9 ms·

The Low Cost of Cancelling Someone

66 points by hunglee2 4y ago

causi 4y ago
My 90s-era policy of never connecting my real life and online personas is still serving me well.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I still don't get how we ended up from there to so many people linking their real life name, location, sex and even workplace to anything they post publicly... Like we used to warn children to not disclose their name, or location or anything. And then the same parents happily started to broadcast that stuff...
  - baryphonic 4y ago
    A/S/L?
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    Facebook was when that started to gain traction, but I think Myspace was the beginning. You had a strong incentive to put your real name and location because you would find people you knew around you automatically.
  - Kamq 4y ago
    > I still don't get how we ended up from there to so many people linking their real life name, location, sex and even workplace to anything they post publicly It's in the interest of the large internet companies to encourage this culture shift. It makes it easier to target advertising.
  - incone123 4y ago
    I knew UK activists who operated on the assumption their landlines were monitored in the 90s go ahead and do activist stuff under their real names on Facebook in the 2000s.
  - chernofool 4y ago
    It's strange, isn't it? In the span of a year or two, the zeitgeist shifted from "online stranger danger" to "you don't exist if you're not active on [website]". Even stranger, few people seem willing to re-evaluate their place in mass-scale social sites, even after 20 years of spam, scams and shams. Maybe it's a tragedy of the commons. People might enjoy the effortless positive reinforcement provided by their worldwide in-groups, which makes it easy to ignore the huge negative externalities? Or could people be addicted to the feeling of righteously fighting a great evil, such as their [adjective-of-the-month] neighbors?
rippercushions 4y ago
It's tough to fight against cancelling for the same reason it's tough to fight against bullies: you risk getting targeted yourself. If somebody calls X a racist, and you defend them, hey presto, you're now clearly a racist yourself.
- Graziano_M 4y ago
  Look at Robbie Coltrane, who just died but had the gall to not completely disavow JK Rowling. Now people are celebrating his death.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    So? There are 8B+ people in the world. Some are going to have differing opinions.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - lapcat 4y ago
    I haven't seen people celebrating his death. Anyway, this isn't an example of cancelation. You can't cancel a dead person. He wasn't killed by Twitter, he apparently died of illness.
    - RHSeeger 4y ago
      I think the point was that people turned against him because he _didn't_ turn against someone else that was the target of cancelling. He wasn't cancelled, per se; but he did suffer negative consequences for it.
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > He wasn't cancelled, per se; but he did suffer negative consequences for it. What negative consequences, other than some people having a negative opinion of him? There's nothing inherently wrong with people having a negative opinion of another person, that happens all the time. It's not a phenomenon to be worried about.
auslegung 4y ago
I’m all for accountability, but I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that hundreds or maybe thousands of randos on the internet can ruin someone’s career, even if that person has done something wrong. The legal system should be the solution here but it is broken. Ideally we’d spend our energy fixing it but… easier said than done. So I guess there are no good solutions :( Please tell me I’m wrong
- cm2187 4y ago
  The legal system should be the solution to controversial opinions?
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    When people say they want the legal system to be the solution they mean they want people to be caged and/or they want fines that only matter to the poor, in practice. They’re promoting state violence, not an ordered society
    - auslegung 4y ago
      You are assuming and generalizing, two things that do not go well with good faith discussion. Part of the legal system being broken includes a prison system that is awful, and unbalanced penalties to the poor. So what I am proposing, "fix the legal system", would address these as well.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        from your wording you are still supportive of caging people (just doing it better) so I'm not sure why you would paint my response as absurdly off base. you're like the people who say that crony capitalism is fixable you just need to solve the cronyism and return capitalism to some purer and equitable form that never existed
  - auslegung 4y ago
    At what point was I talking about controversial opinions?
lapcat 4y ago
It always has been and always will be the people in power who do the canceling. And they've been canceling people for various reasons before Twitter even existed. You can go back to the McCarthy era, where people were blacklisted for allegedly being Communist sympathizers. A "Twitter mob" has no power to fire someone, cancel contracts, or do anything other than tweet. If the people who are in power cave to pressure from a bunch random people on Twitter, that's on the powerful, not on the otherwise powerless tweeters. Cowardly people in power would rather throw their colleagues under the bus than experience any bad PR whatsoever. Is that the fault of Twitter? No. Would that problem be solved by shutting down Twitter? No. > It’s very difficult people to fight alone, or take risks alone, but having the backing of an organization or legal fund can make a big difference. But they could easily fight it if they had the backing of their own employer, for example, who would be the very organization that's officially doing the "canceling".
- Kamq 4y ago
  > If the people who are in power cave to pressure from a bunch random people on Twitter, that's on the powerful, not on the otherwise powerless tweeters. I feel like you can't call a group that can get "the people in power to cave" as powerless. That is power.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > I feel like you can't call a group that can get "the people in power to cave" as powerless. That is power. But it only works if the authorities are fearful, conflict-averse ass coverers. If the authorities ignore Twitter, then Twitter has no power. It's not like the "Twitter mobs" have guns, or even literal pitchforks. If they don't get want they want, all they can do is whine some more on Twitter.
    - onos 4y ago
      I agree, but the situation is that the people leading our institutions are self interested, weak, and not omniscient. And that means the Twitter mobs do have power and they often use this destructively. The question then is: Given that our authorities are weak, and the mob is causing us real problems, what should we do about it?
oifjsidjf 4y ago
You will never win against these people with nice words. Only going on an aggressive offense will work. A bully will never back down if the victim apologizes: this will cause the victim only to be bullied more. The bully must feel the hard fist of his victim breaking his nose, there is no other way.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  What specific action are you endorsing here?
  - flappyeagle 4y ago
