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Its really tough being a comedian. Generally, in society there are lines drawn over which you must not cross. Comedians typically get to push those boundaries u

by anonu 5y ago

Its really tough being a comedian. Generally, in society there are lines drawn over which you must not cross. Comedians typically get to push those boundaries under the guise of comedy or free-thinking or equal-opportunity racism or bigotry. Generally, I am totally supportive of that as it is thought-provoking and conversation inducing. It's better to bring uncomfortable subjects out into the open and make fun of them rather than have them be taboo subjects that should not be discussed. So ultimately, the meta view on all this is, yes, lets have a conversation. Maybe its a heated one, but lets not "cancel" people while were at it. Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled.

danShumway 5y ago
> Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled. What would that look like though? I think there's a somewhat valid conversation to be had about cancel culture, but this point comes up over and over, and I'm constantly wondering: if people criticizing speech in public places like Twitter isn't the free market, and Netflix employees collectively advocating that they don't want to host the speech isn't the free market, and if users boycotting or voting with their wallets isn't the free market, and if advertisers pushing for higher standards on the platforms they're advertising on isn't the free market, and if platform-holders and publishers deciding what content they want to promote isn't the free market, then what is the free market? When we talk about cancel culture, a lot of the mechanisms of canceling use free market actions; freedom of association, the right to criticize, the right to filter and to share filters with other people, the right to choose how we spend our money and time. And it's valid to look at the free market of speech and say that sometimes it's overly harsh or that it censors the wrong people or that it can be intolerant, but I don't see how it's possible to simultaneously say that the marketplace of ideas is the correct way to sort out good and bad speech, and also that people being mean on Twitter or calling for boycotts is fundamentally the wrong way to tackle conflict. What do people think the marketplace of ideas is, and how should it act? When the marketplace of ideas deems an idea unpopular or bad, should it still be given equal weight and equal investment and promotion alongside other ideas, even though the marketplace doesn't want it? That's not how the real economic marketplace works; in the economic marketplace if you can't convince people to buy your product, then your company dies and investors stop giving you money and putting you on store shelves. Nobody says that it's a violation of the free market if people badmouth a company online and stores stop carrying their products as a result. Nobody argues that I'm "canceling" Facebook when I tell people to stop using it, or when I argue that Facebook's future VR products are likely to be bad just by virtue of being made by Facebook. What's different about the marketplace of ideas? Is it that Netflix has too much power and it's a pseudo-monopoly over entertainment? I can buy that argument for situations like Facebook or the Apple app store, but I don't really buy it for Netflix.
- anonu 5y ago
  > What would that look like though? Certainly not through 1000 Netflix employees representing the free-market.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Should 1000 Netflix employees be able to represent what content Netflix hosts? Netflix refuses to carry an awful lot of content. Is it a violation of the free market of speech that they're not streaming everyone else's responses to David Chappelle? I mean, I personally haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them about this debate, does that mean Netflix is censoring my voice and subverting the marketplace of ideas by refusing to stream my videos? The problem is that if we go too far down the road of deciding Netflix is violating the marketplace of ideas by choosing not to host certain ideas on a curated service, we end up with really silly conclusions. I'd be a bit more charitable to this idea if we were talking about a general platform like Youtube, or if we were talking about a platform with outsized monopoly-levels of control over video content. But it's absurd to say that the marketplace of ideas means Netflix is obligated to pay people to produce content for them and to promote that content; that would be a huge violation of Freedom of Association, and it would just be completely unworkable as a business model. And if Netflix isn't obligated to pay for and host everyone's content, then who else has more right to have input into what Netflix does host than its employees, owners, and stakeholders?
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      > I mean, I haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them Consider -- just for a moment -- that you are not Dave Chappelle. But if you were an entertainer with his appeal and fanbase, then I don't doubt that Netflix would reach out to you to try to sign you to some specials. In other words, Netflix is not a pez-dispenser of views on political issues. It's an entertainment platform for the entire world. So no, extremist groups within Netflix don't get to stand between Chapelle and his audience, deplatforming him just because they have a job at Netflix.
      - 5y ago
krainboltgreene 5y ago
I feel like the multimillionare comedian in question is doing fine. Every other comedian I know is doing fine as well. Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine.
- xpaqui 5y ago
  > Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine. I feel this is a gross generalization, are we talking about CK Lewis or Daphne? What's the line for doing fine, losing a year of gigs, working in another area, not dead, not in a mental institution? This "cancel" culture is unproductive and pitting people against people for misunderstandings that wouldn't hold water in real life.
  - krainboltgreene 5y ago
    You could have at least looked up CK Lewis' current success, which has it's own wikipedia entry featuring the subject of this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K.#2020%E2%80%93present:_COVID-19_and_stand-up_tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K.#2020%E2%80%93presen... Either way, it's also really really dark and disturbing for you to attribute Daphne's suicide to "cancelation".

