19 ms·

Mob justice is trampling democratic discourse

277 points by tysone 5y ago

eigengrau5150 5y ago
I think the only way counter the new Puritanism is to meet every accusation of impropriety with unyielding defiance. Never explain yourself. Never apologize. Never allow your equals to hold you "accountable", let alone your inferiors. "My life matters. Your feelings do not."
bserge 5y ago
Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! I've had to listen to rants about sterilizing alcoholics, shooting immigrants at the border, deporting people, having one strong leader like in a monarchy (but somehow it's not dictatorship). Idiocy runs deep. Walk on a busy street and look around, more than half the people hold some of these views. 3/4 I'd even say. I do, too, I believe all drugs should be legal (even if I sign away all my other healthcare), the death penalty should be a choice vs life imprisonment for example. Is that as dumb as sterilizing alcoholics? I can't really tell since I'm me. I like to believe I stop at not dictating how other people should live their own lives.
- cookieswumchorr 5y ago
  the problem is, many, very many people love to tell others how they should live, speak, and especially how they should feel. I have come to the conclusion that my own political preferences are not with the left, the right or any other particular pole. I just dislike people trying to force their opinion on me, and especially those who try to do it by manipulating my feelings. Doesn't matter what their beliefs are.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I think it's important to be careful, when one identifies as "outside the system", that one is not actually advancing the cause of one of the "sides". In particular, when the status quo is unjust, saying that you don't identify with either the left or the right often means that you're OK with the status quo. I'm not saying this is an inherently wrong position, just that it's important to be aware of whose interests are served by you standing on the sidelines.
    - rscoots 5y ago
      You'll notice the post you're responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines". A common tactic used by evangelist partisans is to paint centrists as 'undecided' on some issues and therefore just as evil as the enemy. In reality these people are as opinionated as any partisan on individual topics.
      - AlexandrB 5y ago
        > You'll notice the post your responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines". That's a fair criticism. I suppose I was responding to the attitude I perceived from the comment rather than the words themselves. I'll admit that what I said may not apply to the GP at all.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Let's say I care about people more than politics. And let's say it plays out this way in my thinking: I'm pro-life, because I see a fetus as a person, or at least a person-in-the-making. And I'm pro-law-enforcement, because I see crime hurting people. And I'm pro-welfare and pro-raising-minimum-wage, because I see poverty hurting people. And I'm anti-death-penalty, because I see that as killing a person. And I'm anti-gun-rights, because I see guns killing people. (Note well: Not all of these are my positions, so let's skip debates about the specifics.) In the great Red-vs-Blue battle, I'm on the sidelines, because I'm on Team People, not Team Red or Team Blue. Both sides have positions that I agree with, and both have positions that I disagree with. I can't be fully on either team, because neither is fully on my team. But I'll get involved on individual issues. I'm not "undecided" on individual issues. Why is that a problem? (I mean, I see that it's a problem for someone who's wholly sold out to Team Red or Team Blue, but why should the rest of us care?)
    - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
      I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I certainly agree with their post. My opinion is that people on the edges of the political spectrum, who have strong opinions and are active in politics, in fact do nothing to change society, and actually entrench the existing power structures. The reason I have come to that conclusion is that politics is tribal, if you want to be part of a group, you have to have exactly the right beliefs, you cannot have an opinion other than the ones shared by the group, if you think a bit differently than the group, but agree with them on a large degree of things and are willing to work with them, the group will reject you. They do not want free thinkers, they want foot soldiers for their culture war. All the culture wars have done is act as a set of wedge issues politicians use to divide their opponents base. When you become politically active, you become a tool for politicians. And somehow, very predictably, midterm elections are already bad for incumbent presidents parties, we always alternate between democratic preaidents and republican presidents, my cities local politics will always be democratic, my state will always be controlled by republicans. The people in power seem to be happy with this status quo, perhaps just because it is predictable.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    What about people who leave you alone but try to push their opinion on others with less political power?
  - crmd 5y ago
    In war games, the only winning move is not to play.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    True, and this is an age old argument. Here is the relevant XKCD, just with a narrow scope: https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- yanderekko 5y ago
  >But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! This has always been one of the more-grating aspects of cancel culture. When my tribe does it to yours, it's just "actions having consequences", "fucking around and finding out", "consequences culture", etc. When your tribe does it to mine, it's criminal harassment / death threats / bigotry / gaslighting / etc etc.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! Maybe this is just part of the maturing process that most of us go through. There's a painfully large number of times in my life where I've been a total ass about someone else's beliefs, failings, etc., until something in my own life made me more empathetic on the topic.
kelvin0 5y ago
"How much intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a poorly worded comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?" Since when has Twitter become a platform for intellectual discourse?
- eigengrau5150 5y ago
  Since never. Twitter has always been the bathroom wall of the internet.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  The sentence you quoted is not describing Twitter as the platform for intellectual discourse, it's describing it as the platform where the mob gathers their pitchforks to demand banishment.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think that line indicates that intellectual discourse that occurs anywhere is harmed by a comment taken out of context and spread on Twitter. Not that any intellectual discourse occurs on Twitter.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  That aside, I think the answer to the question is still "very little". People engaged in these crazy ideological battles on either side are out of touch. Most people are, in fact, reasonable.
- agentultra 5y ago
  When I hear this I don't believe they're talking about grammar errors or malapropisms. You can replace "poorly worded comment* with racist/misogynist/ableist/transphobic/etc comment and see that this is a euphemism. How much of intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a racist/misogynist/abelist comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter? Context is important. One can dig up a quote from David Bowie that would paint him as a supporter of fascism. And indeed, at one point in his life, that may have been true. He later rescinded those comments and apologized and did his best, it seems, to make up for it in his later life. But we're talking about people in the here-and-now in positions of power with terrible opinions saying horrible things about other people and they downplay it by acting like the people holding them accountable are the overly-sensitive ones. It's not trampling democratic discourse. It's making it better in my accounting.
Artistry121 5y ago
When you look at courts in the South (but really anywhere in the US - just that for the stronger historical context), the length of time it takes people to get trials, the amount of money in major cases and the political careers of attorney generals justice has always been mob-like. Just focused on powerful mobs.
- cies 5y ago
  Also looking at the power of lobby (mostly the power of big biz) in politics, combined with the two-party system (where big biz can easily support both sides), I think we see a much bigger enemy of democratic discourse. Mob rule is maybe "the people" finding a way get around the broken system.
hprotagonist 5y ago
Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura last night; they were the only people who made any effort to make Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. -- Cryptonomicon, 1999 Rehashing the PC wars of the mid-90s has been a continual experience of deja vu combined with a fairly appalled horror at finding out how many of my peers fell for it twice.
- duxup 5y ago
  I'm not even sure if it is PC wars of the mid 90s as much as a sort of flavor of puritanism like behavior where folks just substitute their cause / identity and go looking for whatever is wrong. I fear it is human nature.
- throwaway14356 5y ago
  its facinating to see a big problem solve little people
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  It is a bit worse than that -- because these were largely people who did not fall for the religious-based Puritanism. D&D is Satanic. Now it is problematic. It appears that people will fall for this Puritanism as long as the flavor packet that comes with it is to their taste.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
z3ugma 5y ago
Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown. The podcast You're Wrong About did a great episode on this recently about "cancel culture" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id1380008439?i=1000524480233 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800... In it, they specifically call out The Atlantic's editors for their handwringing
- duxup 5y ago
  Is the scale the issue?
- batch12 5y ago
  It really isn't overblown. The foaming outraged extremists that torture any individual or company that deigns to disagree with their current ideals is a huge issue.
