugh and progressing to Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace making an audience out of shouting and saying rude things in an attempt to be edgy. The current crop of protesters out screaming obscenities at police officers and the general public seem to have taken this to it's (hopefully) final conclusion. It's like a scene from "Idiocracy" really. And the current president is right in there, he's made an election platform out of impoliteness. I've been listing to a lot of free audio books from the late 1800 and early 1900's. The amount of general politeness and manners exhibited from people was amazing. So different. It's too much for the current era, but I'd be ok if we went back to a little respect and courtesy of others in general no matter what someone thought or did or believed and this became custom once again.
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  A bit off topic but where do you get free audio books of old books?
  - mythrwy 6y ago
    There's a number of podcasts (Classic Tales for instance) where they read old books. And you can do a search and find a bunch as well (https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/, http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks) But I've found one of the best sources is YouTube. Tons of readings of out of copyright books and you can usually pick a narrator you like.
  - 6y ago
nullc 6y ago
This is what we get when we connect everyone's minds to filters which amplify the most most viral and most vicious soundbites and rewards people based on how much blind rage they can induce in others. If you avoid twitter and facebook and anyone that interacts too much with those things, you'll see a lot less of this stuff and probably be a lot happier.
jakkyboi 6y ago
Another boring take that loves to claim social change and strong opinions as limiting to free speech
- apsec112 6y ago
  Getting fired for saying anything Twitter disagrees with limits your free speech. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...
bravoetch 6y ago
People have complained about PC culture since at least the mid-90s. This article is yet another of the same. I have news for the author - the thing you're upset with isn't going away. You can't hide from it, and you'll never understand it.
- 3131s 6y ago
  Are you telling me that over-zealous leftist college kids aren't actually at the root of all the world's problems?
carapace 6y ago
There's a simple solution: quit Twitter. I resuscitated my old neglected Twitter account recently. It stressed me out and felt addictive, so I quit. It turns out that if you're not on Twitter you don't hear that noise and it doesn't affect you.
- coffeefirst 6y ago
  Correct. Twitter is a bubble that magnifies the angriest opinions and makes them look more popular than they are. Outside of that bubble, most of these controversies don’t even exist.
hindsightbias 6y ago
PG told me it’s a good thing that there are things I’m afraid to say. Up until more recently, it seemed the majority of folks on the internets felt they were obligated to let their freak flag fly. So color me confused. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html Or at least give Jonah Goldberg credit for Liberal Fascism, written over a decade ago.
t0astbread 6y ago
I stopped reading halfway through because this article has sort of mixed agree-ability for me but I guess my takeaway from this is that it's good to be careful about calling extremes and jumping to conclusions when evaluating others.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  And just to get my word out there: I think the transgender passage was kind of meh. To me it sounds like the article conflates the fact that biological sex exists with the idea that it's somehow extremely important in our everyday life. I think it's important to respect everyone's biological needs but the way we see each other should definitely be our gender identity. Pressing on "the importance of biological sex" kinda feels like a good way to make people believe their identity must be defined by their biology. (By the way, I am curios as to how biological sex is treated during a transition. Like, changing your body isn't instantaneous, apart from that there's also intersex people, so is it really all-binary from a scientific POV?) And the Rowling piece kinda read like a non-apology to me, sorry.
bvinc 6y ago
The real story here is the story of someone who has actively avoided politics all of her life, but Twitter's engagement increasing algorithms got to her. It showed her outrageous Twitter mobs to feed her outrage cycle until she was hooked on politics and seeking out alt-right thinkers. The interesting thing is that all those people in Twitter mobs that she's so upset about are also in an outrage cycle, hooked on Twitter. The real hidden enemy here isn't political correctness, it's social media. It's the massive social experiment that no one signed up for, and it's driving us all insane.
- ismyrnow 6y ago
  I like your wording on this - outrage cycle. I agree that social media algorithms promote that, which is why I have largely withdrawn from twitter, facebook, and instagram. They're nowhere near representative of my real life social networks. While platforms like instagram have the capability to keep friends connected and inspire people, they've turned into toxic waste sites. That said, their effect on society hasn't been limited to raging twitter tirades. Companies, governments, and other institutions seem to be bending the knee to their outrage, which has led to not only our cancel culture, but to things like the CHOP situation which went on for far too long. Leaders are scared of making the mob angry.
- erezsh 6y ago
  It's funny how I've never seen anyone describe themselves as alt-right, yet whenever anyone criticizes the extreme left, someone like you pops up to remind us viewers that the author is actually secretly alt-right and is committing thoughtcrime. Social media is the contemporary tool of spreading information, yes, but you don't have to use it to see everyone else around you lose their mind. Also, there are good things coming from social media too, and literally everyone in it signed up for it. Sounds like you hold political correctness very dearly, but here's an interesting thought experiment for you. Try to imagine that just maybe, she may be right, and see if you can actually disprove it.
everybodyknows 6y ago
For a superbly witty satire of academic "cancel culture", give a listen to Zadie Smith's short story "Now More Than Ever": https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-smith-reads-now-more-than-ever https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-sm...
pragmatic 6y ago
I feel the muckraking media lit this candle by starting a generational war between millennials and boomers in Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street days. IMHO, this is when the "destroy the other side at all costs" really took off.
fzeroracer 6y ago
I saw zero mentions of Trump or the current administration and their efforts to curtail free speech, threatening people into complying, the attacks on journalists or protestors. Instead what I see is fear of 'cancel culture', the fear of BLM being a bunch of secret marxists (ironically she should be advocating for their right to freedom of speech as well, but it seems that marxists are more scary than nazis) and a bunch of links at the end to people who have done their fair share to either stifle free speech or cancel people on their own. She even links to Andy Ngo who is a known liar and provocateur and has even himself encouraged violence against people he disagrees with. Frankly I'm disappointing this article is even given a millisecond of anyone's time of day.
- cozuya 6y ago
  If Biden wins in November, Republicans will be hunted, and you will be dead within a year. This is what someone who she links to (known nutball Scott Adams) said YESTERDAY. But this is totally a good faith article that we should all read and absolutely belongs on top of a serious discussion forum like HN. Yep.
- hnxxd 6y ago
  1. Journalists are not innocent little bringers of truth that are being oppressed by orange man. They have lots of power. 2. Both nazis and marxists are a danger to our society. As far as body count goes, marxists are a bigger danger. Both should be allowed free speech. 3. You're personally attacking a journalist who happens to show things you don't like seeing. The irony is hilarious.
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    I'd like for you to point out the personal attacks I made, but it seems you made an account just to shitpost and run.
lifeformed 6y ago
Counterpoint: progress is messy. In an ideal world, we'd shape society through rational democratic debates where everyone is discussing in good faith. Maybe we'll get there one day, but there are a lot of things in the way: poor education, economic hardship, inaccessible healthcare, wealth inequality, and biases deeply embedded in our culture. These factors not only make a lot of people unequipped to express nuance in their frustrations, they also don't exactly incentivize them to do so. (And even if these issues are resolved, there are also the complexities of crowd mentalities that affect even very rational people. To overcome these complexities will take a mindfulness not really currently studied or practiced at scale.) Throughout history, we've seen that change usually comes from very messy, ugly, forceful action. Polite discussion has its place, but when people are pushed to the limits, politeness is discarded and those who take action get what they fight for, polite or not. In those moments, enforcing "politeness" only works to preserve the status quo. Politically correct mobs are a form of this - they are ugly and indiscriminate, but effective at shaping culture by stigmatizing ideas that have been used to justify harm. I'm not saying it's great - this is only a description of what is, not what ought to be. But people being mean or annoying online is as old as the internet, and is not limited to politically left-leaning people. It just happens that the mean left internet people are on the side of society's conscience, and luckily for now it's generally working for the greater good by correcting some big imbalances in American history. Of course, the lack of accountability and balance makes this powerful hammer prone to swing wherever gravity carries it. It's dangerous, but to lash out against it is to lash out against the atmosphere for climate change - we need to address the root causes. We need to improve the livelihoods of everyone so they don't feel desperate and angry - this requires tackling hard economic and healthcare problems. We need to improve critical thinking so people can identify the truth - this requires solving difficult problems with our education system (which also tie into economics and healthcare). We need people to be more empathetic - this requires better urban planning, and all of the above. We need so many things and solve so many tough interconnected problems to get to the point where nuance and good-faith discussion rule society. Interestingly, these are all the problems that the mean left people are trying to fix. So it's possible to be on "their side" and not be in love with their techniques. It feels complicated, but isn't that what nuance is for? Pushing back against the mob for being too uncivilized is trying to stop the swinging hammer, when it's probably best to just stay out of the way, and help finish building what the hammer is working on.
