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I have often considered blogging anonymously because I do not feel free to write my nuanced philosophical views about the world anymore, as nuance is mostly dea

I have often considered blogging anonymously because I do not feel free to write my nuanced philosophical views about the world anymore, as nuance is mostly dead in the public discourse and anything I write could easily offend someone and cause me problems. But I decided that if I believed something and I was willing to say it aloud, I should be willing to write it down with my name attached. In the end, it has had the effect somewhat of self-censure, because I know some things I cannot write down, so I won't say them aloud either, even though they're perfectly reasonable and not prejudicial. The flip side has been that it's freed me in other ways to be radically honest about who I am in my writing and has helped me to more carefully identify people who are worth attempting a rational dialogue with. To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media. This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way.

hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel culture" generally. Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel culture" as it would relate to an ordinary person writing an ordinary blog?
- celestialcheese 6y ago
  "so you've been publicly shamed" by jon ronson goes into this, I don't remember if there's specific stories about personal bloggers, but there's stories from normal, everyday people.
  - hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
    Ok, I understand now that people are taking "cancel culture" to mean online shaming generally. In that case, I think it is reasonable to take precautions like blogging anonymously. I was specifically thinking of how "cancel" is used as a verb to mean "boycott a cultural product from an entertainer", "boycott a product from a company", or something like that.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      It's not just "online shaming", it's also harassment such as trying to get someone fired from their job.
- DenisM 6y ago
  There you go, a truck driver didn't even write anything: https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/ https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove... Also think about this: people who were not in the limelight and were "cancelled" would never appear on your radar simply because they were not in the limelight.
  - hodgesrm 6y ago
    Wow. Thanks for posting that.
- dnissley 6y ago
  Regular folks who were "cancelled": - David Shor - Justine Sacco - James Damore - Adria Richards A full list would be a mile long
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Of those, the last three didn't suffer any long term consequences (all three were employed relatively soon after they were fired), and the first happened too recently to really analyze.
    - ThA0x2 6y ago
      FWIR: Justine Sacco still suffers from severe PTSD and has to attend regular counselling. Adria Richards fell off the face of the planet, was chronically unemployed for a while, then finally ended up at a no name company, probably making peanuts compared to where she was. James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while, was in several lawsuits with Google, and claims to be working at a start-up, but he may also just be freelancing since he's effectively unemployable. Those are all long term consequences, so, you're effectively wrong here.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        Adria Richards is actually an interesting case. She was "cancelled" for cancelling someone else. One of the major criticisms of the Harper's letter is that people speaking out about injustice have historically faced severe retribution, and that the recent concern about cancellation is only in response to this retributory cannon being pointed toward those "in power". I can't see the people who are today concerned about Cancellation standing up for Adria Richards were that to happen again today. See the recent argument between Yann LeCun and Timnit Gebru for a somewhat analogous situation. The backlash against the person perceived as trying to cancel someone else was much greater than the initial "lash", so to speak. > James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while Not a very long time though. And the lawsuits were ones he chose to file.
        6y ago
- devalgo 6y ago
  >As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. This massively understates the problem. One could easily put together a list of non-celebrities who have had their lives ruined after making some completely anodyne comment.
- nitwit005 6y ago
  People will happily attack you without even reading what you have to say. People have done experiments with headlines which demonstrate as much: https://www.upworthy.com/comments-didnt-read-the-article https://www.upworthy.com/comments-didnt-read-the-article There have been a number of incidents where people have gone after individuals, only for it to be very clear later on they'd done nothing wrong.
  - joubert 6y ago
    I'd be curious to know what % of us here: read an article fully, then give it due consideration, then read the entire HN comment thread, and then add thoughtful comments in the HN thread
- stevens32 6y ago
  It's mind boggling that someone who doesn't understand a term and asks for clarification of it be down-voted like this.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
> This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way. "While the torture and indoctrination in the secret prisons is bad, let us also have a moment of silence for my tweet that was unfairly ratioed. And yes, it's very sad that your aunt was publicly lashed for protesting in favor of letting women have driver's licenses. But is not also sad that MY uncle lost his job because he was a member of a few measly neo-Nazi facebook groups?" Anyway I am sorry that I am CENSORING your views (by publicly disagreeing with them) and CANCELLING you (by being flippant). You can probably say that I am "not attempting a rational dialogue" with you.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here. The idea of HN is curious conversation, not flamewar. Yes, that's hard in the current climate. But the site guidelines cover this—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in particular: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait."
qqn 6y ago
There is a good video that underlines your second point[0], specifically mentioning that compassion is increasingly being replaced by moral superiority, that dialogue is often reactionary instead of responsive, and that the system we live in is often trying to group us based on these very differences, not unlike what happens in a high school cafeteria. She's primarily talking about online and big media discussions I think. She goes on to say that "a lot of us are seeing people who remind us of our former selves and we're attacking that", reminding me that "the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand -- we listen to reply" (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author). Your first point does remind me of an early xkcd though[1], ironic in that it was about radically being yourself, come what may, and clearly identifying with what was then the underdog. It could be interpreted differently today, especially without an understanding of what the early 00s Internet was like. [0]https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-problem-with-wokeness-ayishat-akanbi/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-problem-with-wokene..., also available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-WimRb2jXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-WimRb2jXs but ironically censored [1]https://xkcd.com/137/ https://xkcd.com/137/
- thunderbong 6y ago
  Thank you for your comment and those videos. They were extremely enriching.
  - qqn 6y ago
    You're very welcome. They really helped me. Ayishat Akanbi had a follow-up talk at Sydney's annual "All About Women" conference shortly after,[0] where she added that "intersectionality is seeing the importance of other people’s suffering. Being active on social media can simplify and minimize issues for the sake of being retweetable." The whole talk built well on top of the original video (though the Q&A was not as useful). In addition, she used two more quotes that I wrote down: "If you understood everything I said, you’d be me," (Miles Davis) and "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald). This is just the first half of what he said though, the rest being: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." I think that's nice too. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sni7ghqHBJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sni7ghqHBJw
freedomben 6y ago
> To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media. Yes, exactly right. Unfortunately however even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this. I was recently in a hotel lobby waiting for an Uber and heard a conversation between two strangers. It started out fine but then one person said something mildly political. Almost immediately it seemed like a switch flipped in the other person and he began preaching and talking over. He clearly wasn't even hearing what the first person was saying, but was hearing what he thought that person would say (and was not accurate). It was demoralizing to say the least. We're getting so conditioned with outrage and hatred for people online that it's moving into "real life."
- joubert 6y ago
  > even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this Nicholas Carr argues in his book, The Shallows, how technology literally shapes our brains on a fundamental, cognitive level. To the degree that it is accurate, I would expect our "meat-space" interactions to reflect. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klein-show-the-shallows-twitter-facebook-attention-deep-reading-thinking https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klei...
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Thanks for the link, that's very interesting (as unfortunate as the news it bears is).
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
> offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people Can you expand on that? What do you think are the factors that are causing this dehumanisation? I am giving it a try: it has become easier to band togather, now groups often need an enemy - as a unifying tool and as a means of defining the group (us vs. them). If this is true then any improvements in communication will inevitably lead to greater polarization
- tristor 6y ago
  There may be some more complex elements to this, but I don't think about this in a complex way. It's very simple for me. When you are face-to-face with a person, especially a person you know, there is a connection which forms through body language and other factors I can't identify which makes it very viscerally real that the person across from you is a human being who has their own unique experiences that have helped them to craft a particular worldview. It engenders at least some measure of respect, perhaps enough to give people the benefit of the doubt and to hear them out. When you're online, you don't even know if you're talking to a person who is being sincere in their beliefs or a troll trying to get a rise out of you, or perhaps an advanced bot intended to drive discussion in a particular direction. There's no indication of the motivations, the sincerity, or even the reality of another human being when you interact online. I can't imagine how a conversation intended to be deep and nuanced couldn't be dehumanized by the Internet?

