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False. This distinction you’re trying to make between personal and professional does not exist with cancellation (and even if it did, which it doesn’t, you’re i

• lapcat 4y ago
  > Your personal definition of cancellation does not match what is “normally” understood nor what is documented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture Well, if you're going to cite Wikipedia as documentation, I'm going to cite it too: "Criticism of the concept" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture#Criticism_of_the_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture#Criticism_of_th... I get the impression that the term "cancel culture" can mean anything that anyone wants it to mean, and it ends up becoming amorphous complaining about random grievances real and imagined. (Kind of like the imaginary "War against Christmas", where Christmas is cancelled because some people choose to say "Happy Holidays".) Regardless, I would personally make a distinction between "I was fired because of X" and "My friends don't like me anymore because of X". I don't think it's useful to have one term that covers these two very distinct things, and also I don't think the latter is worth having much of a public debate about. It's difficult to take "cancel culture" too seriously when many self-described victims of cancellation were simply criticized. They seem to think any form is criticism is bullying and ostracism, and that everyone has to duty to be accepting of their obnoxious opinions.
  • dahart 4y ago
    How exactly does moving the goal posts to now argue that cancel culture doesn’t exist support your original claim that powerful people like McCarthy are the ones doing the cancelling and always have been? You’re contradicting yourself. It’s hilarious to argue with a first-hand account that something happened with what is essentially ‘I think your problem doesn’t exist because I define the thing you said as not a problem and nobody rational would have that problem.’ Arguing that cancel might be trivial in some cases completely fails to demonstrate that it’s not sometimes serious. We know it’s sometimes serious, just ask Harvey Weinstein. > I would personally make a distinction between “I was fired because of X” and “My friends don’t like me anymore because of X”. Good for you. Contrary to your claim, that’s not a distinction that was made either with “cancellation” nor with your own example of MyCarthyism. And again, you’re failing to capture the fact that most people’s social circle involves co-workers, and what the cross-over effects are between work and personal life. You’re also failing to capture family and church and neighborhoods and loads of other organizations of people where being ostracized can and does have a meaningful impact, for good or bad.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      > You’re also failing to capture family and church and neighborhoods and loads of other organizations of people where being ostracized can and does have a meaningful impact, for good or bad. Here's the problem: If you define "cancel culture" so extremely broadly that it covers any form of social ostracism whatsoever, then it's not in any respect a new or novel phenomemon. It's been with us for as long as society has existed. In this sense, it's almost a tautology that cancel culture exists. But so what? Why is everyone going on and on about cancel culture in recent years when it's thousands of years old? What is relatively new is global social media, which has existed for less than 20 years. Personal information or misinformation can now go "viral" in a way that it never could before, as a result of computers and the internet. But it's not clear that there's been a "culture" change. It's just the same old human culture, now technologically enhanced. Do people sometimes lose their jobs or other professional opportunities because of information spread on social media? Yes. Although I think this happens less than the fearmongers would have us believe. So "cancel culture" in the stricter sense may exist too, but I think it's been exaggerated quite a bit. Of course I wouldn't deny that social media has the ability to rapidly spread information. What I deny is that social media has the power to cancel people. It does have the power to initiate the discussion about whether to cancel people, but that's only a discussion, mere words (tweets). The actual decision to cancel someone is always made by the people in power, and not by the "mob". Twitter can be denied or ignored. However, the people in power often have no loyalty or regard for those who are under them, so they're perfectly willing to throw underlings under the bus to cover their own asses, without a second thought, just to make an unpleasant PR situation go away. So leadership cowardice and selfishness is empowering and incentivizing "cancel culture" in this sense. I should note that I'm expressing no particular opinion about whether a particular person should or shouldn't lose a particular job or financial benefit. That really depends on the specifics of the situation. In general, I don't think that anyone should be denied the ability to make a living, but I'm less sympathetic about someone losing special privileges and high status, which are nobody's right. > We know it’s sometimes serious, just ask Harvey Weinstein. I can't, because he's in prison.