[HN Gopher] Our Fundamental Right to Shame and Shun the New York...
___________________________________________________________________
Our Fundamental Right to Shame and Shun the New York Times
Author : tptacek
Score : 218 points
Date : 2022-03-22 19:14 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (popehat.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (popehat.substack.com)
| mikevm wrote:
| commandlinefan wrote:
| cm2187 wrote:
| I think it is part of an effort of the democratic party to move
| back to the centre ahead of the midterm elections. A lot of the
| progressive agenda is toxic electorally.
| tptacek wrote:
| People on both ends of the political spectrum are pretty
| constantly trying to cancel Ken White. People on the left claim
| he's a pawn of the Koch Brothers (especially for his vocal
| support of FIRE), and on the right because he's vehemently
| opposed to Donald Trump. He's received semi-credible death
| threats.
|
| This seems like another instance of what Dan Gackle refers to
| as "notice-dislike" bias: you're unlikely to notice as much
| when people say things you don't find objectionable, but notice
| acutely when they say things you find problematic. We all have
| that bias; it's a limitation of our cognition.
| hraedon wrote:
| That's a pretty tendentious view of both Popehat's expressed
| opinion and the NYTime's article.
|
| Popehat is pretty clearly against what he defines as "cancel
| culture," and the NYTimes article is primarily about
| journalists and elite opinion writers not liking backtalk from
| their readers.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Seems he is against it until conservatives are victims of it.
| Then suddenly it's a good thing. You have a right to not
| patronize someone who you disagree with. Just like I think
| there will be a backlash against those who call for the
| pitchforks - they'll find people peacefully protesting them
| outside of the their workplaces, places they frequent,
| outside their homes. Just another ACLU shill in this article.
| hraedon wrote:
| One of his cited examples of actual "cancel culture" is the
| shouting down of Ilya Shapiro, an act he characterizes as
| "fascist and contemptible," and two others are either
| cancelings within social justice spaces or involve circular
| firing squads on the left. To me, this is maybe an
| indication that he is operating on principle more than
| politics.
| amriksohata wrote:
| The mainstream media is getting choked with pressure from social
| media and alternate news sources. I have seen a pattern across
| many of the major outlets who used to have more conservative
| approach to reporting, are now becoming more and more daring and
| bombastic with headlines for clicks and attention
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| Seems to be keeping things afloat though. You would think if
| all the predictions were correct that mainstream media would
| cease to exist at this point, now that it's common for
| literally everyone to have a smartphone and social media. And
| yet, it survives to this day, so clearly there's demand for
| whatever they are serving.
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/worlds-dullest-editorial-launc...
|
| Matt Taibbi's great post on this same topic.
|
| 'This Times editorial is watered down almost to the level of a
| public service announcement written for the Cartoon Network, or
| maybe a fortune cookie ("Free speech is a process, not a
| destination. Winning numbers 4, 9, 11, 32, 46..."). It made the
| Harper's letter read like a bin Laden fatwa, but it's somehow
| arousing a bigger panic.'
| tootie wrote:
| Taibbi has mostly torpedoed his credibility with Russian
| apoligism. Him and Glenn Greenwald.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What was he wrong about? He was warning that NATO expansion
| would stir up Russia. He was right about that. He was wrong
| in predicting that Putin wouldn't launch a full-blown
| invasion of Ukraine, but he was pretty clear in admitting
| this mis-prediction.
| LegitShady wrote:
| thats a personal opinion of yours. I put his credibility
| higher than most major news orgs I can think of.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Strongly disagree. Taibbi & Greenwald along with Michael
| Tracey (who is currently in Poland on the Ukranian border)
| are some of the few independent journalists with the cojones
| to take on the establishment, who spend a huge amount of time
| smearing and discrediting them because they are impartial and
| provide invaluable commentary on all sides.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| He immediately and thoroughly owned up to his mistakes
| regarding Russia. His credibility has increased in my mind.
| tootie wrote:
| He's still posting Ukrainian Nazi tweets. He owned up to
| the thing he was incontrovertibly wrong about but doesn't
| seem to be rethinking his approach.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I'd suggest that openly discussing the fact that Ukraine
| has a huge neo nazi problem is responsible reporting. I'm
| frankly surprised the many BBC and other documentaries on
| this huge problem from the last few years have not been
| removed from youtube given the sudden transformation of
| Ukraine into white hats in the current 'western'.
|
| This is why I read Taibbi, because the legacy media has
| lost so much credibility. (It should go without saying
| the Russian invasion is obviously appalling and wrong but
| many people appear to have calcified into 'any criticism
| of Ukraine makes you a Russian 'apologist' etc etc)
| sendfoods wrote:
| Could you provide some context? I have not been following
| them closely lately, but am familiar with their work and
| _generally_ find them very respectable journalists.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Cancel culture happens because it works, and it not even be true.
| Until businesses, universities, and institutions say no to the
| digital mob, it will continue.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's the good thing about cancel culture: it works. The bad
| thing is that anything that works eventually goes corporate.
|
| > Until businesses, universities, and institutions say no to
| the digital mob, it will continue.
|
| You can wait on that, but I prefer labor laws.
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Good point.
| [deleted]
| tensor wrote:
| I think it should continue. For a while I was leaning against
| it, but on reflection I realized that there is no obligation
| for me to listen to or engage with people that have abhorrent
| views. Rarely will doing so actually change their mind, or
| mine.
|
| What corporations are allowed to do is one thing, but as an
| individual I've decided to take cancel culture to heart. When
| possible, I now just put anyone with awful views on my personal
| ban lists. Twitter and Reddit both allow this. I no longer see
| any of their posts and they don't see mine.
|
| I'm far happier having done this an I don't think the world has
| lost anything by it. There are definitely issues I'm willing to
| engage on and discuss, but there are many that I am not.
| Hearing the same tired old propaganda talking points from
| people in certain camps is just poison to me.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Cancel Culture would be actively seeking to enact
| consequences on those people beyond disagreeing with them,
| blocking them, or calling them a poo-poo head.
|
| Like contacting an employer to get them fired, trying to ruin
| their business, trying to get them banned from social media
| sites or organizations, etc.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > For a while I was leaning against it, but on reflection I
| realized that there is no obligation for me to listen to or
| engage with people that have abhorrent views. Rarely will
| doing so actually change their mind, or mine.
|
| I don't think anyone disagrees with that, but your notion has
| pretty much nothing to with what other people call "cancel
| culture".
|
| If there is a talk about topic "X", you not showing up is not
| "canceling" anything and nobody cares.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Cancel culture isn't particularly new, either - the name is,
| but it was going on when I was a kid. The only difference was
| that the same people who are cheering it on now (like, I'm
| sure, Popehat) are the same ones who were raging against it
| when it was the religious right doing it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > when it was the religious right doing it.
|
| The religious right continues to do it. They've somehow been
| grandfathered in while we gather lynch mobs to attack pink-
| haired community college liberal arts professors.
| ameminator wrote:
| If only the people who condemned the religious right would
| also condemn the fanatic left, I'm sure the world would be
| a more consistent place.
| ssully wrote:
| It would be a consistent place assuming the people who
| condemn the fanatic left also condemn the religious
| right.
| kbelder wrote:
| It's not new, but it's scaled up. Computers are a force
| multiplier.
| fredgrott wrote:
| In order to fully understand this subject one has to understand
| where our commons went or disappeared to...Under US constitution
| about the only free commons is the postal mail.
|
| Let me illustrate:
|
| Small town relocates Police department to private shopping mall.
| Now can I protest on the sidewalk in that private shopping mall
| right outside the Police Dept. door?
|
| The short legal answer is not as its private property sidewalk
|
| Its not cancel culture its people waking up to realize that what
| they thought was public commons to apply limited free political
| speech is instead a privately owned communications channel not
| public commons
| egberts1 wrote:
| I got blocked by Sacramento Bee (a California newspaper)
| Editorial from their Facebook page.
|
| Pretty sure that they didn't like the different facts that I have
| pointed out over several different times as rebuttal to their
| dated opinions ... with using each of their own website pages as
| counter-citations.
|
| But hey, Editorial folks reserve the rights to cancel me for
| their own idiocy of their own makings.
|
| It's just the slippery narratives of their overlords that they
| are trying to propagate (or is it propagandizing).
|
| That to me is "cancel culture".
| lazide wrote:
| I don't know of any definition of cancel culture that would
| fit. That's moderation.
|
| Cancel culture would be if they put your profile or picture on
| the front page as an example of being a terrible person who has
| done things every right thinking person should not, and no one
| should think of employing or working with you - because they
| didn't like your comments.
| hraedon wrote:
| Did you suffer any sort of consequence for your responses
| beyond being deprived of the ability to continue accessing
| their Facebook page?
|
| If not, you're really straining even the most generous
| definition of "cancel culture" beyond the point of even minimal
| usefulness.
| egberts1 wrote:
| sure, they're rallying people at the behest of the governor
| against the middle-class. sure enough, they got what they
| wanted and we are paying dearly for it to this day.
| lazide wrote:
| Sounds like a vague political harm, not a focused
| individual one - which seems to be the complaint around
| cancel culture abuses?
| biorach wrote:
| being blocked from a facebook page is not being cancelled
| egberts1 wrote:
| nope. that being blocked from a page is not the definition of
| "cancel culture".
| [deleted]
| coding123 wrote:
| we freak out too much over shit that doesn't matter. Let's just
| fix homelessness and end buying culture.
| davesque wrote:
| At the risk of outing myself as a skeptic of certain orthodoxies,
| I also found the Times op-ed in question to have a rather un-
| serious tone. However, I think there were different things I
| latched onto than the author of this critique. I didn't find the
| lack of clear distinction between the legal definition of free
| speech and the common definition to be particularly problematic.
| As the author mentions, a lot of people felt it was reasonably
| clear that the Times was referring to the common notion of free
| speech. But I noticed passages such as this one from the Times
| op-ed:
|
| "Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture
| exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are
| offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech. Many on the
| right, _for all their braying about cancel culture_ , have
| embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a
| bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would
| ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in
| classrooms."
|
| For the supposed paper of record, I found the choice to use the
| decidedly contemptuous language to refer to the right wing (that
| I italicized above) very telling. There were a handful of other
| telling moments in the Times article where the authors clearly
| revealed their bias and intellectual stake on certain issues.