loraa 6y ago
Alt-left is really making everything shitty.
Barrin92 6y ago
I'm extremely convinced the "anti-cancel-culture"-culture has to be the most thriving white collar subscription industry of our times. For people being cancelled I can't really tell how many dozens of blog posts with thousands of likes like this I see of people publicly talking about not being able to publicly talk. Following the obligatory comparisons to 1984 for being cancelled out of the network-tv drag queen tv show community, comparisons to the Soviet Union followed promptly. As someone who had family in East Germany let me tell you what Soviet cancel culture was. Being thrown into a dungeon where the light doesn't shine or someone being shot in the head by a Stasi agent. Extremely bored people being cancelled out of some community by other extremely bored people on the noise generating machine that is social media is about as much Soviet Union as Trump fearing STDs was his Vietnam. This reminds me of the valiant defenders of the intellectual dark web, which is so dark that it seems to occupy the permanent topspot on every podcasting service on the internet
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
  The cancel culture in soviet union (i was a citizen) was very similar, more often than not you weren't shot in the head but you weren't accepted to university, couldn't get a goid job etc all because you or your parents shed the guilt of disagreeing with extremists communists. For the average person the culture was similar what were seeing today, during the Stalin times they preferred bullet or Siberia indeed.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    Let's remember though the woman writing that article in particular is a lawyer and partner at a VC firm. I've seen Eric Weinstein talk about this stuff a lot, he's managing director at Thiel Capital. We're not talking about factory workers being cancelled by the communist party for not spying on their neighbours, we're talking about a bunch of upper-class professionals being cast out of the intelligentsia, which annoys them a lot. As the saying goes, "the conflict is so fierce because the stakes are so low". But this is not the Soviet Union. Not even as a metaphor. The entire cancel culture debate is in itself extremely limited to the kind of people who are overly online. Nobody who is flipping burgers or driving Uber is being cancelled, because they don't have an audience, or the time to waste and probably the good judgement to waste their time like we do
ismyrnow 6y ago
I feel pretty strongly that the vocal "majority" on the internet isn't at all representative of our local, national, or global communities. Both government and business leadership need to stand up to the bullying that these online mobs are doing, and employ reason instead.
lasky 6y ago
Are anyone’s rights to free speech actually threatened? Or is there just backlash from the public. I’ve noticed how this “You take away my free speech when I get backlash when I speak some idea that is now interpreted as X-phobic or harmful” argument seems to pop up among during movements that cause painful resistant power shifts. also this.... “Personally, I think adding trans performers would breathe life into Drag Race. But I’m a viewer, and I don’t get to decide that. The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show.“ .... but what about free speech you were just arguing for? why don’t people get to scream and cry? This appears to be conservative grief masked as liberally tolerant protection of free speech.
- jpxw 6y ago
  The culture of backlash from the public is causing free speech to be threatened. Both are true.
  - spopejoy 6y ago
    > causing free speech to be threatened. [citation needed]. Social media platforms are not 1st-amendment platforms. What's hilarious about the author of this article is her admiration for South Park. And yet, they did the satire of anyone with the ashen-faced fear of being "kicked off Twitter" as a fate worse than death. I fail to see how the PC left is changing any of the things that really run society. If you don't like the noise, maybe take a break from Twitter? Because being kicked off twitter is NOT a threat to free speech.
- apexalpha 6y ago
  If people are consistently being doxxed and having their life uprooted by being fired because of angry Twitter mobs I would argue this also constitutes a breach of free speech. I know that legally free speech protects you from the government and not everyone else, but personally I agree that 'free speech' is more than just the legal definition.
- theLastVoice 6y ago
  ".... but what about free speech you were just arguing for? why don’t people get to scream and cry?" The article says - we don’t get to scream and cry and "throw tantrums until he changes his own show." The point is you can cry and Express your free speech, but not not expect someone to change their creation. If you think your point is valid, create something of your own. Why should a creator cater to every person who takes offense.
thefz 6y ago
> The entitlement required to think you deserve to benefit from someone else’s work by forcibly inserting yourself into it — while loudly criticizing it — is stunning. Eloquently worded.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  This could be a comment about net neutrality, civil rights law, privacy regulations, or really any kind of regulation. But of course in those contexts, no one speaks of "entitlement". Only to demand freedom of speech is "entitlement".
hatenberg 6y ago
What's killing free speech is failing to set and enforce reasonable limits to hate speech and eventually forcing an over reaction to deal with the severe consequences of that neglect.
skanderbm 6y ago
Jon Ronson wrote an entertaining book on the subject (https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed.html https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Public...). It recounts several examples of internet self-righteous mobs lynching people for minor and larger offences. In particular, one conclusion of the book is that aggressively not making amends for bad behaviour, even raising the bar for offensiveness, is the optimal survival strategy. See Trump ...
secretsatan 6y ago
People saying my opinions are wrong is anti free speech!
courtf 6y ago
Social media is not the government, and has no obligation to maintain free speech. That said, social media has big problems. The biggest is that they have, quite intentionally, encouraged the spread of outrage and mob mentality all across the political spectrum. These companies have installed levers for manipulating their users emotionally, and these levers are for sale. You can even fiddle around for free if you have the time, or get (un)lucky! Oppressive PC culture, that can manifest as an almost Puritanical form of moral authority, spreads quick on social media. As someone who grew up in conservative, small-town America (and rebelled against it every chance I got), I'm not about to have my opinions dictated to me by the new boss either. If your social sphere is mostly composed of middle & upper class, highly educated professionals, you might just feel surrounded by PCness. If you have any connection to the white poor and/or rural however, you also know that right-wing authoritarianism and racism are boiling too, with lethal results. As far as PC culture can be viewed as a defensive response to racism, I think it is clearly the lesser of the two evils, but it's probably a false dichotomy.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
It's not only diversity. It is also the fact that grown ups will write f%%ck instead of fuck because it may offend some people. A breast on TV sent America crazy. A woman breast. Sorry, a n%%%ple. Most of people had one right in front of their eyes at some point in life. Or their mouth, which is disgusting enough to have women cover their breast when breastfeeding. I am French. Our culture is way more aligned with normality than others when it comes to fuck, fucking and breasts. But even here, when I compare to what we had as teens in the 80's,I have the impression that today we are back in the middle ages.
- f1refly 6y ago
  As a german, I think this is mostly a problem with American culture and law being exported globally through their monopolist tech giants. I used to think that the german youth protection laws regarding sexual content where over the top, but now the disconnect between the lived sexualized reality of teenagers and the public and the representation of it in the "social" media is bizarre.
spopejoy 6y ago
> Suddenly it was “racist” to take the nuanced view that protests are okay but smashing businesses’ windows and walking out with big screen TVs is not, despite the former looking like activism and the latter looking like a felony. Aaand that's when I stopped reading this self-aggrandizing tripe. Give me a break, everyone was screaming this exact sentiment on mainstream media and blogs til they were blue in the face. Oh no, some actual radicals think you're an idiot -- that's because to them, you are. It wasn't racist, just stupid and unoriginal to hand-wring over "gosh why can't these fed-up and angry people just be nice? It's distorting the wholesome messages of the protest." There was zero backlash for this kind of namby pamby shit.
thatnomadsucks 6y ago
I like that the author is going into how insecurity has caused this problem. I really wish they went into more depth on this issue. If we look back, neoliberalism (trickle down economics) has stoked the fires that have led to this issue. When Regan came into office, he set the stage for deregulation, privatization and tax breaks for the rich. This has caused the average American to sink into a role that is defined by economic insecurity. Of course this economic idiocy has been embraced by both political parties over the past forty years. So what we see today is a compounding of all of the issues created by bad policy. This is why we see people doubling down on in group identity and focusing on what I've come to call the brand self. This has noting and everything to do with Marx, Edward Said, the Frankfurt School, or critical theory. They are simply a way to justify an in group narrative. I'm not saying that these narratives aren't just, but often times they are create a black and white us vs them mentality that is there to reinforce limited self beliefs. So when we are talking to someone that has taken on this role of insecurity, we are talking to their anxiety that they've justified using sound social theory. That's why all rational thought seems to disappear and subjects often can't be changed. I, for one, am tired of biting my tongue because I know one wrong word can turn a great night out into a three hour conversation about x, y, or z social issue without much back and forth. often times I'll be out and know that, by simply saying the word vaccine, my night can be ruined. These conversations don't live in the rational world. They live deep down in a state of anxious insecurity.
fortran77 6y ago
Having your organization investigate everything you've "liked" over the past 10 years seems horrible.
caffeine 6y ago
If you didn't do something wrong, do NOT apologize. That is what gives them their power.

