6 ms·

As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things po

As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to. The underlying mechanism of Twitter is what gave birth to the term, regardless of whether it's used by haters to justify hate speech. One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. Coupled with the new notion that hurting someone's feelings constitutes a form of harm tantamount to violence, this allows proportionality in punishment to be abstracted away. If measures of harm are arbitrary and shifting depending on how much mob traction one particular issue recieves or how sensitive one person happens to be, then proportionality is impossible, and "cancel culture" captures a state where cancellation is the answer to any grievance of any severity which manages to find cultural purchase.

guelo 5y ago
Consumer boycotts are not new. They have a long history including the Boston Tea Party that kicked off America.
commandlinefan 5y ago
> the modality of mass mob boycotts I was watching the news this morning and they were talking about the latest company that's boycotting Russia in response to the social media storm. It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They don't have to impose sanctions (and their own rules make it difficult to do so) - the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  A handful of tech companies arguably have far more power to regulate speech than any government.
  - guelo 5y ago
    Not universally true, Putin and Xi Jinping have more power than tech companies in their countries. America decided 231 years ago that private actors would have more power over speech than the government.
  - krapp 5y ago
    The counterargument to that, of course, is that a handful of tech companies can't actually make your speech illegal, make their competition illegal, arrest you, imprison you, ban your speech across an entire country, burn your literature or have you and your ethic/religious/political group shot and dumped into shallow graves. I mean, sure... getting banned from Twitter is momentarily annoying but Twitter having far more power to regulate speech than the entity that writes the laws that define Twitter's existence, that claims a monopoly on violence, and that in many cases directly controls the media and censors the internet? No. It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one.
    - gopher_space 5y ago
      > It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one. You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. My charitable view is that people are actually complaining about a monopoly on attention. It's an interesting subject but doesn't have anything to do with speech.
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
        > You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and registrars refuse to register your domain. But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well.
        Meekro 5y ago
        > But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well. Until your upstream network provider decides to drop you (this happened to Epik, temporarily killing the whole company until they dropped 8chan). But of course you could also make your own backbone ISP.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  > It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I've been thinking this for quite a few years now. >the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations. Or swarms of bots shaping public opinion run by just a few people? As long as Govt's allow encryption, over the telecoms networks in their countries, the sooner govts become irrelevant.
- dylan604 5y ago
  > It's a form of democracy, I guess It's not much different than the old historical mobs with pitch forks and torches, only there's a slightly lower potential to physical harm.
- mook 5y ago
  > latest company that's boycotting Russia Is it really companies boycotting Russia? Or is it that they're no longer doing business with people in Russia due to the sanctions (and therefore the likelihood that there would be no way to get paid), with some pretty marketing speak wrapped around it?
ashtonkem 5y ago
> As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new. … One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. They used to kill people for advocating for integration and civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble to kill black men accused of hitting on white women. Not internet “mobs”, actual ones with guns and pitchforks. Literally nothing you’re talking about is new, in fact it has gotten way less bad over the past few decades. In fact, arguing that its new and pernicious requires us to purposefully ignore the history of political and speech based violence throughout the 20th century and earlier.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  They used to imprison people for sending information about birth control through the mail. I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. The most common phrase quoted by people to describe a hypothetical rational limit on speech[*] was cribbed from a case that found it was ok to imprison people for passing out pamphlets against WWI. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
  - Latty 5y ago
    > I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. Obviously not always, but often because you are viewing it through the a different lens: there is an unspoken "for people like me" missing from the end of their statement.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I think thats a big part of why powerful writers and journalists are complaining. They’re not used to the masses talking back to them, and they don’t like it very much.
      - 5y ago
kritiko 5y ago
>One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. Lenny Bruce was convicted of obscenity less than 60 years ago. The civil liberties around speech went through a series of challenges and expansions very recently. The ACLU used to defend nazis. Now they prefer not to, to the chagrin or dismay of more traditional civil libertarians.
- noduerme 5y ago
  The one thing that's remained constant from times when civil rights activists were imprisoned for "offending" people to now when right wingers are canceled for offending people seems to be that the bulk of the population is incapable of, or unwilling to, set the principle of speech over their own feelings about that speech. I think it's because most people just can't imagine themselves being on the wrong end of a censorship regime (civil, corporate, or otherwise). This is why the ACLU was so important; that was the entire point of it. It was started by a Jew. I'm a Jew, and I contributed to it. Not because I like nazis or think for a moment that they'd give me the same chance to speak. But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will come for those who believe themselves immune. We will have a far-right government again, and whatever liberties we allow to erode now because it suits us will be used against us. Only the very young and those with very short memories think that silencing opinions they don't like is a winning strategy in the long run.
  - iosono88 5y ago
  - Animats 5y ago
    But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will come for those who believe themselves immune. Exactly.
  - Latty 5y ago
    You are equating government imprisonment with public cancellation here because they both have a chilling effect, but we very quickly run into the paradox of tolerance: do you restrict the expression of "cancelling" to protect other speech? Those Nazis you use an example of abhorrent speech that must be allowed were calling for communists to be rounded up and killed for their views. Surely that is partaking in cancellation? Who cancels the cancellers?
tptacek 5y ago
I think you're making White's point for him. You're implying that free speech should be at least as important as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic. This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How do you coherently isolate the speech that must be protected --- the supposed "first speaker" --- from the speech that shouldn't (critics of that first speaker)?
- jimbokun 5y ago
  It's a norm not a law. Be open to a broad array of viewpoints and opinions, as a general rule. It makes you a better human being.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    It's an aspirational norm, but it's nobody's practiced norm; virtually everybody has lines they draw. So what does it tell us that we can aspire to having that norm? I'd argue: not much.
    - jimbokun 5y ago
      The extent to which a society aspires to this norm has a great effect on the extent to which that society flourishes and prospers.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        Then we've clearly flourished throughout the 20th century in spit of it and not because of it.
        hanselot 5y ago
        akvadrako 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
javajosh 5y ago
>modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to Wonderfully written, noduerme, and I comment first to expand on this part. The mob includes friends and family. To be shunned, or ostracized by friends and family can and does happen because of these incidents. To become associated with an ideology, even against your will, can put your employment at risk, as your employer does not want to be seen as supporting you. These are very dire consequences, equivalent to significant jail time, IMHO. Second, I want to note that the phenomena is a failure of the justice system. That in an ideal world there would only be one justice and it would be fast and easy to access, and handle even the smallest matter promptly and fairly. These antics are wrong, but they point to a demand for righting wrongs that isn't being met by the current justice system.
UncleMeat 5y ago
> One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. This is not new. People were shot and killed for pro-trade-union speech, for example.