| Even if I mostly share those views, I found the overall article
| to be rather ineffective at encouraging any but the most
| sympathetic readers to reconsider their rhetoric. On some level,
| the Times authors seemed to want to continue to cling to a sense
| of righteousness that must actually be at the root of the problem
| in question.
| elil17 wrote:
| >For the supposed paper of record, I found the choice to use
| the decidedly contemptuous language to refer to the right wing
| (that I italicized above) very telling.
|
| I genuinely don't know how else they could describe what's
| going on. Braying means speaking loudly and harshly - an
| accurate description of how many public figures on the right
| discuss cancel culture. It's colorful language, sure, but it's
| an op-ed, which mean's its someone's opinion.
| davesque wrote:
| I don't disagree that it is an accurate (and somewhat
| inflammatory) description of how figures on the right discuss
| cancel culture. What I'm saying is that it is an
| _ineffective_ means of changing anyone 's mind that they must
| care about changing.
|
| As participants in the culture war often do, they claim to
| want peace while also wanting victory.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Why must the tone always be conciliatory? Why must both
| sides have a point? Why must we write everything to try and
| change minds on every topic at once?
|
| Maybe for the rational people, the argument you're talking
| about is over; at this point maybe we're just discussing
| the problem directly. Maybe everyone who would be convinced
| has been convinced, and the people who remain can be dealt
| with differently than how we'd deal with genuine difference
| of opinion.
| [deleted]
| elil17 wrote:
| Fair enough - doesn't seem effective to me either
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Does he have a similar rant on 'virtue signaling' or maybe the
| now old-skool 'political correctness'?
| civilized wrote:
| This is a good post.
|
| Regardless of how we feel about cancel culture, I think we can
| all agree that the quality of thought coming from the NYT
| Editorial Board is (and always has been) pretty mediocre at best.
|
| I'm vaguely anti-cancel culture (with a lot of nuance and
| context-dependence) but I don't feel particularly galvanized by
| the Board coming out for or against me. They don't think or write
| clearly enough for it to make any difference in my mind.
|
| And so long as we're on the topic, some of the worst "cancel
| culture" incidents have been perpetrated by NYT management
| itself, such as the firing of veteran science reporter Donald
| McNeil for "using the N-word". He did not use the N-word, he
| _mentioned_ the word in a context where it came up, as the NYT
| and other prestige media have themselves done in a variety of
| situations. And as John McWhorter has reminded us over and over,
| the use-mention distinction is relevant here but for some reason
| completely ignored.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I wonder to what extent the subject here, 'cancel culture', is a
| side effect of the outrage porn nature of social media (and maybe
| media in general), in which engagement statistics show higher
| engagement when it comes to inflammatory subjects/posts. Outrage
| porn's history goes back forever, but in the modern media context
| it might have been invented by Jerry Springer.
|
| Basically the model seems to involve identifying a subject for
| the outrage to focus on, whipping up clicks and views by bumping
| the subject's statements up the social media engagement ladder -
| this is a lot of ad revenue, ahem - and then, finally, the
| ceremonial burning of the sacrificial victim for the appeasement
| of the flash mob. This is particularly true when the target has
| no political following or wealth status, certainly no means to
| push back (like a billionaire's PR team calling all their
| contacts in the media, crisis managers, social media botnets,
| etc.).
|
| As far as the political-social use of this exercise, it's the
| kind of thing authoritarian states are known to do and was
| parodied by Orwell in 1984 as the "Two Minute Hate" routine.
| Actual debate of sensitive topics is the last thing anyone
| involved with this circus wants to see.
|
| In contrast, students were once taught to argue the points of the
| opposition in a debate, as an exercise in thinking as well as
| understanding. This kind of debate training seems highly unlikely
| in today's world, and would probably generate lot of outrage and
| calls for cancellation of the program.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Does anyone notice a weird effect with this article's font where
| random letters of parts of letters appear bold, and it seems to
| shift as you move your eyes around? I'm viewing it on a 2020 M1
| Macbook Air screen.
| wlakjlkjkerg wrote:
| nullc wrote:
| There is a big difference between:
|
| (1) Not associating with someone who you know has done some
| wrong.
|
| (2) Not associating with someone where there are unproven public
| rumors that they've done some wrong.
|
| (3) Not associating with someone who associates with someone who
| is subject to unproven public rumors of wrong doing.
|
| (4) Publicly attacking people over unproven rumors of wrong doing
| for which you have no personal knowledge.
|
| (5) Publicly attacking people because they failed to engage in
| public attacks against a third person who is subject to unproven
| allegations which the attacking party (nor the party being
| attacked) have no personal knowledge. ("If you won't denounce
| Albert Einstein as a vile traitor here and now then you're a
| supporter of communism yourself!") -- or the N-th generation
| version of that ("You meta-meta-meta communist scum!").
|
| (6) Complaining that the people with torches and pitchforks might
| be acting in a way which undermines the fairness or even
| viability of a civilized society.
| tptacek wrote:
| The author likely agrees with all of this.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Here is the original NYT article this opinion is in reference to:
|
| https://archive.ph/T0SKl
| stickfigure wrote:
| Every time something like this comes up I am reminded of The
| Toxoplasma Of Rage:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
|
| YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? _FREE SPEECH._
| Gimpei wrote:
| The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of
| specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where
| "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I
| think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to
| acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses.
|
| For example, there is the case of Dorian Abbot, who was
| disinvited from an MIT lecture after he wrote an op-ed
| criticizing affirmative action [1], even though the MIT lecture
| had nothing to do with affirmative action. I just don't see how
| allowing him to speak about climate science significantly
| impinges on the free speech of the members of the MIT community
| who found his views objectionable. I think it's also significant
| that 73% of the US population agrees with Abbot (I support
| affirmative action for the record). Basically the message that I
| get from MIT's behavior is that if you have a thoroughly
| mainstream opinion, you better not mention it in public if you
| want to have a successful academic career. This is chilling for
| science. If I were still a practicing social scientist, I
| wouldn't touch any hot button social issue with a ten foot pole.
| Or at least not if I wasn't prepared to p-hack a socially
| acceptable result.
|
| I also think that shutting out views that you disagree with is
| terrible for personal intellectual development. Only hearing
| views that correspond to your priors is a recipe for group-think
| and intellectual laziness. I make a point of trying to read a
| wide range of opinions (National Review to Jacobin) because I
| believe having my ideas challenged makes them stronger. I don't
| see how you can have an informed opinion about anything without
| doing the same.
|
| Lastly, if the polls that nytimes cite are true, "cancel culture"
| is a huge political mistake for progressive. It risks making the
| democratic brand toxic so that electoral victory, and any real
| change is impossible.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html
| krapp wrote:
| >The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of
| specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where
| "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I
| think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to
| acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses.
|
| Actually, many progressives do acknowledge that. Plenty of
| people on the left feel that cancel culture sometimes goes too
| far, including marginalized groups who feel it appropriates
| their struggle and does more harm than good, primarily serving
| as a way for outsiders to virtue signal allyship in ways that
| don't really threaten their privilege, or require skin in the
| game as it were.
|
| On the other hand, given a corrupt system which often protects
| and insulates powerful people from the consequences of their
| vile actions, cancel culture is sometimes the only lever people
| have to effect progressive change in that system. I mean,
| cancellation, protest and collective action are the only reason
| certain issues are even part of the greater cultural
| conversation at all.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| When was the last time that someone genuinely powerful was
| successfully cancelled?
| krapp wrote:
| Donald Trump?
|
| Although that depends on what you mean by "successfully"
| cancelled.
|
| Plenty of politicians and celebrities have been cancelled
| for racist, sexist and otherwise abusive behavior, but I
| don't know what your line for "genuinely" powerful is,
| either.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >Donald Trump
|
| Trump was banned from twitter after he already lost the
| presidency, and banning from a mediocre low-IQ forum is
| not how most cancel culture opponents define it, the
| dominant conception has an essential material aspect to
| it, such as firing from a job, harassment or extra-legal
| violence.
|
| >Plenty of politicians and celebrities have been
| cancelled for racist, sexist and otherwise abusive
| behavior, but I don't know what your line for "genuinely
| powerful" is, either
|
| Not OP, but I suspect his\her line for "genuinely
| powerful being cancelled" is that the cancellation is not
| planned and catalysed by a "more powerful" entity. When
| and if "cancelling" is ever used against a powerful
| person, there are often extremely obvious marks of an
| equal or superior in power person(s) behind it. When this
| doesn't happen, the cancellation attempt fails (e.g.
| Sexual allegations against Joe Biden failing).
| zeruch wrote:
| Harvey Weinstein?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > For example, there is the case of Dorian Abbot, who was
| disinvited from an MIT lecture after he wrote an op-ed
| criticizing affirmative action
|
| Or Chelsea Manning who was disinvited from speaking at Harvard
| after pressure from the government
| guelo wrote:
| > For example ...
|
| One of the reasons this debate is so useless is that it's
| mostly about cherry-picking anecdotes that support your
| partisan biases.
| tptacek wrote:
| The comments on this thread seem to be quite wildly missing
| White's point. Many of the arguments taking place here seem
| premised on the idea that Ken White has attempted to solve, once
| and for all, the "cancel culture" problem --- or somehow write a
| dispositive argument that "cancel culture" isn't real.
|
| He's not doing any of these things. He's responding to a specific
| NYT staff editorial.
|
| White agrees with many of you that disproportionate responses to
| speech happen, are harmful, and are occurring regularly. He cites
| several instances, from both sides of the American political
| spectrum. You don't have to come up with an elaborate argument
| about how White is wrong about how harmful "cancel culture" is;
| White almost certainly agrees with you (at least in a general
| sense; maybe not in your particulars).
|
| His point is that you have to discuss something more particular
| than "the right to speak your mind without fear of shame or
| shunning". You've never had that right. You can't have it. To be
| free of shame or shunning is to be free of other people's speech.
| If you're saying something provocative, you are almost certainly
| responding in a sense to something someone else said; if you
| think you have the right to speak without shame or shunning, so
| does the person you're effectively responding to. At best, you're
| arguing for what White has in the past mockingly referred to as a
| "replevin of feels"; at worst, what you're asking for is totally
| incoherent.
