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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

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
    - waheoo 6y ago
      K fixed.
      - dang 6y ago
        Replacing the word "fucking" with "really" has nothing to do with it. There's no guideline against profanity on HN. Please read the guidelines and take the spirit of the site more to heart.
        waheoo 6y ago
        > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. The post I was replying to was shallow. Asking if people have rtfa is also against the guidelines. So its a bit rich to assume I havent read the guidelines. And no, there isnt a guideline agaisnt profanity but its what bought you to my comment isn't it?
        dang 6y ago
        Not really. I was reacting to "cherry picked whataboutism" and the putdown aspect. Both of those remain. In fact that's all the comment consists of. It doesn't matter what you were replying to.
- cumcastsucks 6y ago
  that's not cancel culture, friend. keep trying.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  No, I was making a point with a bit more depth to it than that. If the point you're trying to make is that both sides are guilty of mob cancel culture, then you don't need to. Nobody here is pretending or claiming otherwise. Your comment is just another example of jumping into partisan politics for absolutely no reason.
  - buboard 6y ago
    sorry i would claim otherwise. Nobody has been cancelled for expressing leftwing-or extreme leftwing- ideas it may detract from your central point, but it also explanis why one side of the spectrum won't be willing to contribute to an armistice
    - Thorentis 6y ago
      Well yes, if you did some analysis of which opinions people have lost their jobs over, and which causes must you support openly if you don't want to be seen as backwards, or which things have people apologised for saying after posting a Tweet, then I'm sure it would be clear that one side dominates societal discourse far more than the other.
      - MagnumOpus 6y ago
        It is super obvious that far more people have been fired for championing leftist opinions and causes (living wages, workers' safety, unions) than for being republican/racist/islamophobic. (Though I am not sure that the right wing dominates societal discourse like you say.)
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Sure they have. There was a story making the rounds just today about a girl losing a Deloitte offer for a pro-BLM post, and FIRE can tell you that even on campus left-wing cancellations aren't unheard of.
    - gguevaraa 6y ago
      Not sure if this fits the bill but here's a story[0]. [0]: https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/harvard-grad-claira-janover-fired-over-tiktok-stab-threat-raises-money-online/ https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/harvard-grad-claira-janover-fi...
- bargl 6y ago
  This is a valid point. Cancel culture cuts both ways, and I find it unacceptable in either direction. The one claim I'll give conservatives is that they did not say they fired him over this it was a lack of performance. I don't buy that story, but there are nuances that show the different tactics conservatives use for canceling things. I do not support what happened to Kapernick, I don't think cancel culture is any better when disguised as something else. But the scale at which things are happening now is insane.
- jlos 6y ago
  Kapernick made a political statement as his place of work. He made a calculated risk to his career for the sake of his convictions. Choosing to take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and judged for not taking one. As a non-fan of football, I read the distate for Kapernick's statement as foisting another political binary on fans (mostly by the media, not so much by kapernick). Should you kneel or not kneel? Now you have to have an opinion. I think the progression is: 1. Make a political statement against an injustice (hashtags, kneeling, etc) 2. Making a lack of support a form of complicity with injustice. 3. Narrowly define what support looks like. Exact quote from #ShutDownStem website: >> Unless you engage directly with eliminating racism, you are perpetuating it. [0] https://www.shutdownstem.com/ https://www.shutdownstem.com/
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    > Choosing to take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and judged for not taking one Fantastic point. And I would hope those in favor of democracy can accept it. If you choose to support a political party publicly, you can reasonably expect people to engage with you about it. But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or candidate. What we are seeing now, is not the freedom to choose a particular stance or cause. We are seeing the mob react with force to a lack of opinion. You must have an opinion. And it must be the right one.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      >But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or candidate. well, nobody is able to coerce you for not doing anything, but people can still judge you for it, and that may be perfectly reasonable. Inaction can be as devastating as action. Withdrawing in the face of some injustice is as much of a choice as participating on either front. It's an overused quote but really all that is necessary for evil to triumph is good people doing nothing. Of course today sometimes the causes are hyperbolic, but nothing is wrong with the principle. If someone is the victim of racism say, and people look away rather than stepping up, that's a failure.
