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I've seen this take quite a bit lately with respect to cancel culture and I'm a bit confused about it. Since HN is amazing, I'm hoping someone here can help me

I've seen this take quite a bit lately with respect to cancel culture and I'm a bit confused about it. Since HN is amazing, I'm hoping someone here can help me understand without it turning into a flamewar. I don't understand how "cancel culture" is substantially different from what we used to call "boycotts", just with the internet for more social lubrication. I suppose theres a risk that the allegations at the center of the boycott are incorrect, but isn't that what defamation laws are meant to combat?

matkoniecz 6y ago
Not an expert, but big difference is that boycotts are against companies/businesses while cancellations target individuals.
- rgblambda 6y ago
  The term can apply to individuals as well. The origin of the term boycott was a landlord's agent called Charles Boycott, who was socially and economically ostracised in response to the eviction of tenants.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I think one thing that I've noticed is that defamation laws seem really hard to enforce on people speaking on the internet, especially when one can hide behind a pseudonym or straight anonymity. I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civil rights bus boycotts wanted a specific policy to change and once that policy changed, they stopped their boycotts. Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual and there doesn't seem to be much that the individual can do to seek redemption—but I may be wrong on this. Would love to hear your thoughts in response.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  Thats a fair take. I hadn't considered the sort-of agenda that boycotts tend to have. I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling. _____ You lost me a bit on: > Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual... I've been conceptualizing the cancel as individuals choosing to not support creators, but this makes it sound like theres a third-party involved. A sibling comment mentioned people repeatedly calling Disney.. am I missing something here? _____ I've been involved in one cancel before, so heres the frame of reference I'm coming from: I like an artist named DojaKat. A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it. I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel). Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists. Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
  - dkersten 6y ago
    When I hear "cancel culture", I think of the cases where someone is accused of something, usually over social media, and without any real chance to defend themselves gets attacked and harassed by a hordes of anonymous strangers online in a witch hunt, typically alongside death threats and demanding that their employers fire them. So, unless you sent DojaKat death threats or tried to have her fired/have her l7income taken away, I don't see a boycott like that as the same as "cancel culture" at all.
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    > I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling. I appreciate this point. I think sometimes these waves of calls for cancellation play into larger movements that have more clearly defined goals, such as #metoo, which I think focused on shedding light on sexual violence/abuse/harassment and to get individuals and organizations to create more policies to prevent it from happening. Maybe when I think of "cancel culture" I think less of the underlying structural goals of it, but you've helped me step back to think of that. ______ I think a lot with the call to "cancel" someone (I don't know why I feel compelled to put it in quotes but I keep doing it) is often to specifically tell the organization(s) to remove the individual from participating. E.g., wanting Netflix to fire Kevin Spacey in House of Cards (and other Hollywood production firms to no longer hire him), wanting radio stations to ban R Kelly's music, etc. So I think it's the idea that for a person to be cancelled, someone has to do the cancelling. _____ I guess for me, I wouldn't see that so much as how the phrase "cancel" is being used in the "cancel culture" idea. Yours seems to be you, the individual consumer, doing the cancellation, and also you being open to giving her a second chance through forgiveness. I see a "cancel" of DojaKat in this instance being people demanding that her record company, her agent, TV stations, radio stations, and others agree to break relations with her and when she apologizes, to not forgive her and to not give her a second chance. So in summary, I see "cancel culture" as more about trying to rally others, especially groups and institutions, to break off relations with that person (or sometimes a group) and to do so permanently. I personally don't like it because I believe much more in restorative justice than I do retributive justice, and I also believe that by distancing ourselves from these people, through the power of the internet, they may find other people who feel alienated and cancelled and they could form into more and more radicalized groups.
mgarfias 6y ago
Boycott is me (or you) choosing not to spend your money or do business with a particular entity due to perceived notions about that entity. This cancel culture stuff is about not just "not reading the article and not going to the site", its an active attack against someone that you don't like. A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.
- kube-system 6y ago
  There is a long history of people who have been fired due to public outrage. People have different (and a greater number of) means of communicating that outrage today, but the general mechanism hasn't changed.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  A few people have made the point about boycotts being against organizations and cancels being against individuals. I don’t see the material difference there, what about it being an individual makes you feel it’s different? Your last point is intriguing to me. If I were to simply not watch films with Gina Carano in them anymore, would you still say I’m canceling her?
