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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 movemen

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.

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.