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Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
- nickdothutton 6y agoVery interesting. He credits his perspective to the fact that he grew up in a Japanese’s family without the western influence limiting his creative output.
- jpxw 6y agoThe high number of upvotes and low number of comments here says something, I think...
- bitcharmer 6y agoIt's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
- A12-B 6y agoI don't really think no one is allowed to say anything controversial anymore. Plenty of national newspapers are willing to give people front-page editorials to say things that are not mainstream. That's hardly a dark age.
- agentdrtran 6y agoI love "anymore" in these statements, like in the US thirty years ago where anywhere you could speak to a wide audience was tightly controlled by wealthy white men
- _-david-_ 6y ago>Plenty of national newspapers are willing to give people front-page editorials to say things that are not mainstream. Do you have some examples?
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI have a counter example, just look at the debacle when the New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton and the editorial page editor had to resign because of the outrage about its content: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/07/nyt-opinion-bennet-resigns-cotton-op-ed-306317 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/07/nyt-opinion-bennet-...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kennywinker 6y agoHe called for using military force against civil rights activists. Is this the kind of great intellectual leap forward the grandparent post was talking about? Because if you want to talk about cancelling things, using the military to crush and jail activism is cancelling things pretty hard.
- _-david-_ 6y agoHe called on the use of force against people doing violence, not the peaceful protestors.
- kennywinker 6y ago"One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers." Incited by "violence" (mostly property damage, some clashes with cops trying to box in and disperse non-violent protestors) - but calling for dispersal of everyone. Using the military to crush a civil rights movement
- cblconfederate 6y agoWho knew, the age of unrestricted access meant that others would have unrestricted access to our secrets too
- standardUser 6y agoThere is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
- lainga 6y agoOr fired from your job, branded with the scarlet letter, have your private information shown to the public by some news outlet...
- c06n 6y agoAnd fired from your job. And yelled at on the street. And prevented from working in your field ever again. And death threats. So, blacklisting: check. Excommunication: check. I'd rather not wait till it goes down further.
- tstrimple 6y agoWho (apart from Colin Kaepernick) has been prevented from working in their field ever again?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwawaygh 6y agoAll of those things happen to homosexuals and non-Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and with MUCH greater frequency. When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take the cancel culture bugbear seriously.
- refenestrator 6y agoAnd that's really bad! Don't emulate it! "We're gonna hurt some people ourselves to get even" is the devil speaking.
- silicon2401 6y agoEverything rises and falls. Even in the west we've had the inquisition, the Stasi in the DDR, McCarthyism in the US. Hopefully the modern trend towards censorship and rightthink will encourage the future generations to appreciate freedom of speech and ideas
- jpxw 6y agoThe worrying thing, to me, is that it’s the young who are pushing this. Previously it was old conservatives, who were on the way out anyway. It’s different now.
- phendrenad2 6y agoCancel culture is mostly millennial-led. Gen Z seems to take it as the status quo, and we'll see what they do with it when they have power.
- artificial 6y agoCancel culture is McCarthyism, just driven by the left. Millenials are barely in power. I'd say GenX has more of a say.
- artificial 6y agoI recall the scares about D&D and Satanism back in the day. The shoe is on the other foot now, weirdly backed by the corporations. Do you think it's organic or inculcated?
- throwaway5752 6y agoHere's a counterpoint: in the last 150 years we've seen the enslavement and legally mandated racial segregation of African-Americans, same-sex marriages illegal until recently, enormous and largely forgot historical support of Hitler and Franco, a mass shooting of a synagogue amid a resurgence in neonazism, and are only celebrating 100 years of womens' right to vote. It's hard, from the outside of the bubble of this generally white and male forum, sometimes to appreciate how badly other people have it. Some people are effectively cancelled all the time and even a small taste of it has people in an uproar here. Perhaps a little empathy on all sides would be beneficial.
- edbob 6y agoThis is exactly why we should cherish the standard of moderation and equality that has been achieved, because it is that rare and precious and is so very easily lost. There are significant threats to this both from the left and the right, and they must be carefully guarded against. Cancel Culture hasn't destroyed it yet, but the people driving cancellations most definitely aim to suppress the voices of at least 40% of the country, and add insult to injury by falsely claiming that "only racists/fascists/etc. are canceled". As if Twitter mobs phoning in death threats were composed of good, rational people who can be trusted with the power to decide whether a person deserves to be seen as a human being or as scum.
- bart_spoon 6y agoEven if it were only white males suffering from cancel culture, this wouldn't be an argument that justifies the modern environment. That said, it isn't simply white, straight, upper class males being targeted: * The dutch translator for Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem quit after backlash due to the fact that they are a white, nonbinary individual rather than a "spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black". This despite the fact that they were specifically chosen by Gorman, herself a black female. [0] * Back in 2018, a black female student at Smith College complained of being discriminated against for "eating while black" because she was asked to leave an area that had been marked as off-limits to everyone. Subsequent investigations revealed the employees involved did nothing wrong and did not target the student. Despite this, the New York Times reported last week that they continue to receive harassment and threats. One woman, a cafeteria worker who suffers from chronic health issues, can't find employment because of it. The ACLU has continued to insist that the employees wronged the student, despite the result of the investigations. [1] * The YA fiction scene is constantly embroiled in controversy, often due to perceived crimes against woke culture. In one notable instance, the author Amelie Wen Zhao, a Chinese-American immigrant, had her upcoming novel cancelled and her career derailed due to the story involving a society in which people could be enslaved on a basis not involving the color of their skin. [2] * A highly praised science fiction short story published in Clarksworld magazine called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter", written by a trans author who was repurposing the meme, was pulled (along with all of the author's future submissions) after intense public backlash towards the author by the Twitter woke mob. [3] * Glenn Greenwald, a gay journalist, has been targeted in recent weeks as a "transphobe" for drawing attention to recent study defending a book questioning if young people are being pressured into transitioning too strongly against an ACLU lawyer who was publicly arguing the book should be censored, and for drawing attention to recent research regarding the skyrocketing rates of those who identify as LGBTQ in the youngest generations [4] [5] Plenty of women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and the poor are being targeted and harmed for not toeing the cultural party line. This cultish group think is dangerous for individuals, and it's dangerous for our society, regardless of who you are. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-gorman-white-translator-quits-marieke-lucas-rijneveld https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-gorman-... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.htm... [2] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-criticism-and-cancel-culture https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/17/sci-fi-magazine-pulls-story-by-trans-writer-after-barrage-of-attacks?fbclid=IwAR1cPSjyv9bUyWBkPR0yxrSjxWNx4alqpC3JegNt4j9XQeBpkKB6tHkiee8 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/17/sci-fi-magazin... [4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-speech https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-s... [5] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1364617687423471621 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1364617687423471621
- kennywinker 6y agoWhat kind of intellectual progress do you think we're missing out on? I see people getting "cancelled" (aka facing consequences) for things like sexual misconduct / abusive behavior. For anti trans views. For fascistic ideas, or storming the capital to re-instate a democratically defeated politician. Are any of these places where the next big leap in intellectual progress is going to come from?
