cancel culture IV

[TrackerNeil]

22 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Have any of you actually run afoul of this though? 

Believe me, I wouldn't mind being so well known that someone even consider cancelling me!

That said, lots of people get cancelled--Adria Richards, Natalie Wynn, Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, Adam Koebel, Lindsay Ellis, Oliver Thorn--and they report that it's pretty damned unpleasant, and can even affect their ability to earn money. 

Before anyone starts, this isn't a question of those specific people being good, or bad; inevitably, someone will want to weigh in and talk about their problems with Wynn or Koebel, and I'm not going to defend them, as media creators or as people. However, I think we should all be able to recognize that Natalie Wynn speaking badly on one or two occasions, or Henry Rollins fucking up because he got pissed off, just aren't worthy of the level of vitriol and fury that call-out culture evokes. 

My view is that "cancelling" lets us feel righteous about being cruel because, hey, doesn't Adria Richards in some sense deserve to receive death threats? Next time she won't tweet complaints about jokes! And why shouldn't Lindsay Ellis lose some money? She could just condemn and disavow Natalie Wynn. Since in these instances we are surrounded by a virtual mob, all pulling the same way, we can believe that we as individuals bear no responsibility for the outcome, just as the individual snowflakes can surely claim not to be an avalanche.

[Relic]

Maybe I'm just getting old but this term just pisses me off. People are such fucking sheep. 

[JGP]

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

I don't have the online presence to get cancelled; believe me, I wouldn't mind being so well known that someone even consider cancelling me!

You might get there, I remember enjoying your linked bloggy/videos things on FB. You're funny.

What you aren't in the habit of though Tracker, is saying ostensibly outrageous or reprehensible things -whether your believe them or not- for clicks, or attention, or because you're a prick on the inside and sometimes that shits just got to be let loose cause, dang nabbit, society's gotten too dang soft. 

And while the relatively famous are the more notable examples, 'cancelling' certainly happens to unknowns too. A local real estate agent got bounced from his job for shit talking minorities/under privileged on Twitter when some people complained to his employer. Consequences or cancelling, I don't know.

I get what you're saying though.

 

[JGP]

57 minutes ago, Relic said:

Maybe I'm just getting old but this term just pisses me off. People are such fucking sheep. 

You've thought of most people as sheep for as long as I've known you, brother lol

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

You've thought of most people as sheep for as long as I've known you, brother lol

True, guess I was just born cranky. 

[TrackerNeil]

2 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

You might get there, I remember enjoying your linked bloggy/videos things on FB. You're funny.

What you aren't in the habit of though Tracker, is saying ostensibly outrageous or reprehensible things -whether your believe them or not- for clicks, or attention, or because you're a prick on the inside and sometimes that shits just got to be let loose cause, dang nabbit, society's gotten too dang soft. 

Heh...I guess, I am not the iconoclast I sometimes imagine myself to be. 

It's true; I really don't say things publicly unless I really believe them, for better or for worse.

(BTW, when I left the board I forgot everyone's westeros.org handles, so I probably only know your Facebook name now. I'm not great at remembering names that way.)

[JGP]

57 minutes ago, Relic said:

True, guess I was just born cranky. 

Or... single minded.

[Relic]

2 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Or... single minded.

Neverrrrrrrr

[JGP]

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

Heh...I guess, I am not the iconoclast I sometimes imagine myself to be. 

It's true; I really don't say things publicly unless I really believe them, for better or for worse.

(BTW, when I left the board I forgot everyone's westeros.org handles, so I probably only know your Facebook name now. I'm not great at remembering names that way.)

Oh, I was that super ugly dude with the heart of gold and the lucky charm. I'm not on FB anymore though. Once all the Cambridge Analytica stuff started coming out, I excised all my stuff and bounced. 

 

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Neverrrrrrrr

 Sent you a DM, Mike.

[Raja]

10 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Kind of jealous Raja is getting a "Canceller" title.  Guess I'll just have to work harder at cancelling folks.

I...I haven't even posted in any iteration of these threads. It's amusing. 

Only one cogent response to the previous post by Triskele, tbh.

 

[Knight Of Winter]

2 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

That said, lots of people get cancelled--Adria Richards, Natalie Wynn, Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, Adam Koebel, Lindsay Ellis, Oliver Thorn--and they report that it's pretty damned unpleasant, and can even affect their ability to earn money. 

 

Small digression; but whole Adria Richards case reminds me so much of this timeless tweet:

 

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Small digression; but whole Adria Richards case reminds me so much of this timeless tweet:

 

The story of what happened to her is both frustrating and fascinating. I never get tired of it.

[DanteGabriel]

4 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

 

My view is that "cancelling" lets us feel righteous about being cruel because, hey, doesn't Adria Richards in some sense deserve to receive death threats? Next time she won't tweet complaints about jokes! And why shouldn't Lindsay Ellis lose some money? She could just condemn and disavow Natalie Wynn. Since in these instances we are surrounded by a virtual mob, all pulling the same way, we can believe that we as individuals bear no responsibility for the outcome, just as the individual snowflakes can surely claim not to be an avalanche.