376 points by 737min 6y ago

I hate to remind everyone but PC culture is here to stay. We can all complain about but the fact is no one has a solution, except for staying off social media (which I generally have been doing, and I've never been happier). Need proof? Go watch the movie PCU, made in 1994.

JAlexoid 6y ago
PC culture has always existed, in different forms. You couldn't say that you were gay or even supported same sex marriage, without effective excommunication from society 50 years ago in US.

phnofive 6y ago

Thesis needs work. There is a dearth of mass capitulation to lawful orders for sheltering in place or wearing masks, and booing isn’t censorship (and before you argue that it’s another form thereof, tell me again that gentrification isn’t a term charged with meaning beyond the OED).

dkdk8283 6y ago

I’m thrilled to see this article here. Politically correct culture has gone way too far. Privacy and free speech are quickly eroding and it seemed like not many people are willing to get loud about it.

tijuco2 6y ago
perfect

baggy_trough 6y ago

Unfortunately, the totalitarians are already in control.

rvz 6y ago

I have to say that the web in its early days never had this level of politically correct moderation or witch-hunting acts until YouTube, Facebook and Twitter rose in popularity and were used beyond their intended purpose; as tools used to dox and cancel opponents. Fast-forward to 2020, it has gotten too far and out of control. One could say that social media has definitely accelerated this nonsense to new heights, taking everyone who disagrees with the PC-crowd underground.

Thorentis 6y ago
Social media empowered the mob, and gave them an inflated sense of worth for their own opinions. Because your opinion can instantly be broadcast to millions of people, it must have value. But along with this came the mob mentality, where this new power will be used to silence opposition. The fault really lies in the companies, politicians, and media outlets who have given credence to what "the mob" on social media has to say. Example: a comedian/author makes a tweet that is mildly offensive to some small minority, but they didn't mean anything by it, or it was just a joke. Somebody sees the potential to kick up a stink, and retweet it with "can't believe they just said this. apologise now". It gets maybe 10% the "likes" of the original tweet. A media outlet sees this tweet (some intern is browsing "latest tweets") and writes an article saying "Internet in an outrage: is x a racist?". Author immediately issues an apology, resigns from their job, and goes into hiding, their career destroyed forever. What could have been done differently? The company they worked for could've stood by them. The author/whoever could have just ignored it. The media outlet could have had higher quality standards of publication. And almost nobody would even know what was said in the first place! Our society thrives on conflict, and any small hint of a conflict is blown up beyond all proportion.
throw0101a 6y ago
> I have to say that the web in its early days never had this level of politically correct moderation or witch-hunting acts until […] Let me tell you about Usenet, especially pre-Eternal September …
adventured 6y ago
Not everybody should have a bullhorn and social media has given everyone the ability to weaponize de facto threats & intimidation so as to destroy lives. The social terrorist behavior that has become routine on Twitter et al., needs to be extinguished by giving the behavior a financial cost to the corporations in charge of enabling or stopping it from being broadcast on their services. Twitter as a prominent example needs to be made financially liable for what happens on their service. They're a biased broadcast platform that censors and restricts based on their own subjective rules, they stopped being a mostly non-biased utility ~8-10 years ago. Since they're the opposite of neutral, they're properly entirely responsible for everything broadcast on their platform. You can watch hordes of malevolent actors on Twitter emotionally masturbate in the open to the notion of harming people, wildly lusting for who they're going to hurt next. Cancel some person next, destroy this person next. It's all over Twitter. The entire service has become a platform for social terrorists to organize and attack with. The first step is to make it prohibitively expensive for Twitter to continue to abet the social terrorists (they're terrorists - and yes the definition fits - because they intentionally, specifically seek to terrorize other people) and to force the social platforms to apply their terms of service equally for all users. The fines should be large enough that Twitter should be bankrupted if they fail to comply. And if someone can come up with a better term for the criminals on services like Twitter that use it to terrorize, threaten, intimidate, and destroy, that'd be great, given the obvious problems with the terrorist label. This is a new class of criminal cooperation that has never existed before, as these types of open, massive broadcast platforms have ever existed before. It used to be extremely difficult to organize thousands of people together to try to destroy someone's life, it was a mostly impractical concept previously. That type of weapon (it's a weapon because eg intimidation & threatening people with harm to their life is an act of violence; intimidation at the scale of Twitter is a machine gun version) should not only be illegal, it should cost the corporations to an epic degree if they abet it. Fortunately politicians have begun to figure out how to neuter the socials using these approaches. The only problem now, is that they're not going big enough yet. The fines have to be crushing to be effective.