- prionassembly 6y agoYou’re blurring away the gap between behavior and ideas. Sexual misconduct and “anti trans” views are as incommensurable as musical scales and baseball bats.
- kennywinker 6y agoI understand there is a difference. I’m saying I think the ideas being cancelled are actually just the kind of garbage ideas that don’t have merit but do cause harm. Do you think that anti-trans beliefs are going to be a source of intellectual progress? Because i’d argue that the deconstruction of the gender binary IS the kind of transformative idea that some people in this thread are saying is being stifled. Is the group of young people refusing to buy jk rowling’s next work the ones crushing an idea to maintain social order, or are they the iconoclasts breaking down the old ways with radical ideas? I’d say the latter, but...
- prionassembly 6y agoMy general intuition agrees with your views on gender. But I don’t trust my general intuition blindly - nor do I think it should be the basis for social engineering.
- jimbokun 6y ago> Is the group of young people refusing to buy jk rowling’s next work the ones crushing an idea to maintain social order This one. The idea there is some sophisticated science and nuanced understanding behind the critique of JK Rowling's statements about trans people is completely laughable. It consists of name calling and social signalling, almost exclusively. > the deconstruction of the gender binary IS the kind of transformative idea that some people in this thread are saying is being stifled You can't be serious. There are countless studies showing real differences between men and women in physical and mental traits, and it is incredibly rare for the people deconstructing the gender binary to seriously engage with them. Again, it mostly devolves to name calling and insulting people who mention any evidence that might challenge their pre-established world view.
- kylestlb 6y agodid you miss McCarthyism?
- Helloworldboy 6y agoNo, we live in an era of McCarthyism
- heterodoxxed 6y ago| This is truly the dark age of the information era. This is nonsense. Losing your audience has always been a concern for authors and it is easier to get an audience now than it has ever been.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoIt is not easy if popular platforms are pressured to not do business with you, because vocal minority deem you unfit to be published.
- heterodoxxed 6y agoWhich authors have experienced this?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoIsabel Fall seems to be an interesting example: https://reason.com/2020/01/17/canceled-transgender-story/ https://reason.com/2020/01/17/canceled-transgender-story/
- heterodoxxed 6y agoI'm not clear why this applies, she wasn't dropped by her publisher or blacklisted. She chose to cancel the story herself.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoThis is exactly what the article discusses and this is also the reason why it is relevant and why it applies. The topic becomes too controversial for a vocal minority and an author "voluntarily" self-censored. I chuckled when you said she did it herself. She did, likely after she was told what would happen otherwise. I chuckled, because I assume you think she is free the way Sartre suggested she is free?
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago>It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Cancel culture coming for me yet? No? Obama and Trump have condemned it and here we are.
- RobLach 6y agoHardly so. There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive reach without much consequence or effort. The idea that we're in a dark age of thought is purely rhetorical and only serves to frame a narrative that further amplifies ideas that would never had a chance to propagate before the information era. Furthermore, we are living in a time of such absurdity that there are politicians giving internationally televised press conferences about how their speech is being suppressed and they have no power. The only self-restriction is by people that don't have the conviction to stand by their ideas, or actually have not thought through their perspective to adequate level of introspection and evidence that can survive free and open discourse. Instead it's much easier to exclaim victimhood and censorship and not bother examining ideas beyond a gut feeling.
- shadowgovt 6y agoAnd perhaps, in this era of such free and open access to information, individuals are being held to a higher standard of not speaking from a position of authority without the knowledge that can be gleaned from that free and open access and not doubling-down on their ignorance when it is brought to light for them?
- lostcolony 6y agoOr being elected and then turned power broker in a major political party. It's definitely an interesting time to be alive.
- farias0 6y agoAnd who is the judge of what is and isn't true? You seem to imply social network consensus is a safe ruler for what kind of speech should be allowed but to me it sounds absurd.
- refenestrator 6y agoWhat's interesting is that heretical liberals have the most to fear in this environment. MAGA people can't be cancelled, and it's a badge of honor if attempted. But well-meaning unorthodox liberals really have to watch themselves.
- codezero 6y agoI haven't seen a dearth of people sharing their unpopular opinions, so I'm not sure I really agree with the sentiment that people are _actually_ self censoring in any more meaningful way than they normally do.