    If someone tries to cancel you, escalate and push back. Push back with 10x the force. Push back to a degree beyond what is reasonable. Push back so that it forms a deterrence to future bad behavior. Not scalable, often infeasible. Is it effective? Who knows?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      > Push back with 10x the force. I'm asking you to be clear about what this is. It's not obvious to me what "force" is in this context.
- cm2187 4y ago
  In the case of twitter bullying there is, just ignore it. Who cares what stirandom265428 thinks on twitter? Chances are it's not even a real person. I noticed the same thing in the 90s in France, a country were many still have a cult of the revolution. Anytime you had 1000 guys vociferating in the street, they are somehow referred to as "the people" (except if their opinion is contrary to major newspapers, then it is a "small violent mob"). The reality is that it is only 1000 guys in a population of 60 millions. They are representative of nothing else than themselves. But it's a way for journalists to push their own opinions like if somehow they were mainstream. It's the same today. You can find 10k retweets for any random cause, even hitler. But if they align to major newsrooms opinions, they will be presented as expression of the public opinion. And I think the people doing the cancelling (employers firing, companies cancelling contracts) are more worried of the media than of the twitter mob. But given how little credibility the media have those days, they could safely ignore them and nothing would happen. Unless they evolve in those few liberal circles where all your friends will turn their back on you if you think differently on a single thing.
IgorPartola 4y ago
Opposing view: go listen to the cancel culture three parter on the You Are Wrong About podcast. They deep dive into the whole idea going back to callout culture, Dixie Chicks, the woman who got fired while on her flight to Africa for that tweet, and the basic conclusion is that cancel culture as such does not exactly exist. It is a bit of a boogeyman and in reality is large set of outcomes for actions that are not always even a net negative.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  So they selected a few anecdotes that are outdated and decided something doesn’t exist? Sounds like a podcast to stop listening to If they analyzed hundreds more anecdotes of corporations caving to Twitter mobs they’d have gotten the truth
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    You really don’t know much about them, do you? No they examined the entire history of it starting with the first cancelation (The Chicks) to really deeply understand where the concept comes from and why it’s a thing. That’s kind of what investigative journalists do. They investigate. Also honestly it’s a huge story if you can find systematic firings of people based on Twitter bullying. You should absolutely put that together and sell it as a freelance article to the NYT or similar. I hear they pay well for this kind of research.
    - throwoutway 4y ago
      It’s not that hard. There’s plenty of press releases and quotes spokespersons quoted in the NYT. go for it
- chrismcb 4y ago
  Cancel culture absolutely did exist. Sometimes, but rarely, the actions are justified. Cancelling is basically someone losing their livelihood for something they might have said or did that had no relation to their job. When you aren't a spokesperson you shouldn't be losing your job over something you said or did (or might have) when off the job.
captainmuon 4y ago
I feel like the cost of cancelling someone is quite high, paid in social capital. Especially when you mean the original definition of cancelling, to deplatform somebody. From a minority position (e.g. far-left, person of color, or LGBT), you ask people who are sympathetic to take action against somebody and exclude them. Your ally does not neccessarily support your ethics 100%, but they will agree. Then when backlash comes, they will suffer a portion of it, too. And there is often an element of forcing people to position themselves - either you are an ally, or you are an enemy / whatever-phobic. This is a concious political strategy of identity politics, and it does work. It helped leftist, feminist and other groups affect society even from a position of relative weakness. I think that's not bad - MeToo, the growing acceptance non-traditional gender identities, people using gender-inclusive speech, and so on. I've supported such campagins, too - using moral outrage to get (actual!) antisemites, neo-nazis, christian pro-life sects deplatformed from using our university rooms. But activists should be aware that this can lead to attrition among allys. Next time it might be less trouble to just disinvite every political group, including you. And once you called all your favors for topic X, don't expect to get any help with topic Y (since you are still in a position of weekness after all).
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >From a minority position (e.g. far-left, person of color, or LGBT) Several of these are not minority positions on big media. >I think that's not bad - MeToo MeToo caused huge fallout to the point male mentors were unwilling to tutor women, men seen with minors were deemed creeps, and more. You're right as to the backlash and polarizing effects, but you are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
  - devmor 4y ago
    Your claims here are something I've heard repeated from people before but I've never seen much substance to them. Especially the idea that being non-white or LGBT is non-minority online much of anywhere. Do you have any non-anecdotal data to back those up?
    - 4y ago
1337biz 4y ago
Is there some research or theories about the shadow cancel ngo or whoever coordinates the deplatforming? Considering how slow and unrespobsive big corporates usually are, there must be some real power broker behind it. Deplatformings usually all happen within the same day in a few hours. Last example is probably the deplatfoeming of Andrew Tate.
- Duwensatzaj 4y ago
  Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList and http://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php/GameJournoPros http://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php/GameJournoPros I doubt it’s a power broker, just a group of moderators from different companies who work together. Google Groups aren’t as popular nowadays. My guess is a private Discord.
- rndgermandude 4y ago
  My guess is that when such high profile cancellations happen, it's more of a matter of perceived zugzwang. Some platform does a high profile ban, and then the PR inboxes of the other platforms are set ablaze with journalists asking for comment on how your particular platform wants to handle that person - high profile bans make nice clickbait articles after all - and the twitters and reddits and youtubers and so on of this world talk about what those other platforms are doing/are not doing/should be doing. At this point the other platforms have to do something, either issue a ban as well, or issue some kind of statement why at this time they won't be issuing a ban. Usually the option to just issue a ban as well is a lot easier and PR-wise "safe" than trying to come up with a "defensive" statement of why such a ban is not (yet) appropriate.
norwalkbear 4y ago
Cancel culture will extend to banking soon. Then the rage will boil over. You may not like the fact people have different opinions, but you must accept it. Suppression of their voices leads to revolution. The top down censorship is a "let them eat cake moment".
