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A vocal minority is enough to dox you, to bother your workplace, your school/college, to get you fired/expelled, and alltogether, to make you "too hot" to hire,

A vocal minority is enough to dox you, to bother your workplace, your school/college, to get you fired/expelled, and alltogether, to make you "too hot" to hire, especially by large tech companies, who have whole departments of "vocal minority" people dealing with tiny stuff like that. Cancel culture has to stop.

seanwilson 6y ago
What do you concretely think should be done though? Aren't there already laws about harassing people? I think the news should be more responsible by not reporting that someone was offended by something unless it has serious objective merit because it just gets everyone riled up on non-issues for no good reason. Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic that would be hard to police in any way because you aren't talking about specific people or specific ideas.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic A good, frustrating point. A large proportion of complaints of cancel culture are coupled with implications of frustration that they feel they can't say unpleasant things that they would have gotten away with previously. Or people complaining about direct efforts to change social norms that they don't agree with, claiming that due to a status quo bias, change is cancellation and therefore baseless. As with most ideologies, discussing the definition is a fairly pointless task because its subjective and ill-defined, especially by those who feel passionately about it. The term is pointless. What happened in this case sounds bad, at a glance. Let's not generalize it to other things. It'll get nowhere. Whether or not one believes something is a part of cancel culture has no bearing on whether a particular idea to squash something is good or not.
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    > The term is pointless. What happened in this case sounds bad, at a glance. Let's not generalize it to other things. It'll get nowhere. Whether or not one believes something is a part of cancel culture has no bearing on whether a particular idea to squash something is good or not. Yeah, that's how I feel. Arguing or getting outraged about ill-defined things that can't be attributed to specific people doesn't seem productive because there's no way to resolve it or learn anything. Some people exist that get offended by some things other people aren't offended by. So what? It's just noise.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    Who's in charge of "unpleasant things"? Are these things that a vast majority of the anglosphere, including POC, women, etc, wouldn't take offense to? Maybe people are objecting to a tiny % of critical theorists trying to seize control of acceptable language with no mandate.
    - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
      > Maybe people are objecting to a tiny % of critical theorists trying to seize control of acceptable language from the top down. The problem with that tiny % is, that they are loud, and that we give them attention. And by we, i include everyone, from a reddit upvter to mainstream media. It's 2020, milk is racist, rice is racist, syrup is racist,... and all that because of a few loud people powered by the media, grabbing views from the offended few and utraged many.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      Society is complicated and messy. Social change is uncomfortable. And yet for all the complaining of any given generation, they'd probably disagree with the ethics of three generations prior.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        The thing is, you're not exactly ending segregation here. What I see is an ever-shifting goalpost of harmless aphorisms that are newly considered 'offensive' by a bunch of upper-class people. What does that do for George Floyd's family, exactly? Did it prevent Jacob Blake from being shot in the back a few months later? If you want to embrace critical theory, you should include the critical theorists in the analysis -- what's their power incentive? What do they stand to gain? Let's not just assume they're saints but everyone else needs an inquisition.
        6y ago
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    It's not that simple. You have your usual bucket of nutcases, who get offended by everything, and everything is sexist (airconditioning), racist (milk) or *-phobic. But then you have cases, where a mere accusation of anything even without proof) can destroy peoples lives, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case You also have (somewhat) mainstream media spreading such fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus You also have individuals, eg. Johnny Depp getting acused by Amber Heard, losing his upcoming acting roles, and after a time (and 87 cctv videos), she's found to be the crazy/violent one. You have people like Pewdiepie getting accused of being a racist many times: https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18136253/pewdiepie-vs-tseries-links-to-white-supremacist-alt-right-redpill https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18136253/pewdiepie-vs-tseries... Pewdiepie has a special 'power', that he gets more views than Vox does, so he