- rapind 6y agoVoicing an unpopular opinion always had a cost, today and hundreds of years ago. Either your conviction outweighs the consequences or it doesn’t. We shouldn’t assume that all or even most unpopular opinions will advance our intellectual progress. Like always there’s plenty of noise. I’m not keen on the automated (AI) filtering though, or how fast opinions can spread in the Information Age. Feels like we’re headed for disaster by skipping the organic and slow human vetting process.
- weeblewobble 6y agoThis seems to sort of elide the extremely popular and lucrative media ecosystem of the "IDW"/"free speech movement"/anti-woke movement. Certainly it's true that the Overton window has shifted in large sections of the legacy media, but the Overton window always existed. The idea that its illegitimate for a private organization to shift their personal Overton window seems vaguely authoritarian to me. Anyway it's never been easier to grow, reach, and monetize your personal audience (substack, podcasts, etc.) without gatekeepers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sosuke 6y agoI thought this was the reason authors often use pen names. Creating an entirely anonymous identity isn't easy but it is nice to screw up safely.
- A12-B 6y agoIt's pretty easy, actually. You make a website with whoisguard enabled, you sign your writing with a fake name, and you decline interview requests. Bonus points if you pretend to be a different gender, like JK Rowling did. Often times the allure of being a pseudonymous person actually makes your work even more attractive.
- lexapro 6y agoHow do you protect your intellectual property? As soon as there is any kind of legal battle your pseudonymity will be gone.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoBanksy has managed to preserve his pseudonymity through a corporate structure.
- icelancer 6y agoKinda. Like SSC, if you want to know his identity, you can find it out with a bit of effort.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoNot really. There are two contradictory claims as to his identity, neither is confirmed, and what little evidence has been adduced can be explained in another way.
- ghaff 6y agoIf you're bestselling enough for it to matter, probably a publisher would protect their property. Being pseudonymous doesn't necessarily mean that no one knows but that just a few people know who generally won't go blabbing to the newspapers. But if authorship of something becomes a widespread puzzle to solves, e.g. Primary Colors, it does tend to get out sooner or later.
- meetups323 6y agoAn interesting point is made way at the end: > And in fact AI could come up with the next big idea, an idea like communism or Nazism or capitalism… and what troubles me about that is that it is very difficult for humans to keep control of that situation. This to me is the best "are AI at human-level intellect yet" benchmark I've heard to date. Once AI can create a novel socio-political framework and convince humans to adapt it en-masse [0], I think we can safely say AI has far surpassed human intellect. (99.9999...% of humans can't accomplish such a task) 0: leaving myself some wiggle room with the definition of "masse"
- manux 6y agoThe Culture series by Ian M Banks has an interesting take on this, if this kind of sci-fi interests you!
- A12-B 6y agoThe reality is humans wouldn't believe the AI. They'd spend literal centuries arguing that the AI's parameters were wrong or the training data was bad if it meant they could protect their financial interests.
- uxp100 6y agoWell, I think the imaginary SF AI would have some ability to construct a superhumanly convincing argument. But also, its easy to imagine that the AI would also be protecting it's own financial interest at that point in some way. Or existential interest.
- meetups323 6y agoHumans need not necessarily know that it's an AI-created framework. If the I/O mechanism of the AI were an internet link, it could do all the work through twitter/reddit, blog posts, hell it could even hack its articles into news sites. All it needs to do is continue doing this until enough humans take the bait and bring it into non-internet.
- blablabla123 6y agoNot sure, I think with socio-political frameworks - as with programming - the devil is in the detail. Everybody is equal no matter what? Sounds great, but the detailed implementations of that have sucked so far and didn't match the interface spec anyways. As a matter of fact even smaller legislations in the sphere of taxes might need a lot of people doing a lot of calculations behind the scenes. It's not that a single politician comes up with a new tax scheme including a percentage and this just works. If done properly, it needs to be checked if it can actually be financed.
- manux 6y agoSelf-censoring is part of the frontal cortex's normal function. I only hear this word 'self-censorship' brought up as a boogeyman. If people have an axe to grind against some part of mainstream culture, why not just say it out loud instead of priming their readers with FUD? (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
- imwillofficial 6y agoI am going to charitably interpret your comment as ignorance of the topic as opposed to malicious muddying of the already confusing waters. Self censorship is indeed driven by the judgement portion of the brain, however, what is being mourned here is the constantly shifting and uncertain ground on which our current society puts its taboos. What was once a socially acceptable position to have in polite society, is no long so. Instead of slowly changing over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, it's mutating at a breakneck pace. Most people in my experience just want to live and let live. Not exhaust ourselves at the latest target of the two minutes hate outrage machine.
- Karunamon 6y ago>What was once a socially acceptable position to have in polite society, is no long so. To add on to this, it's not just that the standards change, it's that the standards change retroactively and you can be hounded out of your livelihood for an offhand comment made a decade prior. I can at least sympathize, if not agree with "cancelling" when someone demonstrates unrepentant shittiness in the present day, but this kind of ex-post-facto thing happening against statements that weren't even tangentially offensive when they were made is horrid. There's no way such an environment can't lead to self-censorship.
- manux 6y ago> it's mutating at a breakneck pace I agree that it's changing faster than a century ago, but I don't think "breakneck pace" is a fair qualifier. Lots of people comfortably adapt to new norms and change how they behave without significant effort. > the two minutes hate outrage machine. This phenomenon existed long before the internet. Heck, I'd bet long before writing was invented. Gossip in large social groups doesn't seem like something particularly new. I still think this has nothing to do with "self-censoring out of fear" being a Bad new thing. You _should_ self-censor if you think you're being offensive. If the author of the article really wanted to harp on the fact that predicting what is offensive is hard, then perhaps that should be the focus of the article. I don't think pushing the "fear" narrative is useful nor healthy.