  - robmccoll 5y ago
    I think like most things, none of it is as big as you might think. It makes for an interesting story, so it gets heavily reported, but honestly, it seems over-represented in the media. Do you *personally* know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it? Same question, but about local businesses? People are entitled to their opinions and actions barring actually violating laws. It's the balance of free speech and the free market. Any person, business, organization, etc. can take a stance and hold an opinion publicly, but that may hold consequences due to the perceptions and behavior of others that cannot be controlled. Locally I see unions and protest groups trying to shame businesses all the time. Those businesses are doing fine. I see local politicians raise money on the idea that "the left is trying to cancel them" pretty successfully.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - batch12 5y ago
      Yes, I personally know several people who were targeted by these extremists. Some went so far as to call their employers and lie about them to try and have them cancelled.
commandlinefan 5y ago
This new wave of social discourse that's being labelled "cancel culture" (in spite of the protests of the people at the forefront of it) is often justifiably compared to a religion, just as in the linked article. My read of history is that religion is only ever overturned by a stronger religion - I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia.
- corey_moncure 5y ago
  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad-- the church has way better music.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia. This is my prediction, although I’m not completely sure about the lifetime part. If it does come to that, I’m not completely unopposed to the crazy prepper life though.
- herio 5y ago
  From a non US outsiders perspective I do have to say that it looks like the US civil war never really ended. The country is still largely divided along the same lines (with maybe California as a third entity) and I don't really see it reconciling any time soon. Kind of like Belgium over here in Europe, which is usually say is not so much a country as it is a cold civil war :)
  - nradov 5y ago
    The geographic lines of division today have changed tremendously since the Civil War. The divide is now more rural versus urban rather than north versus south. In the last presidential election rural California was mostly "red" while southern cities were mostly "blue". https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/ https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/
    - 5y ago
thepasswordis 5y ago
The problem is that now we have all of these discussions on a stage in front of a mob. Discourse is no longer a tool we use to approach a better mutual understanding, it’s a gladiator match where there has to be a loser and a winner. I’ve run into this problem with people who use a lot of twitter. They would keep asking me to “state my position”, and also demand it to be about 1 sentence long. The problem being…I don’t usually have a “position”, but rather I have a set of things which haven’t yet been proven false. So it’s really a body of existing understanding, not an individual idea, which should be examined as part of a discussion. (I run into this problem with young people, in real life). An prescient example might be my dislike of electronic voting machines. If I say this in public, to the audience that grew up on twitter, they’ll accuse me of being a Republican, an insurrectionist, racist, ivermectin conspiracist anti vaxxer. I’m none of those things (although ever day I become close to being some sort of Republican), but the more complex discussion isn’t really possible on twitter. Because that is where so many people learn how to interact with others, snd where they learn to derive understanding, it doesn’t matter. And even trying to explain that some of these ideas can be bad independently springs some sort of Kafka trap. Here’s a fantastic article that I think lays out a version of the problem: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/ https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  It's kind of a youthful trait, isn't it? An idealism that may carry a ton of insight, really, but no understanding of application. So they think complicated things shouldn't be complicated and get angry about it. (I did. The Great Recession landed at a critical age in my life) They demand simple answers, because complicated ones take too long and require real attention and dedication. People grow out of that. While their politics may not change, usually their approach and understanding do. For any of the good it's done, it seems like Twitter has arrested that other process. Maybe it's the immediacy, or the audience, or the format, or a combination—don't know. But it used to be the only place you found that kind of squabbling was talk radio, cable TV, or a bar—easily avoidable and not as polluting of regular discourse.
  - 5y ago
VictorPath 5y ago
Applebaum talks about Twitter and cancel culture. Of course, her bemoaning of "judgement" on Twitter is odd, because she has used Twitter to throw mud at "Russian spy" and "Russian propaganda" tool Edward Snowden ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20snowden&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20snowden&... ), "apologist for Milosevic" and Nobel laureate Peter Handke ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20milosevic&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20milosevi... ), "bizarre" Noam Chomsky ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20chomsky&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20chomsky&... ) etc. Ok for her to judge and cancel on Twitter, not for the "mob" that judges her and her friends.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think there's a difference between noting someone else's choices and actions as wrong or 'bizarre' vs. the outcomes we see with the sort of mob justice that results in people losing their jobs over misquotes or sincere questions that might be uncomfortable. I'm not a part of any cancel culture because I call someone 'bizarre'.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Well, until enough other people start calling the same person bizarre.
- krapp 5y ago
  None of the people you mention were "cancelled" on Twitter. Criticising or expressing a negative opinion about someone is not "cancel culture."
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > "Russian spy" > "Russian propaganda" > "apologist for Milosevic" ie "What they say doesn't matter because it's to serve motive X" Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture". This is generally a precursor to a bandwagon/snowball to de-platform the individual. This happens when a portion of individuals begin picking a side by taking action, sometimes out of caution. ie The proactive individuals don't want to face the possibility of similar behavior within a social network.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
The outcomes for people who were never charged or convicted of any crimes seems pretty...brutal. Having your livelihood taken away among other sanctions over an allegation would be very upsetting. It seems a safe bet that in an arbitrary amount of time(say, 36 months), this will happen to the "wrong" person - the sort of person who gets upset and kills people they believe(whether right or wrong) to be responsible. I don't think that would change anything though, other than further vilifying the person - if they weren't a legitimate bad actor before, they would have become one. The social pressure to ostracize someone who is already being ostracized by the majority is a real pressure that affects people.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Managers who bow to Twitter pressure and fire people are more of a problem than the Twitter mob. The twitter mob is the indirect cause, the boss is the direct cause of someone being fired.
mc32 5y ago
Consider: *Twitter is a small but vocal slice of politics, mostly left-leaning. *Publishing to Twitter means throwing yourself at the mob. *The mob is motivated by many things, one of which is one-upping the other for sport. But THE WORST part of the whole thing is people take it seriously and companies take it seriously and organizations take it seriously. It would not be so bad if Twittering stayed in Twitter, but it doesn't, it bleeds into life in real ways. That means you cannot use it as a way to "think out loud". People will find what you said 10 years ago when something was okay and judge you on today's mores. People have not co-developed and matured enough with Social media to be able to judge what comes from it appropriately. My wish is we grow out of it much quicker than it took the "East" to grow out of Leninism.
- dgfitz 5y ago
  I believe the article details a lot of examples where twitter had nothing to do with the 'crime' at all. Twitter is just where the echo chamber resides.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I don't know how much I would "blame" twitter. But I do think that "the medium is the message" and Twitter's medium is short, curt, over simplified, and encourages exaggeration and even worse.
    - mc32 5y ago
      It also encourages piling-on. And, for unknown reasons, companies and organizations feel beholden to the Twitter mood. We see this with technical support issues as well as tangential social issues: someone from the company was seen acting rude towards someone -Outrage! (As if the accuser never, ever engaged in such uncivil behavior, ever! And especially never become part of a Twitter mob to seek something as crass as revenge)
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
psyc 5y ago
I've been assured by many HN commenters that there's actually no problem, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent reason for the ambivalence. 1. It's all in my imagination / they haven't seen it. It's a bogeyman created by the alt-right and their mouthpiece, The Atlantic. 2. Cancel culture is actually 'consequence culture', therefore it is right and just and nothing to worry about, unless I deserve it. 3. It's nothing new because whatabout the Dixie Chicks.
- cobrabyte 5y ago
  Who considers The Atlantic to be an alt-right mouthpiece? They unabashedly lean left.
CyberRabbi 5y ago
There is a three-way mutual submissive relationship between corporations, the intelligentsia, and the mob on Twitter. The good thing is that you can mostly ignore it without any meaningful negative impact on your life. Sure, the syrup product in your local supermarket might now be called “Pearl Milling Company” but you’re probably better off avoiding the extra calories.
