8 ms·

It may seem narrower to people who's views are sliding out of the window, but I see no evidence that the overton window in the US is any narrower now than say,

It may seem narrower to people who's views are sliding out of the window, but I see no evidence that the overton window in the US is any narrower now than say, the 1950's. If anything it feels like it has effectively widened, or at least fundamentally changed to lose some of it's bite, since there is no longer truly national media and everyone can quickly find a bubble with a window that fits their views.

jtbayly 6y ago
You may be able to find a bubble, but can you find a job?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
yanderekko 6y ago
>It may seem narrower to people who's views are sliding out of the window, but I see no evidence that the overton window in the US is any narrower now than say, the 1950's. I can probably think of several views supported by the median American in 2021 (or at least 30% of Americans) that would get you summarily dismissed from most high-visibility jobs if publicly expressed. You probably could too. What views in the 1950s do you think were similar? Again, there was undoubtedly an Overton Window in the 1950s. What's peculiar about 2020s cancel culture imo, however, is how zealously it goes after people who hold views that are extremely common among the broader population.
- lapetitejort 6y ago
  A view in the 1950's that could get you dismissed from a high-visibility job? How about being a communist? Have people forgotten about the McCarthy Era?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    You'd probably still get dismissed from a high visibility job for being a communist, actually. IIRC in California being a communist bars you from holding office still today.
  - jihadjihad 6y ago
    In that case there wasn't even a requirement to actually be a communist. You could be dismissed for simply being accused of being a communist.
  - souprock 6y ago
    dismissed from a high-visibility job: agree supported by the median American in 1950's (or at least 30% of Americans): not a chance
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Ah but you see, you didn't actually have to be a communist, you just had to close enough to one. For example, Eugene Debs despite getting more electoral support than the Libertarian party ever did, was branded as a communist, and also made a political prisoner.
      - yanderekko 6y ago
        If your response to being challenged about the 1950s political climate is to raise a story about someone who died before 1930, then that says a lot...
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        It got even worse after 1950, it's just that at that point all socialist were already atomized.
        yanderekko 6y ago
        But afaik it's simply not the case that 30% of the population was sympathetic to socialism in the 1950s. Maybe if you really tortured the term "socialism", but come on.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        30% is an arbitrary number, but even at the time where more people in the US were sympathetic to socialism and were ever sympathetic to modern libertarianism, it was violently suppressed by the state, much less "canceled". As far as how many people were sympathetic to socialism at that point, 15-20% isn't a bad estimate. But if you want something closer to 30% in the 1950s, how about just being black?
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    Were 30% of Americans Communist? The argument isn't that there wasn't anything you couldn't say, but that the window doesn't cover the full range of opinions a substantial part of the population actually holds.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  > What views in the 1950s do you think were similar? How about professing atheism, or believe in communism? Being in a same sex or different race relationship in the 50's wouldn't just get you fired, it could lead to people refusing to give you a mortgage or the police driving you out of town. It's difficult to find examples from the 50's america of a widespread belief that wasn't in the "mainstream" acceptable view because the effects of going against the acceptable view were so harsh. I doubt we could find a reliable poll from that time period to hit your arbitrary 30% threshold, but I like to flatter my ancestral countrymen at least enough to think that miscegenation laws weren't thought of as morally right by 70% of the population. The difference, as you point it out, is that today's "cancel culture" can target people from the majority classes.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > How about professing atheism, or believe in communism? Even today these are sub-5% viewpoints.
    - mattnewton 6y ago
      Okay, how about allowing mixed race marriages? I think the 30% threshold is arbitrary and not worth fixating on, but there are certainly counter examples.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        In 1958, only 4% of Americans supported interracial marriage. (And in 1951 you had Support was around 30% by the 1970s. It was below 50% into the mid-1990s. In 1975, The Jeffersons featured an interracial married couple on TV. So that’s not a great example of being cancelled for something 30% of Americans supported.
        mattnewton 6y ago