- keiferski 6y agoI find it almost funny how the media/culture/etc. seems determined to build a group of people that will react negatively to so-called "cancel culture." They seem to think that people will gladly follow the ever-growing list of arbitrary rules indefinitely. If I were a betting man, I'd predict a resurgence in punk attitudes in about 2025 or 2030. At some point, the dam will break and people will stop caring. I already get a sense that the 13-19 generation is a bit tired of it.
- lainga 6y agoBut then, what are the norms and injunctions that this new generation will break...
- keiferski 6y agoAt some point, I think every generation looks at the collective "rules" of their parents and thinks, "Huh?" and starts to disregard it entirely, if only out of ignorance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- standardUser 6y agoThere is no lack of dissenting opinions to be found outside of the mainstream (the same place where punk once existed exclusively). Cancel culture is primarily a problem with mainstream/pop culture. The "underground" today is more vast and diverse than it has ever been.
- jolmg 6y agoIsn't that what pen-names are for? They can use a new pen-name if they want to write on a topic that might not be received well and only reveal themselves after it's well received. Has something changed so that this isn't as viable of a strategy anymore?
- mustaflex 6y agoI think it reached a certain point where even a pen-name is not enough. The author might write something completely safe(under his own name) and some people will still be able to nitpick and led a crusade against him/her. You can control what you write but not the mob trying to lynch you.
- ghaff 6y agoWell, yes, but not having a pen-name that's connected to a real world identity does limit the potential consequences to a significant degree. It's not perfect, especially if you do something illegal, but an online mob probably can't get you fired if they don't know your real identity.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- z9e 6y agoThis is happening in all professions I'd imagine. Everyone is so scared that they are violating some social framework - which is constantly shifting in what is acceptable or not acceptable. To me I think it really slows down progress we could be making in multiple areas. It's kind of like a mental brake being applied to any freedom of thought. Almost like working in an old fashioned company where there's weeks worth of meetings and bureaucracy in order to get a change deployed to production to make sure everyone is okay with it, even those of whom it doesn't even impact.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI genuinely wonder what cancel culture is going to look like in the next 5-10 years and beyond. Just about everyone I speak to about the subject agrees that cancel culture is bad but very few people seem willing to confront it. I sense that people hope the rest of society will come to its senses and we all stop being so judgemental. But as much as I loathe cancel culture and it's chilling effects on the free exchange of ideas, I can't help but admit that it seems to work. From a detached and objective standpoint, an ideology that utilizes cancel culture is really good at stamping out opposition. You are free to think and believe whatever you want in private and then you self-censor in public out of fear. It takes a certain critical mass of people to affect change and cancel culture excels at keeping individuals from speaking out because the consequences have the potential to ruin your life. So all that being said, I genuinely wonder if cancel culture is here to stay, because the next ideology to come along will also realize how powerful of a tool it is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- runawaybottle 6y agoCancel culture scared the ever living shit out of everyone, even everyday people. Whether you like it or not, it got every male in the workplace to not even breathe in the direction of women you work with. The movement permeated through normal life fast. It was extremely efficient in bringing forth the necessary changes. I have no problem with using the chainsaw as needed, but we need to careful about when we use it. Can’t use it for everythig.
- renewiltord 6y agoI don't think the "fear of women" thing is real. At least it isn't real in SF where I've worked for the last eight years.
- mywittyname 6y agoIt's a real thing among the group of guys who exhibit creepy/abusive behavior towards women. They used to be able to get away with it, now they realize they may not be able to anymore. They aren't so much afraid of women, as they are afraid of consequences for their actions.
- imwillofficial 6y agoWe live in an era in the western world which feels like pilgrim censorship with a new set of taboos, as opposed to an extremely tolerant love filled utopia we were promised. I want my love filled utopia dammit!
- aparsons 6y agoAnd you know what's the cherry on the sundae? A certain sect of people who signal/preach love and equity the loudest - almost always preach it in a 'for thou, not for me' sense. I had coworkers who would live in the whitest neighborhoods, fighting against lower-income housing near their homes, voting for the tallest of fences, and then they come into work and scoff at how X is a Trumpie because of one thing they said, and Y's team isn't hiring enough diverse candidates. I chose to separate myself from having any stake in the outcomes (I am retired, with enough of nest egg to live comfortably regardless of political zeitgeist) and this game that is being played is extremely entertaining to watch.
- imwillofficial 6y agoI vacillate between hopeful at change on the horizon, and sad that I see eye to eye with my fellow people less now than ever before. It sure is an entertaining ride! Now that you mention it... I want my sundae dammit!
- foepys 6y agoI noticed this, too. I suspect that it doesn't come down to believe but to social acceptance. It's currently en vogue to be pro diversity and contra racism which is good in and of itself but I don't think that all people are actually meaning and voting for it. In some communities I see people being anti-rich in one thread and then discussing stock market gambling in the next to get rich. The same with income where they want more government spending on social welfare but oppose higher taxation on their STEM-level incomes.
- mathw 6y agoOr we're dealing with the paradox of tolerance, where we cannot be tolerant of intolerance because the intolerant will destroy the tolerant culture which my generation have been trying to build. Some of us have, anyway. The one we feel is under threat because people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson can still be elected to the leadership of powerful nations which are supposed to be fair and just but that looks like a mockery when you put a white racist dude in charge.
- DC1350 6y agoI can see why. Some people think it’s wrong not to include diverse characters, and others think it’s wrong to speak for other races (ex. colour matching voice actors to their characters). If you’re a white person who wants to write a book then I think you just need to accept that a handful of crazy people are going to get angry no matter what you do.
- fallingknife 6y agoIt's especially ironic because the anger over this stuff is mostly performative outrage by white people claiming to be acting on behalf of minorities.
