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What is stupid about the constant railing against cancellation, when groups exist that do want to form mobs and ruin somebody's career over a comment made 10 ye

What is stupid about the constant railing against cancellation, when groups exist that do want to form mobs and ruin somebody's career over a comment made 10 years ago?

Traster 6y ago
What I'm saying is that the correct response to those mobs is to ignore them or discuss their points on their merits. What often happens (particularly on HN) is a counter-mob forms that rails against the general idea of cancellation, despite the fact that often there are actually underlying reasons for being aggreived. If someone said something stupid 10 years ago the correct answer isn't for them to be fired, it's for them to apologise. But instead we see one group proclaim "Off with his head" and another group simply counter-mobilize. You see it even in the most extreme scenarios, today on HN we've literally got an article about Harvard closing down something because of it's links to Epstein, and people talking about "cancel culture". There actually are degrees of badness that we need to talk about beyond tagging everything as "cancel culture".
matthewmacleod 6y ago
Because it's a dumbass catchphrase made up to make you outraged and you're buying in to it.
- dang 6y ago
  It looks like you've crossed into using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's one line at which we ban an account—regardless of what side you're battling for or against—because it's not what this site is for and destroys what it is for. I'm not going to ban you right now, but if you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site—thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity—more to heart, we'd be grateful. Every user needs to follow the rules and use HN as intended regardless of how wrong others are or how badly they behave. Otherwise we just end up in a downward spiral.

What is stupid about the constant railing against cancellation, when groups exist that do want to form mobs and ruin somebody's career over a comment made 10 years ago?

Traster 6y ago

What I'm saying is that the correct response to those mobs is to ignore them or discuss their points on their merits. What often happens (particularly on HN) is a counter-mob forms that rails against the general idea of cancellation, despite the fact that often there are actually underlying reasons for being aggreived. If someone said something stupid 10 years ago the correct answer isn't for them to be fired, it's for them to apologise. But instead we see one group proclaim "Off with his head" and another group simply counter-mobilize. You see it even in the most extreme scenarios, today on HN we've literally got an article about Harvard closing down something because of it's links to Epstein, and people talking about "cancel culture". There actually are degrees of badness that we need to talk about beyond tagging everything as "cancel culture".

matthewmacleod 6y ago

Because it's a dumbass catchphrase made up to make you outraged and you're buying in to it.

dang 6y ago
It looks like you've crossed into using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's one line at which we ban an account—regardless of what side you're battling for or against—because it's not what this site is for and destroys what it is for. I'm not going to ban you right now, but if you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site—thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity—more to heart, we'd be grateful. Every user needs to follow the rules and use HN as intended regardless of how wrong others are or how badly they behave. Otherwise we just end up in a downward spiral.