|
| This Substack post would be bigger news if Ken White had,
| Solomonically, worked out the whole problem of disproportionate
| responses to speech. He has not, and I think he's probably much
| too smart to try. He's just critiquing someone else's bad
| argument. That's all you really have to engage with here; you
| don't have to let cortisol trick you into believing this is an
| amassing of the forces of "cancel culture isn't real" that you
| must mobilize against.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane
| the NYT editorial was.
|
| We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening
| assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to,
| "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public
| without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly
| wrong.
|
| It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my
| mental gears to a halt. I just... I have a very hard time
| thinking generously about the author of that sentence.
|
| I'm glad people like Ken exist, to put into words something
| more coherent than what I'd ever be able to create.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _It 's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my
| mental gears to a halt._
|
| This is the cortisone rush that tptacek was referring to. You
| need to let it go through you (or past you) until you feel
| your mental gears loosen up again. Then step back and look at
| the bigger picture.
|
| What the editorial author meant was not some kind of
| _absolute_ freedom from the threat of being shamed or
| shunned. But that, once upon a time, and it wasn 't too long
| ago, there was a thing known as "civil discourse" in this
| country. In which (and granted the boundaries are fuzzy hear)
| -- in itself the mere fact of having an unpopular (or
| difficult) opinion on the state of the world ... did not run
| such an alarmingly and dysfunctional risk of getting you shut
| down in form or another as it does today.
|
| Note that this don't mean "unpopular or difficult" in the
| anything-goes sense. Spouting sheer idiocy can (and should)
| get you shunned and shamed, along with threats of
| implications of violence, and a whole lot of other things I
| don't need to mention.
|
| But taking unpopular / difficult (or even simply naive)
| stances within the boundaries of plausibility and reason, by
| themselves, should not merit such a reaction. And yet
| increasingly they do. That is what is meant by a breakdown in
| the standards of civil discourse. And it this breakdown of
| standards -- and the creeping climate of "better hold your
| tongue" that has taken over this country -- that is the main
| concern of the editorial piece. Not absolutist notions of
| freedom or freedom-from.
|
| Nuance. That's the key takeaway here.
| coffeemug wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > Americans don't have, and have never had, any right to be
| free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our
| right to speak free of government interference. It does not
| protect us from other people saying mean things in response
| to our speech.
|
| First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a
| legal right to speak free of government interference, and it
| also means a cultural environment of pluralism where opposing
| views are welcomed and debate is encouraged. Here Ken
| conflates the two meanings.
|
| Second, unlike legal norms, cultural norms are continuous
| rather than discrete. There are maybe 3-5 definitions of
| murder (premeditated, involuntary, etc.), but saying mean
| things is a continuum. You can live in a society like Soviet
| Union c 1930 where your coworker who wants your position
| calls for "the people's court" because of a joke you made-- a
| completely informal struggle session that doesn't involve the
| government. Or you can live in a society where you can
| express anything whatsoever and not get fired. Or at a
| million points in between.
|
| Third, legal norms follow cultural norms. See gay marriage.
|
| When people talk about cancel culture they talk about
| cultural norms shifting toward struggle sessions (the word
| "culture" is in the term!), and concerns that some day legal
| norms may follow this cultural shift. In this context the
| word "right" is used colloquially. Obviously nobody has a
| legal right to speak without fear of shaming.
|
| We want to live in a culture where a joke on the internet
| doesn't lead to a struggle session at work. It isn't batshit
| insane, it isn't gobsmackingly wrong, and it isn't that
| difficult to understand.
| otterley wrote:
| > We want to live in a culture where a joke on the internet
| doesn't lead to a struggle session at work.
|
| Everyone wants to do that, until they find themselves the
| target of a joke while struggling to have a good career,
| live in a nice place, and raise a family as a member of an
| unprivileged group with a lot of adverse baggage to
| overcome. Not everyone thinks such jokes are funny, and
| they have just as much a right to be pissed off about them
| as you think you have to make them. Getting along with your
| peers is an essential duty at most jobs, and that includes
| refraining from unnecessarily upsetting them.
| tptacek wrote:
| Ken White agrees with you that there are disproportionate
| responses to speech on the Internet and, if you follow him,
| isn't any more amenable to struggle sessions than you are
| (see: his years-long advocacy of what Lukianoff is doing at
| FIRE).
|
| The problem is that the NYT here managed to articulate a
| different, and stupid, problem: the eroding of our supposed
| right to speak without shame or shunning. The NYT's
| arguments are in a line of similar arguments that are not
| in fact about free speech, but rather _the opposite_ : they
| purport to defend speech, but only selectively, and in the
| cases they don't defend, they're an appeal to shut down
| speech and voluntary association.
| [deleted]
| mrjangles wrote:
| Yeah that's a good point. There is not a single person
| complaining about cancel culture today that wouldn't
| immediately join the snarling mob and try to cancel someone
| that argued something like "we should rape 1 year olds" or
| something like that, for example.
|
| If we kept the arguments to "It is wrong to hate people just
| for holding the same opinion as 50% of the population", or
| "Hating someone for making a joke is wrong", it would make a
| lot more sense.
|
| You know, the more I think about it, the fact that there are
| a large body of people who literally hate and want to destroy
| the lives of half the people living in the western world,
| simply because of their opinions about life, really rubs in
| how psychotically dangerous they are. It is amazing they are
| allowed to get away with their behavior. The reason is that
| people really are instinctively terrified of a ravenous mob
| (and rightly so), so they keep quite, but, in the age of the
| internet, there is less to fear from these mobs.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think "speech without social repercussions should
| be safe from approbation as long as it's popular speech" is
| a good norm either.
| lliamander wrote:
| I can't find the quote, but Norman Rockwell said that the
| inspiration for his _Freedom of Speech_ painting was a town
| hall he attended where a man not much liked by the community
| was allowed to speak his piece, even when the people did not
| like what he had to say.
|
| I'm not arguing we shouldn't be able to shame or shun (the
| NYT itself would be my preferred target). I think the idea is
| that we should aspire to resolving our differences through
| dialog. What we have now is a crowd of people who feel that
| dialog is no longer necessary, and that to even simply engage
| in dialog with one's political enemies is bad and might
| somehow taint you.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's not too far off. Any behavior which constitutes assault
| or harassment is not protected by the first amendment.
|
| Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment in
| the right context, though actually proving it in a court of
| law gets much trickier.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "In the right context" is doing a lot of work there! I
| think we can all agree that:
|
| * If you say that vanilla ice cream is boring, and I
| respond by getting 10,000 Twitter users to email your CEO
| saying they'll boycott your company until you're fired,
| that's at least colloquially harassment and completely
| unacceptable behavior.
|
| * If you go on a 10 minute rant about how much my political
| and religious views suck, and I respond by uninviting you
| from my birthday party, that's a reasonable response and
| not harassment at all.
|
| So to meaningfully address the issue of "cancel culture",
| which the NYT and Popehat both agree is real, we really
| have to talk about what is and isn't the right context or
| we won't be able to get anywhere.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Shaming and shunning is not harassment, harassment is
| harassment which requires additional components beyond just
| shaming and shunning; you have to take it to an excess or
| compound it with other behavior for shaming and/or shunning
| to reach anything even remotely resembling harassment.
|
| So decidedly no; you are not granted a freedom from shaming
| and shunning for your opinion, not in American culture, not
| in Western or Eastern culture, not historically, not in any
| religion, nowhere has this concept been held up as a
| societal more. The concept literally does not exist, and
| yet here the NYT cites it as some cultural artifact like
| it's been a cornerstone of American society from the
| beginning.
|
| And what's provable in a court of law is completely
| immaterial to this discussion, not sure why you'd bring
| that up. The NYT was not citing the First Amendment, and in
| fact directly says so later on in the editorial.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment
| in the right context_
|
| Shunning is never harassment. Shaming could be, but not on
| its own -- it would probably have to be either
| extraordinarily sustained/egregious and/or paired with
| credible threats to person or property.
|
| Even emergent behavior that has the same effect as blatant
| harassment isn't harassment. I.e., sending one person 10K
| letters, some of which contain (even unspecific) threats,
| is CERTAINLY harassment. But if 10K people each send one
| letter, there are probably zero instances of harassment
| unless one of the letters is seriously egregious (e.g.,
| contains specific and credible threats). And even then, the
| other 99,999 letters aren't instances of harassment.
|
| Organized behavior might be. It depends on the amount of
| coordination. But probably the case is too difficult to
| take on.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Harassment is a legal concept. In what context are we
| considering "shaming and shunning" to be harassment in if
| not the context of the court of law?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| prescriptivist wrote:
| > That's all you really have to engage with here; you don't
| have to let cortisol trick you into believing this is an
| amassing of the forces of "cancel culture isn't real" that you
| must mobilize against.
|
| At least you are clear in what you think about the average
| person that is concerned about this topic.
| zeruch wrote:
| Your is so far the only comment that seems to have actually
| read and understood the piece. Bravo.
| jollybean wrote:
| "His point is that you have to discuss something more
| particular than "the right to speak your mind without fear of
| shame or shunning". You've never had that right"
|
| This is a bit flawed, essentially 'straw man' argument in the
| grand scheme.
|
| While there might be good reason to critique the NYT article,
| the response I think missed the bigger point.
|
| Nobody is really making the argument that speech isn't going to
| have consequences.
|
| The 'Cancel Culture Does not Exist' or 'This Is Not A 1st
| Amendment Issue' arguments are already tired, empty canards.
|
| The awful failure of the authors argument are clearly evident
| in his dismissal of the Harper's Magazine moment - he argues
| 'nobody bothers to define cancel culture' etc. which is
| bullshit.
|
| Stephen Pinker, one of the Harper's signatories, faced
| concerted and vicious attempt at 'cancellation' of some of his
| positions and credentials when he dared to voice the heretic
| idea along the lines that policing in America is largely much
| more heavy handed than eslewehere, and that this is the
| fundamental issues, less so race. God forbid (!).
|
| Thankfully, Stephen Pinker has enough credentials to hold off
| the cancellers.