- aaomidi 6y agoI am quite interested that people worry cancel culture is preventing intellectual progress more than copyright. Copyright, patents, and other forms of intellectual property have an absolute legal stranglehold on whatever you're trying to do. "Cancel culture", which honestly I've never felt like has limited me, just puts peer pressure on people. Why is the outrage towards IP not as strong as it is towards cancel culture?
- vimy 6y agoCancel culture isn’t simply peer pressure. It’s a mob harassing employers and schools to fire or expel wrongthinkers. Cancel culture literally ruins lives.
- aaomidi 6y agoThat's called peer pressure through capital control. It's a feature of Capitalism to ruin people's lives through their jobs because of the opinions they hold. This is happened time and time again in US/World history: - Civil rights activists being fired from their jobs - Red scare and people getting fired from their jobs - etc If we want this problem to go away we need to stop connecting your ability to live to your ability to hold a job. Everything else is just treating various symptoms of the problem.
- threwawasy1228 6y agoOne is a legal framework with rules that govern how it is applied, even if you don't like that framework you can understand it. Cancel culture on the other hand does not have a specific set of rules. It is constantly changing and unevenly enforced by random people. When things are wildly unpredictable there is fear.
- aaomidi 6y agoBeing a legal framework makes it a lot scarier and a lot more dangerous. Cancel culture doesn't have the ability to throw you into a cage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lundgren https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lundgren
- silentsea90 6y agoI for one use a pseudonymous Twitter profile to be myself
- uxp100 6y agoI feel like this discussion is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Ishiguro has a new book out and the article doesn't mention it til half way through, as if his mildly presented, fairly specific remarks about "Cancel Culture" are even notable. He mentions young writers with precarious careers, and the author of the article brings JK Rowling into it, which is about as far from what Ishiguro was talking about as can be. Either way, I've only read The Remains of the Day, and I'm interested in reading more, but I can't say this article drew me in to Klara at all. Any suggestions for next books of his to read?
- pedrolins 6y agoIt's an interesting phenomenom the one described in the story. I myself a great number of times have experienced situations where I held back on writing down certain thoughts even in places like my journal where the whole point is to write down every single thought crossing through my mind anyway.
- lom888 6y agoI know this experience. For me the fear was that if I put the thought onto paper that somehow it would be more real, but the result was that the thoughts ended up burning away at me and taking up more headspace than if I just put them on the page. The realization that I am an emotional being full of contradictions and not a logic machine helped me stop suppressing.
- eruci 6y agoSelf-censoring people, by default, never disturb the status-quo. That's why progress only comes from the fearless few.
- stevebmark 6y agoWhat a clickbait article. There's no mention at all of any specifics of "young authors" censoring their work. Instead it's a vague opinion piece about Ishiguro disliking "cancel culture" in general, because JK Rowling took some heat. It just looks like the same story of "I think cancel culture is the cause of all problems" without any specifics.
- mariusor 6y agoI'm not sure what you were looking for in the article but from the title it seems clear that Ishiguro has shared his views on something he sees as a problem, not that he's going to quote statistics and exact data at us. You disliking people that don't agree with cancel culture doesn't invalidate their opinion, or make it "click bait".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bart_spoon 6y agoHere's an article reviewing a few cancel culture incidents in YA fiction, including an Asian-American author pulling her book prior to publication due to an outraged mob who latched onto the marketing blurb indicated the story was about a fantasy society where people were enslaved on attributes other than skin color. [0] There was also a notable incident from last year regarding a science fiction short story in Clarkesworld called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter". The title was a repurposing of the meme, the work wasn't in any way transphobic, and the author was trans themself. It received very positive critical reviews, but again, due to an outraged Twitter mob, the author pulled their story, as well as yet-to-be published submissions. [1] Being unaware of something doesn't automatically make it clickbait. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-criticism-and-cancel-culture https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-... [1] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-criticism-and-cancel-culture https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-...
- stevebmark 6y ago
- _-david-_ 6y agoOne of the biggest issues is the lack of consistent canceling for the same offense along with the changing rules. If you said something 10 years ago that was completely acceptable it will be used to attack you in the present. When others said the same thing they get a pass but you don't. If the rules were clear and generally agreed upon I think tnere would be less fear.
- konjin 6y ago#MeToo died the second it was used on Biden. Something I got banned from twitter for pointing out would happen 6 months ahead of time for 'hatred'. All I did was use the Salem witch trials as a blue print.
- Animats 6y agoWe're approaching Orwell's "Newspeak". - Idiot -> retarded -> special needs - Negro -> colored -> Black - Queer -> gay -> LGBTQ - Indian -> Amerind -> native american - Illegal immigrant -> undocumented worker - fat -> plus size - He/she -> they (singular) - bum -> homeless Using the words in the left column can get you and your writing attacked.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI am going to channel George Carlin and add the incoming rape victim >> unwilling sperm recipient.
- dnrvs 6y agoI don't think you understand newspeak. The words on the right mean the same as the original meaning of the word on the left. The meanings of words change over time, languages do that.
- bpodgursky 6y agoActually "homeless" is not really current — it's 'unhoused' now. "Undocumented" is also a bit passe, the current trend is to drop the "undocumented" part entirely, and just refer to all immigrants (legal or illegal) as "immigrants".
- rrose 6y ago- retarded is a slur, people with special needs don't want to be called that. not sure why this is controversial - this is just normal language change. we use different words than we did in the 50s. - queer and gay are both still used, and in fact are both part of LGBTQ, so this doesn't actually fit the pattern youre trying to show. - native american is just a better term? indian is confusing given that there is also a country called "india" - can a person be "illegal"? undocumented worker is just a more correct term. - this and the undocumented worker one are probably the only ones in here that actually fit the pattern youre trying to show. - people ask not to be called he/she and we oblige. I don't see how this is similar to newspeak. - bum is clearly a pejorative term, and because many of us don't dislike homeless people a priori, we don't use this term. there's nothing sinister going on here. It's crazy to me that people are really clutching their pearls over not being able to call people "retards" and "negroes"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoCan you really blame authors? Anything that is even mildly controversial can easily result in effectively being banned from participating on various platforms. More recent example of this weird feedback loop is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Attack_Helicopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Atta...