fake-name 6y ago

[citation needed] > The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show. Wow, this article literally doesn't understand what free speech is. Aaaand it more horseshoe theory of politics, references the quillette, and says they're now libertarian. Nothing of value here.

Thorentis 6y ago

I hope people realise this sooner rather than later. No matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, it is clear that PC culture is making the world a worse place for everybody. Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an enemy? Does that ring any bells? I swear there's another regime in human history that made you hang flags outside your house to show your clear support. This comparison is made to death so I won't name it, but the similarities - despite accusations flying in the other direction constantly - are constantly increasing. Removing TV shows from Netflix because somebody covered their face in black paint, with no regard for context or what was being made fun of it? (hint: it wasn't black people). "Cancelling" somebody's career because their daughter said something that might be deemed racist? "Cancelling" somebody because they said something 10 years ago that might be racist? Absurd. I honestly think our society is getting soft. You cannot disagree with somebody without them immediately deciding whether or not they can publicly shame you or if you broke any laws in the process of hurting them. Comedy is getting less and less funny, debate is increasingly meaningless because you have to tip-toe around everything. We are making society blander and less diverse in the name of diversity. Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion.

cma 6y ago
> Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an enemy? Does that ring any bells? Are you talking about Kapernick being cancelled from the NFL by conservative cancel culture and the Vice President's staged NFL walkout to support conservative cancel culture?
- waheoo 6y ago
  Cherry picked whataboutism is really boring.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please read and follow the site guidelines when commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

aklemm 6y ago

Culture cancels abhorrent ideas, same as it ever was. Notice how it’s COMPLETELY unacceptable to suggest slavery should be made legal. Or children sent to work in factories. All commonplace 150 years ago and we only benefit from the ideas being practically unutterable.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Notice how it’s COMPLETELY unacceptable to suggest slavery should be made legal. Only if you use the word "slavery". Suggesting that "workers should be able to sell an equity stake in their future earnings“ isn't just acceptable, it's fashionable.
- aklemm 6y ago
  I’m failing to see how that’s a sensible comparison.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Holding an equity stake in a freelancer's earnings is a very common form of slavery, including slavery in the American South.
nilkn 6y ago
Cancel culture is completely unnecessary for the examples you gave. Supporting slavery was essentially unutterable long before cancel culture existed.
- random314 6y ago
  Supporting slavery being unutterable is a perfect example of the benefits of cancel culture.
  - deleted 6y ago
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blacksqr 6y ago

"We’re supposed to have a First Amendment right to freedom of the press, but this phenomenon is ruining it." Writer of linked article claims to be a lawyer, but strangely seems unaware that the First Amendment protects speech and the press from the government. No examples of government restricting free expression were given.

waheoo 6y ago
Id say the stance on platforms is stifiling free speech. Private companies should not be able to moderate speech and claim to be a platform. You're either a publisher or your not. If you're a public platform, your users should be protected by public laws. For rhe most part the current state of affairs has worked so far but i would suggest it hasnt for some and is starting to show its weaknesses in a more polarized environment. For the downvoters, this isnt some new opinion of mine because of the talking points from trump, ive had this view since the torrent debates of the early 2000s and other similar situations with people like snowden. If you disagree because with what i have to say, please explain.
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  Are you implying that if I stand up a small public forum or message board for some niche interest using my own assets that I am unable to boot people off it or moderate in any way without being deemed a publisher and being liable for content?
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    I think it is about scale. If you stand up a public forum and you have 100 users, do your moderation choices actually sway a large percentage of public opinion? Consider instead a social media platform with a billion users and its moderation choices. It is time for us to use some common sense and not just dissolve everything down to that simplistic binary terms. Having a forum doesn't make you a publisher. Moderation isn't always bad. There are many other nuances like reach, scale, trust, etc. For instance, there is a huge difference between me posting disinformation of my private blog, and me publishing disinformation is a newspaper read by hundreds of thousands daily. My responsibility and influence over the public increases with the reach I have. We need to think the same way about social media.

pcurve 6y ago

I think the move towards real identity killed free speech online. Anonymity was easy for regular folks back in the 2000s. I'm actually baffled at how some people so willingly express their personal views online these days.

yepthatsreality 6y ago
It’s called being discovered. You want your tweets discovered so that you can have a sense of something earned by writing it.

awb 6y ago

Appreciate the article, but a few points I feel are off the mark a bit: > But despite his killer getting fired and arrested, the protests became more violent, more destructive, and more divisive. A lot of rioting and violence came in the early days, even before the arrest and murder charges. The vast majority of protests were peaceful. And this seems to insinuate that the protesters and rioters were the same people, which I don't think is a widely held belief. And maybe the protests are about more than just the murder of George Floyd... If this was an isolated incident, maybe expectations of a quick return to civility would make sense, but it's almost like people (including white people) are tired of this happening. > If you aren't posting #BLM, you’re racist. If you ARE posting #BLM but you say it in the wrong way, you're racist. If you're white and you're silent, that's violence. If you're white and you're speaking up, you're talking over black voices and only they should be heard. Maybe this is several folks trying to take the culture wheel. The debate is messy right now and that's OK. It's a messy topic and people are tossing out their ideas. If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too. I'm glad we're having a conversation about it even if it's just to simply say we're all confused. Props to the author for sharing her views. If folks take issue with what you've said, don't sweat it. And if you're looking for other folks on direction on how to "do it right", you're looking in the wrong direction.