  - unishark 6y ago
    When it's against individuals it starts to become harassment and bullying, depending on the severity. These are not things we generally care about protecting organizations from, just individuals.
    - mathgorges 6y ago
      I see, that makes sense. I’m still curious if me choosing to not watch films with problematic individuals in them would be considered cancelling or a boycott?
      - unishark 6y ago
jimbokun 6y ago
People getting fired for an allegation that doesn't pan out, but by then their reputation and career are already destroyed. Or comments taken out of context or missing nuance. Or punishment out of proportion to the offense. In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals. Suing for defamation can be expensive and risky, and doesn't necessarily restore reputational damage even if you win. Obviously, some people clearly guilty of the accusations against them and deserve the consequences being meted out against them. But there is also a long history of "witch hunts" and people being punished in ways that don't deserve. Social media is enabling a new form of that, which is what we call "cancel culture".
- klyrs 6y ago
  > In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals. This isn't remotely new, though. For one very visible example in our industry, Lynn Conway got fired for coming out as transgender. Similarly, Turing was canceled for being gay. Politicians have been getting canceled for marital infidelity for most of my life (and, wow, Trump really modernized the Republican party on that one). Not to mention the McCarthy era, where people got canceled over suspected affiliation with leftists. There's a huge panic about how cancel culture is destroying the world... but the difference is that people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry, instead of getting canceled by the intolerance and bigotry of those in power. And, yes. There are certainly cases where the cancellation is disproportionate to the offense. But compared to Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, and many many others canceled in the past... there's nothing new here, and historically speaking, this sort of cancellation is pretty soft.
  - jlawson 6y ago
    Turing wasn't 'canceled' for being gay. He was prosecuted by the government according to the laws of the time, by police. Cancel culture is extra-legal and does not involve the use of laws or police. Cancel culture is also distinct from politicians and infidelity because cancel culture targets non-public individuals. Of course politicians and celebrities were always subject to public opinion; the modern era now means that everyone can be targeted this way, even if they weren't known at all before (Justine Sacco is a simple example). The McCarthy era was again a matter of government action through government processes with at least some level of transparency, democratic representation, and accountability. It was not spontaneous mobs of individuals without leaders or any kind of accountability. (They also targeted communists, not just 'leftists'). It's ironic you say casually that "people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry", when cancel culture is itself intolerance and bigotry. The standard definition of bigotry is "extreme intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." [0] [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you who are openly clear that cancel culture is just like historical persecution, but you're totally fine with it because you (wrongly) think it only happens to bad people. As though only people you like deserve to have human rights.
ookblah 6y ago
i think boycotting a business or having a highly visible public figure (aka celebrities) face social consequences isn't "cancel culture". it comes with the territory, so to speak. for me, personally, it's when your average joe gets the other end of internet mob justice and they suddenly seek to ruin everything about your life above and beyond what you would normally face.
mr-wendel 6y ago
Great questions, and I applaud your ability to approach a sensitive topic with such open curiosity. Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit. - The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized problem and response can now turn into a localized problem, but global response. - The ability to go back-in-time is all too easy. That dumb comment you made as a teenager can come back years and years later to haunt you (or people close to you). Maybe you had a massive turn-around already or you were recorded without consent. Often that doesn't matter. - It is fostering an insidious call-out culture. The focus is no longer on prevention and remediation, but on scoring points and repositioning power towards "the vanguard". Legitimate victims aren't helped to heal and offenders aren't led to improve. - No room is given to defend yourself, particularly when mobbed upon. Even if the record is set straight later it doesn't matter, as your reputation (possibly friendships, career, and family life) is in tatters. What I do feel worth asserting is this: no matter what the current norm is, always remember you will be judged according to later standards, right or wrong. The greater the disparity in power the more important this is regardless of role (e.g. boss, parent, etc).
- mathgorges 6y ago
  Thanks for this. These sort-of argument catalogue comments are very helpful in these discussions. And your call out at the bottom is good wisdom :) Edit: this->these
  - mr-wendel 6y ago