- KittenInABox 6y agoIsabel Fall is a pseudonym; she can likely publish elsewhere under a different name. (This doesn't mean the response was proportionate or appropriate. The response to that story was way too far. But Isabel Fall herself can publish elsewhere under another pseudonym.)
- google234123 6y agoHow does that make it better? What if she had published under her real name? Do you think she could have published again after? Do we all have to publish under pseudonym's now for our own safety?
- KittenInABox 6y agoNo, I'm not saying it makes it better. I'm in fact explicitly stating that the reaction to Isabel Fall was ridiculously overblown. However that's still not true that she's banned from the industry. Just because she's a victim doesn't mean we should misrepresent the manner in which she was victimized.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoNot sure a 66 year old can truly understand what consequences young people can face. You can be completely blacklisted not only from your works being stocked, but even all means of promoting yourself too and in the most extreme cases get blacklisted from payment processors which I'm sure will trickle down and become more common over the next few years. End of the day you have to pay the bills and if you want them paid you have to at least make your writing a certain way of thinking and ideology. Until this changes this is terrible advice for young artists. Just don't rock the boat, follow right think, don't write anything controversial and pray you eventually get enough money to write what you actually want to write. Sure yeah art will suffer as a whole but the decision was already made what's more important, art or a few annoyed people on twitter and the annoyed people won.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI wonder what "PC" terminology we use today will be a fireable offense if uttered in the future.
- trhway 6y ago>if uttered in the future how about if what uttered today gets inspected in the future? Given the trajectory of the things, i already self-censor all my posts today - even anonymous as there is no true anonymity really, and the Political Correctness Officers of the future will have access to all the information they'd want. I've already seen ideological intolerance back in the USSR (and US had it during the times of McCarthy), and the future looks more and more like such an intolerance amplified by the technology, "cyber-neo-McCarthyism".
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoI think just today (or yesterday), Twitch had to backtrack on a statement celebrating "Womxn's History Month" For the understanding of the 90% of people who didn't take Gender Studies in an elite coastal university (like I did), the term "womxn" used to be radical and super PC, a way to "reclaim" the word "woman" and both remove the word "man" (yes, as silly as it sounds, serious academics did this) and signify that "woman" as a term was more inclusive than just biological gender, including transgender people as well. Nowadays, apparently the term "womxn" which was invented and used solely by extreme feminists is problematic and using it can lead to your public shaming on Twitter. Why? Because if you use "womxn" to signify that you are inclusive of non-biological women, then you are implying that the term "women" is not enough for non-biological women, and therefore, you are "othering" them and therefore you are transphobic. https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/1366543370257002496 https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/1366543370257002496
- waserwill 6y agoI understand the source of people's fears here, though I'm not sure whether they are justified. In attempting to clearly articulate ideas, writers too often fall into cliches--the sort of pitfall that might be widely understood at the expense of predictability. Those, coupled with topics related to current events and sensitive topics, can be a dangerous brew. Yet in a world where media are not centrally controlled (cf. N Korea), ideas can propagate without being direct. Philosophers and heretics have written indirectly for millennia to avoid being read by the authorities or by the public; even the Soviets were accompanied by a thriving culture of satirical literature (and more importantly, jokes/anecdotes) that were allegorical yet far-reaching. If there are meaningful truths that must be said, there is a way to say them without being blunt about it.
- dogman144 6y agoThey are pretty justified, publishing is going through a heavy, but very internal, reckoning. That's likely what Ishiguro is speaking too, although it's missed given how the concerns are mainstream concerns now.
- konjin 6y agoIf you enjoy living in such a world you're welcome to move to North Korea.
- ramblerman 6y ago> If there are meaningful truths that must be said, there is a way to say them without being blunt about it. You are free to read authors that write in a style you like. But we are talking about cancelling, so I don't really understand your point. Authors that don't sugar coat their facts shouldn't be published?
- shadowgovt 6y agoDoes anyone have a link to the original interview with the BBC? I'd be interested to see more of the context of his comments.
- pnathan 6y agoThere's a whole nuance here that often gets lost. A lot of people are straight up _raging jackasses_ - or worse and/or their work is repulsive - and at a certain point, wind up getting to be the target of an Internet Hate Mob. Note that in a perfectly just world, these people might be in prison or have otherwise major life consequences applied by the designated authorities - yet they have not had consequences. And there are, of course, people who simply say something that flips the bit of the online mob and becomes the target of an Internet Hate Mob. Someone ran their mouth and said something dumb. Oops. It is critical to consider that both of these cases are true, and the outcome, in the moment, doesn't per se look different without a careful attention to the ground facts. Much of the social media system has been unintentionally engineered to be an outrage machine. Shockingly, outrage results. I suggest not having outrage before reading facts. It is, of course, the case that immature activists are immature, that is tautological. I share the national eyerolling when it makes the news. Thank you for reading my TED talk transcript. I have very little fear of young literary authors self censoring. Self censoring is a conventional part of basic society and something we teach children from a very early age. Understanding the difference between a thought useful to express and something vomited out of the id takes time and some level of maturity. Having to have a basic understanding of what you're talking about and taking on as a topic shouldn't be controversial, yet it seems to be. edit: minor clarification.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Marazan 6y agoBe right back, a bit busy at the moment, am booked up all morning to do interviews on major news networks about how I'm cancelled and no longer have free speech.
