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I understand "cancel culture" to simply be a form of mob-enforced group-think. It's "intolerance of intolerance" taken to an extreme. If you say or do something

by umvi 6y ago

I understand "cancel culture" to simply be a form of mob-enforced group-think. It's "intolerance of intolerance" taken to an extreme. If you say or do something (or said or did something in the past!) that runs afoul of the mob, the mob "cancels" you (tries to get you fired from your job, kicked out of github projects you contribute to, membership revoked from organizations you participate in, your business boycotted/destroyed, etc. - essentially ruin your life as much as possible without causing bodily harm). The end goal of cancel culture is to "send a message" to other people that do similar things and get them to conform to the prevailing group-think of the mob. Maybe you were religious and voted against gay marriage in the past. Maybe you used a politically incorrect term on Twitter. Maybe you donated some money to the wrong political party. Maybe you just didn't kowtow to the mob's latest demands. All of these things can ignite the capricious maelstrom of the mob, and once you are a target, they will pursue you with righteous indignation until you are "cancelled"

mieses 6y ago
It would be convenient if there was a database of cancelled people so those people could go on with their lives and operate outside cancel culture. For example, there could be institutions of higher learning that required applicants to demonstrate evidence of having been cancelled. Such institutions might be more effective at producing novel and useful scientific ideas (as opposed to theories of biological sex, for example). I wonder if there should be an age limit for being cancelled. If a 10 year old dresses as Thomas Jefferson for a school Halloween event, it might be good to give them a pass until they are 18 when they can make a better informed choice about whether they want to join the cancel culture or the resistance.
- notahacker 6y ago
  tbh I suspect the applicants who were cancelled would come up with a lot of theories of sex, race, religion and politics and relatively little novelty. In Brave New World, all the Alpha citizens were sent to an island. Within six years they had a full scale civil war. I suspect something similar would happen if you put those cancelled for voicing their second wave feminism in a way which offended people as a threat in a faculty with those cancelled for voicing arguments considered sexist, those cancelled for making arguments considered Islamophobic with those cancelled for interpretations of the Quran considered extreme etc.
- Udik 6y ago
  What we'd really need is a public database of cancellers. Apart from the few deeply ideologically motivated ones, most of the cancellers are simply individuals who either perceive, consciously or unconsciously, the advantage of aligning themselves with the dominant ideology, or who are trying to minimise the risk of being misaligned with it. What we lack is something to counterbalance the advantages of signalling conformity- some longer perspective in which to frame our actions. Unfortunately, this type of record keeping is typical exactly of the cancel culture I'm so opposed to.

by umvi 6y ago

mieses 6y ago

It would be convenient if there was a database of cancelled people so those people could go on with their lives and operate outside cancel culture. For example, there could be institutions of higher learning that required applicants to demonstrate evidence of having been cancelled. Such institutions might be more effective at producing novel and useful scientific ideas (as opposed to theories of biological sex, for example). I wonder if there should be an age limit for being cancelled. If a 10 year old dresses as Thomas Jefferson for a school Halloween event, it might be good to give them a pass until they are 18 when they can make a better informed choice about whether they want to join the cancel culture or the resistance.

notahacker 6y ago
tbh I suspect the applicants who were cancelled would come up with a lot of theories of sex, race, religion and politics and relatively little novelty. In Brave New World, all the Alpha citizens were sent to an island. Within six years they had a full scale civil war. I suspect something similar would happen if you put those cancelled for voicing their second wave feminism in a way which offended people as a threat in a faculty with those cancelled for voicing arguments considered sexist, those cancelled for making arguments considered Islamophobic with those cancelled for interpretations of the Quran considered extreme etc.
Udik 6y ago
What we'd really need is a public database of cancellers. Apart from the few deeply ideologically motivated ones, most of the cancellers are simply individuals who either perceive, consciously or unconsciously, the advantage of aligning themselves with the dominant ideology, or who are trying to minimise the risk of being misaligned with it. What we lack is something to counterbalance the advantages of signalling conformity- some longer perspective in which to frame our actions. Unfortunately, this type of record keeping is typical exactly of the cancel culture I'm so opposed to.