- Duwensatzaj 4y ago
  Soon? It’s been there for a while. PayPal and traditional banks have been closing accounts for having wrong opinions for years.
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  Have you ever heard of a credit report, how does that not 'cancel' ones ability to use the banking system. If everyone could get a loan for a business idea, there'd be a lot more cool inventions and restaurants, and choices in society - but they're very selective and if you're rich - they don't even look at your credit just give you money and business cards to tell your friends.
ouid 4y ago
Here's my extremely hot take. Almost all cancellation is of net benefit. It doesn't matter if you're cancelled over a lie or a disallowed opinion, all that matters is that you have stopped being a famous person with a platform. Almost no one famous is worth listening to about things that matter, and cancellation is the penalty that famouos people incur for talking about things that matter. I draw an exception for comedians, who are famous for how worth listening to they are.
- Miner49er 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly. It's a good thing that power can be taken away with extreme ease in some situations. We need more of that. We should expect more of people we put in positions of power, not less.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I disagree, cancellation usually means no work for ~2 years before a gentle restart with less work that's less well paid. How well would you survive that? Not purely financially but emotionally. Added to this is that cancellation usually includes criticism from friends. I can not imagine publically criticizing a friend. I've cut people off before, I've criticized friends within social circles even. Criticizing someone for the purposes of strangers I find quite disgusting, akin to tribal excile likely one of the worst traditional punishments of humans probably historically a death sentence. It hits people hard. My hot take, the power of social isolation is why older male suicide is horrifically high following divorce. People on HN collapse if Google shuts their accounts down unexpectedly lol let alone every service and business you've worked with and your friends and family dropping you.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  Cancellation doesn't just apply to 'famous' people though. It will apply to everyone. I can't tell if your post is sarcasm or not.
  - ouid 4y ago
    how on earth would it manage to apply to everyone?
thebigspacefuck 4y ago
I was writing some unit tests yesterday and started to use names from Harry Potter in the test data, then remembered people trying to cancel JK Rowling for being a TERF and if this would make me appear insensitive to trans people, so I changed them all to something else.
- captainmuon 4y ago
  I am all for sensitivity, trans rights, and being inclusive and professional in the workplace. But this kind of chilling effect makes me angry.
  - ttpphd 4y ago
    You are angry that a person stopped to think about how their joke might hurt someone else and so they chose not to hurt someone else? That makes you angry?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  I stick with "Test Testerson" for my test data.
ttpphd 4y ago
Getting "cancelled" can also be a lucrative gig, especially for a substack witter. It is not a meaningful word. Just like woke, people invoke the word as a ritual and social marker of their own anxieties and psychological pathologies rather than as a source of linguistic clarity used to enlighten people who aren't already partially indoctrinated into the irrational "cancel panic". This blog post itself is poor quality writing that adds nothing to what has already been said exhaustively for more than 5 years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
luuuzeta 4y ago
>... what truly hurt me was that the words of this person were enough to turn an entire group of colleagues—and even some people who were becoming something closer to friends—against me. It hurt me professionally and it hurt me personally. Almost none of these people bothered to ask me if any of this was true or discuss it with me—they just ostracized me immediately. If they ostracized you right from the get-go without even listening to your side of the story, then they obviously weren't friend material to start with. >The few people who did not behave that way—I’ll be grateful to forever. They had integrity and honor. And at the very least, curiosity. This could be considered a good result of such cancellation attempt: You got rid of heavy luggage you didn't know you were carrying, and ended up with a lighter and healthier weight.
williamcotton 4y ago
Does everyone agree that there are issues with accountability in online discourse?
tjpnz 4y ago
Shower thought: why isn't the insurance industry offering policies to cover such situations? If someone cancels me I get a payout which I can use to support my family or even sue the individual who deliberately set out to destroy my livelihood.
- incone123 4y ago
  I'd be less surprised to see that as an exclusion on income insurance policies.
- lapcat 4y ago
  How much would you be willing to pay for such a policy? I'm personally willing to pay $0. That's just anecdotal, but I suspect it's not a wise investment for most people. And if only the likely-to-be-canceled are willing to pay for the policies, then that's not a good risk for the insurance companies.
Ensorceled 4y ago
> Many people like to lament about “accountability” culture and how those who find themselves in the eye of the storm have done something to deserve it—perhaps occasionally there’s even some truth to that. Almost every "cancellation" I've seen has been accountability, this blog makes it sound like every cancellation is based on lies. Yes, there are definitely people being mobbed that either don't deserve it at all or are getting more than their 15 minutes share, but to say that people being "cancelled" only occasionally deserve it is hogwash.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > Almost every "cancellation" I've seen has been accountability How do you know, exactly? Did you personally verify the facts underlying each and every case?
  - orwin 4y ago
    I'm aware of two persons being actively cancelled (aka, people group to protest when they come somewhere). Roman Polansky (who still was present to get his Cesar)m and Bertrand Cantat (who still sing at some venues). One is a child rapist, and the second a murderer. Other people i know who suffer that are politicians, but we weirldy don't call that "cancellation", but "calling out". To me, if you are a public figure, you ought to be called out if you do something a part of the population don't agree with. Oh, i also know a small restaurant owner "cancelled". The cooking institute tell its female students to avoid apprenticeship there. The last time I spat on him was two month ago (basically the last time i met him). Considering he raped my sister, this isn't much of a punishment.
- hedora 4y ago
  I can’t think of many examples that seemed legitimate, and also shouldn’t have involved criminal charges. Obligatory example of bullshit cancellation: Fantasy writer attends panel on role of race in fantasy authorship. She accidentally uses the word colored. Now she is professionally shunned. Her husband later issued a statement pointing out she didn’t mean to offend anyone by using a term that the NAACP uses on a regular basis. As someone who got repeatedly lectured about how we must all use the word “African American” now instead of “black” back in to 90’s (But most of my African friends are white!?!), I can sympathize with the gaffe. Anyway, she’s been kicked out of a bunch of professional associations. Based on her invitation to speak at the panel, I’m assuming she’s not exactly a card carrying member of the KKK, Trump voter, etc..
