8 ms·

> Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms This one is VERY morally and emotionally weighty, and I think you have to do quite a bit of work to AC

by csours 1y ago

> Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms This one is VERY morally and emotionally weighty, and I think you have to do quite a bit of work to ACTUALLY understand what is going on here, but I agree. In the middle of a fight, no one wants to look reasonable. In a fight, reasonable looks weak. In a fight, no one wants democracy, we just want to win. Unfortunately that fight mindset also shuts down the whole thinking part of the the brain; which is how you get people who gleefully vote for a king, because they feel like the king is their champion in the fight.

pjc50 1y ago
It's also especially vulnerable to "motte and bailey" arguments. Harassing people over competing fandoms is out of order. However, a lot of #metoo gets filed under "cancel culture" when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim.
- Aunche 1y ago
  > when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim. This is by definition cancel culture. Unfortunately some bad actors will abuse this as a way to hurt someone. I've seen this happen twice, and fear of this happening is enough for good men to be unnecessarily distant towards women. That said, people getting away with sexual assault seems to be significantly more common.
  - anal_reactor 1y ago
    As a man who will never rape a woman, I care a little about the possibility of a random stranger having a small possibility of being raped, but I care much more about myself getting potentially unjustly accused of sexual abuse and suffering consequences. If engaging in any interaction with a woman will get me an acquaintance at best and ruin my career at worst, then this sounds like a very bad deal.
    - lern_too_spel 1y ago
      This is a ridiculous take. Defamation suits still exist. Not interacting with colleagues of a different gender, on the other hand, will get you disciplined and eventually fired. Just don't be a creep like Joel Kaplan, allegedly.
      - csours 1y ago
        It is a morally disgusting, but very rational take. It is morally disgusting because of the relative harms between the parties, but very rational because of the personal risk/reward calculation.
        lern_too_spel 1y ago
        It's precisely the risk/reward calculation that is wrong. If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. If you stop interacting with people, you will get fired.
        yubblegum 1y ago
        Any data on what percentage of these suits succeed and how much it costs?
        lillecarl 1y ago
        I'd say this is a naive take, it probably happens but I've never heard of someone getting a defamation lawsuit through in Sweden. And even if you end up being right and winning all bridges will be burned and some excuse to keep you fucked will be made. It's a losers game, and you don't have to play. Which doesn't necessarily mean "don't interact with women" but maybe "keep it to the bare minimum, don't be alone and cover your ass" Considering how fucked up things are everywhere on so many levels I think any way to get through the day with a positive end is a great way to do it
        haberman 1y ago
        > If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. Are you aware of anyone who has successfully done this and maintained their standing in life? The example that comes to mind for me is Steven Galloway, a UBC Professor who was accused of sexual assault in 2015 and filed a defamation lawsuit about it in 2018. That lawsuit has spent the last 7 years making its way through the courts; after many attempts to have it dismissed, it will finally proceed to trial. Meanwhile Galloway's career basically ended: he went from being a celebrated and award-winning author and professor to doing manual labor like cleaning swimming pools. His publisher cancelled a three-book contract in 2018. Even if the defamation lawsuit succeeds, how will he ever be made whole? He will never get the last 10 years of his life back.
  - text0404 1y ago
    i mean, 1 in 3 women have a chance of experiencing sexual violence in the US. it sucks that some men now fear interacting with women because of n=2 false accusations, but a grassroots movement was literally created because women aren't getting justice for the egregious crimes which are committed against them at alarmingly high rates (and who themselves are ostracized and whose careers are destroyed for just reporting those crimes).
    - fennecbutt 1y ago
      Men are more often victims of violence in general than women by far yet sexual violence if given precedence because society likes to be sexist and group all men together. It doesn't matter if I'm a male victim of crime because most criminals are men and that makes me somehow complicit. I never liked playing society's hetero games.
jgeada 1y ago
Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture! Cancel culture used to be called social exclusion/ostracism, and it has been how people police themselves against undesirable people in pre-internet communities where most everybody knew everybody. If you were considered an ass, eventually the only person listening to you was you. Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient. While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you.
- marknutter 1y ago
  Let's look back at who these "undesirable people" who were being excluded/ostracized were throughout history, shall we, and see how well your "While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you" dismissal holds up.
  - foldr 1y ago
    You can certainly ostracize people who don’t deserve to be ostracized, but it doesn’t follow from that that all social ostracization is inherently bad. Freedom of association and freedom of speech can be used for bad ends as well as good, like most freedoms.
    - marknutter 1y ago
      Who gets to decide what ostracization is good and what ostracization is bad?
      - foldr 1y ago
        I don't think anyone decides that as such. Organizations and individuals decide who they do or don't want to associate with. If it turns out that very few people want to associate with you, then you've been ostracized. Your question is like asking "Who decides which people should be friends?", or "Who decides who should be popular?"
intended 1y ago
However cancel culture is 100% going to evolve once you create an internet, and then leave things to the market to solve. Cancel culture is ... i guess the best democracy in a broken system. Its people realizing the lever of power that is left is the levers as a consumer. So by choosing what they consume, they are sending signals to the system of society. For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture, for me its an inevitability. As is the natural irritation and opposition which would appear to it. I suppose, all of it, cancel, counter cancel, is just the invisible hand at work?
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture To someone whose formative years came before the internet, cancel culture looks a lot like plain old boring boycotts? So there would be a lot of confusion as to why it's so big a deal? I tend to agree. You need cancel culture. You need people who oppose cancel culture. You need it all. If you don't have any given one of these kinds of civil freedoms, then you actually don't have a democracy. So a lot of it is just branding. You have to call it cancel culture, because if you were to try and ban the organizing of boycotts, people would laugh at you. It's plainly obvious that you need the freedom to boycott and you need the freedom to oppose the boycott to have a democracy. Haidt's argument in this regard is non-sensical in that boycotts are, pretty much, a democratic norm in and of themselves.
  - intended 1y ago
    Yeah. Good old social boycott. I felt you could see this be figured out in real time, if you looked at how people spoke online. You had many phases online, like the Libertarian phase, and people constantly talking about capitalism being great, and markets being great etc. Then you had 2008, and people started learning about things worked, and you started seeing people and different age brackets coming to terms with their reality and agency. The agency that had previously been defined in market terms! So with everything from anonymous to flash mobs, people put two and two together and figured they could boycott things that they disagreed with. The only time this became an issue is when it started exerting ACTUAL social force. At that point people had to have the difficult conversation of what people were mad about, AND the new manner in which people were exerting force. As is inevitable with any use of force, it gets enmeshed with other people who weild force and power and it becomes just another thing that is seen as oppresive and broken. But its essentially effective (or ineffective) social boycotting.
vroomvrooom 1y ago
[flagged]

