6 ms·

Cancel culture still getting stronger. More momentum for the pendulum when the trends bounce back, I guess.

api 6y ago
While I think the reaction to Stallman was excessive, I am really tired of the "cancel culture" term. It gives the impression that this is somehow new, when "cancel culture" is one of those things that has existed since there was more than one human. There has never been a time or a society where saying certain things would not bring at the very least calls for you to be "cancelled." In many other times and places it'll get you imprisoned or killed. Our society is extremely liberal when it comes to speech compared to the historical and global norm. Here's an example from the Bush II era: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/dixie-chicks-were-cancelled-criticizing-130039511.html https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/dixie-chicks-were-cancelled-... BTW I feel the same way about "fake news." It's another thing that is absolutely not new.
- gorjusborg 6y ago
  For me the term seems useful. Cancel culture as a concept is less about the newness of ostracizing people and more about an awakening in the public about the power anonymous voices on the web can be in aggregate. We probably shouldn't be surprised that such power would be abused as it is discovered in a new form. We should be able to give the phenomenon a name so we can discuss it.
  - Jaepa 6y ago
    I kind of feel like cancel culture minimizes the issue by allowing people to talk not effect while completely skirting around the cause. Saying was he was removed due to public backlash due to history of sexist behavior, and discrimination is much hard to defend then the reductive was cancelled. EDIT The recent Suess books case is kind of a prime example of this. Since cancelled doesn't have a strict definition saying the books were cancelled arguably not entirely wrong. But misses the who, what, & why of it. (e.g the publisher stopped printing select low selling books that included offensive outdated stereotypes)
    - gorjusborg 6y ago
      That's a fair point, and I think I agree. My stance was that 'cancel culture' as a term seems most often used to decry the use of the power of mob rule online. I think the criticism is fair, and we should be able to discuss the effects of such a dynamic. I have also seen what I think you are describing, which is a sweeping under the rug of real issues underlying such an outcry, by dismissing it as 'just cancel culture'.
- blagie 6y ago
  Cancel culture was never this bad or this random. The Internet has amplified its impact a thousandfold.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  I would also say that nobody would ever frame fighting for the right to fire gay people, or the right to refuse to sign marriage certificates as cancellation.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  Right, it ignores the the freedom of speech of the listener. The person that hears an offensive statement, has a right to say it's offensive. It also ignores our freedom of association. If you say terrible things, I might not support your cause or give you money. And the consequence of that is that people that make their money in the public eye may lose their jobs. It's pretty ridiculous to believe that you can say whatever you want but deserve support regardless... as if you're entitled to my attention and wallet and I should be helpless to change my own personal life to exclude you... ignoring my right of self determination. People who talk about cancel culture seem to forget these other rights.
  - taylodl 6y ago
    What you say is true - but cancel culture goes beyond this: these people actively try to get the subject of their disdain fired and go further to ensure they are no longer able to speak publicly again. That's what it means to be "cancelled." It's not ignoring you or not associating with you, it's about excommunicating you. Totally different.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  I fully agree that the phenomena you refer to are not new, however today's Twitter outrage crowd did not exist 30 years ago, there was no small, vocal group of people able to bend huge corporations to their will or steer public discourse or shape narrative of major events as it happens today. It just wasn't happening at this scale in the past. This is new.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gremlinsinc 6y ago