Thorentis 6y ago
> If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too. Anecdata: in a company all-hands 2 weeks ago, an employee asked the CEO why the company hadn't yet made a public statement about BLM. The CEO looked visibly agitated, almost fearful, and stumbled through some response that equated to "will we do that by the end of the week". Whether or not the pressure actually exists, people are scared of what will happen if they don't conform. People have been fired over tweets, roasted in the media over not speaking out "when they should", and for things they said 10 years ago. Nobody wants to be on the front page of buzzfeed for being outed "as a racist". There is a collective societal fear that is driving us faster and faster off the PC cliff.
- mike503 6y ago
  This. I sometimes worry about anything I may have said years ago or anything I say now that could be construed as offensive by ... almost anyone at this point. Early on (day after the riots started) I posted an article about a POC business owner’s business being destroyed due to protests (rioting) - I had someone call me gross and “where was your outrage when a Black man was killed by a cop? I didn’t see you post anything then” After that I started having to make a risk analysis before doing anything. At this point you HAVE to say something about everything and cover your bases, or you’re complicit; oddly enough you can say something AGAINST the movement, be called out, and apologize, and that’s acceptable. But trying to stay out of the shitstorm? No, you’re complicit. Say something positive, or say something negative and then retract it. But say something...

glenda 6y ago

You're still free to write whatever you want, no one is taking that away. However, just because you have something to say doesn't mean that I or anyone else has give it the time of day. I am also free to respond however I'd like, and in some cases there may be many more people that share my opinion rather than yours!

xfitm3 6y ago
I can write whatever I want but there's a good chance I'll get fired for voicing unpopular opinions.
- glenda 6y ago
  That may be the case depending on the opinion you've expressed but that also seems like a conversation between you and your employer at that point.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
    No one should get fired for voicing wrong political opinion, America needs stronger workers rights.
  - xfitm3 6y ago
    Absolutely not. It's a discussion between me and my peers whom my employer predicts will react negatively if I stay on board. It's my fellow human who wants me to lose my livelihood because I disagree.
    - spopejoy 6y ago
      Nope, it's your bosses' call, 100%. Businesses are dictatorships. What you describe is your read of what you might think your boss will do, but if it is in their interest to keep you, they will keep you, even if your "peers" are hurt and offended. OTOH, if the people you've offended are more important than you, then maybe your job is at risk. But it's at risk anyway in that case. People think "calling HR" is some kind of loaded weapon, but the fact is there are harrassers and all sorts of losers who get called to HR over and over and keep their jobs. HR exists for one reason: protect the management. If you're expendable and easy to fire, then _maybe_ they'll can you, but if you're actually a decent employee they definitely won't if all we're talking about is a brush fire on Slack.

hintymad 6y ago

It's far more than free speech being killed. "If you're not with us, you're against us". "Silence is violence". Remember Pol Pot? If you're not a revolutionist, then you're counter-revolutionary. That said, isn't this logical under the moral framework of our political correctness? You're either correct or you are not, after all. It's a binary decision. If you're not correct, why do you insist staying incorrect? If you do, of course you're a bigot, a racist, a xenophobia, a fascist, or an evil person. So, all conservatives "should be jailed". All republicans "are evil". A black police is a "black Judas", as yelled by a protester. A group of protestors can trespass private property, and the property owner is public enemy no. 1 if he stands in front of his house with a rifle. Residents in Seattle CHAZ have nothing and "should not have nothing to complain" because CHAZ "is Summer of Love", and because "personal loss is nothing compared with fighting justice". Really, there's really no boundary under the current moral framework of the US progressives. And isn't this what we really want? All the media I read or used to read, be it The Atlantic, the WAPO, the New Yorker, the NYT, the NBC, the CNN, the ABC. They all tell me that we should brace such moral framework. We should join such progressive movement. We should ditch law and order when a nation is hurt and sinned. We should examine what we believe and cancel what's evil. See, if "math is racist", what else is not? And really, isn't this what we choose? We chose to vote Kshama Sawant, for instance. Then, it shouldn't be a surprise that she led hundreds of people to break into Seattle City Hall, and why is it a surprise that she or someone leaked the mayor's home address even though the address is classified by law? Either we have a better moral framework, or we probably will have to accept what we have now and more in the future.

ropable 6y ago

Eh. In my observation, people who whinge "PC speech is out of control!" are often really saying "I don't like being called out for saying whatever I like!".

kayodelycaon 6y ago
The article was a lot more nuanced than most people who say “PC speech is out of control”. And I think they have a good point. Pulling up tweets from ten years ago to get people fired is horrible. Ten years ago, I hated gay and trans people because of the way I was raised. I’ve changed significantly in those ten years. Hell, I had a psychotic break. Should the things that I said then be forever held against me? I clearly wasn’t in my right mind. The people that have held those things against me were all from the “far left”. That’s one data point but it’s something I’ve seen over and over. I ran a convention where I had to fire a volunteer because they said something “unacceptable” on Facebook. Defending them was not an option if the convention was going to survive. I’ve seen what happened to conventions that tried to defend people who had said similar things. It’s still ugly years later. I say this as someone who would march in the protests here if I wasn’t at sufficient risk Of dying from COVID. I’ve been in the pride parade here despite my sensitivity to heat and poor physical condition at the time.

tbabej 6y ago

The author has a point. When going to upvote the article, I caught myself subconsciously running the risk analysis of HN DB getting hacked and the upvote data getting publicly exposed.

DavidVoid 6y ago

Well that was a really biased article. The more toxic parts of cancel culture are a problem yes, but to blame the left for Netflix deciding to remove episodes they shouldn't have removed is just silly, especially when the vast majority of people on the left don't agree with Netflix in those cases. I'd argue that the part complaining about "the liberal media" is even more applicable to right-wing media. What she's complaining about has been done by Fox News and Murdoch owned tabloids for ages now. And I have a very hard time taking anyone who recommends PragerU seriously. PragerU is an awful and dishonest propaganda outlet and should be treated as such. The fact that someone who claims to be pro choice, pro LGBTQ, and pro environmental issues would even claim that PragerU is "rational" makes me seriously doubt that person's judgment. Honestly, the idea of abandoning your social political viewpoints just because you think that some people on the left are mean is a really dumb way to go about deciding your political opinions and who to vote for. It's reactionary and inevitably leads to putting more shitty people in positions of power. You should stand for your beliefs even if that means having to agree with some dumb-asses. --- For a view on cancelling from someone on the left, and talk about experiences with it, I can recommend Contrapoints' video on the subject [1]. It's long but worth a watch if you want to hear someone talk about it who doesn't just suggest that people abandon the left and vote against their interests. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dtornabene 6y ago

yeah, uh, maybe flag this one

ipv6ipv4 6y ago

Social media is the Babel fish: "... the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

Miner49er 6y ago

I don't get the argument here. Is the Twitter mobs not entitled to their free speech? To me this seems like she just doesn't like that a majority of people's opinions are changing and is trying to silence them.

