5 ms·

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 t

by 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?"
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > Organizations and individuals decide who they do or don't want to associate with No they don't, there are laws against that, for example you can't decide to ostracize black people from your company, you will get sued for that.
        foldr 1y ago
        Hmm? There are laws against some forms of discrimination, but organizations have freedom of association just as individuals do. For example, political affiliation is not a protected class, so (in some states and some contexts) it is perfectly legal for a private company to decline to hire someone on the basis of their political views.
    - temp0826 1y ago
      And who would hold everyone in the group to that standard? How do you stop a lynch mob?
      - Jensson 1y ago
        The police, that is how we stopped lynch mobs in the past.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 1y ago
      Thinking in terms of the US constitution and the laws built on top if it, ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not. So its fine to fire all black people to ostracize them? No, of course not, so no you are wrong here, there are more limitations than that, people have rights protecting them from a lot of ostracism.
        sjsdaiuasgdia 1y ago
        Yes, there are some narrow carve-outs, to encourage ostracization on the basis of behavior rather than the basis of identity. This works because people can choose to not be jerks, but they can't choose to not be black.
        naasking 1y ago
        > This works because people can choose to not be jerks, but they can't choose to not be black. What if they could? People can change gender identity nowadays, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that people could change their phenotypical characteristics (transracialism is a hotly debated topic).
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Ostracization is an absolutely critical tool in the marketplace of ideas. I'm sympathetic to the argument that the dynamics of the Internet have made some tools more or less suitable for purpose as what they used to be, but the idea that we can just assert "no ostracization" is flatly insane and totally antithetical to the marketplace of ideas.
- jgeada 1y ago
  Like I said "Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient." Heck, downvotes here in HN are basically the same thing. If a statement doesn't comply with both the explicit rules and implicit assumptions and culture here, it will be downvoted to oblivion. And it is one of the major mechanisms that HN uses to ensure this site remains useful and relevant even with the large number of participants.
  - marknutter 1y ago
    And that leads to a monoculture and echo chambers.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Just because something applies some negative pressure on diversity of thought doesn't mean it necessarily "leads to a monoculture and echo chambers." If you're in a car that's going way too fast, do you tell the driver not to touch the brakes because it "leads to us never reaching our destination?" Anyway, we're currently seeing the reign of the "cancel culture is the big problem" crybabies. Turns out they just thought the state should have the power to decide who's allowed to have an opinion.
zoogeny 1y ago
It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth. The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization. He chooses death. I think it is worth deeply pondering why a man as wise as Socrates would choose death over ostracization.
- hn_acker 1y ago
  > It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth. Plato's Apology was not meant to be a wholly accurate account [1]. It's a partially fictional, philosophical account meant to demonstrate Socrates' intended message. But I digress. > The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization. My understanding is that Socrates chose death where he had the option of requesting legal exile, which in the context of "cancel culture" is not nearly the same as social ostracization. As for why Socrates would choose death, a superficial search gave me possible explanations (e.g. "death is not so bad" but more formal [2] or moral integrity toward family/friends [3]) that didn't center on the personal suffering or cruelty of exile or ostracization. I would add "moral integrity toward sticking to the truth" as another possible explanation (though I'm not entirely sympathetic to choosing suicide for any of these explanations). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)#The_text_of_Apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)#The_text_of_Ap... [2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-classical-journal/article/socrates-on-life-and-death-plato-apology-40c541c7/B2B0F7971118CD45D699C8F486D90348 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-classical-... [3] https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-didnt-Socrates-try-to-escape-his-death-sentence https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-didnt-Socrates-try-t...
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Possibly he was anti-democratic, and was put on trial by the democratic government in troubled times (the Spartans had only recently gone away) because he was a threat, and he declined to be exiled by ostracism (from ostrakon, a clay pot, because pot shards were voting tokens), that is to be voted out, because he had no respect for a democratic process.
YetAnotherNick 1y ago
Except this is not the case. If someone whom half of the country thinks is the best person to become their president could get "cancelled" and blocked from twitter, it is hard to argue that he got cancelled the pre internet way where no one wants to listen to him. Cancel culture today for both parties is not form of not listening or even social exclusion, but kind of active shaming.
csours 1y ago
1. Some people definitely deserve to be cancelled/ostracized/socially punished. 2. Social media cares about engagement, not right and wrong. If content of a type is sought for, content of that type will be made. 3. Social media has trained people to simply react to the perceived message - "Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture!" 4. Concern trolling is very real. Social media is a low trust environment. You have no reason to think of me as a serious person, or take the time to engage with my reasoning. 5. Shame is incredibly motivating, but the shamer does not get to choose the direction that shame moves the target. You can certainly say that they are reacting wrongly, but you are not their parent/priest/custodian. 6. Once enough people are made to feel shame, they may band together. You are free to say that this is morally wrong or detestable. 7. This is all very very unsatisfying, so people usually take a more satisfying offramp and just blame someone. Blame and responsibility are very very slippery topics. Blame is about moral satisfaction and dropping a heavy, prickly, stinky and noxious emotional burden. Blame typically falls on the person with the least social capital (relative to the blamer) who is closest to the problem. Blame is the easiest thing to reach for in a low trust environment. Responsibility requires a high trust environment. Responsibility can be forward and backward - who WAS responsible for this incident, who WILL BE responsible for improving the situation. In a low trust environment, responsibility will randomly transmute into blame. 8. It's easier to fight than it is to work. If someone is morally wrong, you do not owe them any emotional labor. 9. A fight does not require real harm as a trigger; a perceived social slight or lack of respect is more than enough to start a fight. Pain can be endured, shame cannot. 10. Anger and fighting form a feedback loop. Does the anger or fight come first? 11. This sort of thing has historically gotten VERY VERY bad before it gets better, even when people see it coming. It is very unsatisfying to say, but life can just really suck for a lot of people for a while. This is a heavy, noxious emotional burden, so by all means preserve your emotional health and find someone to blame. ---- So what is the solution? I don't have a satisfying solution, but I have noticed something. I have noticed that gravity is the weakest force/interaction in the universe per scale unit. I have noticed that gravity is responsible for the largest objects and systems in the universe. I have noticed that people mostly do not change their views in the middle of a fight. "That's odd" is the most power phrase in science. The greatness of humanity has followed curiosity, patience, empathy and humility. ---- I won't tell anyone to stop fighting, but I will say that I strongly believe that fighting is only ever part of a solution. I believe that fighting cannot ever fix anything or make anything better on the large scale. Fighting can only make things less worse, for some people, in some place, at some time.
charlie90 1y ago
>you were considered an ass You were considered an ass by people that actually knew you. The internet lynch mob takes a 30 second clip of a person they don't know and demand that the person have their life destroyed.
raydev 1y ago
> 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. Does this also justify hundreds or thousands of people calling your minimum wage employer trying to get you fired?
AlexandrB 1y ago
> 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. This conception of "cancelling" has little relation to how it actually happens, where the offending messages are often spread as far as possible first. If the goal is not to listen to someone, muting/blocking is almost always an option. Cancelling is trying to convince everyone else to shun the person as well often with misleading or reductive narratives about what they said/did and use of guilt by association. My favourite example is Contrapoints getting cancelled for featuring a short VoiceOver by a controversial trans person[1] in a video. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
naasking 1y ago
> 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. Even if this were true, its application was typically reserved for people already infamous for doing something heinous, eg. murderers, despots, thieves, etc. Social media virality has applied this to individuals whose worst crime was maybe making an off-colour joke. The disproportionate response to the transgression is what most people dislike about modern cancel culture, and I don't think this disproportional response was that common in the past.