_pmf_ 5y ago
"Just don't be an asshole." -- Assholes
unethical_ban 5y ago
>What many of these people—the difficult ones, the gossipy ones, the overly gregarious ones—have in common is that they make people uncomfortable. Here, too, a profound generational shift has transpired. “I think people’s tolerance for discomfort—people’s tolerance for dissonance, for not hearing exactly what they want to hear—has now gone down to zero,” one person told me. “Discomfort used to be a term of praise about pedagogy—I mean, the greatest discomforter of all was Socrates.” Yep. I read this article in horror, even though I've heard many of the stories before. I am someone who likes to think out loud, to play devil's advocate, and who likes to flirt. It seems I should reconsider my thoughts of going into journalism or education! Honestly, it is scary to see this country go in such a direction. I wonder if it will simmer down in 10-15 years. My theory is that a lot of the accusations flying around (especially with #metoo) relate to things that occurred before there would be proof of wrongdoing, and before people had the support structure and institutional trust to report it quickly. Now that we live in a country where people can feel more comfortable reporting their abuses more quickly, we won't have cases like Brett Kavanaugh, where it's a he-said/she-said from 30 years ago. To the other points in the article, it does seem to be coming mostly from "the youth". People who have come of age at a time when lots of social norms and forms of interaction have changed, and where Twitter and Facebook have always existed. They don't know a world where, if you don't like something, you just live with it. Now, no matter how foolish it is to expect to never be offended, people can now find thousands of supporters online for any kind of inane qualm one has with their employer, coworker or professor. And it's wrapped in moral superiority. Is there a country in Europe that is beautiful, intellectual, and doesn't yet suffer from this cultural disease?
treme 5y ago
reddit is a huge elephant in the room that contributes to this polarization. mods have 0 accountability and ban people that don't share same political views with impunity (even in non political subs, especially big deal in regional local subs).
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  True, but this is why so many 'alternate' subs have been created over the years, and why you also can (for now) still create one if you see a need. I've found that mods in smaller communities are often much more approachable than I expected, as well. Unfortunately, you are right that mod abuse in larger subs has become a pretty awful problem. Part of the issue is that some have found ways to monetize their positions (which of course eventually ruins everything), but there's certainly no shortage of egotistical maniacs, trolls and idiots who are happy to unfairly hassle others without pay. It can be hard to pull subscribers away once a place reaches critical mass, too. Honestly, I see no solution to the problem other than to steer clear of larger spaces-- or at least watch for biases and don't take them seriously. Any attempt to create a 'vetting' system for mods will not only break anonymity but also give reddit's paid admins even more power.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    you cant really create alternates of local subs because a) national ones grew their audience via auto-subscribe and b) names of localities are unique Well the solution is to have expiration dates for mods or have them voted. moderators should be clerks, not dictators
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  > especially big deal in regional local subs Yeah about that, it's so bizarre. American political culture has corroded it so much, that the mods of local or national subs have named themselves expert epidemiologists now. They will shut down even perfectly civil discussion if they dont like it for arbitrary reasons (because they themselves are clueless so rely on their feels)
- cobrabyte 5y ago
helen___keller 5y ago
Is it surprising that it feels like our society is drifting closer to anarchy when hundreds of millions of people spend hours a day on platforms that are inherently not democratic?
- duxup 5y ago
  My workplace isn't democratic, few are... not sure that has bright society closer to anarchy.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    Your workplace isn't used as a platform for "democratic discourse"
    - duxup 5y ago
      How many places are democratic that are a platform for democratic discourse?
      - helen___keller 5y ago
        Local town halls, city council meetings, and things of that nature. Which is to say: not many (and over the duration of our democracy, they have not scaled with technology in the way that propaganda has: newspapers, then talk radio, then evening TV news, then 24/7 TV news, and now the rage-o-sphere)
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
That's rather rich coming from a magazine (like all of them really) that has so decidedly chosen a team for the culture wars. I can't say that it's a matter of 'democracy' but simply human nature on the large scale. Personal and mass behavior (personal in the aggregate I guess) is going to be steered by a combination of top-down force and bottom-up culture. Diversity implies a lack of bottom-up control systems so, if anything, you need less democracy in modern states. Obviously social media makes it easier to gin up a mob, and there's always been the truth that small yet loud contingents can punch above their weight, but it seems to me that there's nothing really new here. Social media appears to allow impolite behavior at lower cost, but that poor behavior was always built into the individual. Perhaps what I'd like to hear is some insight from a participant in the Yugoslavia breakup.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  The Atlantic is actually much better than, say, Mother Jones/Slate/Salon. Back in 2015, they ran "Coddling of the American Mind" which was one of the first big articles detailing this shift in public discourse.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  That’s kind of how the media works. Invent problems, harp on them for weeks, then either move on or offer your own new “commentary” about solutions. All while making big bucks off the advertising eyeballs.
motohagiography 5y ago
I think she pulls punches here, but why wouldn't she, because that's what she's writing about. The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. They exist in the Public sphere, and so the thoughts and conversations of others are suddenly subject to "accountbility." There is no conventional notion of what is ones business and what is not. As though for these atomized people with few close relationships and a lack of personal boundaries, that nothing is their business because they are not invited into intimate relationships means everything is because they don't know there is a difference between what is and what isn't. Appelbaum says: > A decade ago, I wrote a book about the Sovietization of Central Europe in the 1940s, and found that much of the political conformism of the early Communist period was the result not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure. Even without a clear risk to their life, people felt obliged—not just for the sake of their career but for their children, their friends, their spouse—to repeat slogans that they didn’t believe, or to perform acts of public obeisance to a political party they privately scorned. Even Appelbaum, who wrote a scathing survey of this very phenomenon, hedges herself as not being overly sympathetic to wrongthink, lest she be expelled from the intelligentsia circles she works in for a lack of fervency. What bothers me is that even smart people like her are not seeing the forest for the trees, and how this is a managed phenomenon. > Despite the right-wing rhetoric that says otherwise, these procedures are not being driven by a “unified left” (there is no “unified left”), or by a unified movement of any kind, let alone by the government. While I can see why she would want to avoid risking the attention of the people behind this, it is in fact co-ordinated, and the "left," is only one of the hosts and funnels used for it. Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. If Anne Appelbaum has been cowed by these people, we are much further down the road to perdition than we know.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  >The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU
steve76 5y ago
`The phone stops ringing. People stop talking to you. You become toxic.` HOOORRAAYYYY!!! I go to great efforts to keep people away from me. How do I do this? Sign me up. If this really bothers you, here's an easy fix. Make money. Then you can get by with anything. Perhaps they're not mad at what you said, but mad at your highly expensive tax payer funded paycheck that you've consistently under performed. I never liked Hawthorne. I was always partial to Melville. Or Conrad. Or Milton. A promenade of monsters. And the whale likes to be killed, but lures them along, humiliates them by taking out other whalers, and finally springs a trap sucking everyone down into hell, keeping one alive to spread the horror. Bezos and Musk made it to the moon. That's enough payload to kill the world a couple times over. From current events, I don't think your leadership cares if you live or die. Go ahead. Cancel them and see what happens. Or better yet ... JOIN US
mrfusion 5y ago
Half of the sub Reddit’s went private to protest for censorship.
DanielBMarkham 5y ago
This is a good article. It's well-researched and it tries to be as even-handed as possible. Trying to move beyond the immediate issues, something a lot of people don't talk about is the resulting lack of quality in those institutions affected by mob rule. I go to places for quality information that I used to go 20 years ago and in many cases it's a horrible pile of substandard, inadequate crap. It's not a coincidence that the people who do the worst things are many of the same folks that sing the hymns that their side wants to hear. People in various professions and organizations are learning to play on the emotions of others. More troubling, they are learning that this public emotional manipulation is much more than adequate for their jobs. The quality of the jobs themselves suffer. We need those folks to actually do their jobs, not become or stay popular.
tharne 5y ago