adventured 6y ago
If it's intimidation, threats, etc. then it isn't free speech, it's violence. That's why maliciously yelling fire in a crowded theater isn't covered by freedom of speech, the action is intending to violently harm other people. That's also why placing a bullhorn next to someone's ear and blasting a screed through it in a way that destroys someone's hearing isn't a behavior protected by freedom of speech (it would be considered assault, it's an act of violence; the person could easily express their screed without harming someone in that manner). The mobs on Twitter frequently cross over into committing mass acts of criminal behavior through threats and intimidation, organizing to harm people. They don't hide it, this criminal behavior is all out in the open. Hurt this person next, no no no hurt this person. Threatening to harm people is violence (it doesn't have to be a physical threat to be violence), not freedom of speech.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  I see what you're saying, but that sort of comes down to opinion. If you ask these Twitter mobs, I'm sure they'd say that are only responding in kind. They'd say that the people they're attacking are already attacking them or attacking others.
spopejoy 6y ago
She's a rich VC so by definition her viewpoint is more important than the twitter mobs, yes.

newacct583 6y ago

The end gives it away: > I’ll end with some quality, free-thinking people and resources who aren’t afraid to post their views. I have found it immensely helpful to diversify my feeds with different opinions and people. Which is, of course, why it's almost 100% right-leaning libertarians, mixed with a token handful of reliably leftward-shooting people like Taibbi and Tracey. There's not a legitimate progressive voice in that whole list that I can see. Not one. This author, and this article's intended readership, isn't interested in legitimate online discussion. She just wants a different echo chamber than the ones she's being presented.

DavidVoid 6y ago
For someone claims to be pro LGBTQ, pro choice, and pro environmental issues, she sure recommends a lot of "quality" resources that certainly aren't pro any of those things.
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  Just because the author has an axe to grind, that doesn’t invalid everything they say. It’s possible to read critically and decide what’s worth discussing.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    An appeal to free speech made insincerely isn't much of an appeal. The question is whether she feels strongly enough about the inherent value of contrasting enough to preserve them in her own recommendations. And she doesn't. She's Just Another Angry Libertarian, only protesting when "her" side is criticized. If you agree with her, she makes sense. If you don't, she seems... duplicitous. To wit: I don't trust this woman (or most of the posters here) to preserve my speech. Or that of many others. I mean, we're literally seeing armed suppression of peaceful protestors in the news. And what's the Real Problem in her head? The protestors. Because they yelled at people on the internet.
    - throwaway2048 6y ago

mythrwy 6y ago

The thing I bemoan the loss of is general politeness. Somehow folks have gotten the idea that it's ok to scream "Fuck You!!" at the top of their lungs in public or on social media if the victim is perceived to somehow be mildly racist for instance. And the entire cancel mob is impolite and unmannered. No charity, no nuance, no stopping to think or consider what is being said. Just rabid mouth frothing. And really racism itself is impolite. It makes others feel bad for no good reason. It's anti social. So is sexism. It's extreme impoliteness and dis-consideration of others. Ya, we get it, we should have the legal freedom to be impolite. But good people just shouldn't do it. For most any reason. We can always invent excuses why we should be disrespectful to others. It seems the media really got on this trend early with a lot of right wing folks starting with Rush Limbaugh and progressing to Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace making an audience out of shouting and saying rude things in an attempt to be edgy. The current crop of protesters out screaming obscenities at police officers and the general public seem to have taken this to it's (hopefully) final conclusion. It's like a scene from "Idiocracy" really. And the current president is right in there, he's made an election platform out of impoliteness. I've been listing to a lot of free audio books from the late 1800 and early 1900's. The amount of general politeness and manners exhibited from people was amazing. So different. It's too much for the current era, but I'd be ok if we went back to a little respect and courtesy of others in general no matter what someone thought or did or believed and this became custom once again.

kayodelycaon 6y ago
A bit off topic but where do you get free audio books of old books?
- mythrwy 6y ago
  There's a number of podcasts (Classic Tales for instance) where they read old books. And you can do a search and find a bunch as well (https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/, http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks) But I've found one of the best sources is YouTube. Tons of readings of out of copyright books and you can usually pick a narrator you like.
- 6y ago

nullc 6y ago

This is what we get when we connect everyone's minds to filters which amplify the most most viral and most vicious soundbites and rewards people based on how much blind rage they can induce in others. If you avoid twitter and facebook and anyone that interacts too much with those things, you'll see a lot less of this stuff and probably be a lot happier.

jakkyboi 6y ago

Another boring take that loves to claim social change and strong opinions as limiting to free speech

apsec112 6y ago
Getting fired for saying anything Twitter disagrees with limits your free speech. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

bravoetch 6y ago

People have complained about PC culture since at least the mid-90s. This article is yet another of the same. I have news for the author - the thing you're upset with isn't going away. You can't hide from it, and you'll never understand it.

3131s 6y ago
Are you telling me that over-zealous leftist college kids aren't actually at the root of all the world's problems?

carapace 6y ago

There's a simple solution: quit Twitter. I resuscitated my old neglected Twitter account recently. It stressed me out and felt addictive, so I quit. It turns out that if you're not on Twitter you don't hear that noise and it doesn't affect you.

coffeefirst 6y ago
Correct. Twitter is a bubble that magnifies the angriest opinions and makes them look more popular than they are. Outside of that bubble, most of these controversies don’t even exist.

hindsightbias 6y ago

PG told me it’s a good thing that there are things I’m afraid to say. Up until more recently, it seemed the majority of folks on the internets felt they were obligated to let their freak flag fly. So color me confused. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html Or at least give Jonah Goldberg credit for Liberal Fascism, written over a decade ago.

t0astbread 6y ago

I stopped reading halfway through because this article has sort of mixed agree-ability for me but I guess my takeaway from this is that it's good to be careful about calling extremes and jumping to conclusions when evaluating others.

t0astbread 6y ago
And just to get my word out there: I think the transgender passage was kind of meh. To me it sounds like the article conflates the fact that biological sex exists with the idea that it's somehow extremely important in our everyday life. I think it's important to respect everyone's biological needs but the way we see each other should definitely be our gender identity. Pressing on "the importance of biological sex" kinda feels like a good way to make people believe their identity must be defined by their biology. (By the way, I am curios as to how biological sex is treated during a transition. Like, changing your body isn't instantaneous, apart from that there's also intersex people, so is it really all-binary from a scientific POV?) And the Rowling piece kinda read like a non-apology to me, sorry.

bvinc 6y ago

The real story here is the story of someone who has actively avoided politics all of her life, but Twitter's engagement increasing algorithms got to her. It showed her outrageous Twitter mobs to feed her outrage cycle until she was hooked on politics and seeking out alt-right thinkers. The interesting thing is that all those people in Twitter mobs that she's so upset about are also in an outrage cycle, hooked on Twitter. The real hidden enemy here isn't political correctness, it's social media. It's the massive social experiment that no one signed up for, and it's driving us all insane.