by anonu 5y ago

danShumway 5y ago

> Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled. What would that look like though? I think there's a somewhat valid conversation to be had about cancel culture, but this point comes up over and over, and I'm constantly wondering: if people criticizing speech in public places like Twitter isn't the free market, and Netflix employees collectively advocating that they don't want to host the speech isn't the free market, and if users boycotting or voting with their wallets isn't the free market, and if advertisers pushing for higher standards on the platforms they're advertising on isn't the free market, and if platform-holders and publishers deciding what content they want to promote isn't the free market, then what is the free market? When we talk about cancel culture, a lot of the mechanisms of canceling use free market actions; freedom of association, the right to criticize, the right to filter and to share filters with other people, the right to choose how we spend our money and time. And it's valid to look at the free market of speech and say that sometimes it's overly harsh or that it censors the wrong people or that it can be intolerant, but I don't see how it's possible to simultaneously say that the marketplace of ideas is the correct way to sort out good and bad speech, and also that people being mean on Twitter or calling for boycotts is fundamentally the wrong way to tackle conflict. What do people think the marketplace of ideas is, and how should it act? When the marketplace of ideas deems an idea unpopular or bad, should it still be given equal weight and equal investment and promotion alongside other ideas, even though the marketplace doesn't want it? That's not how the real economic marketplace works; in the economic marketplace if you can't convince people to buy your product, then your company dies and investors stop giving you money and putting you on store shelves. Nobody says that it's a violation of the free market if people badmouth a company online and stores stop carrying their products as a result. Nobody argues that I'm "canceling" Facebook when I tell people to stop using it, or when I argue that Facebook's future VR products are likely to be bad just by virtue of being made by Facebook. What's different about the marketplace of ideas? Is it that Netflix has too much power and it's a pseudo-monopoly over entertainment? I can buy that argument for situations like Facebook or the Apple app store, but I don't really buy it for Netflix.

anonu 5y ago
> What would that look like though? Certainly not through 1000 Netflix employees representing the free-market.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Should 1000 Netflix employees be able to represent what content Netflix hosts? Netflix refuses to carry an awful lot of content. Is it a violation of the free market of speech that they're not streaming everyone else's responses to David Chappelle? I mean, I personally haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them about this debate, does that mean Netflix is censoring my voice and subverting the marketplace of ideas by refusing to stream my videos? The problem is that if we go too far down the road of deciding Netflix is violating the marketplace of ideas by choosing not to host certain ideas on a curated service, we end up with really silly conclusions. I'd be a bit more charitable to this idea if we were talking about a general platform like Youtube, or if we were talking about a platform with outsized monopoly-levels of control over video content. But it's absurd to say that the marketplace of ideas means Netflix is obligated to pay people to produce content for them and to promote that content; that would be a huge violation of Freedom of Association, and it would just be completely unworkable as a business model. And if Netflix isn't obligated to pay for and host everyone's content, then who else has more right to have input into what Netflix does host than its employees, owners, and stakeholders?
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > I mean, I haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them Consider -- just for a moment -- that you are not Dave Chappelle. But if you were an entertainer with his appeal and fanbase, then I don't doubt that Netflix would reach out to you to try to sign you to some specials. In other words, Netflix is not a pez-dispenser of views on political issues. It's an entertainment platform for the entire world. So no, extremist groups within Netflix don't get to stand between Chapelle and his audience, deplatforming him just because they have a job at Netflix.
    - 5y ago

krainboltgreene 5y ago

I feel like the multimillionare comedian in question is doing fine. Every other comedian I know is doing fine as well. Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine.

xpaqui 5y ago
> Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine. I feel this is a gross generalization, are we talking about CK Lewis or Daphne? What's the line for doing fine, losing a year of gigs, working in another area, not dead, not in a mental institution? This "cancel" culture is unproductive and pitting people against people for misunderstandings that wouldn't hold water in real life.
- krainboltgreene 5y ago
  You could have at least looked up CK Lewis' current success, which has it's own wikipedia entry featuring the subject of this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K.#2020%E2%80%93present:_COVID-19_and_stand-up_tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K.#2020%E2%80%93presen... Either way, it's also really really dark and disturbing for you to attribute Daphne's suicide to "cancelation".