ajross 4y ago
What's frustrating about the internet-libertarian set is how much time they spend talking effusively about "being cancelled", given how thoroughly suppressed they seem to think they are. I know a little about Brodsky. She's everywhere! Google her name, you'll find her twitter, her essays, her bylines, her substack. Yet here we have a whole essay dedicated to her experience with... cancellation? What got canceled? I actually dug around trying to find out what she's talking about. And... I couldn't. I can't find anyone complaining about her, any links to her tweets that went viral in angry circles. No "Brodsky is a Pedo" nonsense. There's just nothing I can find that says that anyone dislikes her at all. But boy, howdy does she write a lot about Cancel Culture. Basically: I call shenanigans here. She wasn't cancelled, at all. Someone was mean to her on the internet, and that surely sucks. But it's not the kind of endemic social problem she claims it is.
motohagiography 4y ago
Mobs have always been with us, to where stoning appears at least as far back as ancient times, so the phenomenon of twitter mobs isn't new. The people behind them are the same archetypes they have always been. Consider who is absent from mob formation: honest, grounded, level headed, principled, honourable, responsible, good intentioned, admirable, courageous, adjusted, and other traditionally virtuous people, then look at who is left over. The formation of a mob is always the same, one person channeling the latent hurtness and sensitized aggression of others against their target for the perverse and morbid satisfaction of having done so, and to have been at the center of it. The question we haven't asked (and I haven't either) is what socities or cultures of good people have done to mitigate pools of hysteria forming like these in the past. We know that people actuated by attention are untrustworthy, and treating them as anything other than edgy entertainment is probably harmful socially. You can't fix the mobs, but you can create cultures that isolate them and don't tolerate or believe them in principle, no matter what their cause is. If you can't do that, you can at least respect people who do. I feel like this isn't a new problem.
- starkd 4y ago
  We also know people behave differently in mobs than they do in individual one-on-one relations. The answer could be putting more stress on personal relationships regardless of anyone else. This also would help when the mob does come after you, because you have more support from people who know the real you.
ttpphd 4y ago
There's something darkly funny about a white lady pondering whether the solution to "cancel culture" is to "call out" the people who are doing the "cancelling". Pretty funny because before white people latched onto the word "cancel", this was known as "calling out".
hairofadog 4y ago
I consider myself pretty far to the left on the political spectrum, but I also strive to be a fair-minded pragmatist, and I have to say the black-and-whiteness of these discussions do drive me crazy. Mob justice isn't great. While I don't think the problem of "cancel culture" is nearly as pervasive as some claim, mob justice is clearly not the best mechanism for fairness and I have seen concrete examples of people being canceled unfairly, I have also seen examples of people who seem to derive a sense of fulfillment from incessantly pestering employers or would-be employers of their targets. "Bean Dad" was a good example of someone who was unfairly harassed out of employment. Al Franken also comes to mind. HOWEVER, I think it's 100% wrong that the problem of mob or tribal justice is a phenomenon of the left. The aesthetic and mechanisms may be different, but consider the McCarthy era. Consider racial discrimination, sex discrimination, and religious discrimination, all of which are ongoing and rely on various forms of ostracization, in addition to having the power of the law and institutions behind them. The reason the left uses public call-outs as their go-to mechanism is that they historically, institutional power has been so egregiously biased against them that there wasn't much other recourse.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Al Franken also comes to mind. Well... Al Franken is fine. He was rich and famous before he became a Senator, and he's still rich and famous now. Moreover, his successor was reelected, so the Senate seat hasn't changed parties. Franken was a liability. Imagine him campaigning for women's rights. It just wouldn't work. To be clear, though, it was Franken's own Democratic colleagues in the Senate who pressured him to resign. He didn't resign because Twitter told him to.
  - hairofadog 4y ago
    I agree with you that Franken is fine (and I'll admit to not fully understanding what happened there; I should read up [1]). Bean Dad is fine too, for whatever it's worth, though unlike Franken, he had done nothing wrong. In any case, I don't think I articulated my thought very well there, which was not to say these people had been irrevocably damaged, but to point out a tendency on the left (where I am) to take swings at people, even, or especially, their own, sometimes performatively and without cause. This happens on the right to the same degree, it's just that the litmus tests are different (currently the only one being loyalty to the previous president). [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al...
gremlinsinc 4y ago
Where I come from the ability to cancel something is a bonus, getting ripped off by a subscription you cancel it. Cancelling is just another word for "Accountability" so many childish-grownups, are so sad that they can't be racist and bigots online and have their feels hurt. Look cupcake, freedom of speech is a given in America, but there's no such thing (and never has been) speech without consequences. You call someone a racial slur on tv, you deserve to have your career ended. You sexually harass someone, same thing. The only thing that does worry me, is when we could go to far and make every little thing an issue, thought police, and china's social credit score come to mind, but then I'm pretty sure those in power already have a pretty good profile of just about everyone in America either through browser cookie tracking or more nefarious NSA programs we don't know about. So, sure there's a line that crosses into the badlands, but so far I haven't seen a case of 'canceling' that wasn't really warranted and most of it is organic influencers doing the canceling not government 'shadow' agencies. Some people will just think everything is a conspiracy though no matter what you tell them.
t0bia_s 4y ago
"Almost none of these people bothered to ask me if any of this was true or discuss it with me—they just ostracized me immediately. All of this based on a lie." That is, for me, basic concept of conformity behaviour. Accepting virtual reality without critical thinking, just because most people agree. "The few people who did not behave that way—I’ll be grateful to forever. They had integrity and honor. And at the very least, curiosity." Those people are usually named as conspiracy theorist lovers, outsiders... Well in virtual reality represent by internet. Trends are easy, skepticism brings problems.

