2 ms·

> The point of my original comment was to correctly attribute blame for the occurrence. Correctly according to who? I understand and agree that this was your g

by dahart 4y ago

> The point of my original comment was to correctly attribute blame for the occurrence. Correctly according to who? I understand and agree that this was your goal. I disagree that you did it correctly. Why does it even make sense to pretend like there’s only one reason or only one part to blame in said “occurrence”? You’re also still talking about jobs and making black and white assumptions that it comes down to only a few people who have “power”. The assumptions you’re stating clearly demonstrate that you’re talking about only one narrow form of cancellation, and trying to downplay painful social stigma as an outcome. > Twitter is not decisive on the matter. Again, nobody said it was. This is still a straw man. Social media doesn’t have to be decisive on the matter in order to have massive and unstoppable influence. It doesn’t have to have the final say in order to initiate things or sway public opinion. It is not useful to draw a line between who’s making a final decision and who’s starting a campaign to spread information with an agenda. You’re trying to skip right past the fact that Harvey Weistein’s trouble did not start in a court of law. It started with his actions, which lead to public allegations, many shared on social media. He’s in jail because he was convicted after and as a result of words being spread around about what he did. Cause and effect. Private and public allegations are the cause that lead to newspapers and then police to investigate, the court of law that jailed him was the effect of that cause. Suggesting that public opinion had little to do with this and doesn’t have that power is so weird and incorrect, the order of events here was extremely public and extremely well documented. The outcome of his story lead many other people to share their experiences on social media, which in turn has caused other “cancellations”, some of which then became police investigations into other people. In these a bunch of these cases (which just so happen to be pretty much the exemplar class for social canceling) your framing of people in power caving to Twitter is entirely and completely incorrect. The negative outcomes are caused sometimes by audiences refusing to watch some celebrities, sometimes by advertisers and sponsors doing the pressuring by dropping financial support, sometimes because of legal investigations revealing wrongdoing, and almost always because public outcry came first. There are very few cases in the national media that match your imaginary scenario of someone getting fired after their boss just read and believed some unverified junk online. The very small number of storied I’ve ever read like that usually involved the boss apologizing or the employee being offered something much better by people who heard the story. > Twitter is the ultimate in slacktivism. Sometimes, yes. This was the point of the article. This is also one reason why social media cancel culture is not the same as McCarthyism or other kinds of ostracism historically.

lapcat 4y ago
> you’re talking about only one narrow form of cancellation, and trying to downplay painful social stigma as an outcome. The former is true, but I'm not sure the latter is true, or that the former implies the latter. > unstoppable influence I disagree that it's unstoppable. > It is not useful to draw a line between who’s making a final decision and who’s starting a campaign to spread information with an agenda I also disagree with that. > Harvey Weistein’s trouble did not start in a court of law. It started with allegations, many shared on social media. Well, no, his trouble started with sexually assaulting a number of women. And that's also why he's in jail. You actually seem to have your timeline reversed. The New York Times published an exposé https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-haras... on October 5, 2017 and the New Yorker (Ronan Farrow) https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove... on October 10. Rose McGowan didn't start tweeting about it until after the NYT story broke, and "Me too" started https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/919659438700670976 https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/919659438700670976 on October 15. Weinstein's victims were talking privately to the news media long before social media got involved. > the order of events here was extremely public and extremely well documented. Indeed, as I noted above. Weinstein was actually investigated by police a couple years earlier https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/nyregion/harvey-weinstein-producer-questioned-by-new-york-police-after-groping-accusation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/nyregion/harvey-weinstein... but they didn't bring charges against him at the time, which in retrospect turned out to be a scandal itself. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/nypd-prosecutors-point-fingers-over-harvey-weinstein-probe-n809756 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/nypd-pro... ADDENDUM: I see that you rewrote some of your comment after I published mine, apparently in order to make yourself look less wrong about the facts I cited. That's pretty silly and pointless, because I know you did it, and there's likely nobody else reading the thread at this point except you and me. I'm done with this now, I won't be reading or replying anymore.
- dahart 4y ago
  > I see that you rewrote some of your comment after I published mine That is false. I edited my own comment before you replied (I even checked right before and after submitting my edits), and apparently unfortunately you didn’t see my edits until afterward, and have made yet another incorrect assumption. My edits were not a reaction to you, I clarified and improved my own comment. Is it possible you’re complaining about my argument getting stronger, and jumping to incorrect conclusions about my motivation, because you were already failing to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation? The point that you just clarified is that Weinstein would never have gone to court, nor to jail, without his actions, nor without the allegations. Just 1 comment ago you “attributed” his being in jail to the court, arguing that here and in all cases of cancel the final decisive people in power were the primary cause of the outcome. I fully agree that he’s in jail because of his actions. You’ve just illustrated the point that the judge that delivered his sentence is not the correct way to attribute his being in jail. The judge’s decision is only one reason, and it’s almost completely irrelevant. Once Weinstein was finally accused in public, after mounting public outcry, and once he was investigated and formally charged, jail was practically inevitable. The cause of him being in prison is correctly attributed to the whole series of events, especially the events that started everything (his actions and the allegations), and not, contrary to your claim, to someone in power.