|
| JK Rowling is another good pop culture example. People lament
| that 'she's a billionaire and can't be cancelled' again which
| is not true. The amount of front page sardonic vitriol about
| her by ostensibly 'respectable' publications is very directly
| translated into hesitancy on every popular front: movie deals,
| book deals, actors fear of 'being in the out club' if they
| appear in a film based upon her book etc. Her 'cancellation'
| can be literally be measured in dollars.
|
| It's pernicious specifically because the vast majority of
| participants actually are probably not bothered entirely by
| Rowling or Pinker comments - but that the 'fear of association'
| created by the 'Cancel Screamers' creates a chilling effect on
| speech and participation.
|
| Ergo the 'consequence' of speech is not legitimate: people are
| not 'running from Rowling' because of what they think of her
| positions, they are running from her because of what _others_
| might think of them.
|
| I'll step back my argument an inch and admit that there are
| actually nutbars (of all stripes) who probably believe they can
| 'say whatever, whenever' - 1 minute on Twitter will remind us
| of that, however there's a gigantic grey are of obvious areas
| of public cancellation.
| rayiner wrote:
| I think both you and Ken and the New York Times are getting
| tripped up by the phrase "free speech." What the New York Times
| is actually talking about is "ideological pluralism." When
| elderly Millennials like me were growing up, you could have--at
| least in educated circles--a broad range of heterodox opinions
| without anyone getting too upset about what you said.
|
| And that's just not true anymore. I've got in trouble with
| white progressives in my social circle (which is mostly white
| progressives) for saying we should carefully scrutinize
| refugees from Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile my dad--whose
| grandfather was an Imam and who has worked in Afghanistan--
| expressed the exact same opinion after we withdrew from
| Afghanistan and there was the question of Afghan refugees.
|
| Ken is absolutely correct that conservatives used to do it too.
| But I didn't grow up in the deep south where being in favor of
| same-sex marriage in the 1990s would get you socially
| ostracized. I am alarmed, however, that in blue America in
| 2022, I can't even discuss how my Muslim family members feel
| about marriage, divorce, etc., except to condemn their views.
| Saying "rural America in the 1990s was just as bad" doesn't
| actually score any points with me.
|
| I think the New York Times editorial is confused and inelegant.
| But kudos to them for actually speaking up. Because I don't
| think we're all just having some collective delusion that
| something has changed in "liberal society" and that change
| isn't a good one.
| tptacek wrote:
| Ken White doesn't think you're having a collective delusion
| either. See, for instance, his recent response on Twitter to
| the drama about unpopular speech at Occidental. So I'm not
| sure what you're rebutting here.
| lliamander wrote:
| I think his notion of "disproportionate response to to speech" is
| a good start, but is too generic to help us understand why this
| has become an issue of discussion over the past decade.
|
| When I think of cancel culture, my primary thought is of private
| individuals facing meaningful harms (mainly economic) as a result
| of public outcry over the individuals (perfectly legal) speech or
| actions that signal the individual is "on the wrong team".
|
| It's not a simple definition, but captures both why people are
| afraid of it, and why it is happening now (social media made it
| possible to make a private individual's speech and actions
| public, even if that individual wasn't a user of that platform).
|
| Public figures losing speaking engagements or whatever is bad,
| but the targeting of private individuals in this manner is an
| escalation of political conflict that is very alarming.
|
| Lastly, I will add that while this evil is not exclusively
| committed by the Left, there is absolutely an asymmetry. The Left
| has generally been far more likely to cancel people than the
| reverse. There are a number of possible causes (people on the
| left are more politically active, will be amplified by a left
| -leaning media industry, etc)
| Misdicorl wrote:
| > The Left has generally been far more likely to cancel people
| than the reverse. There are a number of possible causes (people
| on the left are more politically active, will be amplified by a
| left -leaning media industry, etc)
|
| I think this is more neatly described by the right having more
| mainstream and surreptitious avenues of "cancelling" people
| they don't like. Gang lists, credit scores, police
| intimidation/brutality, selective enforcement of drug policy,
| the prison system, good ol' boys clubs, etc etc etc.
| lliamander wrote:
| That grab-bag of issues suggests you have a confused notion
| of what constitutes "the right". For instance, how is police
| brutality a example of "right-wing cancel culture" when some
| of our most salient examples occurred in left-wing dominated
| cities? Not everything you disagree with is a political
| weapon used by your enemies.
|
| I will concede (though you didn't make this point explicitly)
| that the religious right has historically had a fair bit of
| social power that might be described as cancel culture, but
| that power has arguably been gone since before cancel culture
| as I described it became a thing.
| rilezg wrote:
| Do we need more time and space in our society for measured
| discussion about current events? Absolutely, but such discussion
| is anathema to engagement-algorithm-driven social/traditional
| media. If you take the time to think things through, then by the
| time you are ready to speak the world will have already moved
| along and the post you are replying to is as good as dead.
| Instead we reward only the hottest, most emotion-provoking takes
| and clap-backs. Those exchanges do nothing to foster mutual
| understanding, but they sure do get the views and rake in that
| sweet ad money, which helps meet growth projections.
|
| We're free to blame Democrats or Republicans or Russians or
| whoever, but 'cancel culture' is a natural response to a system
| that viralizes outrage. Completely banning the speech on the
| specific topic that causes the outrage will always be a losing
| battle because the system will always find some new dumbness to
| amplify. If you really want change then you gotta change the
| system, dude.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _This is sheer nonsense from the jump._
|
| No it's not. The basic point that was being quoted (from the NYT
| comment piece) was quite sensible actually.
|
| The OP author then immediately falls into the semantic trap of
| "right to express oneself freely" == "First Amendment rights".
| They're not equivalent. They're overlapping and related obviously
| -- but nonetheless fundamentally different things.
|
| My expectations that there might be something to this post
| dropped precipitously at the point, so that's where I stopped
| reading.
| thrashh wrote:
| Cancel culture is just a symptom.
|
| As I see it, the Internet has created two problems:
|
| (1) Everyone now has a voice -- yeah that's cool but society
| isn't handling it too well yet
|
| (2) It's now easy to associate with people who think like you --
| cool but absolutely terrible
|
| What happens is that now a bulk of the things you hear come from
| your own circle (which is self affirming!) and then when you hear
| something from outside your circle, it feels so far off that it
| causes you to react violently (a.k.a. you want to cancel them).
|
| The problem is: you can't get rid of that violent reaction. It's
| natural and human to dislike things that you're unfamiliar with.
| (Actually I think every living thing is like that -- being wary
| of unfamiliar things is essential to survival.)
|
| So the only thing you can do is desensitize yourself by hanging
| out with a diverse set of people. I don't know how we can make
| society as a whole do that more, but the Internet is allowing
| some people to do it a lot less.
|
| To make matters worse, before when it didn't matter if Jane or
| Frank were totally clueless, it matters now because because Jane
| and Frank both have a voice and can tweet about it.
| president wrote:
| IMO cancel culture wasn't as large as a problem until it was
| sanctioned by very large and influential people and
| institutions like the NYT.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| > _" Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining
| "cancel culture" encourages this. When some people vaguely
| complain about "cancel culture" in a way that lends itself to
| promoting this constant partisanship, other people not
| unreasonably see it as partisan."_
|
| Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if
| ever, does. Each one of us has our own conception of a term -
| wordfeel, if you will - and virtually no one actually knows or
| holds to the literal dictionary definition. We hear words and
| apply them if they seem right to us. Even if you managed to
| precisely define cancel culture, people would easily try to claim
| that some alleged cancelling event it is _actually_ something
| else, "accountability", "showing you the door", etc.. Never
| underestimate someone's ability to lawyerly redefine what
| something is or isn't.
|
| Additionally, I think Popehat is dead wrong here:
|
| > _" Saying we should "end cancel culture" means we're saying
| some people should refrain from some exercises of speech and
| association to promote other people feeling more free to speak."_
|
| No rights are actually being infringed by this. It is possible to
| have cultural mores that are in the spirit of free speech. The
| opposite stance, not calling on people to end cancel culture, is
| _also_ accepting a reduction in speech. Even so, by Popehat 's
| own worldview, because the government is not restricting cancel
| culture this shouldn't be seen as some infringement of liberty. I
| don't know what Popehat actually wants here.
| tptacek wrote:
| Without the definition, White says, the appeal to an "end
| cancel culture norm" is, overtly, a call to broadly restrict
| people's speech. If you dismiss the demand for clarity, you
| can't coherently rebut his assessment of what "end cancel
| culture" means.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"If you dismiss the demand for clarity, you can't coherently
| rebut his assessment of what "end cancel culture" means."
|
| I'm dismissing his standard of what counts as "clarity"
| because I sense he's expecting a lawyerly definition based on
| something akin to precedent and case law. In other words,
| he's seeking past examples of alleged "cancel culture" and
| trying to define what made each event count as, or not count
| as, "cancel culture". And then from that formulate a rigid
| definition. I believe such a rigid definition is flawed
| because it is reactionary, because vernacular consensus is
| not formed this way, and because the definition can easily be
| skirted around.
|
| It would be like me demanding clarity on what makes something
| "cool".
| tptacek wrote:
| If you want to erect a new societal norm around "cool", it
| would in fact fall upon you to define "coolness".