ismyrnow 6y ago
I like your wording on this - outrage cycle. I agree that social media algorithms promote that, which is why I have largely withdrawn from twitter, facebook, and instagram. They're nowhere near representative of my real life social networks. While platforms like instagram have the capability to keep friends connected and inspire people, they've turned into toxic waste sites. That said, their effect on society hasn't been limited to raging twitter tirades. Companies, governments, and other institutions seem to be bending the knee to their outrage, which has led to not only our cancel culture, but to things like the CHOP situation which went on for far too long. Leaders are scared of making the mob angry.
erezsh 6y ago
It's funny how I've never seen anyone describe themselves as alt-right, yet whenever anyone criticizes the extreme left, someone like you pops up to remind us viewers that the author is actually secretly alt-right and is committing thoughtcrime. Social media is the contemporary tool of spreading information, yes, but you don't have to use it to see everyone else around you lose their mind. Also, there are good things coming from social media too, and literally everyone in it signed up for it. Sounds like you hold political correctness very dearly, but here's an interesting thought experiment for you. Try to imagine that just maybe, she may be right, and see if you can actually disprove it.

everybodyknows 6y ago

For a superbly witty satire of academic "cancel culture", give a listen to Zadie Smith's short story "Now More Than Ever": https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-smith-reads-now-more-than-ever https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-sm...

pragmatic 6y ago

I feel the muckraking media lit this candle by starting a generational war between millennials and boomers in Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street days. IMHO, this is when the "destroy the other side at all costs" really took off.

fzeroracer 6y ago

I saw zero mentions of Trump or the current administration and their efforts to curtail free speech, threatening people into complying, the attacks on journalists or protestors. Instead what I see is fear of 'cancel culture', the fear of BLM being a bunch of secret marxists (ironically she should be advocating for their right to freedom of speech as well, but it seems that marxists are more scary than nazis) and a bunch of links at the end to people who have done their fair share to either stifle free speech or cancel people on their own. She even links to Andy Ngo who is a known liar and provocateur and has even himself encouraged violence against people he disagrees with. Frankly I'm disappointing this article is even given a millisecond of anyone's time of day.

cozuya 6y ago
If Biden wins in November, Republicans will be hunted, and you will be dead within a year. This is what someone who she links to (known nutball Scott Adams) said YESTERDAY. But this is totally a good faith article that we should all read and absolutely belongs on top of a serious discussion forum like HN. Yep.
hnxxd 6y ago
1. Journalists are not innocent little bringers of truth that are being oppressed by orange man. They have lots of power. 2. Both nazis and marxists are a danger to our society. As far as body count goes, marxists are a bigger danger. Both should be allowed free speech. 3. You're personally attacking a journalist who happens to show things you don't like seeing. The irony is hilarious.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I'd like for you to point out the personal attacks I made, but it seems you made an account just to shitpost and run.

lifeformed 6y ago

Counterpoint: progress is messy. In an ideal world, we'd shape society through rational democratic debates where everyone is discussing in good faith. Maybe we'll get there one day, but there are a lot of things in the way: poor education, economic hardship, inaccessible healthcare, wealth inequality, and biases deeply embedded in our culture. These factors not only make a lot of people unequipped to express nuance in their frustrations, they also don't exactly incentivize them to do so. (And even if these issues are resolved, there are also the complexities of crowd mentalities that affect even very rational people. To overcome these complexities will take a mindfulness not really currently studied or practiced at scale.) Throughout history, we've seen that change usually comes from very messy, ugly, forceful action. Polite discussion has its place, but when people are pushed to the limits, politeness is discarded and those who take action get what they fight for, polite or not. In those moments, enforcing "politeness" only works to preserve the status quo. Politically correct mobs are a form of this - they are ugly and indiscriminate, but effective at shaping culture by stigmatizing ideas that have been used to justify harm. I'm not saying it's great - this is only a description of what is, not what ought to be. But people being mean or annoying online is as old as the internet, and is not limited to politically left-leaning people. It just happens that the mean left internet people are on the side of society's conscience, and luckily for now it's generally working for the greater good by correcting some big imbalances in American history. Of course, the lack of accountability and balance makes this powerful hammer prone to swing wherever gravity carries it. It's dangerous, but to lash out against it is to lash out against the atmosphere for climate change - we need to address the root causes. We need to improve the livelihoods of everyone so they don't feel desperate and angry - this requires tackling hard economic and healthcare problems. We need to improve critical thinking so people can identify the truth - this requires solving difficult problems with our education system (which also tie into economics and healthcare). We need people to be more empathetic - this requires better urban planning, and all of the above. We need so many things and solve so many tough interconnected problems to get to the point where nuance and good-faith discussion rule society. Interestingly, these are all the problems that the mean left people are trying to fix. So it's possible to be on "their side" and not be in love with their techniques. It feels complicated, but isn't that what nuance is for? Pushing back against the mob for being too uncivilized is trying to stop the swinging hammer, when it's probably best to just stay out of the way, and help finish building what the hammer is working on.

loraa 6y ago

Alt-left is really making everything shitty.

Barrin92 6y ago

I'm extremely convinced the "anti-cancel-culture"-culture has to be the most thriving white collar subscription industry of our times. For people being cancelled I can't really tell how many dozens of blog posts with thousands of likes like this I see of people publicly talking about not being able to publicly talk. Following the obligatory comparisons to 1984 for being cancelled out of the network-tv drag queen tv show community, comparisons to the Soviet Union followed promptly. As someone who had family in East Germany let me tell you what Soviet cancel culture was. Being thrown into a dungeon where the light doesn't shine or someone being shot in the head by a Stasi agent. Extremely bored people being cancelled out of some community by other extremely bored people on the noise generating machine that is social media is about as much Soviet Union as Trump fearing STDs was his Vietnam. This reminds me of the valiant defenders of the intellectual dark web, which is so dark that it seems to occupy the permanent topspot on every podcasting service on the internet

9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
The cancel culture in soviet union (i was a citizen) was very similar, more often than not you weren't shot in the head but you weren't accepted to university, couldn't get a goid job etc all because you or your parents shed the guilt of disagreeing with extremists communists. For the average person the culture was similar what were seeing today, during the Stalin times they preferred bullet or Siberia indeed.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Let's remember though the woman writing that article in particular is a lawyer and partner at a VC firm. I've seen Eric Weinstein talk about this stuff a lot, he's managing director at Thiel Capital. We're not talking about factory workers being cancelled by the communist party for not spying on their neighbours, we're talking about a bunch of upper-class professionals being cast out of the intelligentsia, which annoys them a lot. As the saying goes, "the conflict is so fierce because the stakes are so low". But this is not the Soviet Union. Not even as a metaphor. The entire cancel culture debate is in itself extremely limited to the kind of people who are overly online. Nobody who is flipping burgers or driving Uber is being cancelled, because they don't have an audience, or the time to waste and probably the good judgement to waste their time like we do

ismyrnow 6y ago

I feel pretty strongly that the vocal "majority" on the internet isn't at all representative of our local, national, or global communities. Both government and business leadership need to stand up to the bullying that these online mobs are doing, and employ reason instead.