    Dixie Chicks in/around 2004/2005 went public against the war in Iraq. At the same time sales for Dixie Chicks albums plummeted because they're "too liberal". This was before twitter was a thing, facebook was "barely" a thing, myspace was dying...etc. 1968 (year may be off)...iirc there was a huge huge march (I've seen videos, before my birth) against the Vietnam War... you could say they were trying to "cancel" the war...guess that never happened either because something that big couldn't exist without Twitter. In the middle ages over 300k women were murdered as accused witches, amazingly no twitter is responsible for canceling witches either. 1776 ... a few colonists decided to "cancel" their ties to Great Britain. 1860 ... a few traitorous racists decided to cancel their "ties" to the union... all these things without Twitter.
- esjeon 6y ago
  I think the modern cancel culture outmatches any cancelling happened before. Through the internet, almost any people can get “cancelled” by a large number of people. The current SNS system also amplifies negative emotions like anger, so it’s even much easier to get cancelled. Even when you do the right thing, an excerpt can render you a sexist, racist, etc. A big problem here is that the fittest to this environment is those who do nothing, since it’s very difficult to satisfy diverse social norms that have relatively small intersection. So I think the cancel culture does oppress the freedom of speech and thoughts, since the internet won’t forget and the mob won’t forgive.
  - zenethian 6y ago
    You're right that it outmatches it, but it's the first time that the consumer can directly influence things by getting their voice heard. Previous cancel culture was limited to those who already had a captive audience: churches, large corporations, marketing agencies, and news outlets. Now that there's a wider, and (arguably) more free ability to communicate in large groups and quickly organize and share information, it's simply turning in new directions under the leadership of end users instead of opinionated juggernauts. Instead of cancelling rap music for explicit lyrics we're cancelling people who, despite their credentials or accomplishments, are still terrible people. The backlash isn't even that he's just done terrible things in the past, it's that he stands by his terrible opinion that he has done nothing wrong.
    - nathanaldensr 6y ago
      So what? Who cares what cancel culture was and what it is? If you're a target, you're a target. There is only The Mob; their faces, affiliations, and politics matter little.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > I think the modern cancel culture outmatches any cancelling happened before. Through the internet, almost any people can get “cancelled” by a large number of people. I think it's the opposite: if you got cancelled previously—Walmart, Barnes & Noble, etc. stopped selling your book perhaps—you'd simply disappear into a memory hole. Nobody would have a way to find out about it, so nobody would know to care. Now at least other people may find out about it, and you can make a stand to fight back. > since the internet won’t forget and the mob won’t forgive The internet forgets plenty, and whether the mob's forgiveness even matters depends on whether your audience is in the mob.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cool_dude85 6y ago
A question for those who are against so-called "cancel culture": are there any statements from someone like RMS that, in your mind, should result in the FSF kicking him off their board? If he became a Holocaust denialist, or joined NAMBLA, should the FSF keep him on their board?