by jgeada 1y ago

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?"
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > Organizations and individuals decide who they do or don't want to associate with No they don't, there are laws against that, for example you can't decide to ostracize black people from your company, you will get sued for that.
      - foldr 1y ago
        Hmm? There are laws against some forms of discrimination, but organizations have freedom of association just as individuals do. For example, political affiliation is not a protected class, so (in some states and some contexts) it is perfectly legal for a private company to decline to hire someone on the basis of their political views.
  - temp0826 1y ago
    And who would hold everyone in the group to that standard? How do you stop a lynch mob?
    - Jensson 1y ago
      The police, that is how we stopped lynch mobs in the past.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 1y ago
    Thinking in terms of the US constitution and the laws built on top if it, ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not. So its fine to fire all black people to ostracize them? No, of course not, so no you are wrong here, there are more limitations than that, people have rights protecting them from a lot of ostracism.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 1y ago
        Yes, there are some narrow carve-outs, to encourage ostracization on the basis of behavior rather than the basis of identity. This works because people can choose to not be jerks, but they can't choose to not be black.
        naasking 1y ago
        > This works because people can choose to not be jerks, but they can't choose to not be black. What if they could? People can change gender identity nowadays, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that people could change their phenotypical characteristics (transracialism is a hotly debated topic).
sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Ostracization is an absolutely critical tool in the marketplace of ideas. I'm sympathetic to the argument that the dynamics of the Internet have made some tools more or less suitable for purpose as what they used to be, but the idea that we can just assert "no ostracization" is flatly insane and totally antithetical to the marketplace of ideas.
jgeada 1y ago
Like I said "Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient." Heck, downvotes here in HN are basically the same thing. If a statement doesn't comply with both the explicit rules and implicit assumptions and culture here, it will be downvoted to oblivion. And it is one of the major mechanisms that HN uses to ensure this site remains useful and relevant even with the large number of participants.
- marknutter 1y ago
  And that leads to a monoculture and echo chambers.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Just because something applies some negative pressure on diversity of thought doesn't mean it necessarily "leads to a monoculture and echo chambers." If you're in a car that's going way too fast, do you tell the driver not to touch the brakes because it "leads to us never reaching our destination?" Anyway, we're currently seeing the reign of the "cancel culture is the big problem" crybabies. Turns out they just thought the state should have the power to decide who's allowed to have an opinion.

zoogeny 1y ago

It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth. The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization. He chooses death. I think it is worth deeply pondering why a man as wise as Socrates would choose death over ostracization.