        Another example is catholicism; Catholics absolutely were barred from some jobs in the 50's, despite being nearly a quarter of the population. We can keep looking at examples, but I don't think the 30% is a meaningful number, as I wrote above it seems impossible to find an opinion that the majority felt comfortable expressing that went against the stringent vocal monitory setting the overton window. I hypothesize that the vast majority of people just did not care strongly about interracial marriage but did not want to tangle with those who did. It seems to just be another way of saying that today's overton window doesn't include some of the views common in conservative white america, and before it was defined by conservative white america.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I would say the "window" enforced by most cancellation represents <30% of the population. I think it's largely the "woke" subset of the progressive population, however big that is, but certainly less than 30%. I don't think the window represents the views of over 70% of the rest of the population; I don't think that was the case in the 50s and certainly not in the 90s or 00s. It seems very likely to me that the window has narrowed to the point that it can't reasonably be called an "Overton Window" as I understand it (i.e., 'views tolerable to the majority' if I understand correctly). Whether or not this kind of super-narrow window constitutes an Overton Window, I certainly think it's an undesirable development.
- rayiner 6y ago
  It's far less than 30%, maybe less than 10%. And you're correct, that's what I think is driving the response to "cancel culture." Being ostracized for expressing views contrary to those of the majority is just human history. Being ostracized for expressing views consistent with those of the majority is quite an odd situation. That inversion is only possible because particular ideologies have overtaken elite universities, and most of our cultural institutions are controlled by graduates of those elite universities.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Well put, as usual. > It's far less than 30%, maybe less than 10%. Agreed, I was trying to be overly generous with the 30% figure.
  - weeblewobble 6y ago
    If cultural institutions are captured and weaponized by people whose views represent <10% of society, won't the rest of society simply choose new cultural institutions to care about? This seems to me to be already underway. Right wing media has been around for decades, and more recently youtube, podcasts, substack, etc. have provided a platform for a huge number of cultural institutions opposed to the tyrannical 10%. So what's the problem? Well, I think the problem is that it's not <10%. Sure, some of the more extreme examples of woke-ism would have very little broad support. And sure, the aforementioned ecosystem of alternative cultural institutions are incentivized to make sure those examples get as much exposure as possible. But the "steelman" version of woke-ism probably has 40-50% support in the US. The steelman version of anti-wokism probably has around the same support level. So we're at a stalemate. The old-guard of tyrannical college elite institutions and the new breed of alternative working class everyman institutions co-exist in the same attention marketplace, competing and trading blows. So again I ask, what's the problem?
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The Overton Window hasn't widened. It hasn't narrowed. Instead, it shattered. Take gay marriage, for example. 50 years ago, 95% of the population thought that gay marriage was ridiculous. That meant that 95% of the population thought that the position of 95% of the population was reasonable. That's an Overton Window. Now, 30%[1] of the population still agree with the previous view. 40% of the population thinks that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable, and that thinking otherwise is completely unacceptable. And 30% are somewhere in the middle (gay marriage is acceptable, but it's OK to think that it's not, maybe). That means that 40% of the population has an Overton Window that excludes 60% of the population, and a separate 30% has a window that excludes 70% of the population. There isn't a society-wide Overton Window on the topic any longer. --- [1] All numbers are gut-feel estimates, with no statistical validity.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  I think that even in the past the default position of most Americans on these issues is one where they just don’t care one way or another very strongly and don’t want to deal with those who do. Even in the days where it seemed that 95% thought gay marriage was ridiculous, it seems more likely to me that maybe 30% hated the idea and 50% didn’t care strongly either way but certainly didn’t want to face the 30%. This is almost the same dynamic you are talking about now; the difference is who the vocal 30% is these days. The majority of people maybe mildly disliked gay marriage but didn’t really care about it and mostly just don’t want to deal with the people who care a great deal about it, only now the vocal 30% who care a great deal is for gay marriage. That’s the shifted Overton window, and a bunch of people who hated gay marriage are complaining how “it seemed like everyone was with me just a decade ago!”
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Your premise is that in the past a vocal minority of conservatives controlled the Overton window on this issue, and that’s not what the polling shows, and if you look at contemporary societies where homosexuality is still taboo, it’s clear that the polling accurately reflected reality.
- 6y ago