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm trying to do that. I chose "cool" as an
| example because none of us came up with the term, no one
| can confidently define it and have everyone agree on it,
| and it's a word we all seem to use without truly knowing
| what it means.
|
| At the risk of stretching an analogy too far, I would not
| need to define what "coolness" is in order to confront
| people who I perceive to be overly critical and who are
| trying to get people to stop expressing themselves in
| ways they perceive as "uncool". In other words, if I tell
| someone "If you have nothing nice to say don't say
| anything at all", it does not seem reasonable to expect
| me to define what "nice" means in order to justify
| chiding someone for not being nice.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're getting to Ken White's point, which is that we
| can't reasonably call for clear norms about "cancel
| culture" given how poorly defined it is. Without that
| definition --- and maybe we'll never have it --- "cancel
| culture" is mostly just an undisciplined tool for
| shutting down criticism.
|
| White writes at length about the fact that
| disproportionate responses to objectionable speech
| happen, and are worth discussing. His take is that you
| have to talk about those things in their particulars,
| rather than trying to write staff editorials and open
| letters about the phenomenon of "cancel culture" (or, in
| the NYT's case, a [nonexistant!] right to express
| thoughts without fear of shame or shunning).
|
| White's essay is _about the NYT letter_. It is not an
| attempt to end the "cancel culture" debate once and for
| all. I'd ask you to scroll through this thread and try to
| pick out the arguments here that recognize that fact, or
| the ones that are clearly premised on the notion that
| White believes he's "solved" the cancel culture problem
| (or doesn't believe it's real).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity
|
| No, he's very clearly making the argument that vigorously
| avoiding defining it at all while trying to argue about it
| prevents any coherency or utility, not that precisely defining
| it leads to clarity.
| adriand wrote:
| > Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely,
| if ever, does. Each one of us has our own conception of a term
| - wordfeel, if you will - and virtually no one actually knows
| or holds to the literal dictionary definition.
|
| I really disagree, I think he addresses this very specifically
| at the end of the article, where he writes, "I believe more
| specificity -- action items -- is the answer":
|
| > Pointing to specific instances of "cancellation" and debating
| why they are inside or outside of our norms is a productive
| action item. Saying "colleges shouldn't disinvite speakers
| because of controversy" is a good specific action item; we can
| debate it. Saying "Ken, stop piling on 20-follower Twitter
| accounts when they say stupid things" is an action item; I can
| debate it. [Shan't.] Saying "stop demanding that businesses
| fire people for what they say off the job" is an action item. I
| might not agree but we can discuss it.
|
| He's not at all falling into a definition trap! I think that
| misses the point of the article, which is one of the most
| coherent articles I've ever encountered on the subject.
| abnry wrote:
| Cancel culture is...
|
| targeted at individuals,
|
| for the loss of their job, invitations, or positions,
|
| for offenses that are minor in comparison to historical
| offenses,
|
| or offenses that are based on guilt by association or
| speculative inference,
|
| often for things in the past,
|
| which were things many people accepted at the time,
|
| and often which the individual disavows today.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's a more specific and coherent definition of cancel
| culture, but it's certainly not the current consensus
| definition: many "cancel culture" debates --- probably most
| of them --- are about speech or opinions that the individual
| stands resolutely behind.
|
| And, of course, "for offenses that are minor in comparison"
| or "speculative" is almost always subjective; it just shifts
| the debate to a different set of words, but it doesn't narrow
| it or offer us any guidance. People think all sorts of things
| are minor, or world-ending; proven, or fabricated.
| abnry wrote:
| > And, of course, "for offenses that are minor in
| comparison" or "speculative" is almost always subjective.
|
| They really aren't. I used the word "historically" for this
| reason. Years ago, for example, people would openly espouse
| directly racist views. Today, you can get fired for using a
| slur in the "mention" category, rather than in the "use"
| category.
|
| And speculative inference isn't anything more than saying,
| "this person said x, y, & z... which means they _must_ also
| believe horrendous things a, b & c" when it is in fact
| logically possible to believe x, y & z without believing a,
| b, & c.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can get fired for having the wrong hairstyle --- that
| is a thing that in fact happens more often than firings
| because of cancel mobs. So we're not really saying much
| yet. Similarly, you can use the logic in your second
| paragraph to insulate any kind of speech at all from
| approbation; if you take what you're saying to its clear
| conclusion, what you're really saying is that it's never
| OK to boycott anything over speech. That's far beyond
| what even the most vigorous anti-cancel-culture advocates
| are saying.
| musicale wrote:
| > Today, you can get fired for using a slur in the
| "mention" category, rather than in the "use" category.
|
| Surely a reference to something is different than the
| thing itself, and quoting someone does not mean that you
| endorse their viewpoint.
|
| Claiming or acting otherwise seems like it would lead to
| all sorts of logical contradictions.
| orangecat wrote:
| Or "offenses" that are purely imaginary, like suggesting that
| people should read a book before accusing its author of
| transphobia (https://laurenhough.substack.com/p/a-question-
| for-lambda-lit...), or discussing a common Chinese expression
| whose pronunciation vaguely resembles a slur in English
| (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-
| sus...).
| pas wrote:
| > defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever,
| does
|
| US politics is full of ambiguities, word games, and of course
| attacks that exploit these clarity gaps. See a list [0] of them
| below.
|
| Of course slogans are useful, and trying to hold hypocrites to
| account by using their slogan against them, yet at the same
| time it seems the political discourse is _extremely_ low
| signal-to-noise, and there 's almost no general need/demand for
| clarity. For example the both the "rich people pay no taxes"
| and the usual "XY corp last year paid 3.50 in taxes" memes are
| just that, catchy memes.
|
| And all of this puts a brutally counter productive shouting at
| the late night game feeling on politics. (Sure, there's a
| reason why political discourse is like this... we probably have
| to go through the catchy meme arms race.)
|
| [0] BLM, defund the police, liberal and classical liberal,
| gender/sex, socialism, recently critical race theory, equality
| vs equity (equal outcome, equal opportunity), free speech vs.
| selective publishing/hosting of content free from government
| interference; safe space vs. safe space from certain
| ideas/trigger vs. safe space for expressing ideas free of
| consequences, and maybe also "no child left behind" too. (Of
| course a few of them are proper slogans, but then due to the
| ambiguity in semantics folks try to use these as concrete
| promises.)
| Animats wrote:
| _Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity._
|
| He does seem to be obsessing over nomenclature. A more useful
| question is, what happens if you express an unpopular opinion?
| Do you get fired? Arrested? Lynched? Torn to bits by a mob?
| Shamed on social media? Blocked by social media companies?
| Can't get published in major media? Attacked by TV pundits? Not
| invited to the good parties? Also, how long does this go on,
| and is it retroactive for things said in the past?
| [deleted]
| zeruch wrote:
| "Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity."
|
| It's not a trap, it's essentially true. Clarity doesn't mean
| solvability, but reducing ambiguity, or at the very least
| getting some better consensual agreement on terms among
| adversaries usually helps flash out the discourse beyond tropes
| and jabs.
| Imnimo wrote:
| >I don't know what Popehat actually wants here.
|
| I think he wants people who say "we should end cancel culture"
| to recognize that their cause is not "the spirit of free
| speech".
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This completely leaves out that the tolerance for speech, even
| minor offenses, which used to be acceptable are now being
| weaponized to destroy each other in visceral, tribal fashion.
|
| You can have an accountable society and cancel someone for
| crossing the line. That line used to be for things such as
| Pedophilia, encouraging violence, promoting rape-culture, etc.
| Truly terrible things.
|
| I hope people will wake up or we'll end up with a worse place
| than ever.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| > Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the
| precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely,
| if ever, does.
|
| _Certainly_ it leads to more clarity. Two parties talking
| "past" each other is one of _the_ most common sources of
| disagreement in my experience. Of course it isn 't a panacea
| and there will still be disagreement on when the definition is
| being used correctly, and bad actors, and .... But it is an
| _excellent_ (and I would argue _necessary_ ) starting point for
| any meaningful discussion.
|
| > Additionally, I think Popehat is dead wrong here:.... I don't
| know what Popehat actually wants here
|
| The headings of the sections work pretty neatly for me to
| distill this down (skipping the intro).
|
| 1) (Why) Working Towards A Definition Is Important -> dont just
| handwave
|
| 2) Propaganda Drives Perception -> rethink what you think
| cancel culture is
|
| 3) Everybody's Rights Matter -> The person being cancelled may
| have been out of bounds and trying to cancel someone else too.
| Context is important
|
| 4) We Need Action Items -> stop these stupid articles that
| simply clutch pearls and propose something _anything_ that can
| actually be considered
| parineum wrote:
| > Two parties talking "past" each other is one of the most
| common sources of disagreement in my experience.
|
| A prime and recent example of this is "defund the police".
| You could talk to 10 people at a protest and get 10 different
| answers on what that means, and that's among supporters. Any
| actual conversation on the topic has to start with "well what
| do you mean?". You would often hear a refrain of "nobody is
| talking about completely defunding the police." but there was
| plenty of actual support for that in just-outside-of-
| mainstream groups.
|
| So many movements are united behind such vague slogans that
| they garner widespread support because everybody has a
| personal and reasonable (to them) interpretation of it's
| meaning.
|
| "Cancel culture" just the next "Occupy Wallstreet", "Black
| Lives Matter", "Defund the Police", etc. It's a leaderless
| grassroots phenomenon with no stated objectives or goals.
|
| I think people are much more concerned with finding a
| community to fight with rather than actually winning the
| fight.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| Yes, the "vague idea anyone can attach meaning to" is often
| an intentional aspect of these movements to gather larger
| support. Its also easy to subsequently exploit and I think
| the venerable CIA handbook from the ~60s goes into detail
| on that. Of course having a narrow focus doesn't really
| stop exploitation from a motivated counterparty with
| sufficient resources, especially when you need broad source
| support (e.g. large political reform issues).
| skissane wrote:
| > No rights are actually being infringed by this. It is
| possible to have cultural mores that are in the spirit of free
| speech.
|
| What do you mean by "rights"? Legal rights or moral rights? If
| legal rights, under which law in which jurisdiction? I agree
| very many cases of "cancellation" are not illegal, and as such
| not violating anyone's legal rights - but a lot of people seem
| to approach this with a narrow focus on the US 1st Amendment
| (hereafter 1A), when this isn't a US-only issue, and even in
| the US there are other laws involved than just 1A - a private
| company firing someone for their publicly expressed political
| views cannot violate 1A, but it _might_ violate state laws
| against political discrimination in employment (such as
| California Labor Code section 1101), and those state laws can
| also be understood as creating (or recognising) legal rights.
| Also, law is not static, it evolves through case law and
| legislation, so something which is legal today might not be
| legal in the future-people who believe that we have a problem
| with "cancel culture" are likely to lobby for laws against it,
| and we'll see if they succeed.
|
| If one acknowledges the existence of ethics/morality
| independent of the law, it follows people may have
| ethical/moral rights which are violated even if their legal
| rights (in a certain jurisdiction at a certain time) are not
| being violated.
| Latty wrote:
| > I don't know what Popehat actually wants here.
|
| For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they
| face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm
| others would be a good start.