66 points by hunglee2 4y ago

causi 4y ago

My 90s-era policy of never connecting my real life and online personas is still serving me well.

Ekaros 4y ago
I still don't get how we ended up from there to so many people linking their real life name, location, sex and even workplace to anything they post publicly... Like we used to warn children to not disclose their name, or location or anything. And then the same parents happily started to broadcast that stuff...
- baryphonic 4y ago
  A/S/L?
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Facebook was when that started to gain traction, but I think Myspace was the beginning. You had a strong incentive to put your real name and location because you would find people you knew around you automatically.
- Kamq 4y ago
  > I still don't get how we ended up from there to so many people linking their real life name, location, sex and even workplace to anything they post publicly It's in the interest of the large internet companies to encourage this culture shift. It makes it easier to target advertising.
- incone123 4y ago
  I knew UK activists who operated on the assumption their landlines were monitored in the 90s go ahead and do activist stuff under their real names on Facebook in the 2000s.
- chernofool 4y ago
  It's strange, isn't it? In the span of a year or two, the zeitgeist shifted from "online stranger danger" to "you don't exist if you're not active on [website]". Even stranger, few people seem willing to re-evaluate their place in mass-scale social sites, even after 20 years of spam, scams and shams. Maybe it's a tragedy of the commons. People might enjoy the effortless positive reinforcement provided by their worldwide in-groups, which makes it easy to ignore the huge negative externalities? Or could people be addicted to the feeling of righteously fighting a great evil, such as their [adjective-of-the-month] neighbors?

rippercushions 4y ago

It's tough to fight against cancelling for the same reason it's tough to fight against bullies: you risk getting targeted yourself. If somebody calls X a racist, and you defend them, hey presto, you're now clearly a racist yourself.

Graziano_M 4y ago
Look at Robbie Coltrane, who just died but had the gall to not completely disavow JK Rowling. Now people are celebrating his death.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  So? There are 8B+ people in the world. Some are going to have differing opinions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lapcat 4y ago
  I haven't seen people celebrating his death. Anyway, this isn't an example of cancelation. You can't cancel a dead person. He wasn't killed by Twitter, he apparently died of illness.
  - RHSeeger 4y ago
    I think the point was that people turned against him because he _didn't_ turn against someone else that was the target of cancelling. He wasn't cancelled, per se; but he did suffer negative consequences for it.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > He wasn't cancelled, per se; but he did suffer negative consequences for it. What negative consequences, other than some people having a negative opinion of him? There's nothing inherently wrong with people having a negative opinion of another person, that happens all the time. It's not a phenomenon to be worried about.

auslegung 4y ago

I’m all for accountability, but I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that hundreds or maybe thousands of randos on the internet can ruin someone’s career, even if that person has done something wrong. The legal system should be the solution here but it is broken. Ideally we’d spend our energy fixing it but… easier said than done. So I guess there are no good solutions :( Please tell me I’m wrong

cm2187 4y ago
The legal system should be the solution to controversial opinions?
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  When people say they want the legal system to be the solution they mean they want people to be caged and/or they want fines that only matter to the poor, in practice. They’re promoting state violence, not an ordered society
  - auslegung 4y ago
    You are assuming and generalizing, two things that do not go well with good faith discussion. Part of the legal system being broken includes a prison system that is awful, and unbalanced penalties to the poor. So what I am proposing, "fix the legal system", would address these as well.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      from your wording you are still supportive of caging people (just doing it better) so I'm not sure why you would paint my response as absurdly off base. you're like the people who say that crony capitalism is fixable you just need to solve the cronyism and return capitalism to some purer and equitable form that never existed
- auslegung 4y ago
  At what point was I talking about controversial opinions?

lapcat 4y ago

It always has been and always will be the people in power who do the canceling. And they've been canceling people for various reasons before Twitter even existed. You can go back to the McCarthy era, where people were blacklisted for allegedly being Communist sympathizers. A "Twitter mob" has no power to fire someone, cancel contracts, or do anything other than tweet. If the people who are in power cave to pressure from a bunch random people on Twitter, that's on the powerful, not on the otherwise powerless tweeters. Cowardly people in power would rather throw their colleagues under the bus than experience any bad PR whatsoever. Is that the fault of Twitter? No. Would that problem be solved by shutting down Twitter? No. > It’s very difficult people to fight alone, or take risks alone, but having the backing of an organization or legal fund can make a big difference. But they could easily fight it if they had the backing of their own employer, for example, who would be the very organization that's officially doing the "canceling".

Kamq 4y ago
> If the people who are in power cave to pressure from a bunch random people on Twitter, that's on the powerful, not on the otherwise powerless tweeters. I feel like you can't call a group that can get "the people in power to cave" as powerless. That is power.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > I feel like you can't call a group that can get "the people in power to cave" as powerless. That is power. But it only works if the authorities are fearful, conflict-averse ass coverers. If the authorities ignore Twitter, then Twitter has no power. It's not like the "Twitter mobs" have guns, or even literal pitchforks. If they don't get want they want, all they can do is whine some more on Twitter.
  - onos 4y ago
    I agree, but the situation is that the people leading our institutions are self interested, weak, and not omniscient. And that means the Twitter mobs do have power and they often use this destructively. The question then is: Given that our authorities are weak, and the mob is causing us real problems, what should we do about it?

