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There is now only a single safe way to exist in the public sphere: - Anonymously over the Internet. A private text, a public tweet, a personal blog post or vi
by Funes- 6y ago
There is now only a single safe way to exist in the public sphere:
- Anonymously over the Internet.
A private text, a public tweet, a personal blog post or video, anything caught by a camera without your consent or awareness. All are susceptible of being used to ruin your life if a large enough group of people are willing to.
- pc86 6y agoThe last half of that sentence, which is pretty important, is "and you do something offensive enough to a large enough group of people that they want to ruin your life." The examples of people "accidentally" ruining their own lives with a racist or sexist tweet is a pretty short list.
- ryandrake 6y ago"Offensive" is both in the eye of the beholder and changes as time goes on. An innocuous and innocent opinion today could be, in 10 years, considered extremely offensive. Anyone can drag that "now offensive" comment out of the past to nail you. I can think of jokes I made 20 years ago that were not even slightly offensive at the time, that would get me instantly fired today. Good thing I didn't post them on a medium like the Internet that is infinitely achievable and searchable.
- Frondo 6y agoI have not once, in all the years of hand-wringing over "cancel culture," seen a rich person made poor, or a famous person made obscure, by "the mob" finding old tweets and publicizing them. Not once. For all the power the mob has to ruin lives, you'd think there would be lives ruined -- not mildly inconvenienced or temporarily embarrassed.
- suizi 6y agoSome people have lost their jobs over a tweet. Rich people and celebrities are the most visible but it isn't as if little people haven't been swept up on occasion.
- krapp 6y agoPeople lose their jobs over all sorts of things all the time. Before "cancel culture," people could lose their jobs over a complaint from a single angry customer, or a joke or comment that got elevated to HR, or any reason at all. That doesn't ruin lives, it's a relatively common occurrence, particularly in the modern day. People are only equating it to Orwellian dystopia and Stasi oppression because politics has become involved. But it's not cancel culture's fault that at-will employment exists entirely at the whim and mercy of the employer, or that political activism (which cancel culture is) is clearly free speech. It's always been the case that if someone can convince your boss to fire you, you can be fired.
- Frondo 6y agoExactly, you want to talk about ending cancel culture? Fight for better workers' rights.
- Frondo 6y agoBoo hoo. People get fired for all kinds of arbitrary and capricious reasons. Fight for workers' rights if you care about that. Rich people being temporarily embarrassed? I don't give a shit, and neither should anyone else.
- berkeleyjunk 6y agoYes. This is the worry. "Airplane" is considered one of the funniest movies ever made and most of the jokes would probably never see the light of the day today.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoMost people recognise this. There was that incident with the Canadian prime minister wearing blackface 20 years ago. The tabloids tried to blow it up but ultimately no one cares because it was a long time ago.