    You bet! Now, if you'll allow me to try to present the other side for your consideration: - Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick. - That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic. - People are learning how horrible it is to rely on power and privilege to isolate you from the effects of your wrong-doing. Even if we assume the best of people and that they aren't consciously doing this, it is still pushing awareness closer to consciousness and thus (hopefully) better decision making. - The importance of allyship is making massive strides. As oft quoted, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". On a personal note, as a kid watching a neighborhood kid get his bully-buddy to stop throwing snowballs at another kid taught me a lesson I've never forgotten. - "Good" and "bad" deeds always have a "blast radius" and require support of some kind to sustain. Engaging organizations and platforms that surround people is a critical component to making a change, or all you're doing is swapping the hood ornament on the car without touching the engine underneath.
macksd 6y ago
I see the difference as being that boycotting is a means of protesting a specific policy or practice in the hopes that an organization changes. Cancel culture is wanting to punish a person (or virtue signal) for something in the past. Maybe they deserve it - I get it more when there's a history of credible charges of sexual assault or something (but then, I'd prefer they be tried in court and punished via the legal system). But the bar seems to have lowered and now you get fired for a tweet people don't like. And maybe people have the right to do it, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. If we're not careful it takes over the role of rule of law in our society and will do a worse job of it. In the recent case of Gina Carano specifically, I don't think her tweet is remotely offensive to the level of being fired, and the effect will be that she's given a voice and seen as a martyr by people who have far more extreme opinions than what she's voiced previously.
armchairhacker 6y ago
IMO the main issue with cancel culture is when it targets people who are innocent or gives unreasonable punishments for small mistakes. Those being cancelled are tried in the court of social media, where critics attack without evidence or even knowing the accusations. The accused' friends and employers fear being associated with the accused, even if they ultimately get cleared of any wrongdoing, and they can sue for defamation but it won't necessarily work out. People have gotten kicked out of colleges for using racist words in text messages. People have been fired for their jobs for messages taken out of context. Non-public individuals start getting death threats online and they get called out in the streets, for small mistakes or things taen out of context. A separate issue is that people sometimes get cancelled for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes even when they were still young. The issue here is that people change. It would be like boycotting a company because 20 years ago they exploited workers, regardless of whatever they're doing today. It's a really grey area.
- jounker 6y ago
  There is no such thing as cancel culture. It is a rhetorical device created to shift blame, allowing perpetrators of injustices to claim that they are really the victims.
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    Define injustice. Are you talking about serious hate crimes, i.e. physical violence? "Softer" but still awful actions, such as discriminatory hiring practices? Or impolitic comments that cause no actual harm? If you are talking about the first two, they are not merely injustices but crimes with legal (often criminal) remedies. Cancel culture typically refers to instances of the third option, someone saying something mean and having his life ruined for it. A good example: a guy's business was ruined because his daughter wrote some mean things online as a kid. https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-i-know-doesnt-match-the-social-media-monster/ https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-... They were certainly bad, and her parents ought to chastise and punish her for them. But neither she nor her father should face "cancellation". I feel just as sorry for her; she may never get into college or get a good job because of this. These weren't "injustices"; no man was harmed.
deleted 6y ago
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manfredo 6y ago
A boycott is when consumers protest an organization by refusing to do business with them. Typically this is done to try an effect a change in behavior or policy in said organization. Cancel culture usually targets an individual. The objective is typically not change in policy, but the ostracism of the target. E.g. refusing to buy from Nike until they pay better wages to their manufacturing labor is a boycott. Pressuring a company to fire a certain employee because a group doesn't like the political views of said employee is cancel culture.
werber 6y ago
Boycotts still exist, like the BDS (boycott divest sanction) movement
spoonjim 6y ago
Yes, they are equivalent to boycotts, but think about how hard it was to organize a boycott. They were done at large scale to protest things like “black people must sit in the back of the bus.” Now your career can end because “You encouraged too much forgiveness for a girl who attended the wrong kind of party at 18.”
heywherelogingo 6y ago
Boycott - don't attend talk. Cancel culture - you may not give talk.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  So “cancel culture” == “deplatforming”?
  - dkersten 6y ago
    It can be, sure. Or getting you fired or otherwise demanding that your income stream is taken away. Without any recourse or chance to defend yourself, typically. This is often alongside mass outrage and death threats and usually the majority of the participants are just jumping on to score points or be part of it or whatever, without really having put much thought into whether the accusations are true or how their actions will affect others.