      - 6y ago
- donw 6y ago
  I don't know the full details on Kapernick, so I'm going to speak in generalizations. He does not deserve to be fired for making a political statement. Full stop. At the same time, he did leverage his employer's platform (the NFL) to make a political statement. Some sort of disciplinary action in response to that behavior is a legitimate course of action for an employer. Imagine Kapernick as an engineer working for, say, Instagram. Imagine that he Tweeted a bunch of pro-Biden memes on his personal Twitter. That seems fine to me. Now imagine that he wrote, without consulting management, a feature which put a Biden banner at the top of the Instagram website. That'd be a huge problem, and would merit disciplinary action. Not because he supported Biden, but because he leveraged the company brand and resources to do so, without the support of management. I think this is where we draw the line, but am also open to other ideas.
  - cma 6y ago
    Isn't standing for the national anthem or playing it at games also an, obvious to anyone, literal political statement?
    - donw 6y ago
      The issue is not about making a political statement. As an individual, you should always have that right. Both the New York Times and Breitbart are purveyors of propaganda for their respective political parties. They literally do nothing but make massively biased political statements, all day long. Imagine you work there, and you disagree. You can totally try to change that from within. Fight the system. Work your way up. And once you have sufficient stature within the organization, you can run, say, an article praising George Washington on the front of the NYT, or a piece condemning him on Breitbart. But, you, as a journalist, are a public face for your respective brand, and as such, you will likely face disciplinary action for going against the brand image. It doesn't mean you can't make a statement. But when you leverage your employer's platform to do so, there are going to be consequences. Now, if you use your own megaphone, you absolutely deserve protection from being fired! Build your Twitter/Instagram/Facebook following, and preach as much as you'd like. You built it. It's yours. That's the reality of being a public figure. You are paid to be part of a brand image. Tell me where I'm wrong on this. Or where you think we should draw the line. I'm happy to hear other opinions.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  I'm not a football expert, but the fact his throwing accuracy was poor and getting worse seems relevant here: https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/234081/colin-kaepernicks-biggest-problem-performance-not-politics https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/234081/colin-k...
cumcastsucks 6y ago
i've said since early 2015 this new breed or uber-progressive liberal is just the new fascist. oh wait sorry, you're a fascist if you vote for trump, i forgot.
buboard 6y ago
Removal of PC culture will be seen as a weakness and a concession so it's not going to happen. It has been going on for so long, that parts of the spectrum of opinion have stopped caring about the mainstream. There's a lot of silent minorities that have just left - and removal of Cancel Culture won't bring them back. The concept of Voice has been abused to toxic levels, and some groups have simply chosen Exit (E.g. isnt it interesting how the reddit , the frontpage of the internet, has been left devoid of right-of-center economics?). What's going to happen is that more groups will choose to Exit, bringing the end to mass mainstream culture
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  We've come back from this kind of environment before, and I don't see any reason to doubt we can do it again. Remember the Red Scare, or the Comics Code Authority?
  - artificial 6y ago
    I agree America has wrestled problems in the past and overcame them. Wasn’t McCarthy validated after the fall of the Soviets? There were 100s of agents within the Federal government.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Did anyone ever deny that there were likely Russian spies all over? I don't think that justifies the ridiculousness of McCarthyism. I mean, what was their error rate?
RickJWagner 6y ago
Yes, this. Bullseye.
627467 6y ago
interesting that you'd describe the society as soft in this circumstances. I agree. soft on perspective and vision. I've heard many describing social upheavals of recent years/decades as a waking up to fighting for ideals and values - the opposite of softness. I see the opposite. There are no major fights for real progress... there's an enduring status-quo and the battlegrounds are empty and occasionally we entertain ourselves with token crisis or token fights that fizzle out as quickly as they appear - the duration of a tiktok video.
