> Right, and the point is that if society has learned to embrace civil rights since then Society hasn't learned anything, no. The changes of the civil rights m

> Right, and the point is that if society has learned to embrace civil rights since then Society hasn't learned anything, no. The changes of the civil rights movement were hard fought and enshrined in law that has to be continually enforced precisely because people haven't evolved at all. > because that's what everybody knows what is actually meant when "backlash" or "consequences" is used Are you sure everybody knows this? From my perspective, I surely don't. I've seen "cancelling" simultaneously used to refer to literally cancelling programming like "Rosanne", cancelling powerful people who are abusing women like Harvey Weinstein, cancelling people who foment insurrection against the US government like Trump; and also more mundane yet still dissimilar situations ranging from teenagers canceling friends from their friend group, to indeed some person saying something and getting fired over it. And on the other side, when people complain about backlash they complain about a range of responses including boycotts of products, being moderated but not kicked off social media, actually being kicked off of social media, losing a publisher or a book deal, being kicked out of professional organizations, all the way to being jailed or fired. These are all wildly different contexts that all fall under the "cancel culture" and "backlash" umbrella, so it's not at all clear that "harassment, intimidation, trying to get people fired" is what people mean by "cancel culture" or "backlash". In fact I think it's one of the biggest problems with this discourse.