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I don’t understand what the ‘cancel culture’ comment is supposed to mean. There are a million tweets condemning China’s behavior... way more than the number of

I don’t understand what the ‘cancel culture’ comment is supposed to mean. There are a million tweets condemning China’s behavior... way more than the number of tweets targeting people who are ‘cancelled’ The difference is that tweets can effect a regular person’s life, and they are ‘cancelled’. China doesn’t care. A company will act to fire a single person who behaves badly because of consumer pressure; it doesn’t cost them much and is good PR. Stopping doing business with China is a lot costlier, so they don’t give in to the same consumer pressure that they would for an individual employee. The different outcome doesn’t mean there is some hypocrisy amongst the people tweeting their support for ‘cancelling’ someone. It just means that tweets aren’t that powerful for real change.

misja111 6y ago
Cancel culture means boycotting public figures or companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. You are talking only about tweets but those have little to do with it. Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Vote with your wallet! If enough people do this then it will definitely have an impact, possibly even enough to bring about some real change.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  I thought cancel culture referred to the practice of reporting someone's postings and getting them taken down or even banned by the platform. It also includes doxxing people and trying to get them fired from their jobs because of their online postings.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    Not sure why you are being downvoted. Cancel culture can hit non-famous/significant people as you describe. To me it's all about shutting down debate, and reducing free-speech.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  > Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Is it possible though? I’m really not so sure.
  - jerf 6y ago
    A 100% boycott of China is difficult, especially if you were to try to boycott things that were made elsewhere but have a lot of Chinese stuff in their supply chain. But even just boycotting what you can is a positive step. You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here. You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people. I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless. (Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. You'd find out that 90% of "their goods" are what you consider yours and other third party goods... Even BMW's are largely made there from what I've read.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  > Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. How would you even know which products have raw materials that come from China? You will be hard pressed to find something that doesn’t have parts made in China, and even harder pressed to be able to figure that out.
- aNoob7000 6y ago
  Maybe if companies in the USA and Europe would stop building stuff in China it would work. Why is the burden on placed on individuals when corporations and governments actually have more power in this process. I personally blame corporations and governments in Europe and the USA for the issues with China. They put money above everything.
martythemaniak 6y ago
A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. Closely related to the notion that the leader is simultaneously both a powerful winner and a powerless victim. "cancel culture" here is both powerful and dangerous enough to bring down Western civilization, yet so laughably weak it cannot even pretend to solve real problems.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. I've read that somewhere. By the same "heuristic" anti-Trump talk is "political bullshit", because he is said to be simultanously a buffon/ineffectual loser and a very powerful insidious force. But of course such heuristics are themselves usually selectively applied to opinions which those applying them already agree are "political bullshit".
  - lucretian 6y ago
    this is an obviously bad analogy. trump is clearly a moron, and also holds the most powerful position in the world. those are not contradictory in any way.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  The part that usually completes this idea is that the person or idea only has power because people give it to them. So the person in itself is not powerful but they are given power.
- heymijo 6y ago
  I first heard this idea articulated in Umberto Eco's article on Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism [0,1]. First link is the abridged list. The second is a full feature article. From Point #8 "by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak" [0] http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasci... [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

misja111 6y ago

Cancel culture means boycotting public figures or companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. You are talking only about tweets but those have little to do with it. Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Vote with your wallet! If enough people do this then it will definitely have an impact, possibly even enough to bring about some real change.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago
I thought cancel culture referred to the practice of reporting someone's postings and getting them taken down or even banned by the platform. It also includes doxxing people and trying to get them fired from their jobs because of their online postings.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. Cancel culture can hit non-famous/significant people as you describe. To me it's all about shutting down debate, and reducing free-speech.
elliekelly 6y ago
> Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Is it possible though? I’m really not so sure.
- jerf 6y ago
  A 100% boycott of China is difficult, especially if you were to try to boycott things that were made elsewhere but have a lot of Chinese stuff in their supply chain. But even just boycotting what you can is a positive step. You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here. You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people. I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless. (Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)
coldtea 6y ago
>Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. You'd find out that 90% of "their goods" are what you consider yours and other third party goods... Even BMW's are largely made there from what I've read.
cortesoft 6y ago
> Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. How would you even know which products have raw materials that come from China? You will be hard pressed to find something that doesn’t have parts made in China, and even harder pressed to be able to figure that out.
aNoob7000 6y ago
Maybe if companies in the USA and Europe would stop building stuff in China it would work. Why is the burden on placed on individuals when corporations and governments actually have more power in this process. I personally blame corporations and governments in Europe and the USA for the issues with China. They put money above everything.

martythemaniak 6y ago

A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. Closely related to the notion that the leader is simultaneously both a powerful winner and a powerless victim. "cancel culture" here is both powerful and dangerous enough to bring down Western civilization, yet so laughably weak it cannot even pretend to solve real problems.

coldtea 6y ago
>A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. I've read that somewhere. By the same "heuristic" anti-Trump talk is "political bullshit", because he is said to be simultanously a buffon/ineffectual loser and a very powerful insidious force. But of course such heuristics are themselves usually selectively applied to opinions which those applying them already agree are "political bullshit".
- lucretian 6y ago
  this is an obviously bad analogy. trump is clearly a moron, and also holds the most powerful position in the world. those are not contradictory in any way.
FeepingCreature 6y ago
The part that usually completes this idea is that the person or idea only has power because people give it to them. So the person in itself is not powerful but they are given power.
heymijo 6y ago
I first heard this idea articulated in Umberto Eco's article on Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism [0,1]. First link is the abridged list. The second is a full feature article. From Point #8 "by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak" [0] http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasci... [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/