guelo 5y ago

Consumer boycotts are not new. They have a long history including the Boston Tea Party that kicked off America.

commandlinefan 5y ago

> the modality of mass mob boycotts I was watching the news this morning and they were talking about the latest company that's boycotting Russia in response to the social media storm. It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They don't have to impose sanctions (and their own rules make it difficult to do so) - the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations.

jimbokun 5y ago
A handful of tech companies arguably have far more power to regulate speech than any government.
- guelo 5y ago
  Not universally true, Putin and Xi Jinping have more power than tech companies in their countries. America decided 231 years ago that private actors would have more power over speech than the government.
- krapp 5y ago
  The counterargument to that, of course, is that a handful of tech companies can't actually make your speech illegal, make their competition illegal, arrest you, imprison you, ban your speech across an entire country, burn your literature or have you and your ethic/religious/political group shot and dumped into shallow graves. I mean, sure... getting banned from Twitter is momentarily annoying but Twitter having far more power to regulate speech than the entity that writes the laws that define Twitter's existence, that claims a monopoly on violence, and that in many cases directly controls the media and censors the internet? No. It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one.
  - gopher_space 5y ago
    > It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one. You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. My charitable view is that people are actually complaining about a monopoly on attention. It's an interesting subject but doesn't have anything to do with speech.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
      > You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and registrars refuse to register your domain. But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well.
      - Meekro 5y ago
        > But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well. Until your upstream network provider decides to drop you (this happened to Epik, temporarily killing the whole company until they dropped 8chan). But of course you could also make your own backbone ISP.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
> It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I've been thinking this for quite a few years now. >the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations. Or swarms of bots shaping public opinion run by just a few people? As long as Govt's allow encryption, over the telecoms networks in their countries, the sooner govts become irrelevant.
dylan604 5y ago
> It's a form of democracy, I guess It's not much different than the old historical mobs with pitch forks and torches, only there's a slightly lower potential to physical harm.
mook 5y ago
> latest company that's boycotting Russia Is it really companies boycotting Russia? Or is it that they're no longer doing business with people in Russia due to the sanctions (and therefore the likelihood that there would be no way to get paid), with some pretty marketing speak wrapped around it?