jtbayly 6y ago

You may be able to find a bubble, but can you find a job?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

yanderekko 6y ago

>It may seem narrower to people who's views are sliding out of the window, but I see no evidence that the overton window in the US is any narrower now than say, the 1950's. I can probably think of several views supported by the median American in 2021 (or at least 30% of Americans) that would get you summarily dismissed from most high-visibility jobs if publicly expressed. You probably could too. What views in the 1950s do you think were similar? Again, there was undoubtedly an Overton Window in the 1950s. What's peculiar about 2020s cancel culture imo, however, is how zealously it goes after people who hold views that are extremely common among the broader population.

lapetitejort 6y ago
A view in the 1950's that could get you dismissed from a high-visibility job? How about being a communist? Have people forgotten about the McCarthy Era?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  You'd probably still get dismissed from a high visibility job for being a communist, actually. IIRC in California being a communist bars you from holding office still today.
- jihadjihad 6y ago
  In that case there wasn't even a requirement to actually be a communist. You could be dismissed for simply being accused of being a communist.
- souprock 6y ago
  dismissed from a high-visibility job: agree supported by the median American in 1950's (or at least 30% of Americans): not a chance
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Ah but you see, you didn't actually have to be a communist, you just had to close enough to one. For example, Eugene Debs despite getting more electoral support than the Libertarian party ever did, was branded as a communist, and also made a political prisoner.
    - yanderekko 6y ago
      If your response to being challenged about the 1950s political climate is to raise a story about someone who died before 1930, then that says a lot...
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        It got even worse after 1950, it's just that at that point all socialist were already atomized.
        yanderekko 6y ago
        But afaik it's simply not the case that 30% of the population was sympathetic to socialism in the 1950s. Maybe if you really tortured the term "socialism", but come on.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        30% is an arbitrary number, but even at the time where more people in the US were sympathetic to socialism and were ever sympathetic to modern libertarianism, it was violently suppressed by the state, much less "canceled". As far as how many people were sympathetic to socialism at that point, 15-20% isn't a bad estimate. But if you want something closer to 30% in the 1950s, how about just being black?
- tarboreus 6y ago
  Were 30% of Americans Communist? The argument isn't that there wasn't anything you couldn't say, but that the window doesn't cover the full range of opinions a substantial part of the population actually holds.
mattnewton 6y ago
> What views in the 1950s do you think were similar? How about professing atheism, or believe in communism? Being in a same sex or different race relationship in the 50's wouldn't just get you fired, it could lead to people refusing to give you a mortgage or the police driving you out of town. It's difficult to find examples from the 50's america of a widespread belief that wasn't in the "mainstream" acceptable view because the effects of going against the acceptable view were so harsh. I doubt we could find a reliable poll from that time period to hit your arbitrary 30% threshold, but I like to flatter my ancestral countrymen at least enough to think that miscegenation laws weren't thought of as morally right by 70% of the population. The difference, as you point it out, is that today's "cancel culture" can target people from the majority classes.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > How about professing atheism, or believe in communism? Even today these are sub-5% viewpoints.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    Okay, how about allowing mixed race marriages? I think the 30% threshold is arbitrary and not worth fixating on, but there are certainly counter examples.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      In 1958, only 4% of Americans supported interracial marriage. (And in 1951 you had Support was around 30% by the 1970s. It was below 50% into the mid-1990s. In 1975, The Jeffersons featured an interracial married couple on TV. So that’s not a great example of being cancelled for something 30% of Americans supported.
      - mattnewton 6y ago
        Another example is catholicism; Catholics absolutely were barred from some jobs in the 50's, despite being nearly a quarter of the population. We can keep looking at examples, but I don't think the 30% is a meaningful number, as I wrote above it seems impossible to find an opinion that the majority felt comfortable expressing that went against the stringent vocal monitory setting the overton window. I hypothesize that the vast majority of people just did not care strongly about interracial marriage but did not want to tangle with those who did. It seems to just be another way of saying that today's overton window doesn't include some of the views common in conservative white america, and before it was defined by conservative white america.