- tanseydavid 6y ago
  Interesting how much variable connotation adjectives can present. I think by 'softness' the OP was leaning more toward the idea of 'fragile' as opposed to 'weakness'. As in: "prone to outrage" and/or "reactionary" .
dcow 6y ago
Yeah it's fascist. I'll say it. It fucking disgusts me. I used to fight it but it's impossible. There's no critical thinking happening. People don't stand for civil liberties and freedom anymore. I know it sounds jaded and depressing, but I honestly don't know what to do. The more you fight it the more ostracized you become. When people speak up against the absurdity that is PC culture, they need to be supported. But how can they when everyone's company has a chief diversity officer now? The argument has been that private institutions can do what they want because they are ruled only by the laws of efficient markets. Hospitals don't have to employ smokers as nurses, and so Google doesn't have to employ white male bigots, right? Wrong. I don't understand how private institutions are allowed to skirt the constitution just because it's convenient. That's _not_ justice. A corporation can't murder someone just because it's a private institution. So why are institutions allowed to silence freedom of expression? Why have we institutionalized oppressive mono-culture? What justice is being served? Certainly we've let the pendulum swing far enough. If we're all riding the same train, then what does social justice look like and how do we know when it has been achieved? When have we demonetized enough videos to make everyone happy? When have we de-platformed enough injustice to satisfy the warriors?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. If you lead with "Yeah it's fascist" and "it fucking disgusts me", you're leaving the path of curious conversation, and these threads unfortunately tend not to be self-correcting that way. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dcow 6y ago
    Please, dang, who am I flaming? I'm agreeing with the parent. I'm frustrated. Am I not allowed to present a passionate viewpoint on NH? I mean no disrespect I'm genuinely confused how to respond to your comment. Should I delete mine because I used the word fascist? I absolutely believe the social tendency we're seeing is intolerant and definitionally fascist. It promotes a unified notion of culture and the policies we've seen manifest as a result of it are harmful to freedom of expression. I didn't attack anyone personally and I am presenting an honest, non-trolling, viewpoint with no intention to needlessly provoke anybody.
adaisadais 6y ago
>Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion. Amen! Peter Thiel used to talk a lot on this subject. We’ve built a country upon the illusion of freedom. We are getting towards the War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength stage in society. The scariest part is that the nation who will take the reigns next has no desire for free speech or diversity of opinion. Just as Rome crumbled from within we are doing the exact same. I implore you all: when you vote this fall, vote them out. Put some fresh faces in offices. (1)Regardless of party. Send a message that the status quo is unacceptable. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z99LXZai078 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z99LXZai078
- donw 6y ago
  Hear, hear! Not only that: stand in the way of cancel culture. Commit to being an anger dampener. Don't share outrage porn on social media, and flag it when you see it -- from either side. Do like Monty Python. Whenever somebody you know starts chanting "Burn the witch!", don't outright disagree, and don't try to argue with facts and figures. Instead, ask them how they know she's a witch. Add nuance. Ask them to imagine how they would want to be treated if they were accused of witchcraft. And so on. Reach out, in-person, to others, and encourage them to do the same. Talk to people, in-person, with strong political views, and present counter-arguments to help them moderate. Yes, this carries reputational risk. Not doing so carries existential risk.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    Anecdotally, asking questions has become as "offensive" as making statements. People are so wrapped up in their echo chambers that _anything_ not in line with those "norms" is considered unacceptable. _Everything_ is binary. There's little grey area. Do deviate from the poles is seen as a complete switch to the other side. Free speech? Free thought isn't PC any more.
    - donw 6y ago
      > Anecdotally, asking questions has become as "offensive" as making statements. I think it always has been. :) You are offering the other person a chance to convince you that they are right. Maybe they even have a good argument! And you'd never hear it if you don't open yourself up to that possibility. Just as importantly: you can't expect somebody else to be open to changing their mind, if you aren't open to changing yours. I don't always succeed in this, and sometimes end up chasing rabbits -- did so elsewhere here, in fact. Other than getting in a bit of writing practice, it was wholly unproductive. > People are so wrapped up in their echo chambers that _anything_ not in line with those "norms" is considered unacceptable. True, but like Clausewitz said, war is politics continued by alternate means. It's worth offending people and taking risks to avoid those alternate means.