can atleast present his side of the story ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjCsOmDmjEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjCsOmDmjEU ). Some people don't have that media presence, but the media atleast scewed up enough, so they're no settling multimillion dollar lawsuits (Nick Sandmann, the 'smirking guy'). Now imagine, you're not a famous person, and you're not in a position of being able to sue CNN. Just one mere accusation (whout proof, without anything), can totally destroy your life, and you have no way to fight back. No police report, no judge, no jury, just one "he said, she said", one complaint, and there's nothing you can do... you lose your job, maybe even your carreer, you might get thrown out of your college, or worse. The accuser can lie to the media, say you said something -ist, or -phobic, and there's literally nothing you can do. Now combine the "nutcases" with accusations, and your code using master/slave terminology is racist (as a slav, i have no idea why 'slave' is considered racist), boy/girl in character selection screen and never after is transphobic, and i have no idea what "not implementing all the pronouns" is. Now, we have two options... either we become sensitive to everytihing, and destroy normal human relations and comedy (although, we've gone most of the way there, because of so many protected groups and actions, not allowed to be joked about, the only group you can target your jokes at are white men (with movies like 40 days and 40 nights, where a rape of a man is a comedic high point, and many other examples)), or we can just grow up, not get offended by something someone somewhere said or did (especially if it was a joke), and not "cancel" people because of that.
    - 6y ago
- Pyxl101 6y ago
  News is totally fucked. Look at how most media reported on James Damore being fired from Google, and what they quoted him as having saying, vs what he actually said (1). According to the media, Damore called women "neurotic" and said they were "biologically unfit to be software engineers". Nothing close whatsoever to what was actually said (1). Meanwhile there are university professors willing to defend the memo (2). For example, "For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history." (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico) (1) https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... (2) https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...
sgustard 6y ago
Can someone give me specifics on who's affected by "cancel culture"? It's a meaningless label to me. I mean, I think Bill Cosby has been cancelled. Colin Kaepernick was for kneeling. And the lady who called the police on the black man in central park. Some of those may be unjustified. Is this really the biggest problem in society?
- donor20 6y ago
  I had a teacher in high school (black). He was an absolute favorite of students of all backgrounds. Extremely strict, very buttoned up. In the arts department. I think he literally was the advisor for like the multi-cultural club (that did somewhat lame lunch multi-cultural stuff). He put on a performance that turned out was racist or sexist or something. Think les miserable - we were always doing stuff like that, so the stories were very varied. Bam, he was gone. Even the students in the group that should have been offended were like, he's great. But there was a very very vocal very small set of more activist parents (white BTW!) with one or two students who were after him. Reminds me of the (white again) liberals in Portland or Seattle going after the police chief to cut her pay etc (black women). I was like, who cares what two parents and their kids think. But they got in the paper talking about the racist (I think?) environment he created / messages being sent / cultural appropriation etc. This is theatre - people dress up as different characters so no question an identity politics issue was there most likely. And yes - he was gone the next year after something like 12 years of building up this amazing program. His performances were sold out for multiple showings (literally everyone in school, every parent, every relative, randos went). The shows were major. All the context was overlooked (this guy was so formal he was never crude / rude or insulting). He'd spent all these extra hours doing all these things to bring different groups together - through music and more (he was an immigrant). Two to three people, a scared / sensitive admin team, and boom, thousands of folks the worse for his going. Everyone is worse for this. A lot of the categories of offense are extremely broad or very subtle and penalties are very severe.
- torstenvl 6y ago
  USC professor under fire after using Chinese expression students allege sounds like English slur https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/us/usc-chinese-professor-racism-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/us/usc-chinese-professor-raci... SDG&E Worker Fired Over Alleged Racist Gesture Says He Was Cracking Knuckles 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... Professors mobbed, stripped of teaching positions and residential life functions after suggesting students should establish their own social norms rather than having them enforced by administration https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-per...

