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> 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 im

> 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.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      There's a good chance, I would think, that the black lives matter movement and changing social dialogue improves race relations in the future.
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

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.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    There's a good chance, I would think, that the black lives matter movement and changing social dialogue improves race relations in the future.

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