deleted 6y ago
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bargl 6y ago
The leveraging of mob mentality via digital platforms is what makes me nervous. We've always had local forms of cancel culture. But we've never had the digital weaponized mob mentality like we do with twitter/facebook/instagram/etc. Now we have the ability to point to one incident which was recorded forever and can't be removed. Some things really should die out over time. The comments "most" people make should just, fade away after a while only being recalled in memory and allowing people to grow and get better over time. Instead we have quotes from a 16 year old derailing their efforts to be a better human being as an adult. We even get a similar kind of force here on HN, when a website gets blasted by being featured here. Website owners talk about being able to see that traffic. Humans love seeing Karma in action and this seems to be evolution of that.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  The elections of the future are scary to think about. Nobody with any digital record that is public will be able to run for office. If somebody can be fired for a photo of them in blackface 10 years ago, they sure won't be able to get elected to public office in 30 years time after another 30 years of tweets, photos, and opinions. This is why I deleted all social media, and use online accounts in different non-real names. I don't want anything linked to me, because I can't trust what the mob will do with it.
  - hellisothers 6y ago
    Why don’t people just delete old posts? Do the platforms prevent this somehow?
    - draebek 6y ago
      For one thing, in the case of Reddit, there are sites which exist to archive deleted posts and comments. I believe I've used https://www.removeddit.com/ https://www.removeddit.com/ in the past to read some deleted content. I would imagine it's relatively affordable and easy for someone to scrape social media and store it all, forever.
    - 6y ago
tarsinge 6y ago
> Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion. It’s sad that you don’t see the difference between PC culture and opinions themselves. Being literally racist is not the same thing as being « cancelled » for being unjustly called one because of some social media witch hunt. Also a lot of corporate choices in contexts like this are marketing choices to a certain demographic. Being literally racist is indeed not an opinion and not allowed (like in our constitution in France since more than 200 years), but this has nothing to do with PC culture (an American thing unfortunately getting traction here too).
Balgair 6y ago
This 'cycle' has happened many times in human history. It's nothing 'new'. Most people can name a few of the really violent highlights from history. But these types of things occur even amongst a handful of people. Do they get out of hand? Of course. Are we there now in the US? Compared to things like the French Revolution or the English Civil Wars; oh heck no. Compared to a gossipy Mennonite sewing circle; it's getting there. Obviously we all want the crazy to go away and to get back to the business of living. How to do that though? Don't feed the cycle. Let the falling bobbin roll, do not try to catch the string and pull it out further. Calm down. I know that's hard. I know that the 'wrong' people keep on saying 'wrong' things. Easy for you to say 'calm down', Mr. Comfortable, your life wasn't just ruined. They destroy livelihoods and lives with their words. They deserve what they have coming for them, damnit! Justice! There may be time for that in the future, but for now, we need to not inflame things. Shouting back is a whole lot better than shooting back, of course. But shouting tends to turn the cortex off and turn the brainstem on, so to speak. If you want to be 'right', that's fine. But if you want to fix things and try to make things better, I would suggest listening more than writing screeds on people's FB walls. We know by now that does not work.
- dcow 6y ago
  I do not believe the ends justify the means. Full stop. I do not like being told to idly stand aside while we watch outrage mobs use oppressive rhetoric and illogical tactics to effect change, even if we all agree the cause is just. That's the actual problem people have and what fundamentally irks me about the entire thing. I'm not interested in calmly standing down so as not to inflame their sensitive temper. (And I have tried ignoring it, nothing changed.) Why should I condone behavior that is literally harming other people's livelihood and destroying a society where people are truly safe and free to express themselves? I've waited long enough for the pendulum to swing back. I'm not convinced the end is just around the corner and it will all be over soon. Do you know what the end looks like? I can never seem to get an answer.