oifjsidjf 4y ago

You will never win against these people with nice words. Only going on an aggressive offense will work. A bully will never back down if the victim apologizes: this will cause the victim only to be bullied more. The bully must feel the hard fist of his victim breaking his nose, there is no other way.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
What specific action are you endorsing here?
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  If someone tries to cancel you, escalate and push back. Push back with 10x the force. Push back to a degree beyond what is reasonable. Push back so that it forms a deterrence to future bad behavior. Not scalable, often infeasible. Is it effective? Who knows?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    > Push back with 10x the force. I'm asking you to be clear about what this is. It's not obvious to me what "force" is in this context.
cm2187 4y ago
In the case of twitter bullying there is, just ignore it. Who cares what stirandom265428 thinks on twitter? Chances are it's not even a real person. I noticed the same thing in the 90s in France, a country were many still have a cult of the revolution. Anytime you had 1000 guys vociferating in the street, they are somehow referred to as "the people" (except if their opinion is contrary to major newspapers, then it is a "small violent mob"). The reality is that it is only 1000 guys in a population of 60 millions. They are representative of nothing else than themselves. But it's a way for journalists to push their own opinions like if somehow they were mainstream. It's the same today. You can find 10k retweets for any random cause, even hitler. But if they align to major newsrooms opinions, they will be presented as expression of the public opinion. And I think the people doing the cancelling (employers firing, companies cancelling contracts) are more worried of the media than of the twitter mob. But given how little credibility the media have those days, they could safely ignore them and nothing would happen. Unless they evolve in those few liberal circles where all your friends will turn their back on you if you think differently on a single thing.

IgorPartola 4y ago

Opposing view: go listen to the cancel culture three parter on the You Are Wrong About podcast. They deep dive into the whole idea going back to callout culture, Dixie Chicks, the woman who got fired while on her flight to Africa for that tweet, and the basic conclusion is that cancel culture as such does not exactly exist. It is a bit of a boogeyman and in reality is large set of outcomes for actions that are not always even a net negative.

throwoutway 4y ago
So they selected a few anecdotes that are outdated and decided something doesn’t exist? Sounds like a podcast to stop listening to If they analyzed hundreds more anecdotes of corporations caving to Twitter mobs they’d have gotten the truth
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  You really don’t know much about them, do you? No they examined the entire history of it starting with the first cancelation (The Chicks) to really deeply understand where the concept comes from and why it’s a thing. That’s kind of what investigative journalists do. They investigate. Also honestly it’s a huge story if you can find systematic firings of people based on Twitter bullying. You should absolutely put that together and sell it as a freelance article to the NYT or similar. I hear they pay well for this kind of research.
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    It’s not that hard. There’s plenty of press releases and quotes spokespersons quoted in the NYT. go for it
chrismcb 4y ago
Cancel culture absolutely did exist. Sometimes, but rarely, the actions are justified. Cancelling is basically someone losing their livelihood for something they might have said or did that had no relation to their job. When you aren't a spokesperson you shouldn't be losing your job over something you said or did (or might have) when off the job.

captainmuon 4y ago

I feel like the cost of cancelling someone is quite high, paid in social capital. Especially when you mean the original definition of cancelling, to deplatform somebody. From a minority position (e.g. far-left, person of color, or LGBT), you ask people who are sympathetic to take action against somebody and exclude them. Your ally does not neccessarily support your ethics 100%, but they will agree. Then when backlash comes, they will suffer a portion of it, too. And there is often an element of forcing people to position themselves - either you are an ally, or you are an enemy / whatever-phobic. This is a concious political strategy of identity politics, and it does work. It helped leftist, feminist and other groups affect society even from a position of relative weakness. I think that's not bad - MeToo, the growing acceptance non-traditional gender identities, people using gender-inclusive speech, and so on. I've supported such campagins, too - using moral outrage to get (actual!) antisemites, neo-nazis, christian pro-life sects deplatformed from using our university rooms. But activists should be aware that this can lead to attrition among allys. Next time it might be less trouble to just disinvite every political group, including you. And once you called all your favors for topic X, don't expect to get any help with topic Y (since you are still in a position of weekness after all).

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>From a minority position (e.g. far-left, person of color, or LGBT) Several of these are not minority positions on big media. >I think that's not bad - MeToo MeToo caused huge fallout to the point male mentors were unwilling to tutor women, men seen with minors were deemed creeps, and more. You're right as to the backlash and polarizing effects, but you are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
- devmor 4y ago
  Your claims here are something I've heard repeated from people before but I've never seen much substance to them. Especially the idea that being non-white or LGBT is non-minority online much of anywhere. Do you have any non-anecdotal data to back those up?
  - 4y ago

1337biz 4y ago

Is there some research or theories about the shadow cancel ngo or whoever coordinates the deplatforming? Considering how slow and unrespobsive big corporates usually are, there must be some real power broker behind it. Deplatformings usually all happen within the same day in a few hours. Last example is probably the deplatfoeming of Andrew Tate.

Duwensatzaj 4y ago
Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList and http://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php/GameJournoPros http://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php/GameJournoPros I doubt it’s a power broker, just a group of moderators from different companies who work together. Google Groups aren’t as popular nowadays. My guess is a private Discord.
rndgermandude 4y ago
My guess is that when such high profile cancellations happen, it's more of a matter of perceived zugzwang. Some platform does a high profile ban, and then the PR inboxes of the other platforms are set ablaze with journalists asking for comment on how your particular platform wants to handle that person - high profile bans make nice clickbait articles after all - and the twitters and reddits and youtubers and so on of this world talk about what those other platforms are doing/are not doing/should be doing. At this point the other platforms have to do something, either issue a ban as well, or issue some kind of statement why at this time they won't be issuing a ban. Usually the option to just issue a ban as well is a lot easier and PR-wise "safe" than trying to come up with a "defensive" statement of why such a ban is not (yet) appropriate.

norwalkbear 4y ago

Cancel culture will extend to banking soon. Then the rage will boil over. You may not like the fact people have different opinions, but you must accept it. Suppression of their voices leads to revolution. The top down censorship is a "let them eat cake moment".

