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Whoa, try reading my comment a little more generously, please. I specifically said the current iteration of cancel culture is going overboard. I was not praisin
by clucas 5y ago
Whoa, try reading my comment a little more generously, please. I specifically said the current iteration of cancel culture is going overboard. I was not praising cancel culture.
My main point was that cancel culture arose because of a real gap in our society's ability to handle certain types of people doing certain types of awful things... you mentioned that a lot of it could be handled by the legal system, but the reality was, it wasn't.
Weinstein wasn't charged until after he was cancelled. Same with Spacey. Lauer has never been charged. Epstein had been hit with some stuff, but basically let off with a slap on the wrist.R. Kelly had been acquitted before, and was basically unpunished.
All of these people's actions were (1) well-known in their communities ("open secrets"), (2) ongoing, and (3) not punished by any of the traditional institutions of society. Given that reality, and a global communications network where anyone can share their story, how could cancel culture not arise?
If I was praising anything, I was praising the fact that real abusers who operated with impunity for years were finally getting told to just stay home. Because other than Weinstein, that's basically all that happened.
Now, cancel culture being wielded against people like in TFA, that's way overboard, it's counterproductive, and people should stop it. But I think that's something we're going to have to solve as a society, through social discourse, not with government regulation.
- caddemon 5y agoYeah sorry, I know you were saying it has gone overboard, I didn't mean to present your comment as praising cancel culture in its entirety. But I did read it as praising some aspects of what these mobs can do, which the person I was replying to claimed wasn't a thing at all. More to your point, I get that there have been some positive applications, but I'm just not sure it is possible to avoid much of the bad (which IMO outweighs the good). At least not without fundamental changes to how the call outs are currently done.
- clucas 5y ago> I get that there have been some positive applications, but I'm just not sure it is possible to avoid much of the bad (which IMO outweighs the good) If people could just grant everything else and get right down to this point, the discourse on this issue would be so much more useful and interesting. And much harder. Thank you for a thoughtful comment.