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
  - waheoo 6y ago
    K fixed.
    - dang 6y ago
      Replacing the word "fucking" with "really" has nothing to do with it. There's no guideline against profanity on HN. Please read the guidelines and take the spirit of the site more to heart.
      - waheoo 6y ago
        > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. The post I was replying to was shallow. Asking if people have rtfa is also against the guidelines. So its a bit rich to assume I havent read the guidelines. And no, there isnt a guideline agaisnt profanity but its what bought you to my comment isn't it?
        dang 6y ago
        Not really. I was reacting to "cherry picked whataboutism" and the putdown aspect. Both of those remain. In fact that's all the comment consists of. It doesn't matter what you were replying to.
cumcastsucks 6y ago
that's not cancel culture, friend. keep trying.
Thorentis 6y ago
No, I was making a point with a bit more depth to it than that. If the point you're trying to make is that both sides are guilty of mob cancel culture, then you don't need to. Nobody here is pretending or claiming otherwise. Your comment is just another example of jumping into partisan politics for absolutely no reason.
- buboard 6y ago
  sorry i would claim otherwise. Nobody has been cancelled for expressing leftwing-or extreme leftwing- ideas it may detract from your central point, but it also explanis why one side of the spectrum won't be willing to contribute to an armistice
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    Well yes, if you did some analysis of which opinions people have lost their jobs over, and which causes must you support openly if you don't want to be seen as backwards, or which things have people apologised for saying after posting a Tweet, then I'm sure it would be clear that one side dominates societal discourse far more than the other.
    - MagnumOpus 6y ago
      It is super obvious that far more people have been fired for championing leftist opinions and causes (living wages, workers' safety, unions) than for being republican/racist/islamophobic. (Though I am not sure that the right wing dominates societal discourse like you say.)
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Sure they have. There was a story making the rounds just today about a girl losing a Deloitte offer for a pro-BLM post, and FIRE can tell you that even on campus left-wing cancellations aren't unheard of.
  - gguevaraa 6y ago
    Not sure if this fits the bill but here's a story[0]. [0]: https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/harvard-grad-claira-janover-fired-over-tiktok-stab-threat-raises-money-online/ https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/harvard-grad-claira-janover-fi...
bargl 6y ago
This is a valid point. Cancel culture cuts both ways, and I find it unacceptable in either direction. The one claim I'll give conservatives is that they did not say they fired him over this it was a lack of performance. I don't buy that story, but there are nuances that show the different tactics conservatives use for canceling things. I do not support what happened to Kapernick, I don't think cancel culture is any better when disguised as something else. But the scale at which things are happening now is insane.
jlos 6y ago
Kapernick made a political statement as his place of work. He made a calculated risk to his career for the sake of his convictions. Choosing to take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and judged for not taking one. As a non-fan of football, I read the distate for Kapernick's statement as foisting another political binary on fans (mostly by the media, not so much by kapernick). Should you kneel or not kneel? Now you have to have an opinion. I think the progression is: 1. Make a political statement against an injustice (hashtags, kneeling, etc) 2. Making a lack of support a form of complicity with injustice. 3. Narrowly define what support looks like. Exact quote from #ShutDownStem website: >> Unless you engage directly with eliminating racism, you are perpetuating it. [0] https://www.shutdownstem.com/ https://www.shutdownstem.com/