by csours 1y ago

pjc50 1y ago

It's also especially vulnerable to "motte and bailey" arguments. Harassing people over competing fandoms is out of order. However, a lot of #metoo gets filed under "cancel culture" when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim.

Aunche 1y ago
> when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim. This is by definition cancel culture. Unfortunately some bad actors will abuse this as a way to hurt someone. I've seen this happen twice, and fear of this happening is enough for good men to be unnecessarily distant towards women. That said, people getting away with sexual assault seems to be significantly more common.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  As a man who will never rape a woman, I care a little about the possibility of a random stranger having a small possibility of being raped, but I care much more about myself getting potentially unjustly accused of sexual abuse and suffering consequences. If engaging in any interaction with a woman will get me an acquaintance at best and ruin my career at worst, then this sounds like a very bad deal.
  - lern_too_spel 1y ago
    This is a ridiculous take. Defamation suits still exist. Not interacting with colleagues of a different gender, on the other hand, will get you disciplined and eventually fired. Just don't be a creep like Joel Kaplan, allegedly.
    - csours 1y ago
      It is a morally disgusting, but very rational take. It is morally disgusting because of the relative harms between the parties, but very rational because of the personal risk/reward calculation.
      - lern_too_spel 1y ago
        It's precisely the risk/reward calculation that is wrong. If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. If you stop interacting with people, you will get fired.
        yubblegum 1y ago
        Any data on what percentage of these suits succeed and how much it costs?
        lillecarl 1y ago
        I'd say this is a naive take, it probably happens but I've never heard of someone getting a defamation lawsuit through in Sweden. And even if you end up being right and winning all bridges will be burned and some excuse to keep you fucked will be made. It's a losers game, and you don't have to play. Which doesn't necessarily mean "don't interact with women" but maybe "keep it to the bare minimum, don't be alone and cover your ass" Considering how fucked up things are everywhere on so many levels I think any way to get through the day with a positive end is a great way to do it
        haberman 1y ago
        > If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. Are you aware of anyone who has successfully done this and maintained their standing in life? The example that comes to mind for me is Steven Galloway, a UBC Professor who was accused of sexual assault in 2015 and filed a defamation lawsuit about it in 2018. That lawsuit has spent the last 7 years making its way through the courts; after many attempts to have it dismissed, it will finally proceed to trial. Meanwhile Galloway's career basically ended: he went from being a celebrated and award-winning author and professor to doing manual labor like cleaning swimming pools. His publisher cancelled a three-book contract in 2018. Even if the defamation lawsuit succeeds, how will he ever be made whole? He will never get the last 10 years of his life back.
- text0404 1y ago
  i mean, 1 in 3 women have a chance of experiencing sexual violence in the US. it sucks that some men now fear interacting with women because of n=2 false accusations, but a grassroots movement was literally created because women aren't getting justice for the egregious crimes which are committed against them at alarmingly high rates (and who themselves are ostracized and whose careers are destroyed for just reporting those crimes).
  - fennecbutt 1y ago
    Men are more often victims of violence in general than women by far yet sexual violence if given precedence because society likes to be sexist and group all men together. It doesn't matter if I'm a male victim of crime because most criminals are men and that makes me somehow complicit. I never liked playing society's hetero games.