|
| People not wanting to patronize or associate with you when you
| cause harm to people they care about is really not a bad thing,
| and it's not new either, and yet it is what gets called "cancel
| culture" by a lot of people.
|
| Contextless social media that encourages misunderstanding, a
| lack of ability to find retractions, and the ability to dig up
| old sins and present them as present views are an issue, and
| result in people piling onto others over misconceptions. It's a
| real problem. That's almost _never_ what actually gets talked
| about, it 's just "I should get to say whatever I want without
| people disliking me".
| noduerme wrote:
| As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your
| perception of their opinion is not _new_ , the modality of
| mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially
| taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what
| "cancel culture" refers to. The underlying mechanism of
| Twitter is what gave birth to the term, regardless of whether
| it's used by haters to justify hate speech.
|
| One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that
| speech is less important than people's feelings. Coupled with
| the new notion that hurting someone's feelings constitutes a
| form of harm tantamount to violence, this allows
| proportionality in punishment to be abstracted away. If
| measures of harm are arbitrary and shifting depending on how
| much mob traction one particular issue recieves or how
| sensitive one person happens to be, then proportionality is
| impossible, and "cancel culture" captures a state where
| cancellation is the answer to any grievance of any severity
| which manages to find cultural purchase.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the modality of mass mob boycotts
|
| I was watching the news this morning and they were talking
| about the latest company that's boycotting Russia in
| response to the social media storm. It occurred to me that
| governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They
| don't have to impose sanctions (and their own rules make it
| difficult to do so) - the Twitter mob is deciding who to
| banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without
| any checks or balances or regulations.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It's a form of democracy, I guess
|
| It's not much different than the old historical mobs with
| pitch forks and torches, only there's a slightly lower
| potential to physical harm.
| jimbokun wrote:
| A handful of tech companies arguably have far more power
| to regulate speech than any government.
| guelo wrote:
| Not universally true, Putin and Xi Jinping have more
| power than tech companies in their countries.
|
| America decided 231 years ago that private actors would
| have more power over speech than the government.
| krapp wrote:
| The counterargument to that, of course, is that a handful
| of tech companies can't actually make your speech
| illegal, make their competition illegal, arrest you,
| imprison you, ban your speech across an entire country,
| burn your literature or have you and your
| ethic/religious/political group shot and dumped into
| shallow graves.
|
| I mean, sure... getting banned from Twitter is
| momentarily annoying but Twitter having _far more power
| to regulate speech_ than the entity that writes the laws
| that define Twitter 's existence, that claims a monopoly
| on violence, and that in many cases directly controls the
| media and censors the internet? No.
|
| It's a common argument but I've never really found it a
| compelling one.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > It's a common argument but I've never really found it a
| compelling one.
|
| You can literally make your own twitter any time you
| want. My charitable view is that people are actually
| complaining about a monopoly on attention. It's an
| interesting subject but doesn't have anything to do with
| speech.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > You can literally make your own twitter any time you
| want.
|
| Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and
| registrars refuse to register your domain.
|
| But of course you can also make your own cloud company
| and your own domain registrar as well.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > It occurred to me that governments are becoming
| increasingly irrelevant.
|
| I've been thinking this for quite a few years now.
|
| >the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form
| of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or
| balances or regulations.
|
| Or swarms of bots shaping public opinion run by just a
| few people? As long as Govt's allow encryption, over the
| telecoms networks in their countries, the sooner govts
| become irrelevant.
| [deleted]
| guelo wrote:
| Consumer boycotts are not new. They have a long history
| including the Boston Tea Party that kicked off America.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your
| perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of
| mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially
| taken out of context is entirely new. ... One other thing
| that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less
| important than people's feelings.
|
| They used to kill people for advocating for integration and
| civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble to kill black
| men accused of hitting on white women. Not internet "mobs",
| actual ones with guns and pitchforks.
|
| Literally nothing you're talking about is new, in fact it
| has gotten way less bad over the past few decades. In fact,
| arguing that its new and pernicious requires us to
| purposefully ignore the history of political and speech
| based violence throughout the 20th century and earlier.
| dataangel wrote:
| I'm not convinced that history is just repeating itself.
| There does seem to be something qualitatively different
| about the possibility that nowadays a non-celebrity can
| spout an offensive joke or political take and have it be
| much more likely to be recorded and broadcast to the
| whole world with permanent consequences for them
| everywhere they go. Bad decisions are far more likely
| nowadays to be permanently recorded, and moving over to
| the next town, state etc is no longer enough to escape
| your history. There were implicit safeguards before in
| that most people were much less likely to have a wide
| audience that would remember what they said. It was much
| easier to change your mind about something and then
| pretend it was your opinion the entire time and save
| face. There are organizations with pet issues that
| dedicate themselves to recording offensive social media
| posts by college students and then making profile pages
| for each student on their site to publicly shame them. In
| the past these kids could graduate and then change their
| mind years later and no one would be the wiser as long as
| they never became celebrities or politicians.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Speech is far more free in the US today than in, say, the
| 1950s and 1960s.
|
| But I would argue less free than, say, the 1990s.
| danShumway wrote:
| I personally don't think even that is true.
|
| - Culturally, the 90's were ripe with moral panics over
| satanism, gender expression, obscenity, etc... That could
| be a longer conversation, but the short version is that
| there was a ton of speech suppression happening in the
| 90's and early 2000's.
|
| - Technologically, our mediums today (as problematic as
| they are) still allow for a greater ease of communication
| with a wider audience than they did in the 90's. There
| are developments online since the 90's that I don't like,
| and I worry about centralization online. But the earlier
| decentralized Internet was also very insular and
| inaccessible to a lot of people, and I think that gets
| lost from conversations about Internet freedom. More
| people have access to the Internet today and more people
| have access to publishing platforms today.
|
| - In terms of mass media, there is again worrying
| consolidation happening, but it is nevertheless still the
| case that getting your message out to a wide audience in
| 2022 is easier than it was in 1990. Podcasts, video
| streaming, site deployment, etc... is all easier to do
| today than it was in the past.
|
| Stuff like game development, music production, and so on
| are also easier today than they were in 1990. That's not
| to say that they're perfect or can't be improved, but I
| think back to the Flash boom, and that didn't really
| start until the early 2000's and it really was a
| different level of accessibility for making games,
| including games about political and social topics. In the
| same vein, a quick reminder that Youtube as a site was
| not founded until 2005 and until 2010 the max video
| length was only 10 minutes. Podcasts didn't really start
| to catch on among the public until the late 2000's.
| Patreon was launched in 2013, providing a very simple,
| mainstream way for at least some creators to self-fund
| their own work by directly interacting with fans.
|
| ----
|
| I think people forget sometimes how new all of this stuff
| is. And again, that ignores how much straight-up
| censorship and how many moral panics were happening
| during that time period, but even just from a
| technological perspective, if I have a message I need to
| get out, I would rather do it in the 2020's than the
| 1990's.
|
| I could _maybe_ see an argument that we 're on a
| technological downtick from the 2010's, but honestly I
| don't even believe that. Even with all of the platform
| problems we have online (and it is a problem for our
| online communication to be so centralized and there are
| problems about where some platforms are headed), I still
| feel like almost everything today about media production
| and dissemination is just so much easier than it used to
| be. About the only thing I really miss is Flash, and I
| don't even really think that's a tech problem, I think
| many of those developers have just moved over to programs
| like Unity.
|
| Not to say everything is perfect or everything has gotten
| better, just... I think people have rose-colored glasses
| that they wear when looking back at those times.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I can see an argument for it, but it's worth noting that
| there was quite a lot of censorship in the 90s that
| people don't often remember nowadays. Remember when MTG
| and D&D completely removed "demon" and "devil" from their
| lexicon? Remember when Nintendo localization policies
| required removing every cross from every game?
| tptacek wrote:
| In the 1990s, my ability to speak was restricted to high
| school essays, zines that 12 people read, and FIDONet BBS
| boards.
| noduerme wrote:
| That was, for many of us, our ability to be _heard_. Our
| ability to _speak_ was not hindered by fear of having our
| lives ruined for holding an unpopular opinion or asking
| an incorrectly phrased question.
| tptacek wrote:
| The most common battlefield on which these "cancellation"
| debates happen is people's access to Twitter, a service
| that did not exist in the 1990s (you could, obviously,
| get banned off a BBS for any or no reason). You see it in
| this very thread: people writing appeals to the amount of
| control tech companies have over speech, and how
| unprecedented that is.
| ssully wrote:
| What are things that you would say in the 1990's that you
| wouldn't feel comfortable saying today?
| dataangel wrote:
| Can't speak for parent but I have refrained from
| discussions of things people have been cancelled for even
| when I agree what is leading to the cancelling is
| horrific, because the consequences of getting
| misinterpreted are too grave. Even asking a clarifying
| question for something you genuinely don't know could be
| misinterpreted as a dog whistle. It's hard to blame
| people for that because sometimes clarifying questions
| really are feigned ignorance meant to sink time or
| provoke, but at the same time there is a growing
| sentiment on Twitter and elsewhere that choosing the most
| charitable interpretation in discussion is actually bad
| and empowers bad actors. What you get is a situation
| where nobody trusts anybody.
| noduerme wrote:
| Anything that called bullshit on political correctness,
| and anything not politically correct.
|
| I'm not afraid to say so here, but I would be if I were
| on social media.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Lol, obviously if I typed it here it would mean I'm
| comfortable saying it, so it's a Catch-22 isn't it?
| long_time_gone wrote:
| If you can't explicitly say it, can you at least describe
| in what ways it is "less free than, say, the 1990s?"
|
| If not, the comment loses value.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, 'it depends' - plenty of people got harassed, sent to
| jail, or outright killed for being openly gay during that
| time, among many other things. Not everywhere, but a
| great many places in the US.
|
| Anti-obscenity laws were also going nuts around that
| time.
|
| The internet was relatively mellow on that front, but
| that was because it was mostly unknown and super niche.
|
| society was still trying to apply it's rules to it, it
| was just far less competent at doing so.
| kbelder wrote:
| I'd agree.