hn_acker 1y ago
> It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth. Plato's Apology was not meant to be a wholly accurate account [1]. It's a partially fictional, philosophical account meant to demonstrate Socrates' intended message. But I digress. > The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization. My understanding is that Socrates chose death where he had the option of requesting legal exile, which in the context of "cancel culture" is not nearly the same as social ostracization. As for why Socrates would choose death, a superficial search gave me possible explanations (e.g. "death is not so bad" but more formal [2] or moral integrity toward family/friends [3]) that didn't center on the personal suffering or cruelty of exile or ostracization. I would add "moral integrity toward sticking to the truth" as another possible explanation (though I'm not entirely sympathetic to choosing suicide for any of these explanations). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)#The_text_of_Apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)#The_text_of_Ap... [2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-classical-journal/article/socrates-on-life-and-death-plato-apology-40c541c7/B2B0F7971118CD45D699C8F486D90348 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-classical-... [3] https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-didnt-Socrates-try-to-escape-his-death-sentence https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-didnt-Socrates-try-t...
- card_zero 1y ago
  Possibly he was anti-democratic, and was put on trial by the democratic government in troubled times (the Spartans had only recently gone away) because he was a threat, and he declined to be exiled by ostracism (from ostrakon, a clay pot, because pot shards were voting tokens), that is to be voted out, because he had no respect for a democratic process.

YetAnotherNick 1y ago

Except this is not the case. If someone whom half of the country thinks is the best person to become their president could get "cancelled" and blocked from twitter, it is hard to argue that he got cancelled the pre internet way where no one wants to listen to him. Cancel culture today for both parties is not form of not listening or even social exclusion, but kind of active shaming.

csours 1y ago

1. Some people definitely deserve to be cancelled/ostracized/socially punished. 2. Social media cares about engagement, not right and wrong. If content of a type is sought for, content of that type will be made. 3. Social media has trained people to simply react to the perceived message - "Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture!" 4. Concern trolling is very real. Social media is a low trust environment. You have no reason to think of me as a serious person, or take the time to engage with my reasoning. 5. Shame is incredibly motivating, but the shamer does not get to choose the direction that shame moves the target. You can certainly say that they are reacting wrongly, but you are not their parent/priest/custodian. 6. Once enough people are made to feel shame, they may band together. You are free to say that this is morally wrong or detestable. 7. This is all very very unsatisfying, so people usually take a more satisfying offramp and just blame someone. Blame and responsibility are very very slippery topics. Blame is about moral satisfaction and dropping a heavy, prickly, stinky and noxious emotional burden. Blame typically falls on the person with the least social capital (relative to the blamer) who is closest to the problem. Blame is the easiest thing to reach for in a low trust environment. Responsibility requires a high trust environment. Responsibility can be forward and backward - who WAS responsible for this incident, who WILL BE responsible for improving the situation. In a low trust environment, responsibility will randomly transmute into blame. 8. It's easier to fight than it is to work. If someone is morally wrong, you do not owe them any emotional labor. 9. A fight does not require real harm as a trigger; a perceived social slight or lack of respect is more than enough to start a fight. Pain can be endured, shame cannot. 10. Anger and fighting form a feedback loop. Does the anger or fight come first? 11. This sort of thing has historically gotten VERY VERY bad before it gets better, even when people see it coming. It is very unsatisfying to say, but life can just really suck for a lot of people for a while. This is a heavy, noxious emotional burden, so by all means preserve your emotional health and find someone to blame. ---- So what is the solution? I don't have a satisfying solution, but I have noticed something. I have noticed that gravity is the weakest force/interaction in the universe per scale unit. I have noticed that gravity is responsible for the largest objects and systems in the universe. I have noticed that people mostly do not change their views in the middle of a fight. "That's odd" is the most power phrase in science. The greatness of humanity has followed curiosity, patience, empathy and humility. ---- I won't tell anyone to stop fighting, but I will say that I strongly believe that fighting is only ever part of a solution. I believe that fighting cannot ever fix anything or make anything better on the large scale. Fighting can only make things less worse, for some people, in some place, at some time.

charlie90 1y ago

>you were considered an ass You were considered an ass by people that actually knew you. The internet lynch mob takes a 30 second clip of a person they don't know and demand that the person have their life destroyed.

raydev 1y ago

> 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. Does this also justify hundreds or thousands of people calling your minimum wage employer trying to get you fired?

AlexandrB 1y ago

> 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. This conception of "cancelling" has little relation to how it actually happens, where the offending messages are often spread as far as possible first. If the goal is not to listen to someone, muting/blocking is almost always an option. Cancelling is trying to convince everyone else to shun the person as well often with misleading or reductive narratives about what they said/did and use of guilt by association. My favourite example is Contrapoints getting cancelled for featuring a short VoiceOver by a controversial trans person[1] in a video. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8

naasking 1y ago

> 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. Even if this were true, its application was typically reserved for people already infamous for doing something heinous, eg. murderers, despots, thieves, etc. Social media virality has applied this to individuals whose worst crime was maybe making an off-colour joke. The disproportionate response to the transgression is what most people dislike about modern cancel culture, and I don't think this disproportional response was that common in the past.