ZeroGravitas 6y ago
Like "terrorists" vs "freedom fighters" it's very much about which side you're on. And if you feel like you're about to slip into minority status, you suddenly have a very different opinion on the majority making their voices heard than you did when you were the majority.
munificent 6y ago
The surface level distinction is that a boycott is aimed at an organization while canceling is aimed at a person. That has deeper consequences because our mental model of organizations and people is different. With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved. But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future. Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill. It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of. In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  _Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I posted about the only cancel I've intentionally been involved in elsewhere: I like an artist named DojaKat. A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it. I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel). Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists. Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
  - munificent 6y ago
    > _Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I mean, I'm no authority on any of this. But my impression is that most of the high profile cancelations I've seen have no attached list of demands at which point the person is considered to have made amends and can return to their previous stature. > Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel? Unless you were publicly telling other people that they shouldn't stream her then I wouldn't interpret it as any kind of "cancel". We're all free to stop consuming from anyone for whatever reason we like. That's not canceling people, it's just having a preference.
randomsearch 6y ago
Just a slightly orthogonal point: don't discount the "internet for more social lubrication" issue. The use of feedback and machine learning (even simple mechanisms) in social media to selectively show the most engaging content has, in my opinion, been a fundamental cause of cancel culture. Cancel culture requires "moral outrage", and enragement is engagement, so Twitter (esp) is a factory for moral outrage. This is fundamentally different from boycotts in the sense that boycotts were "organised", "led", or "stirred up" (according to your pov) by people. For example, anti-Nestle campaigners collecting petition signatures. There's a real world cost, a responsibility to be taken, a time lapse. In contrast, moral outrages are manufactured almost autonomously by curation algorithms that are constantly searching for engagement. Outrage happens to be one really good strategy for that. The barrier to participation is extremely low - just click here, type an optional tweet dunking further on the target if you wish - and the speed they can spread is fast. Compounding this is the propensity to be outraged has increased, I think, partly because "engagement-rich" modes of thinking have been spread. I'll resist giving concrete examples to leave the discussion politically neutral. I really think there's an awful lot of responsibility for this problem on the social media companies and their leaders.
Dma54rhs 6y ago
In my eyes it's usually like competing witch hunts / trials with modern legal system :) Way too often people are not interested in justice but revenge, even with the facts out there the will to destroy someone you don't is bigger than reason.
zug_zug 6y ago
Well, I saw somebody illustrate the point very with this comparison "How can you argue somebody should lose their job and not be forgiven for a bad word they said 10 years ago, but at the same time argue criminals who robbed somebody should get forgiven and get probation in less time?"
underwater 6y ago
Boycotts are typically aimed at companies, not individuals. Boycotts are conducted by people with an existing relationship with the target. Boycotts are usually seeking to inflict financial damage, rather than primarily reputational. Boycotts are addressing an issue directly, cancel culture is addressing systematic issues with selective enforcement. Boycotts are trying to change the behaviour of their target, rather than make an example out of them or as punishment. Boycotts are typically temporary, not permanent.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  I've seen a handful of people make the point on permanency, but it doesn't sit right with me. Since theres no central authority enforcing a cancel, how can it be permanent? How many times has Kanye West been "cancelled"? It seems to me everyone forgets about having cancelled him whenever he releases a new album ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And it makes sense to me, since cancels are done by disconnected individuals, a cancel ought to only last as long as the cancelling collective's attention span.
WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
Lower threshold for one to occur. A cancel attempt can be really small. Sometimes a single person is enough. More targeted and more often aimed at specific individuals. As a side effect of the above, it is much easier to devolve into harassment and worse crimes than when it was a business that was being boycott. More access to data to cancel on. Much easier to take information out of context now that social media exists. Cancels also take on characteristics of a meme. A given behavior may lead to a cancel attempt while far worse behavior by others is ignored. There is a lack of rhyme or reason that pairs up with how some things become a meme and other similar things do not. What is considered worthy of being canceled has increased to include many actions that the majority does not feel comfortable cancelling over, but given the previous changes a smaller group is needed to convince HR that someone should be fired.