lasky 6y ago

Are anyone’s rights to free speech actually threatened? Or is there just backlash from the public. I’ve noticed how this “You take away my free speech when I get backlash when I speak some idea that is now interpreted as X-phobic or harmful” argument seems to pop up among during movements that cause painful resistant power shifts. also this.... “Personally, I think adding trans performers would breathe life into Drag Race. But I’m a viewer, and I don’t get to decide that. The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show.“ .... but what about free speech you were just arguing for? why don’t people get to scream and cry? This appears to be conservative grief masked as liberally tolerant protection of free speech.

jpxw 6y ago
The culture of backlash from the public is causing free speech to be threatened. Both are true.
- spopejoy 6y ago
  > causing free speech to be threatened. [citation needed]. Social media platforms are not 1st-amendment platforms. What's hilarious about the author of this article is her admiration for South Park. And yet, they did the satire of anyone with the ashen-faced fear of being "kicked off Twitter" as a fate worse than death. I fail to see how the PC left is changing any of the things that really run society. If you don't like the noise, maybe take a break from Twitter? Because being kicked off twitter is NOT a threat to free speech.
apexalpha 6y ago
If people are consistently being doxxed and having their life uprooted by being fired because of angry Twitter mobs I would argue this also constitutes a breach of free speech. I know that legally free speech protects you from the government and not everyone else, but personally I agree that 'free speech' is more than just the legal definition.
theLastVoice 6y ago
".... but what about free speech you were just arguing for? why don’t people get to scream and cry?" The article says - we don’t get to scream and cry and "throw tantrums until he changes his own show." The point is you can cry and Express your free speech, but not not expect someone to change their creation. If you think your point is valid, create something of your own. Why should a creator cater to every person who takes offense.

thefz 6y ago

> The entitlement required to think you deserve to benefit from someone else’s work by forcibly inserting yourself into it — while loudly criticizing it — is stunning. Eloquently worded.

amadeuspagel 6y ago
This could be a comment about net neutrality, civil rights law, privacy regulations, or really any kind of regulation. But of course in those contexts, no one speaks of "entitlement". Only to demand freedom of speech is "entitlement".

hatenberg 6y ago

What's killing free speech is failing to set and enforce reasonable limits to hate speech and eventually forcing an over reaction to deal with the severe consequences of that neglect.

skanderbm 6y ago

Jon Ronson wrote an entertaining book on the subject (https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed.html https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Public...). It recounts several examples of internet self-righteous mobs lynching people for minor and larger offences. In particular, one conclusion of the book is that aggressively not making amends for bad behaviour, even raising the bar for offensiveness, is the optimal survival strategy. See Trump ...

secretsatan 6y ago

People saying my opinions are wrong is anti free speech!

courtf 6y ago

Social media is not the government, and has no obligation to maintain free speech. That said, social media has big problems. The biggest is that they have, quite intentionally, encouraged the spread of outrage and mob mentality all across the political spectrum. These companies have installed levers for manipulating their users emotionally, and these levers are for sale. You can even fiddle around for free if you have the time, or get (un)lucky! Oppressive PC culture, that can manifest as an almost Puritanical form of moral authority, spreads quick on social media. As someone who grew up in conservative, small-town America (and rebelled against it every chance I got), I'm not about to have my opinions dictated to me by the new boss either. If your social sphere is mostly composed of middle & upper class, highly educated professionals, you might just feel surrounded by PCness. If you have any connection to the white poor and/or rural however, you also know that right-wing authoritarianism and racism are boiling too, with lethal results. As far as PC culture can be viewed as a defensive response to racism, I think it is clearly the lesser of the two evils, but it's probably a false dichotomy.

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

It's not only diversity. It is also the fact that grown ups will write f%%ck instead of fuck because it may offend some people. A breast on TV sent America crazy. A woman breast. Sorry, a n%%%ple. Most of people had one right in front of their eyes at some point in life. Or their mouth, which is disgusting enough to have women cover their breast when breastfeeding. I am French. Our culture is way more aligned with normality than others when it comes to fuck, fucking and breasts. But even here, when I compare to what we had as teens in the 80's,I have the impression that today we are back in the middle ages.

f1refly 6y ago
As a german, I think this is mostly a problem with American culture and law being exported globally through their monopolist tech giants. I used to think that the german youth protection laws regarding sexual content where over the top, but now the disconnect between the lived sexualized reality of teenagers and the public and the representation of it in the "social" media is bizarre.

spopejoy 6y ago

> Suddenly it was “racist” to take the nuanced view that protests are okay but smashing businesses’ windows and walking out with big screen TVs is not, despite the former looking like activism and the latter looking like a felony. Aaand that's when I stopped reading this self-aggrandizing tripe. Give me a break, everyone was screaming this exact sentiment on mainstream media and blogs til they were blue in the face. Oh no, some actual radicals think you're an idiot -- that's because to them, you are. It wasn't racist, just stupid and unoriginal to hand-wring over "gosh why can't these fed-up and angry people just be nice? It's distorting the wholesome messages of the protest." There was zero backlash for this kind of namby pamby shit.

thatnomadsucks 6y ago

I like that the author is going into how insecurity has caused this problem. I really wish they went into more depth on this issue. If we look back, neoliberalism (trickle down economics) has stoked the fires that have led to this issue. When Regan came into office, he set the stage for deregulation, privatization and tax breaks for the rich. This has caused the average American to sink into a role that is defined by economic insecurity. Of course this economic idiocy has been embraced by both political parties over the past forty years. So what we see today is a compounding of all of the issues created by bad policy. This is why we see people doubling down on in group identity and focusing on what I've come to call the brand self. This has noting and everything to do with Marx, Edward Said, the Frankfurt School, or critical theory. They are simply a way to justify an in group narrative. I'm not saying that these narratives aren't just, but often times they are create a black and white us vs them mentality that is there to reinforce limited self beliefs. So when we are talking to someone that has taken on this role of insecurity, we are talking to their anxiety that they've justified using sound social theory. That's why all rational thought seems to disappear and subjects often can't be changed. I, for one, am tired of biting my tongue because I know one wrong word can turn a great night out into a three hour conversation about x, y, or z social issue without much back and forth. often times I'll be out and know that, by simply saying the word vaccine, my night can be ruined. These conversations don't live in the rational world. They live deep down in a state of anxious insecurity.

fortran77 6y ago

Having your organization investigate everything you've "liked" over the past 10 years seems horrible.

caffeine 6y ago

If you didn't do something wrong, do NOT apologize. That is what gives them their power.