throwaway894345 6y ago

I would say the "window" enforced by most cancellation represents <30% of the population. I think it's largely the "woke" subset of the progressive population, however big that is, but certainly less than 30%. I don't think the window represents the views of over 70% of the rest of the population; I don't think that was the case in the 50s and certainly not in the 90s or 00s. It seems very likely to me that the window has narrowed to the point that it can't reasonably be called an "Overton Window" as I understand it (i.e., 'views tolerable to the majority' if I understand correctly). Whether or not this kind of super-narrow window constitutes an Overton Window, I certainly think it's an undesirable development.

rayiner 6y ago
It's far less than 30%, maybe less than 10%. And you're correct, that's what I think is driving the response to "cancel culture." Being ostracized for expressing views contrary to those of the majority is just human history. Being ostracized for expressing views consistent with those of the majority is quite an odd situation. That inversion is only possible because particular ideologies have overtaken elite universities, and most of our cultural institutions are controlled by graduates of those elite universities.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Well put, as usual. > It's far less than 30%, maybe less than 10%. Agreed, I was trying to be overly generous with the 30% figure.
- weeblewobble 6y ago
  If cultural institutions are captured and weaponized by people whose views represent <10% of society, won't the rest of society simply choose new cultural institutions to care about? This seems to me to be already underway. Right wing media has been around for decades, and more recently youtube, podcasts, substack, etc. have provided a platform for a huge number of cultural institutions opposed to the tyrannical 10%. So what's the problem? Well, I think the problem is that it's not <10%. Sure, some of the more extreme examples of woke-ism would have very little broad support. And sure, the aforementioned ecosystem of alternative cultural institutions are incentivized to make sure those examples get as much exposure as possible. But the "steelman" version of woke-ism probably has 40-50% support in the US. The steelman version of anti-wokism probably has around the same support level. So we're at a stalemate. The old-guard of tyrannical college elite institutions and the new breed of alternative working class everyman institutions co-exist in the same attention marketplace, competing and trading blows. So again I ask, what's the problem?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

The Overton Window hasn't widened. It hasn't narrowed. Instead, it shattered. Take gay marriage, for example. 50 years ago, 95% of the population thought that gay marriage was ridiculous. That meant that 95% of the population thought that the position of 95% of the population was reasonable. That's an Overton Window. Now, 30%[1] of the population still agree with the previous view. 40% of the population thinks that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable, and that thinking otherwise is completely unacceptable. And 30% are somewhere in the middle (gay marriage is acceptable, but it's OK to think that it's not, maybe). That means that 40% of the population has an Overton Window that excludes 60% of the population, and a separate 30% has a window that excludes 70% of the population. There isn't a society-wide Overton Window on the topic any longer. --- [1] All numbers are gut-feel estimates, with no statistical validity.

mattnewton 6y ago
I think that even in the past the default position of most Americans on these issues is one where they just don’t care one way or another very strongly and don’t want to deal with those who do. Even in the days where it seemed that 95% thought gay marriage was ridiculous, it seems more likely to me that maybe 30% hated the idea and 50% didn’t care strongly either way but certainly didn’t want to face the 30%. This is almost the same dynamic you are talking about now; the difference is who the vocal 30% is these days. The majority of people maybe mildly disliked gay marriage but didn’t really care about it and mostly just don’t want to deal with the people who care a great deal about it, only now the vocal 30% who care a great deal is for gay marriage. That’s the shifted Overton window, and a bunch of people who hated gay marriage are complaining how “it seemed like everyone was with me just a decade ago!”
- rayiner 6y ago
  Your premise is that in the past a vocal minority of conservatives controlled the Overton window on this issue, and that’s not what the polling shows, and if you look at contemporary societies where homosexuality is still taboo, it’s clear that the polling accurately reflected reality.
6y ago