- tziki 6y agoI've been wondering how much cancel culture is affecting journalism right now. The way it affects won't be clear since it seems stating that you're self censoring due to cancel culture makes you a target of said culture. Also, I imagine for journalists it's not easy to admit to self censoring. Confronting cancel culture is a big risk to take. But how would you measure the effects of it? As a (mainly) reader, I have no clue if the writer omitted something due to their fear. Hell, the writer might not realize it.
- dnrvs 6y ago> "I think there are very valid parts of this argument about appropriation of voice," he added, saying he believes "we do have the obligation to teach ourselves and to do research and to treat people with respect if we're going to have them feature in our work". > He said there must be "decency towards people outside of one's own immediate experience". This is the key point. If you are not doing your research, misrepresenting people or not showing the respect people deserve you should to be called out. From my point of view it looks like the people complaining about self-censorship are just being told to show common decency and they don't like that
- dogman144 6y agoIf you talk to someone who works/worked in publishing or the creative arts scenes (MFA programs, etc.), you'll see that KI is likely specifically addressing that crowd - his industry. I think a lot of the general populace is aware of the dynamics that he's talking about, but in publishing it's another world/level. Interesting example that's the norm in the space: the story "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall. Bear with me as I likely butcher the pronouns/terms etc, but my intent is earnest and well meaning here... Isabel is a trans woman author. She/they weren't out when that story was published in a scifi mag. The story makes some pretty obvious references to sexual/gender identity, and the writing has very specific commentary and sometimes mockery. Isabel, not known to be trans at the time, faced a torrent of online abuse for ~appropriating/joking about/exploring concepts about gender identity. The motivation was pretty clear: Isabel wasn't trans (as far as the public knew). The story had passed some "sensitivity readings" too (yes, sensitivity readers are another interesting area to explore), but the online reception was still awful. There's also a difference between criticism vs. outright internet abuse. Isabel's experiences were pretty firmly in the latter. The author took down the story, I believe came out or the news outed her/they, and the details go on (finger pointing, revisions of criticism about the story given light of the author's gender, etc.). The point of all this is that's an insane dynamic to create in, and that's the tip of the iceberg really with what Publishing is going through. Young Adult fiction is apparently one of the ground zeros for this dynamic.
- heterodoxxed 6y ago| that's an insane dynamic to create in What do you think Twitter would have looked like in 1956 when James Baldwin published Giovanni's Room? Is the problem "cancel culture" (a nebulous term which means little) or simply the result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain?
- jimbokun 6y agoCancel culture is a direct result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain.
- deleted 6y ago
- bachmeier 6y agoSurprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North Carolina, one of the things that was repeated all the time was that a newspaper editor would lose his job for publishing a story with a positive spin on free trade. You can go back further to McCarthyism, Turing being prosecuted for being gay, and on and on. Cancel culture remains a thing. Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. The outright hypocrisy of so many on this issue is the biggest story. Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-us-christian-college-resigns https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-... A professor was cancelled because she wore a hijab. There was no outrage at all from the usual suspects.
- mywittyname 6y agoThe Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.
- jimbokun 6y agoWell, the "Dixie Chicks" have been cancelled again, and now are just "The Chicks".
- wk_end 6y agoIs this sarcasm or a window into a different side of American culture? In my circles the Dixie Chicks rebounded from the Bush backlash and had their biggest pop hit ever in response to it ("Not Ready to Make Nice"); they became more respected in the wake of it than they ever had been.
- monocasa 6y agoAnd the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries". All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.
- redteddy23 6y agoPutting aside the fact the worst examples of "Cancel Culture" are an amplified, tiny number of edge cases, given fuel by those who wish to attack fairly reasonable requests to marginalise hate speech. Ishiguro makes a good point a skilled writer can write from the perspective of someone very different from them. Not that many people are actually arguing against that. What was of concern is the perspectives of marginalised people being written in a cliched and harmful way by people who have no understanding of their lives. Or because they have an agenda of portraying those people in a negative way. Understanding built on accurate and intelligent writing is great but I'm not going to read stuff that has an agenda to caricature and attack.
- konjin 6y agoHate speech is free speech you don't like.
- redteddy23 6y agoI don't like the Dune prequels, Monetarism or Atlas Shrugged. None of them is hate speech.
- konjin 6y agoAtlas Shrugged is sexist to the point it justifies rape. That is the definition of sexual terrorism and hate speech against women. I'm sorry you're not as woke as you think you are, please provide your name and workplace email to expedite your cancellation. Thank you for your cooperation in stomping out fascism.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aiba356ca2 6y agoThe Internet is a Dark Forest. Keep your True Name hidden. > "And in fact AI could come up with the next big idea, an idea like communism or Nazism or capitalism… and what troubles me about that is that it is very difficult for humans to keep control of that situation."
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- cbryan 6y agoThis is a wildly uninformed opinion. People have always written to social norms, and this person is unwilling to acknowledge changing attitudes towards types of writing. I would love a concrete example of the kinds of things this guy thinks are being 'self-censored'.
