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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

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?
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Allow me to articulate. There certainly is evidence active participants tend to skew a certain way on e.g. Twitter and Reddit. These participants are predominantly left-wing. "Do you have any data" you can Google it, it is well known. The majority itself is passive. The majority of active participants are left wing and skew young, which by extension are generally pro-inclusion. Anti-diversity standpoints are a minority except for specific cases. And really, it would be strange if it wasn't, considering the encouragement of anything unfavorable towards a minority is grounds for getting yourself on the fast track to the banlist.
    - IntelMiner 4y ago
      "the encouragement of anything unfavorable towards a minority is grounds for getting yourself on the fast track to the banlist" Why would you want to encourage something that hurts other people?
      - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
        That's the point. People in these discussions act like the majority are unenlightened bigots trying to return things to the 19th century. That's not true, and practice shows it.
    - devmor 4y ago
      Saying "you can google it" and "it is well known" is not a sufficient source to someone challenging your claims. I'll take that to mean that these are your personal opinions and you have no data to back them up.
luckylion 4y ago
> But activists should be aware that this can lead to attrition among allys. How so? With each witch hunt their power will increase and they'll be feared more. Each one after that becomes easier, because people have been seeing the previous one and know what will happen if they don't comply, so they'll be even more inclined to go along with whatever you say.
- captainmuon 4y ago
  I don't know about witch hunts. But each time you push something through, you extend yourself and spend social capital. You can use polarisation and moral outrage to win people over on one issue today. Say your thing is to convince people that JK Rowling is a bad person. But afterwards you'll be the annoying trans rights or SJW person, and people not on your side will be less inclined to listen to you when it comes to other issues. You can imagine political allegiance as a sigmoid function. It's zero on one side of the spectrum and one at the other. What's happening is not that the center is shifting. Rather, the function is getting steeper, it is turning into a step function. The strategy of cancelling people is effective, but it is alienating people at the same time. > How so? With each witch hunt their power will increase and they'll be feared more. Each one after that becomes easier, because people have been seeing the previous one and know what will happen if they don't comply, so they'll be even more inclined to go along with whatever you say. As, well, a leftist, that is not my experience at all. I think we are rapidly loosing ground in the middle of society. "Each one" may be the one that breaks the camel's back and makes somebody say "screw it" to us. And the far right capitalizes a lot on this. Fearmongering about cancelling is much more widespread than actual cancelling. (This is my experience in Germany, it might be different in the States).
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Shouldn't we see "cancelling" pretty quickly die out if that was the case? Essentially, you'd build up social capital and then spend it with a bang and it's gone. No more cancelling. That's not what I see happening. Granted, I try not follow these things too closely, but I didn't get the impression that any social capital was spent -- quite the opposite. If you successfully cancel someone, you earn the points for bringing down a bad person, they were cancelled after all, which proves their guilt. And, like a war lord after a successful raid, you also gathered power, and you instill fear. Will one of your allies jump in front of you to protect someone they don't deem evil when they've just seen you destroy someone? I believe the likelihood decreases with each campaign. It looks to me more like a authoritarian state forming: in the beginning, you still have an opposition that will resist and fight. But the more of them you throw in prison, drive into exile or simply murder, the weaker the resistance gets and the easier it becomes to attack those that remain.

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?
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Allow me to articulate. There certainly is evidence active participants tend to skew a certain way on e.g. Twitter and Reddit. These participants are predominantly left-wing. "Do you have any data" you can Google it, it is well known. The majority itself is passive. The majority of active participants are left wing and skew young, which by extension are generally pro-inclusion. Anti-diversity standpoints are a minority except for specific cases. And really, it would be strange if it wasn't, considering the encouragement of anything unfavorable towards a minority is grounds for getting yourself on the fast track to the banlist.
  - IntelMiner 4y ago
    "the encouragement of anything unfavorable towards a minority is grounds for getting yourself on the fast track to the banlist" Why would you want to encourage something that hurts other people?
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      That's the point. People in these discussions act like the majority are unenlightened bigots trying to return things to the 19th century. That's not true, and practice shows it.
  - devmor 4y ago
    Saying "you can google it" and "it is well known" is not a sufficient source to someone challenging your claims. I'll take that to mean that these are your personal opinions and you have no data to back them up.

luckylion 4y ago

> But activists should be aware that this can lead to attrition among allys. How so? With each witch hunt their power will increase and they'll be feared more. Each one after that becomes easier, because people have been seeing the previous one and know what will happen if they don't comply, so they'll be even more inclined to go along with whatever you say.

captainmuon 4y ago
I don't know about witch hunts. But each time you push something through, you extend yourself and spend social capital. You can use polarisation and moral outrage to win people over on one issue today. Say your thing is to convince people that JK Rowling is a bad person. But afterwards you'll be the annoying trans rights or SJW person, and people not on your side will be less inclined to listen to you when it comes to other issues. You can imagine political allegiance as a sigmoid function. It's zero on one side of the spectrum and one at the other. What's happening is not that the center is shifting. Rather, the function is getting steeper, it is turning into a step function. The strategy of cancelling people is effective, but it is alienating people at the same time. > How so? With each witch hunt their power will increase and they'll be feared more. Each one after that becomes easier, because people have been seeing the previous one and know what will happen if they don't comply, so they'll be even more inclined to go along with whatever you say. As, well, a leftist, that is not my experience at all. I think we are rapidly loosing ground in the middle of society. "Each one" may be the one that breaks the camel's back and makes somebody say "screw it" to us. And the far right capitalizes a lot on this. Fearmongering about cancelling is much more widespread than actual cancelling. (This is my experience in Germany, it might be different in the States).
- luckylion 4y ago
  Shouldn't we see "cancelling" pretty quickly die out if that was the case? Essentially, you'd build up social capital and then spend it with a bang and it's gone. No more cancelling. That's not what I see happening. Granted, I try not follow these things too closely, but I didn't get the impression that any social capital was spent -- quite the opposite. If you successfully cancel someone, you earn the points for bringing down a bad person, they were cancelled after all, which proves their guilt. And, like a war lord after a successful raid, you also gathered power, and you instill fear. Will one of your allies jump in front of you to protect someone they don't deem evil when they've just seen you destroy someone? I believe the likelihood decreases with each campaign. It looks to me more like a authoritarian state forming: in the beginning, you still have an opposition that will resist and fight. But the more of them you throw in prison, drive into exile or simply murder, the weaker the resistance gets and the easier it becomes to attack those that remain.