matkoniecz 6y ago

Not an expert, but big difference is that boycotts are against companies/businesses while cancellations target individuals.

rgblambda 6y ago
The term can apply to individuals as well. The origin of the term boycott was a landlord's agent called Charles Boycott, who was socially and economically ostracised in response to the eviction of tenants.

jimkleiber 6y ago

I think one thing that I've noticed is that defamation laws seem really hard to enforce on people speaking on the internet, especially when one can hide behind a pseudonym or straight anonymity. I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civil rights bus boycotts wanted a specific policy to change and once that policy changed, they stopped their boycotts. Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual and there doesn't seem to be much that the individual can do to seek redemption—but I may be wrong on this. Would love to hear your thoughts in response.

mathgorges 6y ago
Thats a fair take. I hadn't considered the sort-of agenda that boycotts tend to have. I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling. _____ You lost me a bit on: > Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual... I've been conceptualizing the cancel as individuals choosing to not support creators, but this makes it sound like theres a third-party involved. A sibling comment mentioned people repeatedly calling Disney.. am I missing something here? _____ I've been involved in one cancel before, so heres the frame of reference I'm coming from: I like an artist named DojaKat. A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it. I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel). Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists. Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
- dkersten 6y ago
  When I hear "cancel culture", I think of the cases where someone is accused of something, usually over social media, and without any real chance to defend themselves gets attacked and harassed by a hordes of anonymous strangers online in a witch hunt, typically alongside death threats and demanding that their employers fire them. So, unless you sent DojaKat death threats or tried to have her fired/have her l7income taken away, I don't see a boycott like that as the same as "cancel culture" at all.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  > I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling. I appreciate this point. I think sometimes these waves of calls for cancellation play into larger movements that have more clearly defined goals, such as #metoo, which I think focused on shedding light on sexual violence/abuse/harassment and to get individuals and organizations to create more policies to prevent it from happening. Maybe when I think of "cancel culture" I think less of the underlying structural goals of it, but you've helped me step back to think of that. ______ I think a lot with the call to "cancel" someone (I don't know why I feel compelled to put it in quotes but I keep doing it) is often to specifically tell the organization(s) to remove the individual from participating. E.g., wanting Netflix to fire Kevin Spacey in House of Cards (and other Hollywood production firms to no longer hire him), wanting radio stations to ban R Kelly's music, etc. So I think it's the idea that for a person to be cancelled, someone has to do the cancelling. _____ I guess for me, I wouldn't see that so much as how the phrase "cancel" is being used in the "cancel culture" idea. Yours seems to be you, the individual consumer, doing the cancellation, and also you being open to giving her a second chance through forgiveness. I see a "cancel" of DojaKat in this instance being people demanding that her record company, her agent, TV stations, radio stations, and others agree to break relations with her and when she apologizes, to not forgive her and to not give her a second chance. So in summary, I see "cancel culture" as more about trying to rally others, especially groups and institutions, to break off relations with that person (or sometimes a group) and to do so permanently. I personally don't like it because I believe much more in restorative justice than I do retributive justice, and I also believe that by distancing ourselves from these people, through the power of the internet, they may find other people who feel alienated and cancelled and they could form into more and more radicalized groups.

mgarfias 6y ago

Boycott is me (or you) choosing not to spend your money or do business with a particular entity due to perceived notions about that entity. This cancel culture stuff is about not just "not reading the article and not going to the site", its an active attack against someone that you don't like. A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.