ashtonkem 5y ago

> As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new. … One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. They used to kill people for advocating for integration and civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble to kill black men accused of hitting on white women. Not internet “mobs”, actual ones with guns and pitchforks. Literally nothing you’re talking about is new, in fact it has gotten way less bad over the past few decades. In fact, arguing that its new and pernicious requires us to purposefully ignore the history of political and speech based violence throughout the 20th century and earlier.

pessimizer 5y ago
They used to imprison people for sending information about birth control through the mail. I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. The most common phrase quoted by people to describe a hypothetical rational limit on speech[*] was cribbed from a case that found it was ok to imprison people for passing out pamphlets against WWI. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
- Latty 5y ago
  > I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. Obviously not always, but often because you are viewing it through the a different lens: there is an unspoken "for people like me" missing from the end of their statement.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I think thats a big part of why powerful writers and journalists are complaining. They’re not used to the masses talking back to them, and they don’t like it very much.
    - 5y ago

kritiko 5y ago

>One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. Lenny Bruce was convicted of obscenity less than 60 years ago. The civil liberties around speech went through a series of challenges and expansions very recently. The ACLU used to defend nazis. Now they prefer not to, to the chagrin or dismay of more traditional civil libertarians.

noduerme 5y ago
The one thing that's remained constant from times when civil rights activists were imprisoned for "offending" people to now when right wingers are canceled for offending people seems to be that the bulk of the population is incapable of, or unwilling to, set the principle of speech over their own feelings about that speech. I think it's because most people just can't imagine themselves being on the wrong end of a censorship regime (civil, corporate, or otherwise). This is why the ACLU was so important; that was the entire point of it. It was started by a Jew. I'm a Jew, and I contributed to it. Not because I like nazis or think for a moment that they'd give me the same chance to speak. But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will come for those who believe themselves immune. We will have a far-right government again, and whatever liberties we allow to erode now because it suits us will be used against us. Only the very young and those with very short memories think that silencing opinions they don't like is a winning strategy in the long run.
- iosono88 5y ago
- Animats 5y ago
  But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will come for those who believe themselves immune. Exactly.
- Latty 5y ago
  You are equating government imprisonment with public cancellation here because they both have a chilling effect, but we very quickly run into the paradox of tolerance: do you restrict the expression of "cancelling" to protect other speech? Those Nazis you use an example of abhorrent speech that must be allowed were calling for communists to be rounded up and killed for their views. Surely that is partaking in cancellation? Who cancels the cancellers?

tptacek 5y ago

I think you're making White's point for him. You're implying that free speech should be at least as important as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic. This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How do you coherently isolate the speech that must be protected --- the supposed "first speaker" --- from the speech that shouldn't (critics of that first speaker)?

jimbokun 5y ago
It's a norm not a law. Be open to a broad array of viewpoints and opinions, as a general rule. It makes you a better human being.
- tptacek 5y ago
  It's an aspirational norm, but it's nobody's practiced norm; virtually everybody has lines they draw. So what does it tell us that we can aspire to having that norm? I'd argue: not much.
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    The extent to which a society aspires to this norm has a great effect on the extent to which that society flourishes and prospers.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      Then we've clearly flourished throughout the 20th century in spit of it and not because of it.
      - hanselot 5y ago
      - akvadrako 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

javajosh 5y ago

>modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to Wonderfully written, noduerme, and I comment first to expand on this part. The mob includes friends and family. To be shunned, or ostracized by friends and family can and does happen because of these incidents. To become associated with an ideology, even against your will, can put your employment at risk, as your employer does not want to be seen as supporting you. These are very dire consequences, equivalent to significant jail time, IMHO. Second, I want to note that the phenomena is a failure of the justice system. That in an ideal world there would only be one justice and it would be fast and easy to access, and handle even the smallest matter promptly and fairly. These antics are wrong, but they point to a demand for righting wrongs that isn't being met by the current justice system.

UncleMeat 5y ago

> One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. This is not new. People were shot and killed for pro-trade-union speech, for example.