- Thorentis 6y ago
  > Choosing to take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and judged for not taking one Fantastic point. And I would hope those in favor of democracy can accept it. If you choose to support a political party publicly, you can reasonably expect people to engage with you about it. But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or candidate. What we are seeing now, is not the freedom to choose a particular stance or cause. We are seeing the mob react with force to a lack of opinion. You must have an opinion. And it must be the right one.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or candidate. well, nobody is able to coerce you for not doing anything, but people can still judge you for it, and that may be perfectly reasonable. Inaction can be as devastating as action. Withdrawing in the face of some injustice is as much of a choice as participating on either front. It's an overused quote but really all that is necessary for evil to triumph is good people doing nothing. Of course today sometimes the causes are hyperbolic, but nothing is wrong with the principle. If someone is the victim of racism say, and people look away rather than stepping up, that's a failure.
    - 6y ago
donw 6y ago
I don't know the full details on Kapernick, so I'm going to speak in generalizations. He does not deserve to be fired for making a political statement. Full stop. At the same time, he did leverage his employer's platform (the NFL) to make a political statement. Some sort of disciplinary action in response to that behavior is a legitimate course of action for an employer. Imagine Kapernick as an engineer working for, say, Instagram. Imagine that he Tweeted a bunch of pro-Biden memes on his personal Twitter. That seems fine to me. Now imagine that he wrote, without consulting management, a feature which put a Biden banner at the top of the Instagram website. That'd be a huge problem, and would merit disciplinary action. Not because he supported Biden, but because he leveraged the company brand and resources to do so, without the support of management. I think this is where we draw the line, but am also open to other ideas.
- cma 6y ago
  Isn't standing for the national anthem or playing it at games also an, obvious to anyone, literal political statement?
  - donw 6y ago
    The issue is not about making a political statement. As an individual, you should always have that right. Both the New York Times and Breitbart are purveyors of propaganda for their respective political parties. They literally do nothing but make massively biased political statements, all day long. Imagine you work there, and you disagree. You can totally try to change that from within. Fight the system. Work your way up. And once you have sufficient stature within the organization, you can run, say, an article praising George Washington on the front of the NYT, or a piece condemning him on Breitbart. But, you, as a journalist, are a public face for your respective brand, and as such, you will likely face disciplinary action for going against the brand image. It doesn't mean you can't make a statement. But when you leverage your employer's platform to do so, there are going to be consequences. Now, if you use your own megaphone, you absolutely deserve protection from being fired! Build your Twitter/Instagram/Facebook following, and preach as much as you'd like. You built it. It's yours. That's the reality of being a public figure. You are paid to be part of a brand image. Tell me where I'm wrong on this. Or where you think we should draw the line. I'm happy to hear other opinions.
ghufran_syed 6y ago
I'm not a football expert, but the fact his throwing accuracy was poor and getting worse seems relevant here: https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/234081/colin-kaepernicks-biggest-problem-performance-not-politics https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/234081/colin-k...