kube-system 6y ago
There is a long history of people who have been fired due to public outrage. People have different (and a greater number of) means of communicating that outrage today, but the general mechanism hasn't changed.
mathgorges 6y ago
A few people have made the point about boycotts being against organizations and cancels being against individuals. I don’t see the material difference there, what about it being an individual makes you feel it’s different? Your last point is intriguing to me. If I were to simply not watch films with Gina Carano in them anymore, would you still say I’m canceling her?
- unishark 6y ago
  When it's against individuals it starts to become harassment and bullying, depending on the severity. These are not things we generally care about protecting organizations from, just individuals.
  - mathgorges 6y ago
    I see, that makes sense. I’m still curious if me choosing to not watch films with problematic individuals in them would be considered cancelling or a boycott?
    - unishark 6y ago

jimbokun 6y ago

People getting fired for an allegation that doesn't pan out, but by then their reputation and career are already destroyed. Or comments taken out of context or missing nuance. Or punishment out of proportion to the offense. In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals. Suing for defamation can be expensive and risky, and doesn't necessarily restore reputational damage even if you win. Obviously, some people clearly guilty of the accusations against them and deserve the consequences being meted out against them. But there is also a long history of "witch hunts" and people being punished in ways that don't deserve. Social media is enabling a new form of that, which is what we call "cancel culture".

klyrs 6y ago
> In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals. This isn't remotely new, though. For one very visible example in our industry, Lynn Conway got fired for coming out as transgender. Similarly, Turing was canceled for being gay. Politicians have been getting canceled for marital infidelity for most of my life (and, wow, Trump really modernized the Republican party on that one). Not to mention the McCarthy era, where people got canceled over suspected affiliation with leftists. There's a huge panic about how cancel culture is destroying the world... but the difference is that people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry, instead of getting canceled by the intolerance and bigotry of those in power. And, yes. There are certainly cases where the cancellation is disproportionate to the offense. But compared to Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, and many many others canceled in the past... there's nothing new here, and historically speaking, this sort of cancellation is pretty soft.
- jlawson 6y ago
  Turing wasn't 'canceled' for being gay. He was prosecuted by the government according to the laws of the time, by police. Cancel culture is extra-legal and does not involve the use of laws or police. Cancel culture is also distinct from politicians and infidelity because cancel culture targets non-public individuals. Of course politicians and celebrities were always subject to public opinion; the modern era now means that everyone can be targeted this way, even if they weren't known at all before (Justine Sacco is a simple example). The McCarthy era was again a matter of government action through government processes with at least some level of transparency, democratic representation, and accountability. It was not spontaneous mobs of individuals without leaders or any kind of accountability. (They also targeted communists, not just 'leftists'). It's ironic you say casually that "people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry", when cancel culture is itself intolerance and bigotry. The standard definition of bigotry is "extreme intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." [0] [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you who are openly clear that cancel culture is just like historical persecution, but you're totally fine with it because you (wrongly) think it only happens to bad people. As though only people you like deserve to have human rights.

ookblah 6y ago

i think boycotting a business or having a highly visible public figure (aka celebrities) face social consequences isn't "cancel culture". it comes with the territory, so to speak. for me, personally, it's when your average joe gets the other end of internet mob justice and they suddenly seek to ruin everything about your life above and beyond what you would normally face.

mr-wendel 6y ago

Great questions, and I applaud your ability to approach a sensitive topic with such open curiosity. Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit. - The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized problem and response can now turn into a localized problem, but global response. - The ability to go back-in-time is all too easy. That dumb comment you made as a teenager can come back years and years later to haunt you (or people close to you). Maybe you had a massive turn-around already or you were recorded without consent. Often that doesn't matter. - It is fostering an insidious call-out culture. The focus is no longer on prevention and remediation, but on scoring points and repositioning power towards "the vanguard". Legitimate victims aren't helped to heal and offenders aren't led to improve. - No room is given to defend yourself, particularly when mobbed upon. Even if the record is set straight later it doesn't matter, as your reputation (possibly friendships, career, and family life) is in tatters. What I do feel worth asserting is this: no matter what the current norm is, always remember you will be judged according to later standards, right or wrong. The greater the disparity in power the more important this is regardless of role (e.g. boss, parent, etc).