Ironic that the Atlantic of all places is publishing this. While their general assessment is correct, they've certainly done their part in feeding the outrage mob. Over the years their reporting has gotten less and less nuanced and significantly more click-baity.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  That last sentence feels like it applies to pretty much everybody.
titzer 5y ago
The whole show is being run by an insane level of computational power whose main purpose is to addict, distract, and coerce. Advertising, persuasion, the siren-song that hits your brain right in its dopamine loop. It's everywhere, on every screen, all the time. Little interruptions and nuggets to get you back into the cycle of addiction so the machine can pump more impressions past your eyeballs into your brain and make you a good little consumer.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  What I find remarkable is that this isn't part of any grand conspiracy - it's simply the natural outcome of having social media. We really do need a better architecture for social media that rewards mature discussion, rather than the outrage machine we've currently cursed society with. ...and I think we need to stop trying to create a platform that's for everyone. Less is more. As adults, we do not need to share a platform with hormonal teenagers. ...of course age is a very simplistic broad-brush segmentation. At heart, what makes sense is some sort of meritocratic forum.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Are we sure? Even if you remove the advertising i think there's a distinct lack of interest in debate, hence why forums failed, why reddit has become a monoculture, and why atomized media like twitter are the last refuge where people can try to shout at each other. The next iteration will not involve any talk at all.
6510 5y ago
Democratic Discourse isn't enough. The collective wants actual democracy not just talk about it. If the mechanism fails (or we fail the mechanism) it will be replaced by something else, something new, something old... It might not be pretty, it might get a lot more ugly but its going to happen.
cblconfederate 5y ago
It's all probably just a sign of the shifting attitudes in the past few generations. Public is shifting away from liberalism in favor of popularity, and away from the christian-atheist value of forgiveness in favor of block-lists. The digital world has definitely played a part here - block lists were not possible in the analog world which forced people to reevaluate each other even if they still found each other abhorrent. But this is probably the new normal, which inevitably means erosion of collective institutions in favor of atomized ones. This will never be fixed, the mob behavior is here endemic, as there is no force rolling it back. What will happen is probably a fracturing of public opinion (and democracy itself) into separate, safe but insulated bubbles.
- Ar-Curunir 5y ago
  What nonsense. "Christianity" has been the cause for many, many abhorrent crimes throughout history. Also, what is "Christianity" if not a big cult fueled by populism?
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    interesting that a single word evokes such response. As an atheist i always found the principle of forgiveness rather peculiar as it's not natural to humans, but i guess it's one of the many reasons of its quick success before it became the roman religion. In fact i don't think any historians considers the quick early spread of christianity was due to mob behavior. OTOH, any religion can be described as big cult fueled by popular lies.
- VelkaMorava 5y ago
  > of forgiveness in favor of block-lists. ...of forgiveness in favor of blacklists. Fixed that for you.
thirdvect0r 5y ago
Anne Appelbaum is a hack. She cherry-picks her sources to feed her narrative in literally everything she writes. Her faux even-handedness is just a rhetorical device to push her actual agenda. Bin.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
karaterobot 5y ago
> anyone who tries to shoehorn these stories into a right-left political framework has to explain why so few of the victims of this shift can be described as “right wing” or conservative... All of those I spoke with are centrist or center-left liberals. I agree that it's not simply an example of the left attacking the right, since the accused are in many cases left-leaning themselves. But, that shouldn't be taken to mean that conservatives are somehow immune. The reason that all her sources were liberal was because she talked to university academics and journalists, professions where conservatives were driven out decades ago. Sure, they exist, but they're rare enough that it makes sense she wouldn't catch any in her sample. This supports her point, which I agree with — I just think she missed that this isn't a new phenomenon.
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
Funny how these articles only ever complain about censorship of conservative viewpoints, and never about, say, history textbooks being revised to sugarcoat American and Canadian genocide of indigenous people, or of slavery. Eg: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/08/30/i-have-done-nothing-wrong-colleyville-heritage-principal-says-after-gcisd-puts-him-on-paid-leave/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/08/30/i-have-done-nothi... https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-06-04/canada-recognizes-genocide-except-against-its-own-indigenous-peoples https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-06-... Liberal democracy has never been about "democratic discourse".
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Is 'please don't commit arson at your protest' a conservative viewpoint?
h2odragon 5y ago
Many have no faith in their peers to make up their minds for themselves. I doubt they have that faith in themselves. This is an easy conclusion to come to, if you believe there's a better source of Truth. Used to be that source of Truth was a church, but now it has become some notional distributed consensus. We still have our priests and saints, but we don't know why they're elevated, or why they fall... Where #metoo applies only to some people; where being photographed with a finger pose has meaning if you're "right wing", but not if you're "left wing"; where "Trump is Gay!" is an acceptable insult but everyone else has Gay Pride... that isn't hypocrisy to those doing it. It's the application of a different standard of morality. The notion that we are all people, we are all pretty much the same, and we all have pretty much the same flaws; has fallen away. Rulers and leaders and celebrities are supposed to be better than everyone else, and when they prove not to be; either the messenger must be punished and their human flaw ignored; or they must be pulled down from their elevated position.
babyblueblanket 5y ago
I'm surprised no one here is talking about context collapse, which I think does a good chunk to explain the mob justice behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  it isn't -- context is intentionally left out for greater mob effect. nobody stopped a mob by providing context
morpheos137 5y ago
What i don't understand is why people get so emotional and tribal about politics at least in the USA. Both sides as of recently have been enthralled by conspiracy theories and world views that seem untethered to reality or reasonableness. This doesn't mean a lukewarm center is right either. Politics specifically disinterests me because it is all about your side winning not coming up with the best solutions to problems. I guess most people just want to have a tribe to be part of.
notacoward 5y ago
The problem as I see it is that everybody acts like their pet issue not only matters more than any other but more than all of them put together. Thus you get somebody posting something about LGBTQ+ issues, then somebody else trying to shut them down over a phrase that could be interpreted as racially insensitive, then they in their turn are accused of being able-ist, and so on. I see this merry-go-round every day on Twitter or Tumblr. Fun fact: nobody scores 100% on any test of "right thinking" across a wide range of issues, by any political faction's definition of what "right thinking" would be. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did? But they can be right on the vast majority, they can be articulate and effective as advocates on all of them, but then that one wrong answer is used to hang them and all of that positive effect is lost. What's left is just the negative, which we're drowning in. By all means, advocate for what you believe in. Call out people whose behavior you believe is harmful. But have some perspective, have some proportion, and don't casually throw out due process whenever it suits you.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
To give a technical slant to the current woke agenda: my work place recently planned a Hackathon, and asked for contributions for tasks to work on. From a younger colleague: "how about a bot that monitors all online chat channels, highlighting instances where people have used non-pc words or terminology" I didn't sign up.
- jmeister 5y ago
  Aren’t the kids supposed to be rebellious?
  - sergiomattei 5y ago
    Dude's just an ass trying to signal. Nothing to see here.
scotuswroteus 5y ago
Bad headlines with inaccurate, overhyped verbs are trampling straightforward reasoning
_nicelaris_ 5y ago
"Democratic discourse" is one of the main causes of this. We are pushed into teams and forced to decide how best to subjugate those around us. Of course hating and seeking to ruin our neighbor the result, meanwhile those in power over us profit and get away with literally whatever they want because we're convinced it's the fault of our friends and families rather than our rulers. The state is satanic.
8eye 5y ago
yeah, i saw a guy get beat, he seemed like a kind person, i saw him get provoked like fight club style, it sucked. there was a crowd mocking him while he was getting beat, someone said it was because he didn’t have a vaccine card on him, i would have helped but it was over by the time i got there. someone called that police but the police were too busy or something. i am surprised that it’s gotta so acceptable to beat people as a group. i thought that was illegal?
bacan 5y ago
Really? I don't see minimum wage laws going up, even though social media has been demanding it. The only thing I see is politicians sucking up to anti-vaxxers. Twitter etc is great, but they don't really have much power. The BLM movement was a massive uprising, but didn't really achieve anything afaik. The real power is still with the elected officials