Duwensatzaj 4y ago
Soon? It’s been there for a while. PayPal and traditional banks have been closing accounts for having wrong opinions for years.
gremlinsinc 4y ago
Have you ever heard of a credit report, how does that not 'cancel' ones ability to use the banking system. If everyone could get a loan for a business idea, there'd be a lot more cool inventions and restaurants, and choices in society - but they're very selective and if you're rich - they don't even look at your credit just give you money and business cards to tell your friends.

ouid 4y ago

Here's my extremely hot take. Almost all cancellation is of net benefit. It doesn't matter if you're cancelled over a lie or a disallowed opinion, all that matters is that you have stopped being a famous person with a platform. Almost no one famous is worth listening to about things that matter, and cancellation is the penalty that famouos people incur for talking about things that matter. I draw an exception for comedians, who are famous for how worth listening to they are.

Miner49er 4y ago
Yeah, exactly. It's a good thing that power can be taken away with extreme ease in some situations. We need more of that. We should expect more of people we put in positions of power, not less.
psychphysic 4y ago
I disagree, cancellation usually means no work for ~2 years before a gentle restart with less work that's less well paid. How well would you survive that? Not purely financially but emotionally. Added to this is that cancellation usually includes criticism from friends. I can not imagine publically criticizing a friend. I've cut people off before, I've criticized friends within social circles even. Criticizing someone for the purposes of strangers I find quite disgusting, akin to tribal excile likely one of the worst traditional punishments of humans probably historically a death sentence. It hits people hard. My hot take, the power of social isolation is why older male suicide is horrifically high following divorce. People on HN collapse if Google shuts their accounts down unexpectedly lol let alone every service and business you've worked with and your friends and family dropping you.
secondcoming 4y ago
Cancellation doesn't just apply to 'famous' people though. It will apply to everyone. I can't tell if your post is sarcasm or not.
- ouid 4y ago
  how on earth would it manage to apply to everyone?

thebigspacefuck 4y ago

I was writing some unit tests yesterday and started to use names from Harry Potter in the test data, then remembered people trying to cancel JK Rowling for being a TERF and if this would make me appear insensitive to trans people, so I changed them all to something else.

captainmuon 4y ago
I am all for sensitivity, trans rights, and being inclusive and professional in the workplace. But this kind of chilling effect makes me angry.
- ttpphd 4y ago
  You are angry that a person stopped to think about how their joke might hurt someone else and so they chose not to hurt someone else? That makes you angry?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
zach_garwood 4y ago
I stick with "Test Testerson" for my test data.

ttpphd 4y ago

Getting "cancelled" can also be a lucrative gig, especially for a substack witter. It is not a meaningful word. Just like woke, people invoke the word as a ritual and social marker of their own anxieties and psychological pathologies rather than as a source of linguistic clarity used to enlighten people who aren't already partially indoctrinated into the irrational "cancel panic". This blog post itself is poor quality writing that adds nothing to what has already been said exhaustively for more than 5 years.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

luuuzeta 4y ago

>... what truly hurt me was that the words of this person were enough to turn an entire group of colleagues—and even some people who were becoming something closer to friends—against me. It hurt me professionally and it hurt me personally. Almost none of these people bothered to ask me if any of this was true or discuss it with me—they just ostracized me immediately. If they ostracized you right from the get-go without even listening to your side of the story, then they obviously weren't friend material to start with. >The few people who did not behave that way—I’ll be grateful to forever. They had integrity and honor. And at the very least, curiosity. This could be considered a good result of such cancellation attempt: You got rid of heavy luggage you didn't know you were carrying, and ended up with a lighter and healthier weight.

williamcotton 4y ago

Does everyone agree that there are issues with accountability in online discourse?

tjpnz 4y ago

Shower thought: why isn't the insurance industry offering policies to cover such situations? If someone cancels me I get a payout which I can use to support my family or even sue the individual who deliberately set out to destroy my livelihood.

incone123 4y ago
I'd be less surprised to see that as an exclusion on income insurance policies.
lapcat 4y ago
How much would you be willing to pay for such a policy? I'm personally willing to pay $0. That's just anecdotal, but I suspect it's not a wise investment for most people. And if only the likely-to-be-canceled are willing to pay for the policies, then that's not a good risk for the insurance companies.

Ensorceled 4y ago

> Many people like to lament about “accountability” culture and how those who find themselves in the eye of the storm have done something to deserve it—perhaps occasionally there’s even some truth to that. Almost every "cancellation" I've seen has been accountability, this blog makes it sound like every cancellation is based on lies. Yes, there are definitely people being mobbed that either don't deserve it at all or are getting more than their 15 minutes share, but to say that people being "cancelled" only occasionally deserve it is hogwash.

zozbot234 4y ago
> Almost every "cancellation" I've seen has been accountability How do you know, exactly? Did you personally verify the facts underlying each and every case?
- orwin 4y ago
  I'm aware of two persons being actively cancelled (aka, people group to protest when they come somewhere). Roman Polansky (who still was present to get his Cesar)m and Bertrand Cantat (who still sing at some venues). One is a child rapist, and the second a murderer. Other people i know who suffer that are politicians, but we weirldy don't call that "cancellation", but "calling out". To me, if you are a public figure, you ought to be called out if you do something a part of the population don't agree with. Oh, i also know a small restaurant owner "cancelled". The cooking institute tell its female students to avoid apprenticeship there. The last time I spat on him was two month ago (basically the last time i met him). Considering he raped my sister, this isn't much of a punishment.
hedora 4y ago
I can’t think of many examples that seemed legitimate, and also shouldn’t have involved criminal charges. Obligatory example of bullshit cancellation: Fantasy writer attends panel on role of race in fantasy authorship. She accidentally uses the word colored. Now she is professionally shunned. Her husband later issued a statement pointing out she didn’t mean to offend anyone by using a term that the NAACP uses on a regular basis. As someone who got repeatedly lectured about how we must all use the word “African American” now instead of “black” back in to 90’s (But most of my African friends are white!?!), I can sympathize with the gaffe. Anyway, she’s been kicked out of a bunch of professional associations. Based on her invitation to speak at the panel, I’m assuming she’s not exactly a card carrying member of the KKK, Trump voter, etc..