|
| I'd also say race relations are on the same trajectory,
| and that's probably not a coincidence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| They used to imprison people for sending information
| about birth control through the mail. I don't know what
| planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days"
| people live on. The most common phrase quoted by people
| to describe a hypothetical rational limit on speech[*]
| was cribbed from a case that found it was ok to imprison
| people for passing out pamphlets against WWI.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowde
| d_the...
| Latty wrote:
| > I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in
| the good old days" people live on.
|
| Obviously not always, but often because you are viewing
| it through the a different lens: there is an unspoken
| "for people like me" missing from the end of their
| statement.
| danShumway wrote:
| There's a huge lack of education and cultural
| understanding about just how much freedom of speech we
| have today compared to what it was like in the past.
| Overall, people in America are more free today to say
| things than they used to be in the past, period. They
| have more mediums that they can publish to, it is easier
| than ever before for them to get support and to connect
| with communities, and legal protections have literally
| never been better.
|
| I think part of it is that dominant parts of culture were
| never in a position to experience past censorship. Some
| of it might just be short memories. Some of it is
| probably bad faith, or that attacks on Twitter feel more
| real for some people. But the lack of perspective is a
| real problem. You don't have to go far into the past to
| find out that there were tons of taboo topics and ideas
| that could not be talked about, both because of legal
| restrictions and gatekeepers, and because of a lack of
| tolerance from society, and because the mediums through
| which to talk about them were just so much more
| centralized and exclusive than they are today.
|
| Even today, I find that free speech advocates (and I
| consider myself to be a free speech advocate) are often
| uneducated about the scale of censorship that happens
| outside of mainstream culture.
|
| It's really disappointing and frustrating. Academics get
| a tiny, tiny sliver of the kind of backlash that
| marginalized groups get when they protest dominant
| narratives, and it's the end of the world -- because many
| of them have just never encountered real, hard censorship
| before and they don't have a frame of reference. Or less
| charitably, they just don't care about having a frame of
| reference and it's all just a narrative tool for them.
| Animats wrote:
| _They have more mediums that they can publish to, it is
| easier than ever before for them to get support and to
| connect with communities, and legal protections have
| literally never been better._
|
| Yes. Now everybody has a megaphone and it's too noisy to
| hear anything. This leads to heavy self-selection of
| inputs. The real battle today is not over who can say
| what. It's what people should be listening to.
|
| For the current war, not much is being censored after the
| source. You can read all the positions: Russia Today,
| China Daily, South China Morning Post, One America News
| Network, CNN, Fox, the Voice of America, the BBC,
| Reuters, the office of the President of Ukraine... Plus
| vast amounts of stuff on Twitter. Few people do that.
| They tend to obtain info from one source they more or
| less agree with.
| danShumway wrote:
| > The real battle today is not over who can say what.
| It's what people should be listening to.
|
| This is why the characterization of all speech criticism
| as cancel culture is so problematic. We have a segment of
| the population now that believes that free speech means
| not only that they can say things while being shielded by
| laws from government retaliation and by cultural norms
| from unreasonable forms of cultural retaliation; they now
| also believe that free speech requires them to be given
| exclusive, privileged priority on platforms and for them
| to be given extra control over what people hear. For
| them, it is cancel culture that their voice isn't louder
| than everyone else's.
|
| Notably, they don't view it as censorship that other
| segments of the population don't have the same platform
| privileges in the first place. To them, the normal
| position of free speech is that their voice should always
| be specially audible, and they are less concerned about
| making it easier across the board for people to filter
| through the noise or about democratizing curation, and
| more concerned with making sure that their microphone is
| never threatened by other people's speech or association.
|
| ----
|
| It is very important for us to talk about how people get
| information and about how to further decrease gatekeeping
| around curation and subscription of information; I think
| that's one of the next fronts in increasing free speech
| in America.
|
| But it's also important for us to recognize that most
| people don't have exclusive contracts with major media
| networks and tons of advertising and promotion, and that
| demanding that people retain access to privileged speech
| platforms while their critics are characterized as
| censors for even just criticizing them or boycotting
| those platforms -- it's essentially the same as walking
| into a public gym and getting mad that everyone doesn't
| stop their own conversation and only listen to what one
| person has to say.
|
| I think Popehat really hits the nail on the head when he
| talks about privileging the first speaker; some (not all,
| but some) of the backlash I see around online
| communication and criticism is coming from people who
| were used to being major voices that couldn't be ignored,
| and are mad that the increased noise means they no longer
| have that same level of exclusivity or respect, and are
| mad that opposing voices are increasingly given the same
| level of volume and attention and that those voices have
| more ability to respond to their speech. They're mad that
| their critics are on more equal footing with them in
| public debates and have similar levels of reach and
| volume.
|
| This is why it's also so deeply important to express that
| there is a difference between a rando someplace getting
| fired from their job for a Twitter opinion they gave 10
| years ago, and someone getting disinvited from an semi-
| exclusive speaking role at a conference because they are
| actively expressing bad or harmful ideas. Those are
| really not the same thing; one is a cultural retaliation
| against speech that might cross the line into unnecessary
| harm and mob justice, and the other is just people
| getting mad that they don't have a special right to an
| exclusive megaphone.
| kritiko wrote:
| >One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that
| speech is less important than people's feelings. Lenny
| Bruce was convicted of obscenity less than 60 years ago.
| The civil liberties around speech went through a series of
| challenges and expansions very recently. The ACLU used to
| defend nazis. Now they prefer not to, to the chagrin or
| dismay of more traditional civil libertarians.
| noduerme wrote:
| The one thing that's remained constant from times when
| civil rights activists were imprisoned for "offending"
| people to now when right wingers are canceled for
| offending people seems to be that the bulk of the
| population is incapable of, or unwilling to, set the
| principle of speech over their own feelings about that
| speech. I think it's because most people just can't
| imagine themselves being on the wrong end of a censorship
| regime (civil, corporate, or otherwise).
|
| This is why the ACLU was so important; that was the
| entire point of it. It was started by a Jew. I'm a Jew,
| and I contributed to it. Not because I like nazis or
| think for a moment that they'd give me the same chance to
| speak. But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will
| come for those who believe themselves immune. We will
| have a far-right government again, and whatever liberties
| we allow to erode now because it suits us will be used
| against us. Only the very young and those with very short
| memories think that silencing opinions they don't like is
| a winning strategy in the long run.
| Latty wrote:
| You are equating government imprisonment with public
| cancellation here because they both have a chilling
| effect, but we very quickly run into the paradox of
| tolerance: do you restrict the expression of "cancelling"
| to protect other speech?
|
| Those Nazis you use an example of abhorrent speech that
| must be allowed were calling for communists to be rounded
| up and killed for their views. Surely that is partaking
| in cancellation?
|
| Who cancels the cancellers?
| cgrealy wrote:
| > narrowing of speech will come for those who believe
| themselves immune.
|
| True, but on other hand, history has shown us the Paradox
| of Tolerance.
|
| "Liberals" have learned this lesson. When I was growing
| up, people who I would consider socially liberal
| generally supported the "I disagree with what you say,
| but will defend your right to say it" position. These
| days, the same people are less confident. I'm one of
| them.
|
| I want a free and open society where people can discuss
| ideas and those ideas are weighed on their merits and the
| ridiculous ones (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc) are
| laughed at.
|
| But that's not what's happened. The Overton Window in the
| US has dramatically shifted.
|
| I don't know how to fix this. I don't even know that
| there is a fix for this. But I can certainly understand
| the mindset that says "maybe we don't need to defend
| nazis?"
| Jensson wrote:
| > I want a free and open society where people can discuss
| ideas and those ideas are weighed on their merits and the
| ridiculous ones (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc) are
| laughed at.
|
| > But that's not what's happened. The Overton Window in
| the US has dramatically shifted.
|
| Any evidence for this? To me it seems like things went in
| the right direction and never really stopped. That things
| are getting worse and therefore we need to police the
| people harder is just a lie, don't listen to them.
|
| Example, a little over a decade ago the general consensus
| was that gay marriage shouldn't be legal, in what way was
| the overton window of gay rights better back then?
| Authoritarians always try to convince you that evil is
| growing so they need more powers, but they are wrong
| regardless if they are right wing or left wing
| authoritarians.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Of course we don't have to defend Nazis but we can defend
| free speech. We should attack Nazis' inhumane poisonous
| speech and misinformation. And especially we shouldn't
| amplify it. Twitter should not amplify the spread of
| fascist ideology in the name of "fairness". They should
| ban it. People still have their freedom of speech but
| Twitter has the right to not propagate hate and lies.
| Animats wrote:
| _But because inevitably, narrowing of speech will come
| for those who believe themselves immune._
|
| Exactly.
| iosono88 wrote:
| tptacek wrote:
| I think you're making White's point for him. You're
| implying that free speech should be at least as important
| as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals
| for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic.
| This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker
| Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is
| virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How
| do you coherently isolate the speech that must be protected
| --- the supposed "first speaker" --- from the speech that
| shouldn't (critics of that first speaker)?
| gambler wrote:
| A) Criticizing an idea so that others understand how it
| is flawed.
|
| B) "Criticizing" an idea to get it expunged from various
| media to manipulate what ideas people are exposed to.
|
| If you even _pretend_ that there is no difference between
| A and B, you 're not worth intellectually engaging with.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Sure, but the point here is that the NYT is engaging in
| B.
| tptacek wrote:
| Then you shouldn't have any problem with what Ken White
| is saying here, because he makes that distinction at
| great length.
| jimbokun wrote:
| It's a norm not a law.
|
| Be open to a broad array of viewpoints and opinions, as a
| general rule. It makes you a better human being.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's an aspirational norm, but it's nobody's practiced
| norm; virtually everybody has lines they draw. So what
| does it tell us that we can aspire to having that norm?
| I'd argue: not much.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The extent to which a society aspires to this norm has a
| great effect on the extent to which that society
| flourishes and prospers.
| tptacek wrote:
| Then we've clearly flourished throughout the 20th century
| in spit of it and not because of it.
| hanselot wrote:
| akvadrako wrote:
| You are saying we shouldn't be open? That will surely
| lead to never ending conflict.
| tptacek wrote:
| I can't even figure out how to connect your response to
| what I wrote, so I can't possibly do any good by trying
| to reply to it.