mathgorges 6y ago
Thanks for this. These sort-of argument catalogue comments are very helpful in these discussions. And your call out at the bottom is good wisdom :) Edit: this->these
- mr-wendel 6y ago
  You bet! Now, if you'll allow me to try to present the other side for your consideration: - Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick. - That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic. - People are learning how horrible it is to rely on power and privilege to isolate you from the effects of your wrong-doing. Even if we assume the best of people and that they aren't consciously doing this, it is still pushing awareness closer to consciousness and thus (hopefully) better decision making. - The importance of allyship is making massive strides. As oft quoted, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". On a personal note, as a kid watching a neighborhood kid get his bully-buddy to stop throwing snowballs at another kid taught me a lesson I've never forgotten. - "Good" and "bad" deeds always have a "blast radius" and require support of some kind to sustain. Engaging organizations and platforms that surround people is a critical component to making a change, or all you're doing is swapping the hood ornament on the car without touching the engine underneath.

macksd 6y ago

I see the difference as being that boycotting is a means of protesting a specific policy or practice in the hopes that an organization changes. Cancel culture is wanting to punish a person (or virtue signal) for something in the past. Maybe they deserve it - I get it more when there's a history of credible charges of sexual assault or something (but then, I'd prefer they be tried in court and punished via the legal system). But the bar seems to have lowered and now you get fired for a tweet people don't like. And maybe people have the right to do it, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. If we're not careful it takes over the role of rule of law in our society and will do a worse job of it. In the recent case of Gina Carano specifically, I don't think her tweet is remotely offensive to the level of being fired, and the effect will be that she's given a voice and seen as a martyr by people who have far more extreme opinions than what she's voiced previously.

armchairhacker 6y ago

IMO the main issue with cancel culture is when it targets people who are innocent or gives unreasonable punishments for small mistakes. Those being cancelled are tried in the court of social media, where critics attack without evidence or even knowing the accusations. The accused' friends and employers fear being associated with the accused, even if they ultimately get cleared of any wrongdoing, and they can sue for defamation but it won't necessarily work out. People have gotten kicked out of colleges for using racist words in text messages. People have been fired for their jobs for messages taken out of context. Non-public individuals start getting death threats online and they get called out in the streets, for small mistakes or things taen out of context. A separate issue is that people sometimes get cancelled for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes even when they were still young. The issue here is that people change. It would be like boycotting a company because 20 years ago they exploited workers, regardless of whatever they're doing today. It's a really grey area.

jounker 6y ago
There is no such thing as cancel culture. It is a rhetorical device created to shift blame, allowing perpetrators of injustices to claim that they are really the victims.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Define injustice. Are you talking about serious hate crimes, i.e. physical violence? "Softer" but still awful actions, such as discriminatory hiring practices? Or impolitic comments that cause no actual harm? If you are talking about the first two, they are not merely injustices but crimes with legal (often criminal) remedies. Cancel culture typically refers to instances of the third option, someone saying something mean and having his life ruined for it. A good example: a guy's business was ruined because his daughter wrote some mean things online as a kid. https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-i-know-doesnt-match-the-social-media-monster/ https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-... They were certainly bad, and her parents ought to chastise and punish her for them. But neither she nor her father should face "cancellation". I feel just as sorry for her; she may never get into college or get a good job because of this. These weren't "injustices"; no man was harmed.

deleted 6y ago

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manfredo 6y ago

A boycott is when consumers protest an organization by refusing to do business with them. Typically this is done to try an effect a change in behavior or policy in said organization. Cancel culture usually targets an individual. The objective is typically not change in policy, but the ostracism of the target. E.g. refusing to buy from Nike until they pay better wages to their manufacturing labor is a boycott. Pressuring a company to fire a certain employee because a group doesn't like the political views of said employee is cancel culture.

werber 6y ago

Boycotts still exist, like the BDS (boycott divest sanction) movement

spoonjim 6y ago

Yes, they are equivalent to boycotts, but think about how hard it was to organize a boycott. They were done at large scale to protest things like “black people must sit in the back of the bus.” Now your career can end because “You encouraged too much forgiveness for a girl who attended the wrong kind of party at 18.”

heywherelogingo 6y ago

Boycott - don't attend talk. Cancel culture - you may not give talk.

mathgorges 6y ago
So “cancel culture” == “deplatforming”?
- dkersten 6y ago
  It can be, sure. Or getting you fired or otherwise demanding that your income stream is taken away. Without any recourse or chance to defend yourself, typically. This is often alongside mass outrage and death threats and usually the majority of the participants are just jumping on to score points or be part of it or whatever, without really having put much thought into whether the accusations are true or how their actions will affect others.

