4 ms·

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 one

by 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.
- dahart 4y ago
  What I hear you saying is that you don’t understand the situation the author of the article described, don’t have any experience with how powerful social forces and reputations can be, and can’t empathize with it, but are convinced you know better than people who have experience because of your logic. > that’s only a discussion, mere words That’s got to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever read here. Or strangest, I can’t tell which. You’re going in circles. Reductionism like this isn’t just boring, it’s meaningless and false. What among human interactions doesn’t reduce to words? Laws are mere words. Jobs are mere words. Everything you know in the world came from words. All of civilization is built on words. Violence and sex aren’t words, but they are almost always the outcomes of words. Your argument is the same as claiming people can’t lose jobs because people are only made of atoms and atoms can’t fire people. > he’s in prison. Somehow you saying my point out loud to me makes me speculate that you missed the irony entirely.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > What I hear you saying is that You heard wrong, but I've lost all interest in continuing this "conversation", which seems to be going nowhere, amounts to nothing but talking past each other, and is quite unpleasant, not enjoyable or informative at all. At this point I do regret my replying to you in the first place (and also your replying to me in the first place). I did actually flag your first reply as violating the HN guidelines, but I chose to reply anyway. That was a mistake (the replying, not the flagging).
    - dahart 4y ago
      I’d agree I’ve been a tad aggressive with the debate style and went over the line a little. I’m sincerely sorry that my words upset you. My intent was to draw out your core argument, not to get our conversation cancelled with a flag. :P I also feel like this conversation wasn’t progressing, and I do take some responsibility for that, maybe I deserved the flag. What I was trying to get to is why you’re reacting to the term “cancel culture” with consistent disbelief. It feels like there’s probably some core feeling or belief or assumption here that is driving your reaction to the article and to the idea of cancellation, and I’m curious what it is. You don’t seem to like the words, even though along the way you’ve described exactly what it is: online words going viral causing groups of people to enact painful consequences on someone. To be fair, your top comment that started this thread violates multiple HN guidelines wrt to the article, and I (along with others) was trying to see if you’d reflect on that and explain it, and hear your point of view and understand your reasoning, by arguing with it. I didn’t flag it though. It wasn’t egregious, and I realize you’re making a meta comment and may not be thinking specifically about how it comes off next to the article, so I replied instead. In effect, you responded to a personal account of someone’s problem with what comes off as a tone deaf claim that the problem doesn’t exist, in multiple ways, and have since maintained and insisted you’re right without addressing any counter argument. Your stance so far as a whole is failing to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation. Words do have power, which goes without saying, it’s not even debatable. I’m just curious why you’re choosing to use the argument repeatedly that tweets are mere words to suggest that cancel culture somehow isn’t a real or serious phenomenon.

by dahart 4y ago

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.

dahart 4y ago
What I hear you saying is that you don’t understand the situation the author of the article described, don’t have any experience with how powerful social forces and reputations can be, and can’t empathize with it, but are convinced you know better than people who have experience because of your logic. > that’s only a discussion, mere words That’s got to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever read here. Or strangest, I can’t tell which. You’re going in circles. Reductionism like this isn’t just boring, it’s meaningless and false. What among human interactions doesn’t reduce to words? Laws are mere words. Jobs are mere words. Everything you know in the world came from words. All of civilization is built on words. Violence and sex aren’t words, but they are almost always the outcomes of words. Your argument is the same as claiming people can’t lose jobs because people are only made of atoms and atoms can’t fire people. > he’s in prison. Somehow you saying my point out loud to me makes me speculate that you missed the irony entirely.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > What I hear you saying is that You heard wrong, but I've lost all interest in continuing this "conversation", which seems to be going nowhere, amounts to nothing but talking past each other, and is quite unpleasant, not enjoyable or informative at all. At this point I do regret my replying to you in the first place (and also your replying to me in the first place). I did actually flag your first reply as violating the HN guidelines, but I chose to reply anyway. That was a mistake (the replying, not the flagging).
  - dahart 4y ago
    I’d agree I’ve been a tad aggressive with the debate style and went over the line a little. I’m sincerely sorry that my words upset you. My intent was to draw out your core argument, not to get our conversation cancelled with a flag. :P I also feel like this conversation wasn’t progressing, and I do take some responsibility for that, maybe I deserved the flag. What I was trying to get to is why you’re reacting to the term “cancel culture” with consistent disbelief. It feels like there’s probably some core feeling or belief or assumption here that is driving your reaction to the article and to the idea of cancellation, and I’m curious what it is. You don’t seem to like the words, even though along the way you’ve described exactly what it is: online words going viral causing groups of people to enact painful consequences on someone. To be fair, your top comment that started this thread violates multiple HN guidelines wrt to the article, and I (along with others) was trying to see if you’d reflect on that and explain it, and hear your point of view and understand your reasoning, by arguing with it. I didn’t flag it though. It wasn’t egregious, and I realize you’re making a meta comment and may not be thinking specifically about how it comes off next to the article, so I replied instead. In effect, you responded to a personal account of someone’s problem with what comes off as a tone deaf claim that the problem doesn’t exist, in multiple ways, and have since maintained and insisted you’re right without addressing any counter argument. Your stance so far as a whole is failing to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation. Words do have power, which goes without saying, it’s not even debatable. I’m just curious why you’re choosing to use the argument repeatedly that tweets are mere words to suggest that cancel culture somehow isn’t a real or serious phenomenon.