hakka-nyu-su 6y ago

As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel culture" generally. Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel culture" as it would relate to an ordinary person writing an ordinary blog?

celestialcheese 6y ago
"so you've been publicly shamed" by jon ronson goes into this, I don't remember if there's specific stories about personal bloggers, but there's stories from normal, everyday people.
- hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
  Ok, I understand now that people are taking "cancel culture" to mean online shaming generally. In that case, I think it is reasonable to take precautions like blogging anonymously. I was specifically thinking of how "cancel" is used as a verb to mean "boycott a cultural product from an entertainer", "boycott a product from a company", or something like that.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    It's not just "online shaming", it's also harassment such as trying to get someone fired from their job.
DenisM 6y ago
There you go, a truck driver didn't even write anything: https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/ https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove... Also think about this: people who were not in the limelight and were "cancelled" would never appear on your radar simply because they were not in the limelight.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  Wow. Thanks for posting that.
dnissley 6y ago
Regular folks who were "cancelled": - David Shor - Justine Sacco - James Damore - Adria Richards A full list would be a mile long
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  Of those, the last three didn't suffer any long term consequences (all three were employed relatively soon after they were fired), and the first happened too recently to really analyze.
  - ThA0x2 6y ago
    FWIR: Justine Sacco still suffers from severe PTSD and has to attend regular counselling. Adria Richards fell off the face of the planet, was chronically unemployed for a while, then finally ended up at a no name company, probably making peanuts compared to where she was. James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while, was in several lawsuits with Google, and claims to be working at a start-up, but he may also just be freelancing since he's effectively unemployable. Those are all long term consequences, so, you're effectively wrong here.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Adria Richards is actually an interesting case. She was "cancelled" for cancelling someone else. One of the major criticisms of the Harper's letter is that people speaking out about injustice have historically faced severe retribution, and that the recent concern about cancellation is only in response to this retributory cannon being pointed toward those "in power". I can't see the people who are today concerned about Cancellation standing up for Adria Richards were that to happen again today. See the recent argument between Yann LeCun and Timnit Gebru for a somewhat analogous situation. The backlash against the person perceived as trying to cancel someone else was much greater than the initial "lash", so to speak. > James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while Not a very long time though. And the lawsuits were ones he chose to file.
      - 6y ago
devalgo 6y ago
>As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. This massively understates the problem. One could easily put together a list of non-celebrities who have had their lives ruined after making some completely anodyne comment.
nitwit005 6y ago
People will happily attack you without even reading what you have to say. People have done experiments with headlines which demonstrate as much: https://www.upworthy.com/comments-didnt-read-the-article https://www.upworthy.com/comments-didnt-read-the-article There have been a number of incidents where people have gone after individuals, only for it to be very clear later on they'd done nothing wrong.
- joubert 6y ago
  I'd be curious to know what % of us here: read an article fully, then give it due consideration, then read the entire HN comment thread, and then add thoughtful comments in the HN thread
stevens32 6y ago
It's mind boggling that someone who doesn't understand a term and asks for clarification of it be down-voted like this.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