ZeroGravitas 6y ago

Like "terrorists" vs "freedom fighters" it's very much about which side you're on. And if you feel like you're about to slip into minority status, you suddenly have a very different opinion on the majority making their voices heard than you did when you were the majority.

munificent 6y ago

The surface level distinction is that a boycott is aimed at an organization while canceling is aimed at a person. That has deeper consequences because our mental model of organizations and people is different. With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved. But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future. Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill. It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of. In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.

mathgorges 6y ago
_Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I posted about the only cancel I've intentionally been involved in elsewhere: I like an artist named DojaKat. A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it. I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel). Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists. Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
- munificent 6y ago
  > _Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I mean, I'm no authority on any of this. But my impression is that most of the high profile cancelations I've seen have no attached list of demands at which point the person is considered to have made amends and can return to their previous stature. > Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel? Unless you were publicly telling other people that they shouldn't stream her then I wouldn't interpret it as any kind of "cancel". We're all free to stop consuming from anyone for whatever reason we like. That's not canceling people, it's just having a preference.

randomsearch 6y ago

Just a slightly orthogonal point: don't discount the "internet for more social lubrication" issue. The use of feedback and machine learning (even simple mechanisms) in social media to selectively show the most engaging content has, in my opinion, been a fundamental cause of cancel culture. Cancel culture requires "moral outrage", and enragement is engagement, so Twitter (esp) is a factory for moral outrage. This is fundamentally different from boycotts in the sense that boycotts were "organised", "led", or "stirred up" (according to your pov) by people. For example, anti-Nestle campaigners collecting petition signatures. There's a real world cost, a responsibility to be taken, a time lapse. In contrast, moral outrages are manufactured almost autonomously by curation algorithms that are constantly searching for engagement. Outrage happens to be one really good strategy for that. The barrier to participation is extremely low - just click here, type an optional tweet dunking further on the target if you wish - and the speed they can spread is fast. Compounding this is the propensity to be outraged has increased, I think, partly because "engagement-rich" modes of thinking have been spread. I'll resist giving concrete examples to leave the discussion politically neutral. I really think there's an awful lot of responsibility for this problem on the social media companies and their leaders.

Dma54rhs 6y ago

In my eyes it's usually like competing witch hunts / trials with modern legal system :) Way too often people are not interested in justice but revenge, even with the facts out there the will to destroy someone you don't is bigger than reason.

zug_zug 6y ago

Well, I saw somebody illustrate the point very with this comparison "How can you argue somebody should lose their job and not be forgiven for a bad word they said 10 years ago, but at the same time argue criminals who robbed somebody should get forgiven and get probation in less time?"

underwater 6y ago

Boycotts are typically aimed at companies, not individuals. Boycotts are conducted by people with an existing relationship with the target. Boycotts are usually seeking to inflict financial damage, rather than primarily reputational. Boycotts are addressing an issue directly, cancel culture is addressing systematic issues with selective enforcement. Boycotts are trying to change the behaviour of their target, rather than make an example out of them or as punishment. Boycotts are typically temporary, not permanent.

mathgorges 6y ago
I've seen a handful of people make the point on permanency, but it doesn't sit right with me. Since theres no central authority enforcing a cancel, how can it be permanent? How many times has Kanye West been "cancelled"? It seems to me everyone forgets about having cancelled him whenever he releases a new album ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And it makes sense to me, since cancels are done by disconnected individuals, a cancel ought to only last as long as the cancelling collective's attention span.

WindyLakeReturn 6y ago

Lower threshold for one to occur. A cancel attempt can be really small. Sometimes a single person is enough. More targeted and more often aimed at specific individuals. As a side effect of the above, it is much easier to devolve into harassment and worse crimes than when it was a business that was being boycott. More access to data to cancel on. Much easier to take information out of context now that social media exists. Cancels also take on characteristics of a meme. A given behavior may lead to a cancel attempt while far worse behavior by others is ignored. There is a lack of rhyme or reason that pairs up with how some things become a meme and other similar things do not. What is considered worthy of being canceled has increased to include many actions that the majority does not feel comfortable cancelling over, but given the previous changes a smaller group is needed to convince HR that someone should be fired.