277 points by tysone 5y ago

I think the only way counter the new Puritanism is to meet every accusation of impropriety with unyielding defiance. Never explain yourself. Never apologize. Never allow your equals to hold you "accountable", let alone your inferiors. "My life matters. Your feelings do not."

bserge 5y ago

Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! I've had to listen to rants about sterilizing alcoholics, shooting immigrants at the border, deporting people, having one strong leader like in a monarchy (but somehow it's not dictatorship). Idiocy runs deep. Walk on a busy street and look around, more than half the people hold some of these views. 3/4 I'd even say. I do, too, I believe all drugs should be legal (even if I sign away all my other healthcare), the death penalty should be a choice vs life imprisonment for example. Is that as dumb as sterilizing alcoholics? I can't really tell since I'm me. I like to believe I stop at not dictating how other people should live their own lives.

cookieswumchorr 5y ago
the problem is, many, very many people love to tell others how they should live, speak, and especially how they should feel. I have come to the conclusion that my own political preferences are not with the left, the right or any other particular pole. I just dislike people trying to force their opinion on me, and especially those who try to do it by manipulating my feelings. Doesn't matter what their beliefs are.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I think it's important to be careful, when one identifies as "outside the system", that one is not actually advancing the cause of one of the "sides". In particular, when the status quo is unjust, saying that you don't identify with either the left or the right often means that you're OK with the status quo. I'm not saying this is an inherently wrong position, just that it's important to be aware of whose interests are served by you standing on the sidelines.
  - rscoots 5y ago
    You'll notice the post you're responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines". A common tactic used by evangelist partisans is to paint centrists as 'undecided' on some issues and therefore just as evil as the enemy. In reality these people are as opinionated as any partisan on individual topics.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      > You'll notice the post your responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines". That's a fair criticism. I suppose I was responding to the attitude I perceived from the comment rather than the words themselves. I'll admit that what I said may not apply to the GP at all.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Let's say I care about people more than politics. And let's say it plays out this way in my thinking: I'm pro-life, because I see a fetus as a person, or at least a person-in-the-making. And I'm pro-law-enforcement, because I see crime hurting people. And I'm pro-welfare and pro-raising-minimum-wage, because I see poverty hurting people. And I'm anti-death-penalty, because I see that as killing a person. And I'm anti-gun-rights, because I see guns killing people. (Note well: Not all of these are my positions, so let's skip debates about the specifics.) In the great Red-vs-Blue battle, I'm on the sidelines, because I'm on Team People, not Team Red or Team Blue. Both sides have positions that I agree with, and both have positions that I disagree with. I can't be fully on either team, because neither is fully on my team. But I'll get involved on individual issues. I'm not "undecided" on individual issues. Why is that a problem? (I mean, I see that it's a problem for someone who's wholly sold out to Team Red or Team Blue, but why should the rest of us care?)
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I certainly agree with their post. My opinion is that people on the edges of the political spectrum, who have strong opinions and are active in politics, in fact do nothing to change society, and actually entrench the existing power structures. The reason I have come to that conclusion is that politics is tribal, if you want to be part of a group, you have to have exactly the right beliefs, you cannot have an opinion other than the ones shared by the group, if you think a bit differently than the group, but agree with them on a large degree of things and are willing to work with them, the group will reject you. They do not want free thinkers, they want foot soldiers for their culture war. All the culture wars have done is act as a set of wedge issues politicians use to divide their opponents base. When you become politically active, you become a tool for politicians. And somehow, very predictably, midterm elections are already bad for incumbent presidents parties, we always alternate between democratic preaidents and republican presidents, my cities local politics will always be democratic, my state will always be controlled by republicans. The people in power seem to be happy with this status quo, perhaps just because it is predictable.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  What about people who leave you alone but try to push their opinion on others with less political power?
- crmd 5y ago
  In war games, the only winning move is not to play.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  True, and this is an age old argument. Here is the relevant XKCD, just with a narrow scope: https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
yanderekko 5y ago
>But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! This has always been one of the more-grating aspects of cancel culture. When my tribe does it to yours, it's just "actions having consequences", "fucking around and finding out", "consequences culture", etc. When your tribe does it to mine, it's criminal harassment / death threats / bigotry / gaslighting / etc etc.
CoastalCoder 5y ago
> Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?! Maybe this is just part of the maturing process that most of us go through. There's a painfully large number of times in my life where I've been a total ass about someone else's beliefs, failings, etc., until something in my own life made me more empathetic on the topic.

kelvin0 5y ago

"How much intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a poorly worded comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?" Since when has Twitter become a platform for intellectual discourse?

eigengrau5150 5y ago
Since never. Twitter has always been the bathroom wall of the internet.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
The sentence you quoted is not describing Twitter as the platform for intellectual discourse, it's describing it as the platform where the mob gathers their pitchforks to demand banishment.
duxup 5y ago
I think that line indicates that intellectual discourse that occurs anywhere is harmed by a comment taken out of context and spread on Twitter. Not that any intellectual discourse occurs on Twitter.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
That aside, I think the answer to the question is still "very little". People engaged in these crazy ideological battles on either side are out of touch. Most people are, in fact, reasonable.
agentultra 5y ago
When I hear this I don't believe they're talking about grammar errors or malapropisms. You can replace "poorly worded comment* with racist/misogynist/ableist/transphobic/etc comment and see that this is a euphemism. How much of intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a racist/misogynist/abelist comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter? Context is important. One can dig up a quote from David Bowie that would paint him as a supporter of fascism. And indeed, at one point in his life, that may have been true. He later rescinded those comments and apologized and did his best, it seems, to make up for it in his later life. But we're talking about people in the here-and-now in positions of power with terrible opinions saying horrible things about other people and they downplay it by acting like the people holding them accountable are the overly-sensitive ones. It's not trampling democratic discourse. It's making it better in my accounting.

Artistry121 5y ago

When you look at courts in the South (but really anywhere in the US - just that for the stronger historical context), the length of time it takes people to get trials, the amount of money in major cases and the political careers of attorney generals justice has always been mob-like. Just focused on powerful mobs.

cies 5y ago
Also looking at the power of lobby (mostly the power of big biz) in politics, combined with the two-party system (where big biz can easily support both sides), I think we see a much bigger enemy of democratic discourse. Mob rule is maybe "the people" finding a way get around the broken system.

hprotagonist 5y ago

Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura last night; they were the only people who made any effort to make Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. -- Cryptonomicon, 1999 Rehashing the PC wars of the mid-90s has been a continual experience of deja vu combined with a fairly appalled horror at finding out how many of my peers fell for it twice.

duxup 5y ago
I'm not even sure if it is PC wars of the mid 90s as much as a sort of flavor of puritanism like behavior where folks just substitute their cause / identity and go looking for whatever is wrong. I fear it is human nature.
throwaway14356 5y ago
its facinating to see a big problem solve little people
at_a_remove 5y ago
It is a bit worse than that -- because these were largely people who did not fall for the religious-based Puritanism. D&D is Satanic. Now it is problematic. It appears that people will fall for this Puritanism as long as the flavor packet that comes with it is to their taste.
- vorpalhex 5y ago

z3ugma 5y ago

Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown. The podcast You're Wrong About did a great episode on this recently about "cancel culture" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id1380008439?i=1000524480233 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800... In it, they specifically call out The Atlantic's editors for their handwringing

duxup 5y ago
Is the scale the issue?
batch12 5y ago
It really isn't overblown. The foaming outraged extremists that torture any individual or company that deigns to disagree with their current ideals is a huge issue.
- robmccoll 5y ago
  I think like most things, none of it is as big as you might think. It makes for an interesting story, so it gets heavily reported, but honestly, it seems over-represented in the media. Do you *personally* know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it? Same question, but about local businesses? People are entitled to their opinions and actions barring actually violating laws. It's the balance of free speech and the free market. Any person, business, organization, etc. can take a stance and hold an opinion publicly, but that may hold consequences due to the perceptions and behavior of others that cannot be controlled. Locally I see unions and protest groups trying to shame businesses all the time. Those businesses are doing fine. I see local politicians raise money on the idea that "the left is trying to cancel them" pretty successfully.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - batch12 5y ago
    Yes, I personally know several people who were targeted by these extremists. Some went so far as to call their employers and lie about them to try and have them cancelled.