Has anyone said Adria Richards deserved death threats?

Did she deserve to lose her job, which was selling her company's technology to developers, after attempting to publicly shame a couple of said developers for stupid jokes during what I am sure was a riveting presentation? It's pretty easy to see how she'd not be effective in her role after getting someone fired herself.

If we could keep the serious consequences for viral fuckups limited to, say, losing your job*, and  not have the death threats and the hounding of people off social media, I suppose that would be okay by me.

 

* I think we also need to make sure losing your job isn't as catastrophic as it currently is. Universal health care so that people can move between jobs more easily. More robust unemployment support and training as well.

[S John]

5 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

* I think we also need to make sure losing your job isn't as catastrophic as it currently is. Universal health care so that people can move between jobs more easily. More robust unemployment support and training as well.

This section touches on the other thing that troubles me about it - the first being the risk-free, semi-anonymous cruelty that TN has so eloquently decried in these threads. 

In this country, to our vast shame IMO, your access to healthcare is tied to your job. And often, not just your healthcare but everyone in your family.

Maybe I’m just getting old and am now fully grasping what it means to have dependents - but tearing someone down to the point where they are unemployed - and potentially unemployable does not just effect that person, it could potentially have extremely serious impacts for their whole family, spouse, kids, elderly dependents, etc. All of those people could be out something as fundamental as healthcare because of the rhetorical mistake of someone they happen to be related to. 

At 22 when you’re young and resilient and have some entry level job, losing your job still sucks but it feels like it’s not the end of the world. But sitting at 36 with my health insurance floating multiple human beings and my income being a very significant part of the household, getting fired would be a pretty damn big deal. Getting fired and then not being able to even get another job at all is an unmitigated disaster.

So, I don’t know, I’m not saying that many of the people who have been ‘cancelled’ didn’t deserve some form of correction or even punishment for what they did, or that many of those folks weren’t wealthy enough to easily absorb the hit anyway. It’s just the idea that a of a swarm of anonymous virtual vigilantes could potentially actually deprive someone of their ability to provide for their family -  to me that doesn’t feel like social justice. It makes me supremely uncomfortable.

And further, is the point of social justice not for people to learn and grow?  For society to improve? I almost get the sense that the internet likes to blast people and then kind of expects them to just go away forever, to crawl in a hole and die. That’s not a viable system. We can criticize people, chastise people for misdeeds, but there needs to be room for redemption and rehabilitation or else it really is just cruel vigilantism that serves little purpose beyond scaring others into compliance - but not actually changing their minds.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I think my issue with the idea and term of cancel culture, is what's the alternative or remedy?  Is it stronger labor laws and universal healthcare?  Because without that it's inevitable - people are always going to do and say stupid or hurtful or ignorant things and then other people who are offended or hurt or recognize stupidity are going to point it out.  And then the powers that be start firing people.  

All it takes is someone not following the 'right' pathway for a complaint (Adria Richards) and heads roll.  That's not cancel culture, that's years of labor law and employment norms being skewed to favor the employer and business everytime at the expense of workers.  

To echo what DG said, is anyone thinking that death threats are ever ok? 

I guess my point is that none of this is anything new, it's just that with the ability for a ton of people to say "that sucks" all at once this is inevitable.  

Are we really seeing an amount of people losing their jobs and becoming un-hireable / unable to work in the future because of this?  The only examples I'm seeing are essentially youtube content creators.  Which still sucks to lose your income but if your income is dependent on your popularity, this is to some extent and assumed risk.  I don't know where Adria Richards is today or who was fired after her blogging abut the dongle joke, but I have a difficult time believing they are blacklisted.  

This has been going on for decades where people lose their job or their avility to feed their family is reduced because of the whims of an employer or public opinion.  It's just out in the light now.  I think it's a mistake to attribute it to 'wokeness' or social justice.  It's a well established norm of an employment culture where the bottom line is the bottom line.  And yeah, at some point the question "where do you draw the line " about privacy concerns and free speech?  If I was an employer, would I want to terminate and employee who was posting a bunch of blue lives matter shit on social media?  Yeah.  And yes, I am well aware of how this would apply to everyone.  At some point you have the right to not be associated with speech and behaviors you don't want to be associated with.  I'm not sure how this all gets untangled.

The people really getting fucked over economically on this aren't the guys like Shor, it's the person who never got a job in the first place because their name or hair looked different, or they weren't the "right fit" for a company to begin with.  Calling this "Cancel culture" is just making a scapegoat of social justice instead of addressing the actual laws and protections that have built this entire situation.

 

[Knight Of Winter]

I don't know, this seems like a case of drawing diametrically opposite conclusion from a same set of data. So, the data is: cancel culture is nothing new, It has caused harm, and has been used to a great degree by employers, corporations, racists, government etc. The conclusion I'd infer is that such a idea is wrong, and should be stopped to a degree it's possible. The opposite conclusion which I'm seeing here is: no, the idea is great - it's just that wrong people were in charge, Now, with internet mobs doing the cancelling - now things will go well. Now we'll achieve something good.