cumcastsucks 6y ago

i've said since early 2015 this new breed or uber-progressive liberal is just the new fascist. oh wait sorry, you're a fascist if you vote for trump, i forgot.

buboard 6y ago

Removal of PC culture will be seen as a weakness and a concession so it's not going to happen. It has been going on for so long, that parts of the spectrum of opinion have stopped caring about the mainstream. There's a lot of silent minorities that have just left - and removal of Cancel Culture won't bring them back. The concept of Voice has been abused to toxic levels, and some groups have simply chosen Exit (E.g. isnt it interesting how the reddit , the frontpage of the internet, has been left devoid of right-of-center economics?). What's going to happen is that more groups will choose to Exit, bringing the end to mass mainstream culture

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
We've come back from this kind of environment before, and I don't see any reason to doubt we can do it again. Remember the Red Scare, or the Comics Code Authority?
- artificial 6y ago
  I agree America has wrestled problems in the past and overcame them. Wasn’t McCarthy validated after the fall of the Soviets? There were 100s of agents within the Federal government.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Did anyone ever deny that there were likely Russian spies all over? I don't think that justifies the ridiculousness of McCarthyism. I mean, what was their error rate?

RickJWagner 6y ago

Yes, this. Bullseye.

627467 6y ago

interesting that you'd describe the society as soft in this circumstances. I agree. soft on perspective and vision. I've heard many describing social upheavals of recent years/decades as a waking up to fighting for ideals and values - the opposite of softness. I see the opposite. There are no major fights for real progress... there's an enduring status-quo and the battlegrounds are empty and occasionally we entertain ourselves with token crisis or token fights that fizzle out as quickly as they appear - the duration of a tiktok video.

tanseydavid 6y ago
Interesting how much variable connotation adjectives can present. I think by 'softness' the OP was leaning more toward the idea of 'fragile' as opposed to 'weakness'. As in: "prone to outrage" and/or "reactionary" .

dcow 6y ago

Yeah it's fascist. I'll say it. It fucking disgusts me. I used to fight it but it's impossible. There's no critical thinking happening. People don't stand for civil liberties and freedom anymore. I know it sounds jaded and depressing, but I honestly don't know what to do. The more you fight it the more ostracized you become. When people speak up against the absurdity that is PC culture, they need to be supported. But how can they when everyone's company has a chief diversity officer now? The argument has been that private institutions can do what they want because they are ruled only by the laws of efficient markets. Hospitals don't have to employ smokers as nurses, and so Google doesn't have to employ white male bigots, right? Wrong. I don't understand how private institutions are allowed to skirt the constitution just because it's convenient. That's _not_ justice. A corporation can't murder someone just because it's a private institution. So why are institutions allowed to silence freedom of expression? Why have we institutionalized oppressive mono-culture? What justice is being served? Certainly we've let the pendulum swing far enough. If we're all riding the same train, then what does social justice look like and how do we know when it has been achieved? When have we demonetized enough videos to make everyone happy? When have we de-platformed enough injustice to satisfy the warriors?

dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. If you lead with "Yeah it's fascist" and "it fucking disgusts me", you're leaving the path of curious conversation, and these threads unfortunately tend not to be self-correcting that way. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dcow 6y ago
  Please, dang, who am I flaming? I'm agreeing with the parent. I'm frustrated. Am I not allowed to present a passionate viewpoint on NH? I mean no disrespect I'm genuinely confused how to respond to your comment. Should I delete mine because I used the word fascist? I absolutely believe the social tendency we're seeing is intolerant and definitionally fascist. It promotes a unified notion of culture and the policies we've seen manifest as a result of it are harmful to freedom of expression. I didn't attack anyone personally and I am presenting an honest, non-trolling, viewpoint with no intention to needlessly provoke anybody.

adaisadais 6y ago

>Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion. Amen! Peter Thiel used to talk a lot on this subject. We’ve built a country upon the illusion of freedom. We are getting towards the War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength stage in society. The scariest part is that the nation who will take the reigns next has no desire for free speech or diversity of opinion. Just as Rome crumbled from within we are doing the exact same. I implore you all: when you vote this fall, vote them out. Put some fresh faces in offices. (1)Regardless of party. Send a message that the status quo is unacceptable. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z99LXZai078 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z99LXZai078

donw 6y ago
Hear, hear! Not only that: stand in the way of cancel culture. Commit to being an anger dampener. Don't share outrage porn on social media, and flag it when you see it -- from either side. Do like Monty Python. Whenever somebody you know starts chanting "Burn the witch!", don't outright disagree, and don't try to argue with facts and figures. Instead, ask them how they know she's a witch. Add nuance. Ask them to imagine how they would want to be treated if they were accused of witchcraft. And so on. Reach out, in-person, to others, and encourage them to do the same. Talk to people, in-person, with strong political views, and present counter-arguments to help them moderate. Yes, this carries reputational risk. Not doing so carries existential risk.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Anecdotally, asking questions has become as "offensive" as making statements. People are so wrapped up in their echo chambers that _anything_ not in line with those "norms" is considered unacceptable. _Everything_ is binary. There's little grey area. Do deviate from the poles is seen as a complete switch to the other side. Free speech? Free thought isn't PC any more.
  - donw 6y ago
    > Anecdotally, asking questions has become as "offensive" as making statements. I think it always has been. :) You are offering the other person a chance to convince you that they are right. Maybe they even have a good argument! And you'd never hear it if you don't open yourself up to that possibility. Just as importantly: you can't expect somebody else to be open to changing their mind, if you aren't open to changing yours. I don't always succeed in this, and sometimes end up chasing rabbits -- did so elsewhere here, in fact. Other than getting in a bit of writing practice, it was wholly unproductive. > People are so wrapped up in their echo chambers that _anything_ not in line with those "norms" is considered unacceptable. True, but like Clausewitz said, war is politics continued by alternate means. It's worth offending people and taking risks to avoid those alternate means.