commandlinefan 5y ago

This new wave of social discourse that's being labelled "cancel culture" (in spite of the protests of the people at the forefront of it) is often justifiably compared to a religion, just as in the linked article. My read of history is that religion is only ever overturned by a stronger religion - I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia.

corey_moncure 5y ago
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad-- the church has way better music.
the_only_law 5y ago
> I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia. This is my prediction, although I’m not completely sure about the lifetime part. If it does come to that, I’m not completely unopposed to the crazy prepper life though.
herio 5y ago
From a non US outsiders perspective I do have to say that it looks like the US civil war never really ended. The country is still largely divided along the same lines (with maybe California as a third entity) and I don't really see it reconciling any time soon. Kind of like Belgium over here in Europe, which is usually say is not so much a country as it is a cold civil war :)
- nradov 5y ago
  The geographic lines of division today have changed tremendously since the Civil War. The divide is now more rural versus urban rather than north versus south. In the last presidential election rural California was mostly "red" while southern cities were mostly "blue". https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/ https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/
  - 5y ago

thepasswordis 5y ago

The problem is that now we have all of these discussions on a stage in front of a mob. Discourse is no longer a tool we use to approach a better mutual understanding, it’s a gladiator match where there has to be a loser and a winner. I’ve run into this problem with people who use a lot of twitter. They would keep asking me to “state my position”, and also demand it to be about 1 sentence long. The problem being…I don’t usually have a “position”, but rather I have a set of things which haven’t yet been proven false. So it’s really a body of existing understanding, not an individual idea, which should be examined as part of a discussion. (I run into this problem with young people, in real life). An prescient example might be my dislike of electronic voting machines. If I say this in public, to the audience that grew up on twitter, they’ll accuse me of being a Republican, an insurrectionist, racist, ivermectin conspiracist anti vaxxer. I’m none of those things (although ever day I become close to being some sort of Republican), but the more complex discussion isn’t really possible on twitter. Because that is where so many people learn how to interact with others, snd where they learn to derive understanding, it doesn’t matter. And even trying to explain that some of these ideas can be bad independently springs some sort of Kafka trap. Here’s a fantastic article that I think lays out a version of the problem: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/ https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...

52-6F-62 5y ago
It's kind of a youthful trait, isn't it? An idealism that may carry a ton of insight, really, but no understanding of application. So they think complicated things shouldn't be complicated and get angry about it. (I did. The Great Recession landed at a critical age in my life) They demand simple answers, because complicated ones take too long and require real attention and dedication. People grow out of that. While their politics may not change, usually their approach and understanding do. For any of the good it's done, it seems like Twitter has arrested that other process. Maybe it's the immediacy, or the audience, or the format, or a combination—don't know. But it used to be the only place you found that kind of squabbling was talk radio, cable TV, or a bar—easily avoidable and not as polluting of regular discourse.
- 5y ago

VictorPath 5y ago

Applebaum talks about Twitter and cancel culture. Of course, her bemoaning of "judgement" on Twitter is odd, because she has used Twitter to throw mud at "Russian spy" and "Russian propaganda" tool Edward Snowden ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20snowden&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20snowden&... ), "apologist for Milosevic" and Nobel laureate Peter Handke ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20milosevic&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20milosevi... ), "bizarre" Noam Chomsky ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20chomsky&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20chomsky&... ) etc. Ok for her to judge and cancel on Twitter, not for the "mob" that judges her and her friends.

duxup 5y ago
I think there's a difference between noting someone else's choices and actions as wrong or 'bizarre' vs. the outcomes we see with the sort of mob justice that results in people losing their jobs over misquotes or sincere questions that might be uncomfortable. I'm not a part of any cancel culture because I call someone 'bizarre'.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Well, until enough other people start calling the same person bizarre.
krapp 5y ago
None of the people you mention were "cancelled" on Twitter. Criticising or expressing a negative opinion about someone is not "cancel culture."
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > "Russian spy" > "Russian propaganda" > "apologist for Milosevic" ie "What they say doesn't matter because it's to serve motive X" Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture". This is generally a precursor to a bandwagon/snowball to de-platform the individual. This happens when a portion of individuals begin picking a side by taking action, sometimes out of caution. ie The proactive individuals don't want to face the possibility of similar behavior within a social network.

clipradiowallet 5y ago

The outcomes for people who were never charged or convicted of any crimes seems pretty...brutal. Having your livelihood taken away among other sanctions over an allegation would be very upsetting. It seems a safe bet that in an arbitrary amount of time(say, 36 months), this will happen to the "wrong" person - the sort of person who gets upset and kills people they believe(whether right or wrong) to be responsible. I don't think that would change anything though, other than further vilifying the person - if they weren't a legitimate bad actor before, they would have become one. The social pressure to ostracize someone who is already being ostracized by the majority is a real pressure that affects people.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Managers who bow to Twitter pressure and fire people are more of a problem than the Twitter mob. The twitter mob is the indirect cause, the boss is the direct cause of someone being fired.

mc32 5y ago

Consider: *Twitter is a small but vocal slice of politics, mostly left-leaning. *Publishing to Twitter means throwing yourself at the mob. *The mob is motivated by many things, one of which is one-upping the other for sport. But THE WORST part of the whole thing is people take it seriously and companies take it seriously and organizations take it seriously. It would not be so bad if Twittering stayed in Twitter, but it doesn't, it bleeds into life in real ways. That means you cannot use it as a way to "think out loud". People will find what you said 10 years ago when something was okay and judge you on today's mores. People have not co-developed and matured enough with Social media to be able to judge what comes from it appropriately. My wish is we grow out of it much quicker than it took the "East" to grow out of Leninism.

dgfitz 5y ago
I believe the article details a lot of examples where twitter had nothing to do with the 'crime' at all. Twitter is just where the echo chamber resides.
- duxup 5y ago
  I don't know how much I would "blame" twitter. But I do think that "the medium is the message" and Twitter's medium is short, curt, over simplified, and encourages exaggeration and even worse.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It also encourages piling-on. And, for unknown reasons, companies and organizations feel beholden to the Twitter mood. We see this with technical support issues as well as tangential social issues: someone from the company was seen acting rude towards someone -Outrage! (As if the accuser never, ever engaged in such uncivil behavior, ever! And especially never become part of a Twitter mob to seek something as crass as revenge)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

psyc 5y ago

I've been assured by many HN commenters that there's actually no problem, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent reason for the ambivalence. 1. It's all in my imagination / they haven't seen it. It's a bogeyman created by the alt-right and their mouthpiece, The Atlantic. 2. Cancel culture is actually 'consequence culture', therefore it is right and just and nothing to worry about, unless I deserve it. 3. It's nothing new because whatabout the Dixie Chicks.

cobrabyte 5y ago
Who considers The Atlantic to be an alt-right mouthpiece? They unabashedly lean left.

CyberRabbi 5y ago

There is a three-way mutual submissive relationship between corporations, the intelligentsia, and the mob on Twitter. The good thing is that you can mostly ignore it without any meaningful negative impact on your life. Sure, the syrup product in your local supermarket might now be called “Pearl Milling Company” but you’re probably better off avoiding the extra calories.