And there's the whole issue that @S John mentioned: which is punishment without a chance for redemption. Cruelty in the name of self-imposed righteousness, Many times, the "wrongdoer" actually did nothing wrong, just had the misfortune that their actions were misinterpreted in the worst possible manner by paranoid people. Other times, where "wrongdoer" actually did something problematic - benevolent warning and giving a chance for them to think and improve would be infinitely better response. Almost never is vicious harassment the correct approach, yet it seems to be the default approach today. Pretty disappointing and sad. Especially from the left, who  traditionally favor ideas such as as mercy, rehabilitation, redemption and such.

Just to address this: 

18 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

If we could keep the serious consequences for viral fuckups limited to, say, losing your job*, and  not have the death threats and the hounding of people off social media, I suppose that would be okay by me.

Taking the supposition that losing a job is the adequate punishment for fuckups and alleged fuckups (which I personally disagree with, but found it reasonable enough to be a starting point), how do you mean to accomplish that? Give power to the internet mob, but then restrict to only to certain kinds of punishment? Remember guys, getting someone fired is fine, but death treats are not. Nor is online harassment or doxxing. Be nice. And do it only to the people who really deserve it. Ok? such
 

[Stego]

On 8/15/2020 at 12:19 AM, Triskele said:

 

This has been a heartbreaking experience for me watching this board devolve....

Many of you have lost your minds.  

 

 

OH MY STARS AND GARTERS. How could this place devolve, Trisk? People have been insane since EZBoard.

Can you link to the drama? 

 

Don't kill your board name. You're OG.

 

ETA: And I didn't know who this Raja person was, but now they will forever be linked in my mind to prepubescent girls dressed scantily and dancing inappropriately on tik-tok. Fucking questionable behavior, that. Why was that his go-to? How on Earth would an adult know that exists without being a tenth degree creep?

Do we need to cancel somebody?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 8/14/2020 at 9:19 PM, Triskele said:

This guy got cancelled (NYT, limited clicks, the Adolph Reed story).  

This has been a heartbreaking experience for me watching this board devolve (I see that Raja-the-Canceler checked in just above, disgusting).  Might commit board suicide soon and almost curious to see what kinds of "do it" responses I get.  

Many of you have lost your minds.  

 

 

Aw, Trisk--you're like hands down most popular on this board. If we had a board yearbook, you'd win that honor! So, if you committed board suicide, that'd be awful for all of us. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

23 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Believe me, I wouldn't mind being so well known that someone even consider cancelling me!

That said, lots of people get cancelled--Adria Richards, Natalie Wynn, Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, Adam Koebel, Lindsay Ellis, Oliver Thorn--and they report that it's pretty damned unpleasant, and can even affect their ability to earn money. 

Before anyone starts, this isn't a question of those specific people being good, or bad; inevitably, someone will want to weigh in and talk about their problems with Wynn or Koebel, and I'm not going to defend them, as media creators or as people. However, I think we should all be able to recognize that Natalie Wynn speaking badly on one or two occasions, or Henry Rollins fucking up because he got pissed off, just aren't worthy of the level of vitriol and fury that call-out culture evokes. 

My view is that "cancelling" lets us feel righteous about being cruel because, hey, doesn't Adria Richards in some sense deserve to receive death threats? Next time she won't tweet complaints about jokes! And why shouldn't Lindsay Ellis lose some money? She could just condemn and disavow Natalie Wynn. Since in these instances we are surrounded by a virtual mob, all pulling the same way, we can believe that we as individuals bear no responsibility for the outcome, just as the individual snowflakes can surely claim not to be an avalanche.

I think 'cancel culture' as it's termed doesn't have to be a bad thing. Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK obviously posterboys. But I will say that the problem, in my view, isn't being called out or taken to task for views you have that are perpetuating long-held systemic issues (like racism for example). It's that we currently have no pathway back from that. Instead of being a teaching experience, it's become an experience of domination. If we turned this whole thing into a discourse about what so-and-so said or did, an opportunity to help them see what the problem is with their words or actions, I think it could be a powerful move forward for people. However, as cancel culture currently stands, it seems to operate from the assumption that the person in the bullseye is irredeemable and we must make an example of them to deter others. It's honestly not surprising this is the case in the US. It truly mirrors our mass incarceration (and the death penalty in so many places). Cancel culture should be modeled on the Norway rehabilitation system, not the American!

[JGP]

Hmn. 

Maybe it's just me [just starting my morning coffee here] but internet harrassment [nasty anonymous emails, death threats, etc] are en entirely different thing and shouldn't be conflated with this idea of cancelling.

Perceived slight and scale of response is a sadly [not sadly in some cases] human thing. The internet has just lengthened the reach. I mean yeah, of course, I guess that's definitely a part of cancel culture, ie: the increased range to gather and increase organized outrage, but death threats and the direction of nasty personal invective?

Not buying the relation.

 

edit: fucking phone