deleted 6y ago

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bargl 6y ago

The leveraging of mob mentality via digital platforms is what makes me nervous. We've always had local forms of cancel culture. But we've never had the digital weaponized mob mentality like we do with twitter/facebook/instagram/etc. Now we have the ability to point to one incident which was recorded forever and can't be removed. Some things really should die out over time. The comments "most" people make should just, fade away after a while only being recalled in memory and allowing people to grow and get better over time. Instead we have quotes from a 16 year old derailing their efforts to be a better human being as an adult. We even get a similar kind of force here on HN, when a website gets blasted by being featured here. Website owners talk about being able to see that traffic. Humans love seeing Karma in action and this seems to be evolution of that.

Thorentis 6y ago
The elections of the future are scary to think about. Nobody with any digital record that is public will be able to run for office. If somebody can be fired for a photo of them in blackface 10 years ago, they sure won't be able to get elected to public office in 30 years time after another 30 years of tweets, photos, and opinions. This is why I deleted all social media, and use online accounts in different non-real names. I don't want anything linked to me, because I can't trust what the mob will do with it.
- hellisothers 6y ago
  Why don’t people just delete old posts? Do the platforms prevent this somehow?
  - draebek 6y ago
    For one thing, in the case of Reddit, there are sites which exist to archive deleted posts and comments. I believe I've used https://www.removeddit.com/ https://www.removeddit.com/ in the past to read some deleted content. I would imagine it's relatively affordable and easy for someone to scrape social media and store it all, forever.
  - 6y ago

tarsinge 6y ago

> Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion. It’s sad that you don’t see the difference between PC culture and opinions themselves. Being literally racist is not the same thing as being « cancelled » for being unjustly called one because of some social media witch hunt. Also a lot of corporate choices in contexts like this are marketing choices to a certain demographic. Being literally racist is indeed not an opinion and not allowed (like in our constitution in France since more than 200 years), but this has nothing to do with PC culture (an American thing unfortunately getting traction here too).

Balgair 6y ago

This 'cycle' has happened many times in human history. It's nothing 'new'. Most people can name a few of the really violent highlights from history. But these types of things occur even amongst a handful of people. Do they get out of hand? Of course. Are we there now in the US? Compared to things like the French Revolution or the English Civil Wars; oh heck no. Compared to a gossipy Mennonite sewing circle; it's getting there. Obviously we all want the crazy to go away and to get back to the business of living. How to do that though? Don't feed the cycle. Let the falling bobbin roll, do not try to catch the string and pull it out further. Calm down. I know that's hard. I know that the 'wrong' people keep on saying 'wrong' things. Easy for you to say 'calm down', Mr. Comfortable, your life wasn't just ruined. They destroy livelihoods and lives with their words. They deserve what they have coming for them, damnit! Justice! There may be time for that in the future, but for now, we need to not inflame things. Shouting back is a whole lot better than shooting back, of course. But shouting tends to turn the cortex off and turn the brainstem on, so to speak. If you want to be 'right', that's fine. But if you want to fix things and try to make things better, I would suggest listening more than writing screeds on people's FB walls. We know by now that does not work.

dcow 6y ago
I do not believe the ends justify the means. Full stop. I do not like being told to idly stand aside while we watch outrage mobs use oppressive rhetoric and illogical tactics to effect change, even if we all agree the cause is just. That's the actual problem people have and what fundamentally irks me about the entire thing. I'm not interested in calmly standing down so as not to inflame their sensitive temper. (And I have tried ignoring it, nothing changed.) Why should I condone behavior that is literally harming other people's livelihood and destroying a society where people are truly safe and free to express themselves? I've waited long enough for the pendulum to swing back. I'm not convinced the end is just around the corner and it will all be over soon. Do you know what the end looks like? I can never seem to get an answer.