by dahart 4y ago

lapcat 4y ago

> you’re talking about only one narrow form of cancellation, and trying to downplay painful social stigma as an outcome. The former is true, but I'm not sure the latter is true, or that the former implies the latter. > unstoppable influence I disagree that it's unstoppable. > It is not useful to draw a line between who’s making a final decision and who’s starting a campaign to spread information with an agenda I also disagree with that. > Harvey Weistein’s trouble did not start in a court of law. It started with allegations, many shared on social media. Well, no, his trouble started with sexually assaulting a number of women. And that's also why he's in jail. You actually seem to have your timeline reversed. The New York Times published an exposé https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-haras... on October 5, 2017 and the New Yorker (Ronan Farrow) https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove... on October 10. Rose McGowan didn't start tweeting about it until after the NYT story broke, and "Me too" started https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/919659438700670976 https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/919659438700670976 on October 15. Weinstein's victims were talking privately to the news media long before social media got involved. > the order of events here was extremely public and extremely well documented. Indeed, as I noted above. Weinstein was actually investigated by police a couple years earlier https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/nyregion/harvey-weinstein-producer-questioned-by-new-york-police-after-groping-accusation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/nyregion/harvey-weinstein... but they didn't bring charges against him at the time, which in retrospect turned out to be a scandal itself. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/nypd-prosecutors-point-fingers-over-harvey-weinstein-probe-n809756 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/nypd-pro... ADDENDUM: I see that you rewrote some of your comment after I published mine, apparently in order to make yourself look less wrong about the facts I cited. That's pretty silly and pointless, because I know you did it, and there's likely nobody else reading the thread at this point except you and me. I'm done with this now, I won't be reading or replying anymore.

dahart 4y ago
> I see that you rewrote some of your comment after I published mine That is false. I edited my own comment before you replied (I even checked right before and after submitting my edits), and apparently unfortunately you didn’t see my edits until afterward, and have made yet another incorrect assumption. My edits were not a reaction to you, I clarified and improved my own comment. Is it possible you’re complaining about my argument getting stronger, and jumping to incorrect conclusions about my motivation, because you were already failing to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation? The point that you just clarified is that Weinstein would never have gone to court, nor to jail, without his actions, nor without the allegations. Just 1 comment ago you “attributed” his being in jail to the court, arguing that here and in all cases of cancel the final decisive people in power were the primary cause of the outcome. I fully agree that he’s in jail because of his actions. You’ve just illustrated the point that the judge that delivered his sentence is not the correct way to attribute his being in jail. The judge’s decision is only one reason, and it’s almost completely irrelevant. Once Weinstein was finally accused in public, after mounting public outcry, and once he was investigated and formally charged, jail was practically inevitable. The cause of him being in prison is correctly attributed to the whole series of events, especially the events that started everything (his actions and the allegations), and not, contrary to your claim, to someone in power.