jgeada 1y ago

Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture! Cancel culture used to be called social exclusion/ostracism, and it has been how people police themselves against undesirable people in pre-internet communities where most everybody knew everybody. If you were considered an ass, eventually the only person listening to you was you. Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient. While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you.

marknutter 1y ago
Let's look back at who these "undesirable people" who were being excluded/ostracized were throughout history, shall we, and see how well your "While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you" dismissal holds up.
- foldr 1y ago
  You can certainly ostracize people who don’t deserve to be ostracized, but it doesn’t follow from that that all social ostracization is inherently bad. Freedom of association and freedom of speech can be used for bad ends as well as good, like most freedoms.
  - marknutter 1y ago
    Who gets to decide what ostracization is good and what ostracization is bad?
    - foldr 1y ago
      I don't think anyone decides that as such. Organizations and individuals decide who they do or don't want to associate with. If it turns out that very few people want to associate with you, then you've been ostracized. Your question is like asking "Who decides which people should be friends?", or "Who decides who should be popular?"

intended 1y ago

However cancel culture is 100% going to evolve once you create an internet, and then leave things to the market to solve. Cancel culture is ... i guess the best democracy in a broken system. Its people realizing the lever of power that is left is the levers as a consumer. So by choosing what they consume, they are sending signals to the system of society. For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture, for me its an inevitability. As is the natural irritation and opposition which would appear to it. I suppose, all of it, cancel, counter cancel, is just the invisible hand at work?

bilbo0s 1y ago
For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture To someone whose formative years came before the internet, cancel culture looks a lot like plain old boring boycotts? So there would be a lot of confusion as to why it's so big a deal? I tend to agree. You need cancel culture. You need people who oppose cancel culture. You need it all. If you don't have any given one of these kinds of civil freedoms, then you actually don't have a democracy. So a lot of it is just branding. You have to call it cancel culture, because if you were to try and ban the organizing of boycotts, people would laugh at you. It's plainly obvious that you need the freedom to boycott and you need the freedom to oppose the boycott to have a democracy. Haidt's argument in this regard is non-sensical in that boycotts are, pretty much, a democratic norm in and of themselves.
- intended 1y ago
  Yeah. Good old social boycott. I felt you could see this be figured out in real time, if you looked at how people spoke online. You had many phases online, like the Libertarian phase, and people constantly talking about capitalism being great, and markets being great etc. Then you had 2008, and people started learning about things worked, and you started seeing people and different age brackets coming to terms with their reality and agency. The agency that had previously been defined in market terms! So with everything from anonymous to flash mobs, people put two and two together and figured they could boycott things that they disagreed with. The only time this became an issue is when it started exerting ACTUAL social force. At that point people had to have the difficult conversation of what people were mad about, AND the new manner in which people were exerting force. As is inevitable with any use of force, it gets enmeshed with other people who weild force and power and it becomes just another thing that is seen as oppresive and broken. But its essentially effective (or ineffective) social boycotting.

vroomvrooom 1y ago

[flagged]