api 6y ago

While I think the reaction to Stallman was excessive, I am really tired of the "cancel culture" term. It gives the impression that this is somehow new, when "cancel culture" is one of those things that has existed since there was more than one human. There has never been a time or a society where saying certain things would not bring at the very least calls for you to be "cancelled." In many other times and places it'll get you imprisoned or killed. Our society is extremely liberal when it comes to speech compared to the historical and global norm. Here's an example from the Bush II era: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/dixie-chicks-were-cancelled-criticizing-130039511.html https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/dixie-chicks-were-cancelled-... BTW I feel the same way about "fake news." It's another thing that is absolutely not new.

gorjusborg 6y ago
For me the term seems useful. Cancel culture as a concept is less about the newness of ostracizing people and more about an awakening in the public about the power anonymous voices on the web can be in aggregate. We probably shouldn't be surprised that such power would be abused as it is discovered in a new form. We should be able to give the phenomenon a name so we can discuss it.
- Jaepa 6y ago
  I kind of feel like cancel culture minimizes the issue by allowing people to talk not effect while completely skirting around the cause. Saying was he was removed due to public backlash due to history of sexist behavior, and discrimination is much hard to defend then the reductive was cancelled. EDIT The recent Suess books case is kind of a prime example of this. Since cancelled doesn't have a strict definition saying the books were cancelled arguably not entirely wrong. But misses the who, what, & why of it. (e.g the publisher stopped printing select low selling books that included offensive outdated stereotypes)
  - gorjusborg 6y ago
    That's a fair point, and I think I agree. My stance was that 'cancel culture' as a term seems most often used to decry the use of the power of mob rule online. I think the criticism is fair, and we should be able to discuss the effects of such a dynamic. I have also seen what I think you are describing, which is a sweeping under the rug of real issues underlying such an outcry, by dismissing it as 'just cancel culture'.
blagie 6y ago
Cancel culture was never this bad or this random. The Internet has amplified its impact a thousandfold.
threatofrain 6y ago
I would also say that nobody would ever frame fighting for the right to fire gay people, or the right to refuse to sign marriage certificates as cancellation.
rgbrenner 6y ago
Right, it ignores the the freedom of speech of the listener. The person that hears an offensive statement, has a right to say it's offensive. It also ignores our freedom of association. If you say terrible things, I might not support your cause or give you money. And the consequence of that is that people that make their money in the public eye may lose their jobs. It's pretty ridiculous to believe that you can say whatever you want but deserve support regardless... as if you're entitled to my attention and wallet and I should be helpless to change my own personal life to exclude you... ignoring my right of self determination. People who talk about cancel culture seem to forget these other rights.
- taylodl 6y ago
  What you say is true - but cancel culture goes beyond this: these people actively try to get the subject of their disdain fired and go further to ensure they are no longer able to speak publicly again. That's what it means to be "cancelled." It's not ignoring you or not associating with you, it's about excommunicating you. Totally different.
bitcharmer 6y ago
I fully agree that the phenomena you refer to are not new, however today's Twitter outrage crowd did not exist 30 years ago, there was no small, vocal group of people able to bend huge corporations to their will or steer public discourse or shape narrative of major events as it happens today. It just wasn't happening at this scale in the past. This is new.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  Dixie Chicks in/around 2004/2005 went public against the war in Iraq. At the same time sales for Dixie Chicks albums plummeted because they're "too liberal". This was before twitter was a thing, facebook was "barely" a thing, myspace was dying...etc. 1968 (year may be off)...iirc there was a huge huge march (I've seen videos, before my birth) against the Vietnam War... you could say they were trying to "cancel" the war...guess that never happened either because something that big couldn't exist without Twitter. In the middle ages over 300k women were murdered as accused witches, amazingly no twitter is responsible for canceling witches either. 1776 ... a few colonists decided to "cancel" their ties to Great Britain. 1860 ... a few traitorous racists decided to cancel their "ties" to the union... all these things without Twitter.
esjeon 6y ago
I think the modern cancel culture outmatches any cancelling happened before. Through the internet, almost any people can get “cancelled” by a large number of people. The current SNS system also amplifies negative emotions like anger, so it’s even much easier to get cancelled. Even when you do the right thing, an excerpt can render you a sexist, racist, etc. A big problem here is that the fittest to this environment is those who do nothing, since it’s very difficult to satisfy diverse social norms that have relatively small intersection. So I think the cancel culture does oppress the freedom of speech and thoughts, since the internet won’t forget and the mob won’t forgive.
- zenethian 6y ago
  You're right that it outmatches it, but it's the first time that the consumer can directly influence things by getting their voice heard. Previous cancel culture was limited to those who already had a captive audience: churches, large corporations, marketing agencies, and news outlets. Now that there's a wider, and (arguably) more free ability to communicate in large groups and quickly organize and share information, it's simply turning in new directions under the leadership of end users instead of opinionated juggernauts. Instead of cancelling rap music for explicit lyrics we're cancelling people who, despite their credentials or accomplishments, are still terrible people. The backlash isn't even that he's just done terrible things in the past, it's that he stands by his terrible opinion that he has done nothing wrong.
  - nathanaldensr 6y ago
    So what? Who cares what cancel culture was and what it is? If you're a target, you're a target. There is only The Mob; their faces, affiliations, and politics matter little.
- mcphage 6y ago
  > I think the modern cancel culture outmatches any cancelling happened before. Through the internet, almost any people can get “cancelled” by a large number of people. I think it's the opposite: if you got cancelled previously—Walmart, Barnes & Noble, etc. stopped selling your book perhaps—you'd simply disappear into a memory hole. Nobody would have a way to find out about it, so nobody would know to care. Now at least other people may find out about it, and you can make a stand to fight back. > since the internet won’t forget and the mob won’t forgive The internet forgets plenty, and whether the mob's forgiveness even matters depends on whether your audience is in the mob.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cool_dude85 6y ago

A question for those who are against so-called "cancel culture": are there any statements from someone like RMS that, in your mind, should result in the FSF kicking him off their board? If he became a Holocaust denialist, or joined NAMBLA, should the FSF keep him on their board?