_pmf_ 5y ago

"Just don't be an asshole." -- Assholes

unethical_ban 5y ago

>What many of these people—the difficult ones, the gossipy ones, the overly gregarious ones—have in common is that they make people uncomfortable. Here, too, a profound generational shift has transpired. “I think people’s tolerance for discomfort—people’s tolerance for dissonance, for not hearing exactly what they want to hear—has now gone down to zero,” one person told me. “Discomfort used to be a term of praise about pedagogy—I mean, the greatest discomforter of all was Socrates.” Yep. I read this article in horror, even though I've heard many of the stories before. I am someone who likes to think out loud, to play devil's advocate, and who likes to flirt. It seems I should reconsider my thoughts of going into journalism or education! Honestly, it is scary to see this country go in such a direction. I wonder if it will simmer down in 10-15 years. My theory is that a lot of the accusations flying around (especially with #metoo) relate to things that occurred before there would be proof of wrongdoing, and before people had the support structure and institutional trust to report it quickly. Now that we live in a country where people can feel more comfortable reporting their abuses more quickly, we won't have cases like Brett Kavanaugh, where it's a he-said/she-said from 30 years ago. To the other points in the article, it does seem to be coming mostly from "the youth". People who have come of age at a time when lots of social norms and forms of interaction have changed, and where Twitter and Facebook have always existed. They don't know a world where, if you don't like something, you just live with it. Now, no matter how foolish it is to expect to never be offended, people can now find thousands of supporters online for any kind of inane qualm one has with their employer, coworker or professor. And it's wrapped in moral superiority. Is there a country in Europe that is beautiful, intellectual, and doesn't yet suffer from this cultural disease?

treme 5y ago

reddit is a huge elephant in the room that contributes to this polarization. mods have 0 accountability and ban people that don't share same political views with impunity (even in non political subs, especially big deal in regional local subs).

slfnflctd 5y ago
True, but this is why so many 'alternate' subs have been created over the years, and why you also can (for now) still create one if you see a need. I've found that mods in smaller communities are often much more approachable than I expected, as well. Unfortunately, you are right that mod abuse in larger subs has become a pretty awful problem. Part of the issue is that some have found ways to monetize their positions (which of course eventually ruins everything), but there's certainly no shortage of egotistical maniacs, trolls and idiots who are happy to unfairly hassle others without pay. It can be hard to pull subscribers away once a place reaches critical mass, too. Honestly, I see no solution to the problem other than to steer clear of larger spaces-- or at least watch for biases and don't take them seriously. Any attempt to create a 'vetting' system for mods will not only break anonymity but also give reddit's paid admins even more power.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  you cant really create alternates of local subs because a) national ones grew their audience via auto-subscribe and b) names of localities are unique Well the solution is to have expiration dates for mods or have them voted. moderators should be clerks, not dictators
cblconfederate 5y ago
> especially big deal in regional local subs Yeah about that, it's so bizarre. American political culture has corroded it so much, that the mods of local or national subs have named themselves expert epidemiologists now. They will shut down even perfectly civil discussion if they dont like it for arbitrary reasons (because they themselves are clueless so rely on their feels)
cobrabyte 5y ago

helen___keller 5y ago

Is it surprising that it feels like our society is drifting closer to anarchy when hundreds of millions of people spend hours a day on platforms that are inherently not democratic?

duxup 5y ago
My workplace isn't democratic, few are... not sure that has bright society closer to anarchy.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  Your workplace isn't used as a platform for "democratic discourse"
  - duxup 5y ago
    How many places are democratic that are a platform for democratic discourse?
    - helen___keller 5y ago
      Local town halls, city council meetings, and things of that nature. Which is to say: not many (and over the duration of our democracy, they have not scaled with technology in the way that propaganda has: newspapers, then talk radio, then evening TV news, then 24/7 TV news, and now the rage-o-sphere)

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

That's rather rich coming from a magazine (like all of them really) that has so decidedly chosen a team for the culture wars. I can't say that it's a matter of 'democracy' but simply human nature on the large scale. Personal and mass behavior (personal in the aggregate I guess) is going to be steered by a combination of top-down force and bottom-up culture. Diversity implies a lack of bottom-up control systems so, if anything, you need less democracy in modern states. Obviously social media makes it easier to gin up a mob, and there's always been the truth that small yet loud contingents can punch above their weight, but it seems to me that there's nothing really new here. Social media appears to allow impolite behavior at lower cost, but that poor behavior was always built into the individual. Perhaps what I'd like to hear is some insight from a participant in the Yugoslavia breakup.

JohnWhigham 5y ago
The Atlantic is actually much better than, say, Mother Jones/Slate/Salon. Back in 2015, they ran "Coddling of the American Mind" which was one of the first big articles detailing this shift in public discourse.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
That’s kind of how the media works. Invent problems, harp on them for weeks, then either move on or offer your own new “commentary” about solutions. All while making big bucks off the advertising eyeballs.

motohagiography 5y ago

I think she pulls punches here, but why wouldn't she, because that's what she's writing about. The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. They exist in the Public sphere, and so the thoughts and conversations of others are suddenly subject to "accountbility." There is no conventional notion of what is ones business and what is not. As though for these atomized people with few close relationships and a lack of personal boundaries, that nothing is their business because they are not invited into intimate relationships means everything is because they don't know there is a difference between what is and what isn't. Appelbaum says: > A decade ago, I wrote a book about the Sovietization of Central Europe in the 1940s, and found that much of the political conformism of the early Communist period was the result not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure. Even without a clear risk to their life, people felt obliged—not just for the sake of their career but for their children, their friends, their spouse—to repeat slogans that they didn’t believe, or to perform acts of public obeisance to a political party they privately scorned. Even Appelbaum, who wrote a scathing survey of this very phenomenon, hedges herself as not being overly sympathetic to wrongthink, lest she be expelled from the intelligentsia circles she works in for a lack of fervency. What bothers me is that even smart people like her are not seeing the forest for the trees, and how this is a managed phenomenon. > Despite the right-wing rhetoric that says otherwise, these procedures are not being driven by a “unified left” (there is no “unified left”), or by a unified movement of any kind, let alone by the government. While I can see why she would want to avoid risking the attention of the people behind this, it is in fact co-ordinated, and the "left," is only one of the hosts and funnels used for it. Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. If Anne Appelbaum has been cowed by these people, we are much further down the road to perdition than we know.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
>The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU

steve76 5y ago

`The phone stops ringing. People stop talking to you. You become toxic.` HOOORRAAYYYY!!! I go to great efforts to keep people away from me. How do I do this? Sign me up. If this really bothers you, here's an easy fix. Make money. Then you can get by with anything. Perhaps they're not mad at what you said, but mad at your highly expensive tax payer funded paycheck that you've consistently under performed. I never liked Hawthorne. I was always partial to Melville. Or Conrad. Or Milton. A promenade of monsters. And the whale likes to be killed, but lures them along, humiliates them by taking out other whalers, and finally springs a trap sucking everyone down into hell, keeping one alive to spread the horror. Bezos and Musk made it to the moon. That's enough payload to kill the world a couple times over. From current events, I don't think your leadership cares if you live or die. Go ahead. Cancel them and see what happens. Or better yet ... JOIN US

mrfusion 5y ago

Half of the sub Reddit’s went private to protest for censorship.