ajross 4y ago

What's frustrating about the internet-libertarian set is how much time they spend talking effusively about "being cancelled", given how thoroughly suppressed they seem to think they are. I know a little about Brodsky. She's everywhere! Google her name, you'll find her twitter, her essays, her bylines, her substack. Yet here we have a whole essay dedicated to her experience with... cancellation? What got canceled? I actually dug around trying to find out what she's talking about. And... I couldn't. I can't find anyone complaining about her, any links to her tweets that went viral in angry circles. No "Brodsky is a Pedo" nonsense. There's just nothing I can find that says that anyone dislikes her at all. But boy, howdy does she write a lot about Cancel Culture. Basically: I call shenanigans here. She wasn't cancelled, at all. Someone was mean to her on the internet, and that surely sucks. But it's not the kind of endemic social problem she claims it is.

motohagiography 4y ago

Mobs have always been with us, to where stoning appears at least as far back as ancient times, so the phenomenon of twitter mobs isn't new. The people behind them are the same archetypes they have always been. Consider who is absent from mob formation: honest, grounded, level headed, principled, honourable, responsible, good intentioned, admirable, courageous, adjusted, and other traditionally virtuous people, then look at who is left over. The formation of a mob is always the same, one person channeling the latent hurtness and sensitized aggression of others against their target for the perverse and morbid satisfaction of having done so, and to have been at the center of it. The question we haven't asked (and I haven't either) is what socities or cultures of good people have done to mitigate pools of hysteria forming like these in the past. We know that people actuated by attention are untrustworthy, and treating them as anything other than edgy entertainment is probably harmful socially. You can't fix the mobs, but you can create cultures that isolate them and don't tolerate or believe them in principle, no matter what their cause is. If you can't do that, you can at least respect people who do. I feel like this isn't a new problem.

starkd 4y ago
We also know people behave differently in mobs than they do in individual one-on-one relations. The answer could be putting more stress on personal relationships regardless of anyone else. This also would help when the mob does come after you, because you have more support from people who know the real you.

ttpphd 4y ago

There's something darkly funny about a white lady pondering whether the solution to "cancel culture" is to "call out" the people who are doing the "cancelling". Pretty funny because before white people latched onto the word "cancel", this was known as "calling out".

hairofadog 4y ago

I consider myself pretty far to the left on the political spectrum, but I also strive to be a fair-minded pragmatist, and I have to say the black-and-whiteness of these discussions do drive me crazy. Mob justice isn't great. While I don't think the problem of "cancel culture" is nearly as pervasive as some claim, mob justice is clearly not the best mechanism for fairness and I have seen concrete examples of people being canceled unfairly, I have also seen examples of people who seem to derive a sense of fulfillment from incessantly pestering employers or would-be employers of their targets. "Bean Dad" was a good example of someone who was unfairly harassed out of employment. Al Franken also comes to mind. HOWEVER, I think it's 100% wrong that the problem of mob or tribal justice is a phenomenon of the left. The aesthetic and mechanisms may be different, but consider the McCarthy era. Consider racial discrimination, sex discrimination, and religious discrimination, all of which are ongoing and rely on various forms of ostracization, in addition to having the power of the law and institutions behind them. The reason the left uses public call-outs as their go-to mechanism is that they historically, institutional power has been so egregiously biased against them that there wasn't much other recourse.

lapcat 4y ago
> Al Franken also comes to mind. Well... Al Franken is fine. He was rich and famous before he became a Senator, and he's still rich and famous now. Moreover, his successor was reelected, so the Senate seat hasn't changed parties. Franken was a liability. Imagine him campaigning for women's rights. It just wouldn't work. To be clear, though, it was Franken's own Democratic colleagues in the Senate who pressured him to resign. He didn't resign because Twitter told him to.
- hairofadog 4y ago
  I agree with you that Franken is fine (and I'll admit to not fully understanding what happened there; I should read up [1]). Bean Dad is fine too, for whatever it's worth, though unlike Franken, he had done nothing wrong. In any case, I don't think I articulated my thought very well there, which was not to say these people had been irrevocably damaged, but to point out a tendency on the left (where I am) to take swings at people, even, or especially, their own, sometimes performatively and without cause. This happens on the right to the same degree, it's just that the litmus tests are different (currently the only one being loyalty to the previous president). [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al...

gremlinsinc 4y ago

Where I come from the ability to cancel something is a bonus, getting ripped off by a subscription you cancel it. Cancelling is just another word for "Accountability" so many childish-grownups, are so sad that they can't be racist and bigots online and have their feels hurt. Look cupcake, freedom of speech is a given in America, but there's no such thing (and never has been) speech without consequences. You call someone a racial slur on tv, you deserve to have your career ended. You sexually harass someone, same thing. The only thing that does worry me, is when we could go to far and make every little thing an issue, thought police, and china's social credit score come to mind, but then I'm pretty sure those in power already have a pretty good profile of just about everyone in America either through browser cookie tracking or more nefarious NSA programs we don't know about. So, sure there's a line that crosses into the badlands, but so far I haven't seen a case of 'canceling' that wasn't really warranted and most of it is organic influencers doing the canceling not government 'shadow' agencies. Some people will just think everything is a conspiracy though no matter what you tell them.

t0bia_s 4y ago

"Almost none of these people bothered to ask me if any of this was true or discuss it with me—they just ostracized me immediately. All of this based on a lie." That is, for me, basic concept of conformity behaviour. Accepting virtual reality without critical thinking, just because most people agree. "The few people who did not behave that way—I’ll be grateful to forever. They had integrity and honor. And at the very least, curiosity." Those people are usually named as conspiracy theorist lovers, outsiders... Well in virtual reality represent by internet. Trends are easy, skepticism brings problems.