seanwilson 6y ago

What do you concretely think should be done though? Aren't there already laws about harassing people? I think the news should be more responsible by not reporting that someone was offended by something unless it has serious objective merit because it just gets everyone riled up on non-issues for no good reason. Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic that would be hard to police in any way because you aren't talking about specific people or specific ideas.

klmadfejno 6y ago
> Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic A good, frustrating point. A large proportion of complaints of cancel culture are coupled with implications of frustration that they feel they can't say unpleasant things that they would have gotten away with previously. Or people complaining about direct efforts to change social norms that they don't agree with, claiming that due to a status quo bias, change is cancellation and therefore baseless. As with most ideologies, discussing the definition is a fairly pointless task because its subjective and ill-defined, especially by those who feel passionately about it. The term is pointless. What happened in this case sounds bad, at a glance. Let's not generalize it to other things. It'll get nowhere. Whether or not one believes something is a part of cancel culture has no bearing on whether a particular idea to squash something is good or not.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > The term is pointless. What happened in this case sounds bad, at a glance. Let's not generalize it to other things. It'll get nowhere. Whether or not one believes something is a part of cancel culture has no bearing on whether a particular idea to squash something is good or not. Yeah, that's how I feel. Arguing or getting outraged about ill-defined things that can't be attributed to specific people doesn't seem productive because there's no way to resolve it or learn anything. Some people exist that get offended by some things other people aren't offended by. So what? It's just noise.
- free_rms 6y ago
  Who's in charge of "unpleasant things"? Are these things that a vast majority of the anglosphere, including POC, women, etc, wouldn't take offense to? Maybe people are objecting to a tiny % of critical theorists trying to seize control of acceptable language with no mandate.
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    > Maybe people are objecting to a tiny % of critical theorists trying to seize control of acceptable language from the top down. The problem with that tiny % is, that they are loud, and that we give them attention. And by we, i include everyone, from a reddit upvter to mainstream media. It's 2020, milk is racist, rice is racist, syrup is racist,... and all that because of a few loud people powered by the media, grabbing views from the offended few and utraged many.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    Society is complicated and messy. Social change is uncomfortable. And yet for all the complaining of any given generation, they'd probably disagree with the ethics of three generations prior.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      The thing is, you're not exactly ending segregation here. What I see is an ever-shifting goalpost of harmless aphorisms that are newly considered 'offensive' by a bunch of upper-class people. What does that do for George Floyd's family, exactly? Did it prevent Jacob Blake from being shot in the back a few months later? If you want to embrace critical theory, you should include the critical theorists in the analysis -- what's their power incentive? What do they stand to gain? Let's not just assume they're saints but everyone else needs an inquisition.
      - 6y ago
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  It's not that simple. You have your usual bucket of nutcases, who get offended by everything, and everything is sexist (airconditioning), racist (milk) or *-phobic. But then you have cases, where a mere accusation of anything even without proof) can destroy peoples lives, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case You also have (somewhat) mainstream media spreading such fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus You also have individuals, eg. Johnny Depp getting acused by Amber Heard, losing his upcoming acting roles, and after a time (and 87 cctv videos), she's found to be the crazy/violent one. You have people like Pewdiepie getting accused of being a racist many times: https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18136253/pewdiepie-vs-tseries-links-to-white-supremacist-alt-right-redpill https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18136253/pewdiepie-vs-tseries... Pewdiepie has a special 'power', that he gets more views than Vox does, so he can atleast present his side of the story ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjCsOmDmjEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjCsOmDmjEU ). Some people don't have that media presence, but the media atleast scewed up enough, so they're no settling multimillion dollar lawsuits (Nick Sandmann, the 'smirking guy'). Now imagine, you're not a famous person, and you're not in a position of being able to sue CNN. Just one mere accusation (whout proof, without anything), can totally destroy your life, and you have no way to fight back. No police report, no judge, no jury, just one "he said, she said", one complaint, and there's nothing you can do... you lose your job, maybe even your carreer, you might get thrown out of your college, or worse. The accuser can lie to the media, say you said something -ist, or -phobic, and there's literally nothing you can do. Now combine the "nutcases" with accusations, and your code using master/slave terminology is racist (as a slav, i have no idea why 'slave' is considered racist), boy/girl in character selection screen and never after is transphobic, and i have no idea what "not implementing all the pronouns" is. Now, we have two options... either we become sensitive to everytihing, and destroy normal human relations and comedy (although, we've gone most of the way there, because of so many protected groups and actions, not allowed to be joked about, the only group you can target your jokes at are white men (with movies like 40 days and 40 nights, where a rape of a man is a comedic high point, and many other examples)), or we can just grow up, not get offended by something someone somewhere said or did (especially if it was a joke), and not "cancel" people because of that.
  - 6y ago
Pyxl101 6y ago
News is totally fucked. Look at how most media reported on James Damore being fired from Google, and what they quoted him as having saying, vs what he actually said (1). According to the media, Damore called women "neurotic" and said they were "biologically unfit to be software engineers". Nothing close whatsoever to what was actually said (1). Meanwhile there are university professors willing to defend the memo (2). For example, "For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history." (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico) (1) https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... (2) https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...

sgustard 6y ago

Can someone give me specifics on who's affected by "cancel culture"? It's a meaningless label to me. I mean, I think Bill Cosby has been cancelled. Colin Kaepernick was for kneeling. And the lady who called the police on the black man in central park. Some of those may be unjustified. Is this really the biggest problem in society?

donor20 6y ago
I had a teacher in high school (black). He was an absolute favorite of students of all backgrounds. Extremely strict, very buttoned up. In the arts department. I think he literally was the advisor for like the multi-cultural club (that did somewhat lame lunch multi-cultural stuff). He put on a performance that turned out was racist or sexist or something. Think les miserable - we were always doing stuff like that, so the stories were very varied. Bam, he was gone. Even the students in the group that should have been offended were like, he's great. But there was a very very vocal very small set of more activist parents (white BTW!) with one or two students who were after him. Reminds me of the (white again) liberals in Portland or Seattle going after the police chief to cut her pay etc (black women). I was like, who cares what two parents and their kids think. But they got in the paper talking about the racist (I think?) environment he created / messages being sent / cultural appropriation etc. This is theatre - people dress up as different characters so no question an identity politics issue was there most likely. And yes - he was gone the next year after something like 12 years of building up this amazing program. His performances were sold out for multiple showings (literally everyone in school, every parent, every relative, randos went). The shows were major. All the context was overlooked (this guy was so formal he was never crude / rude or insulting). He'd spent all these extra hours doing all these things to bring different groups together - through music and more (he was an immigrant). Two to three people, a scared / sensitive admin team, and boom, thousands of folks the worse for his going. Everyone is worse for this. A lot of the categories of offense are extremely broad or very subtle and penalties are very severe.
torstenvl 6y ago
USC professor under fire after using Chinese expression students allege sounds like English slur https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/us/usc-chinese-professor-racism-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/us/usc-chinese-professor-raci... SDG&E Worker Fired Over Alleged Racist Gesture Says He Was Cracking Knuckles 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... Professors mobbed, stripped of teaching positions and residential life functions after suggesting students should establish their own social norms rather than having them enforced by administration https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-per...