- kragen 6y agohttps://archive.fo/dTtYb https://archive.fo/dTtYb
- temp-dude-87844 6y agoAll of these risks existed in the past, but it was more difficult for opposition to organize into a sustained movement, because asynchronous communication was limited by the physics of time and space and the processes of gatekeepers. The Web brought ease of publishing to anyone, and search engines and social networks brought fast keyword-based and topic-based discovery (sometimes automatically), so like-minded individuals can find themselves quicker than they could before. Your fans can organize fast, but so can your critics. Having loud critics (or even detractors) isn't a problem in itself. But organized opposition can boycott businesses and make demands involving you that endanger your current livelihood and make it risky for others to work with you in the future. There is an unequal relationship between unproven authors and their publishers, promoters, and others who work with them. An author has a few publishers, but a publisher works with many authors. Given sustained publicity and economic pressure, most publishers will drop an author if keeping them results in harm to the publisher. This lays bare the fact that authors were never truly free to say what they want to say, because they were frequently dependent on the goodwill, social support, and business support of others. It may appear that in the past, publishers were more principled and didn't cave to sustained loud demands, but it was more difficult to organized sustained loud demands, and various factors made such movements more vulnerable to be dismissed as fringe protests of an upset few instead of the legitimate will of the people. What changed is the globalization of culture, aided by TV and the web, which made faraway events relevant and remote social movements compatible; the globalization of news enabled by the globalization of culture and aided by the 24/7 news cycle perpetuated by commercial TV news and commercial internet news organizations; and the willingness to people to take direct (in-)action against corporations (i.e. boycotts) that are easy to avoid, in pursuit of a cause framed by like-minded thought leaders as moral. There is a lot to unpack in all of this. This is why boycotting your electricity company is much harder and significantly more rare than boycotting a publisher or an entertainment studio or some random company that worked with someone you don't like. This is why it seems like things were different in the past. The fact is, in order to succeed in this changed world, authors must adapt too. Partition writing on different topics and different works by pen names. Self-publish. Market directly. Network with other authors in loose confederations; publish your future works under a new pen name in the same circles. Insulate your personal life from your professional life, and your professional authorships from each other. Reduce your risk that one upset about one thing in one work will wipe your entire life's work.
- sgift 6y agoPeople always self-censored. Far worse, people were censored. Really censored, not "oh, I cannot write on my platform of choice, so I have to use another one which can reach the whole world" censored. You wrote something the people in charge didn't like? No distribution for you, cause all printing was censored. You wrote against your king? Prison for you. You were politically inconvenient for your patron? Hope you have fun on the streets. Your book wasn't like by the book publishers? Sucks to be you. Probably ended up as an unread manuscript in an attic. Oh, and to mirror the words of the article: There were (and are, though less common) real lynch mobs when someone wrote something people didn't like. I have a feeling they are a bit more scary than getting screamed at on Twitter. Fact: It was never as easy as it is today to reach an audience. All the people who have been "cancelled" or whatever the word of the week is, they still have reach people in ages ago would have killed for. Some even got bigger audiences because they were "cancelled". If you self-censor that is a decision. Maybe it is a wise decision. But is it not something people never had to deal with before.
- jjk166 6y agoIf you're not willing to stand by your opinion and face the consequences of sharing it, how important is your opinion really? Intellectual progress demands that ideas distasteful to the status quo must be openly discussable, but some stakes are necessary to keep those who have carefully thought out their positions and thus hold them with conviction from being drowned out by those who merely parrot ridiculous talking points they never took the time to digest themselves. If you are ashamed to be associated with an idea, that is not an idea you should be advocating - if it has any merit, others will advocate it better than you, if not then what purpose does your advocacy serve? There is nothing wrong with picking which hills are worth dying on, and it's okay to acknowledge that some of your opinions are kinda dumb. The fact is most of us are experts on only a narrow range of human knowledge, and our opinions on the rest are coming from a place of ignorance. If you don't have something valuable to add to a conversation, it is not only reasonable but preferable to remain silent and listen to what others have to say.
- Nasrudith 6y agoAh yes Thomas Paine published nothing of worth because nobody took "Common Sense" seriously since they were anonymous leaflets.... Anominity has nothing to do with how well considered something is - there was an improved lower bound on 4Chan as a source and many publishing absolute nonsense under their real name as a lucrative careers. There is no neccessity - only the whinging of those upset they arr no longer able to argue ad bacculum.
- jjk166 6y agoI'm not arguing against anonymity. I published that comment under a pseudonym myself. I am criticizing people who will disavow what they wrote if they are called out on it. That said, documents with the ol' John Hancock have most certainly carried more weight historically.
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- mywittyname 6y agoIsn't censorship a badge of honor among artists? Lots of writers throughout history had their works censored or banned. This is not a new phenomenon nor did it every really stop. In fact, most great works were, or still are, considered controversial and the controversy is often more discussed than the actual work.
- hertzrat 6y ago> The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. Speaking as an occasional author, this is a true statement...
- ausbah 6y agohonestly, if you aren't able to write an accurate perspective on something - I would rather see someone not try and write on something they don't know then make a half-assed attempt from info off the top of their head. at best they just write something inaccurate, at worse the perpetuate harmful preconceptions not saying don't write about things only you have experience with, just do some research before
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- swayvil 6y agoSpeak in contradiction of the popular covid narrative and see what happens. Listen to your friends parrot the popular talking points in unison. Something dark lurked beneath the surface and has now revealed itself.
- Evenjos 6y agoI'm in the writing industry, and I definitely see this with young writers. He's absolutely correct.
- dragontamer 6y agoAnyone who thinks 'cancel culture's is only one side of the political spectrum has conveniently forgotten what it is like to kneel during a football game during the playing of the national anthem. Or what it's like to sit in the front of a bus when you are in the minority. Etc etc.
- Proven 6y agoCCP in China, Democratic Party in the US, and the EU in Europe. Worst freedom of speech in decades...
- musicale 6y agoI'm OK with people saying "you wrote a terrible book that nobody should buy or read." I'm less OK with people saying "because you wrote a terrible book, we need to ensure that you are severely punished, that you present a public confession and apology for writing it, and that none of your writing is ever published or read again by anyone."
- drhayes9 6y agoAre you thinking of something specific here?
- foolinaround 6y agothe percentage of folks commenting under throwaway accounts should suffice for the seriousness of this issue, even on a board where folks are supposedly even keeled...
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoI agree that people have gone too far. Art is a protected field, right? There’s going to be a huge backlash against cancel culture, I don’t think it’s going to last very long. That kinda trend always breeds rebellion.