> This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way. "While the torture and indoctrination in the secret prisons is bad, let us also have a moment of silence for my tweet that was unfairly ratioed. And yes, it's very sad that your aunt was publicly lashed for protesting in favor of letting women have driver's licenses. But is not also sad that MY uncle lost his job because he was a member of a few measly neo-Nazi facebook groups?" Anyway I am sorry that I am CENSORING your views (by publicly disagreeing with them) and CANCELLING you (by being flippant). You can probably say that I am "not attempting a rational dialogue" with you.

dang 6y ago
Please don't do this here. The idea of HN is curious conversation, not flamewar. Yes, that's hard in the current climate. But the site guidelines cover this—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in particular: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait."

qqn 6y ago

There is a good video that underlines your second point[0], specifically mentioning that compassion is increasingly being replaced by moral superiority, that dialogue is often reactionary instead of responsive, and that the system we live in is often trying to group us based on these very differences, not unlike what happens in a high school cafeteria. She's primarily talking about online and big media discussions I think. She goes on to say that "a lot of us are seeing people who remind us of our former selves and we're attacking that", reminding me that "the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand -- we listen to reply" (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author). Your first point does remind me of an early xkcd though[1], ironic in that it was about radically being yourself, come what may, and clearly identifying with what was then the underdog. It could be interpreted differently today, especially without an understanding of what the early 00s Internet was like. [0]https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-problem-with-wokeness-ayishat-akanbi/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-problem-with-wokene..., also available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-WimRb2jXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-WimRb2jXs but ironically censored [1]https://xkcd.com/137/ https://xkcd.com/137/

thunderbong 6y ago
Thank you for your comment and those videos. They were extremely enriching.
- qqn 6y ago
  You're very welcome. They really helped me. Ayishat Akanbi had a follow-up talk at Sydney's annual "All About Women" conference shortly after,[0] where she added that "intersectionality is seeing the importance of other people’s suffering. Being active on social media can simplify and minimize issues for the sake of being retweetable." The whole talk built well on top of the original video (though the Q&A was not as useful). In addition, she used two more quotes that I wrote down: "If you understood everything I said, you’d be me," (Miles Davis) and "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald). This is just the first half of what he said though, the rest being: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." I think that's nice too. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sni7ghqHBJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sni7ghqHBJw

freedomben 6y ago

> To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media. Yes, exactly right. Unfortunately however even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this. I was recently in a hotel lobby waiting for an Uber and heard a conversation between two strangers. It started out fine but then one person said something mildly political. Almost immediately it seemed like a switch flipped in the other person and he began preaching and talking over. He clearly wasn't even hearing what the first person was saying, but was hearing what he thought that person would say (and was not accurate). It was demoralizing to say the least. We're getting so conditioned with outrage and hatred for people online that it's moving into "real life."

joubert 6y ago
> even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this Nicholas Carr argues in his book, The Shallows, how technology literally shapes our brains on a fundamental, cognitive level. To the degree that it is accurate, I would expect our "meat-space" interactions to reflect. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klein-show-the-shallows-twitter-facebook-attention-deep-reading-thinking https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klei...
- freedomben 6y ago
  Thanks for the link, that's very interesting (as unfortunate as the news it bears is).

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

> offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people Can you expand on that? What do you think are the factors that are causing this dehumanisation? I am giving it a try: it has become easier to band togather, now groups often need an enemy - as a unifying tool and as a means of defining the group (us vs. them). If this is true then any improvements in communication will inevitably lead to greater polarization

tristor 6y ago
There may be some more complex elements to this, but I don't think about this in a complex way. It's very simple for me. When you are face-to-face with a person, especially a person you know, there is a connection which forms through body language and other factors I can't identify which makes it very viscerally real that the person across from you is a human being who has their own unique experiences that have helped them to craft a particular worldview. It engenders at least some measure of respect, perhaps enough to give people the benefit of the doubt and to hear them out. When you're online, you don't even know if you're talking to a person who is being sincere in their beliefs or a troll trying to get a rise out of you, or perhaps an advanced bot intended to drive discussion in a particular direction. There's no indication of the motivations, the sincerity, or even the reality of another human being when you interact online. I can't imagine how a conversation intended to be deep and nuanced couldn't be dehumanized by the Internet?