DanielBMarkham 5y ago

This is a good article. It's well-researched and it tries to be as even-handed as possible. Trying to move beyond the immediate issues, something a lot of people don't talk about is the resulting lack of quality in those institutions affected by mob rule. I go to places for quality information that I used to go 20 years ago and in many cases it's a horrible pile of substandard, inadequate crap. It's not a coincidence that the people who do the worst things are many of the same folks that sing the hymns that their side wants to hear. People in various professions and organizations are learning to play on the emotions of others. More troubling, they are learning that this public emotional manipulation is much more than adequate for their jobs. The quality of the jobs themselves suffer. We need those folks to actually do their jobs, not become or stay popular.

tharne 5y ago

Ironic that the Atlantic of all places is publishing this. While their general assessment is correct, they've certainly done their part in feeding the outrage mob. Over the years their reporting has gotten less and less nuanced and significantly more click-baity.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
That last sentence feels like it applies to pretty much everybody.

titzer 5y ago

The whole show is being run by an insane level of computational power whose main purpose is to addict, distract, and coerce. Advertising, persuasion, the siren-song that hits your brain right in its dopamine loop. It's everywhere, on every screen, all the time. Little interruptions and nuggets to get you back into the cycle of addiction so the machine can pump more impressions past your eyeballs into your brain and make you a good little consumer.

koheripbal 5y ago
What I find remarkable is that this isn't part of any grand conspiracy - it's simply the natural outcome of having social media. We really do need a better architecture for social media that rewards mature discussion, rather than the outrage machine we've currently cursed society with. ...and I think we need to stop trying to create a platform that's for everyone. Less is more. As adults, we do not need to share a platform with hormonal teenagers. ...of course age is a very simplistic broad-brush segmentation. At heart, what makes sense is some sort of meritocratic forum.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Are we sure? Even if you remove the advertising i think there's a distinct lack of interest in debate, hence why forums failed, why reddit has become a monoculture, and why atomized media like twitter are the last refuge where people can try to shout at each other. The next iteration will not involve any talk at all.

6510 5y ago

Democratic Discourse isn't enough. The collective wants actual democracy not just talk about it. If the mechanism fails (or we fail the mechanism) it will be replaced by something else, something new, something old... It might not be pretty, it might get a lot more ugly but its going to happen.

cblconfederate 5y ago

It's all probably just a sign of the shifting attitudes in the past few generations. Public is shifting away from liberalism in favor of popularity, and away from the christian-atheist value of forgiveness in favor of block-lists. The digital world has definitely played a part here - block lists were not possible in the analog world which forced people to reevaluate each other even if they still found each other abhorrent. But this is probably the new normal, which inevitably means erosion of collective institutions in favor of atomized ones. This will never be fixed, the mob behavior is here endemic, as there is no force rolling it back. What will happen is probably a fracturing of public opinion (and democracy itself) into separate, safe but insulated bubbles.

Ar-Curunir 5y ago
What nonsense. "Christianity" has been the cause for many, many abhorrent crimes throughout history. Also, what is "Christianity" if not a big cult fueled by populism?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  interesting that a single word evokes such response. As an atheist i always found the principle of forgiveness rather peculiar as it's not natural to humans, but i guess it's one of the many reasons of its quick success before it became the roman religion. In fact i don't think any historians considers the quick early spread of christianity was due to mob behavior. OTOH, any religion can be described as big cult fueled by popular lies.
VelkaMorava 5y ago
> of forgiveness in favor of block-lists. ...of forgiveness in favor of blacklists. Fixed that for you.

thirdvect0r 5y ago

Anne Appelbaum is a hack. She cherry-picks her sources to feed her narrative in literally everything she writes. Her faux even-handedness is just a rhetorical device to push her actual agenda. Bin.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

karaterobot 5y ago

> anyone who tries to shoehorn these stories into a right-left political framework has to explain why so few of the victims of this shift can be described as “right wing” or conservative... All of those I spoke with are centrist or center-left liberals. I agree that it's not simply an example of the left attacking the right, since the accused are in many cases left-leaning themselves. But, that shouldn't be taken to mean that conservatives are somehow immune. The reason that all her sources were liberal was because she talked to university academics and journalists, professions where conservatives were driven out decades ago. Sure, they exist, but they're rare enough that it makes sense she wouldn't catch any in her sample. This supports her point, which I agree with — I just think she missed that this isn't a new phenomenon.

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

Funny how these articles only ever complain about censorship of conservative viewpoints, and never about, say, history textbooks being revised to sugarcoat American and Canadian genocide of indigenous people, or of slavery. Eg: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/08/30/i-have-done-nothing-wrong-colleyville-heritage-principal-says-after-gcisd-puts-him-on-paid-leave/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/08/30/i-have-done-nothi... https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-06-04/canada-recognizes-genocide-except-against-its-own-indigenous-peoples https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-06-... Liberal democracy has never been about "democratic discourse".

refenestrator 5y ago
Is 'please don't commit arson at your protest' a conservative viewpoint?

h2odragon 5y ago

Many have no faith in their peers to make up their minds for themselves. I doubt they have that faith in themselves. This is an easy conclusion to come to, if you believe there's a better source of Truth. Used to be that source of Truth was a church, but now it has become some notional distributed consensus. We still have our priests and saints, but we don't know why they're elevated, or why they fall... Where #metoo applies only to some people; where being photographed with a finger pose has meaning if you're "right wing", but not if you're "left wing"; where "Trump is Gay!" is an acceptable insult but everyone else has Gay Pride... that isn't hypocrisy to those doing it. It's the application of a different standard of morality. The notion that we are all people, we are all pretty much the same, and we all have pretty much the same flaws; has fallen away. Rulers and leaders and celebrities are supposed to be better than everyone else, and when they prove not to be; either the messenger must be punished and their human flaw ignored; or they must be pulled down from their elevated position.

babyblueblanket 5y ago

I'm surprised no one here is talking about context collapse, which I think does a good chunk to explain the mob justice behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse

cblconfederate 5y ago
it isn't -- context is intentionally left out for greater mob effect. nobody stopped a mob by providing context

morpheos137 5y ago

What i don't understand is why people get so emotional and tribal about politics at least in the USA. Both sides as of recently have been enthralled by conspiracy theories and world views that seem untethered to reality or reasonableness. This doesn't mean a lukewarm center is right either. Politics specifically disinterests me because it is all about your side winning not coming up with the best solutions to problems. I guess most people just want to have a tribe to be part of.

notacoward 5y ago

The problem as I see it is that everybody acts like their pet issue not only matters more than any other but more than all of them put together. Thus you get somebody posting something about LGBTQ+ issues, then somebody else trying to shut them down over a phrase that could be interpreted as racially insensitive, then they in their turn are accused of being able-ist, and so on. I see this merry-go-round every day on Twitter or Tumblr. Fun fact: nobody scores 100% on any test of "right thinking" across a wide range of issues, by any political faction's definition of what "right thinking" would be. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did? But they can be right on the vast majority, they can be articulate and effective as advocates on all of them, but then that one wrong answer is used to hang them and all of that positive effect is lost. What's left is just the negative, which we're drowning in. By all means, advocate for what you believe in. Call out people whose behavior you believe is harmful. But have some perspective, have some proportion, and don't casually throw out due process whenever it suits you.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

To give a technical slant to the current woke agenda: my work place recently planned a Hackathon, and asked for contributions for tasks to work on. From a younger colleague: "how about a bot that monitors all online chat channels, highlighting instances where people have used non-pc words or terminology" I didn't sign up.

jmeister 5y ago
Aren’t the kids supposed to be rebellious?
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Dude's just an ass trying to signal. Nothing to see here.

scotuswroteus 5y ago

Bad headlines with inaccurate, overhyped verbs are trampling straightforward reasoning

_nicelaris_ 5y ago

"Democratic discourse" is one of the main causes of this. We are pushed into teams and forced to decide how best to subjugate those around us. Of course hating and seeking to ruin our neighbor the result, meanwhile those in power over us profit and get away with literally whatever they want because we're convinced it's the fault of our friends and families rather than our rulers. The state is satanic.

8eye 5y ago

yeah, i saw a guy get beat, he seemed like a kind person, i saw him get provoked like fight club style, it sucked. there was a crowd mocking him while he was getting beat, someone said it was because he didn’t have a vaccine card on him, i would have helped but it was over by the time i got there. someone called that police but the police were too busy or something. i am surprised that it’s gotta so acceptable to beat people as a group. i thought that was illegal?

bacan 5y ago

Really? I don't see minimum wage laws going up, even though social media has been demanding it. The only thing I see is politicians sucking up to anti-vaxxers. Twitter etc is great, but they don't really have much power. The BLM movement was a massive uprising, but didn't really achieve anything afaik. The real power is still with the elected officials