11 ms·

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

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 2y 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.
- jtsnow 2y ago
  This seems highly revisionist. Cancel culture isn't just about boycotting or being selective about what one consumes. It's not even about holding people accountable. It's about destroying people and tearing them down in order to make examples of them. It results in antagonists showing up at people's homes, writing letters to employers, creating petitions, attacking people in the nastiest ways possible with out engaging with ideas or arguments. It's the disproportionate and graceless reactions that distinguish cancel culture from past methods of accountability.
  - intended 2y ago
    What do you think happens when people get boycotted in villages or “back in the day”? Collections of people get MANY things wrong. Just see relationship advice vs AITAH vs CMV. Are people used to some benign, harmless, ineffective version of social boycotts? Grace? The Scarlet letter describes what society did to adulterers. see what happened in 2008 when large groups got together, or the police protests or any number of movements. They start when there is something easy and clear to work with, and soon smash into (and past) nuances. I agree with the parent poster, these are modern day boycotts, influenced by the malaise of being seen primarily as consumers, and super charged by the emotional polarization of the internet.
marcosdumay 2y ago
> cancel culture looks a lot like plain old boring boycotts Yes, plain old boycotts against a person livelihood without any strict necessity of evidence, recourse, or defense.
- intended 2y ago
  Yes, this is how social boycotts worked. They aren’t nice. Ostracized is an OLD Greek Civ word. Shunning is another. I am beginning to suspect people are unaware of how messy any form of mass activism ends up being. Mass being the keyword here. The point being made was about the inevitability of this form of collective action. Cancel culture is fundamentally about the little guy exerting collective power, based on the older rhetoric limiting people to consumers. That bell has been rung. Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power.
  - endoblast 2y ago
    >Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power. It's worse than that. For instance in the UK the Establishment itself is dominated by people who regard themselves as victims in one way or another. As victims they are the de facto little guys and act with impunity.

intended 2y 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.

jtsnow 2y ago
This seems highly revisionist. Cancel culture isn't just about boycotting or being selective about what one consumes. It's not even about holding people accountable. It's about destroying people and tearing them down in order to make examples of them. It results in antagonists showing up at people's homes, writing letters to employers, creating petitions, attacking people in the nastiest ways possible with out engaging with ideas or arguments. It's the disproportionate and graceless reactions that distinguish cancel culture from past methods of accountability.
- intended 2y ago
  What do you think happens when people get boycotted in villages or “back in the day”? Collections of people get MANY things wrong. Just see relationship advice vs AITAH vs CMV. Are people used to some benign, harmless, ineffective version of social boycotts? Grace? The Scarlet letter describes what society did to adulterers. see what happened in 2008 when large groups got together, or the police protests or any number of movements. They start when there is something easy and clear to work with, and soon smash into (and past) nuances. I agree with the parent poster, these are modern day boycotts, influenced by the malaise of being seen primarily as consumers, and super charged by the emotional polarization of the internet.

marcosdumay 2y ago

> cancel culture looks a lot like plain old boring boycotts Yes, plain old boycotts against a person livelihood without any strict necessity of evidence, recourse, or defense.

intended 2y ago
Yes, this is how social boycotts worked. They aren’t nice. Ostracized is an OLD Greek Civ word. Shunning is another. I am beginning to suspect people are unaware of how messy any form of mass activism ends up being. Mass being the keyword here. The point being made was about the inevitability of this form of collective action. Cancel culture is fundamentally about the little guy exerting collective power, based on the older rhetoric limiting people to consumers. That bell has been rung. Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power.
- endoblast 2y ago
  >Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power. It's worse than that. For instance in the UK the Establishment itself is dominated by people who regard themselves as victims in one way or another. As victims they are the de facto little guys and act with impunity.