| klyrs wrote:
| My opinion is that Joe Dingleberry* should shut up,
| because I've already heard his opinion and find it
| uninteresting. Are you open to my opinion, or just Joe's?
|
| * name changed to protect the uninteresting
| Natsu wrote:
| It's funny to see all the shifts on this. 18 USC 1001 was
| "chickensh-t" that they wouldn't pull back in his day to
| Ken... at least until it wasn't. We talked about chilling
| effects and heckler's vetoes, but now they're well-
| deserved social sanctions?
|
| I've been reading him for probably a decade now, so it's
| hard not to notice how things change whenever the shoe is
| on the other foot.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think White has been pretty consistent about 18 USC
| 1001 being chickenshit, even when it applied to Trump
| employees. It's important to distinguish between
| normative and positive arguments; whenever White talks
| about 18 USC 1001, he's making positive claims. If
| you're, for instance, talking about the All The
| Presidents lawyers podcast, he was there to handicap what
| was actually going to happen in cases against the Trump
| administration. He wasn't _running_ the prosecution.
|
| And, when he does, he virtually always points out how
| that statute is more often used to harass people we find
| sympathetic, even when it's being aimed at e.g. Trump's
| former lawyer.
|
| (18 USC 1001 for non-Pope-Heads is the statute that
| criminalizes lying to the FBI).
| Natsu wrote:
| I watched that podcast and didn't see it. Given that it
| was a prosecution over a difference of opinion over what
| constitutes discussion of "sanctions" in a call they had
| a recording of, with only an FD-302 for evidence of what
| was said, where the only copy was from months after the
| fact.
|
| I don't know that I listened to every podcast, so you an
| point out a quote if there was one, but I sure don't
| remember anything like the word "chickensh-t" coming up.
| Instead, there were a lot of longwinded debates over who
| had the better substantive argument for how long a
| prosecution that was dismissed could be maintained by the
| court.
|
| Which seems patently absurd given that they are violating
| separation of powers there. But it's political, so
| concerns about a judge playing prosecutor were simply
| tossed out the window? What was the end result of that
| supposed to be, anyway? A criminal referral... to the
| people dropping the case?
|
| Those seem like awfully big concerns to sweep away in a
| mealy-mouthed discussion of substantive factors where he
| honestly didn't sound like he was taking a side.
|
| And I'm pretty sure we've both been listening to him for
| a long time, since I sorta think it was one of your
| comments a really long time ago that made me start
| reading his stuff. Do you really not see any changes?
|
| I'd say his tone started changing about the time he had
| that feud and split with his former friend Clark.
| tptacek wrote:
| Which podcast in particular? It ran for 3 years, and 18
| USC 1001 was a recurring character.
|
| I don't think discussing Clark is going to do any favors
| for your arguments.
| Natsu wrote:
| Not going to defend Clark here, just using that as a
| point of time reference and possible explanation for the
| notes of bitterness, since that was an ugly feud for
| former friends.
|
| I was thinking of All the President's Lawyers in
| particular during the end of the trial (e.g. between
| dismissal & pardon).
| danShumway wrote:
| It's extremely hard for me to imagine how anyone who's
| read or listened to a lot of Ken's commentary could walk
| away thinking that he was suddenly in favor of 18 USC
| 1001 just because of the existence of the Trump
| administration. He regularly criticizes the statute.
|
| I don't know, I really just don't see it.
|
| ----
|
| Also, quick sidenote on the heckler's veto:
|
| > We talked about chilling effects and heckler's vetoes,
| but now they're well-deserved social sanctions?
|
| https://nitter.42l.fr/Popehat/status/1504505701401448467#
| m
|
| The heckler's veto isn't really the right term to use
| when talking about cancel culture or shouting down
| speakers. The heckler's veto is more about the government
| shutting down speech under the assumption that it might
| cause a riot or disruption in the future.
|
| But for whatever it's worth, Ken also regularly
| criticizes shouting down speakers in public forums. I
| really just don't see this change in his opinion that
| you're talking about.
| Natsu wrote:
| Oh, he hates the statute normally. He just failed to even
| express mild criticism of it when it was abused and he
| was discussing the trial, which stood out when he was
| literally discussing the merits of a trial centered on
| one. Maybe he made up for it on some episode I didn't
| listen to, there are a lot of them and there's no way I
| heard them all, but I was kinda surprised to see him fail
| to mention a hobby horse of his in a discussion of a
| trial centered on said hobby horse.
|
| > The heckler's veto isn't really the right term to use
| when talking about cancel culture or shouting down
| speakers. The heckler's veto is more about the government
| shutting down speech under the assumption that it might
| cause a riot or disruption in the future.
|
| You say that as if nothing got shut down or forced to pay
| huge security fees due to other people being moved to
| violence against the speakers, but there were and have
| been lawsuits over the same. One of which I think even
| involved Clark, though I didn't follow that particularly
| closely.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| >For people to stop calling it "cancel culture"
|
| Accountability Culture.
| macrolocal wrote:
| > People not wanting to patronize or associate with you when
| you cause harm to people they care about is really not a bad
| thing, and it's not new either, and yet it is what gets
| called "cancel culture" by a lot of people.
|
| Although nowadays, soft penalties scale and can be automated.
| So it feels sensible to explore regulatory frameworks that
| could rein in the worst excesses.
| Latty wrote:
| Who gets to decide what the excess is?
|
| I'm not saying they don't exist: if I advocate for gay
| rights, and turns out my employer has a bunch of homophobic
| customers who get me fired because they don't want to spend
| money that ends up in my pocket, that would be deeply wrong
| in my view.
|
| The question is, what does the "regulatory framework" do
| there? Force those customers to spend money that ends up
| funding someone that fights for something they see as
| morally wrong? Force my boss to employ me even though I
| hurt their business?
|
| The whole point of freedom of speech is the government
| doesn't get to ban views they don't like. Not supporting
| someone because of their views surely needs to be as much
| of a protected view as any other.
| macrolocal wrote:
| > Who gets to decide what the excess is?
|
| Legislators, who also get to address how we criminalize
| physical aggression, the poor man's social aggression.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| > Force my boss to employ me even though I hurt their
| business?
|
| Well probably the answer would be stronger wrongful
| termination regulation and then if they fire you for
| advocating for gay rights then you would probably get
| paid a reasonable amount of money for the loss you
| suffered, and your boss would have more of an incentive
| to think over if they really need to fire you to avoid
| losses to their business or if they should stand up to
| the people trying to force their hand.
| Latty wrote:
| OK, but then the government is deciding what speech
| should be allowed without losing your job.
|
| If it's _any_ speech, then do I get to tell people my
| company sucks and they shouldn 't shop there without
| being fired? What about telling individual customers they
| don't deserve human rights? That very quickly becomes
| obviously absurd. So the question becomes "where is the
| line", and if they government gets to draw that line,
| then that no longer looks like freedom of speech to me.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| When one is already in overshoot, it's a bad play to make
| demands in the direction you've already overextended yourself
| on.
| krapp wrote:
| >For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they
| face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm
| others would be a good start.
|
| That's never going to happen. Such people have a vested
| interest in gaining sympathy for their views and actions by
| discrediting their critics as nothing but a hateful mob or a
| conspiracy to silence and oppress them, and clearly their
| efforts are working. "Cancel culture" has itself become a
| moral panic akin to the Red Scare.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your post reminds me of Barry Deutsch's _I Have Been
| Silenced_ comic [1], which is clearly still relevant today.
|
| 1: http://leftycartoons.com/2018/08/01/i-have-been-
| silenced/
| jimbokun wrote:
| > For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever
| they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that
| harm others would be a good start.
|
| Someone having an opinion different than you does not cause
| you harm.
|
| This is the Big Lie underlying a lot of the rhetoric that has
| been labeled "cancel culture".
|
| The potential harm at shutting down the opportunity to find
| out you were wrong about something by hearing viewpoints
| different from yours, is far greater than whatever harms you
| fear from the words themselves.
| dtjb wrote:
| Nobody is getting cancelled for having a different opinion
| on tax rates or foreign policy.
|
| There are very specific and narrow types of speech that
| lead to 'cancellation,' and it's almost always speech that
| attacks people's identity, race, and sexuality.
| Historically that type of speech has been equated with
| harm.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I agree that's there's a pattern for what gets you
| cancelled, but there is absolutely not a list published
| somewhere that tells you what subjects to avoid.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| How do you draw a distinction between writing an NYT op-ed
| to, say, support same-sex marriage, voting for a candidate
| who supports same sex marriage, and signing a bill to allow
| same-sex marriage? In every case you're "just" writing
| something down. When does one cross the line from "just"
| sharing an opinion, to advocacy for that opinion to
| political action on favor of a policy?
|
| Phrased differently, if someone advocates for a policy that
| I believe will be harmful, why should I treat that
| differently than a stated intent to harm me?
| Latty wrote:
| I said "for actions they take that harm others", and you
| jumped to some trivial difference of opinion. If the
| difference of opinion is supporting policy that hurts me or
| people I care about, then yes, of course it can harm me.
|
| You are saying that someone can use freedom of expression
| to say people I care about should not have human rights,
| but I can't say those people shouldn't be employed by some
| company.
|
| Freedom of expression swings both ways. I agree we should
| think about the harm done, ensure it is real, and what
| level of consequence is reasonable before acting, but that
| doesn't mean there are no situations action is justified.
| abnry wrote:
| > reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm
| others
|
| This is what is at issue. What does "reasonable consequences"
| mean for "harm to others"? Sometimes the harm to others is
| disputed, as the harm is almost always considered emotional.
| Sometimes what is considered "reasonable consequences" is
| something as significant as loss of livelihood.
| Latty wrote:
| Of course, it depends on what you view as harmful, and
| who's opinions you agree with. There is no obvious right
| answer. Pretending we can say "so this should never happen"
| is absurd in my view, it implies people have to give their
| money to people that will use that money to fund harm.
|
| The core of free speech is that even abhorrent views should
| not face censorship by the government, because democracy
| requires it. If this is true, surely the right to _not_
| support people who 's views you disagree with is just as
| necessary? (If not, is every Republican cancelling the
| Democratic party by not donating to them?) The answer, as
| with democracy and freedom of speech, is to make the better
| argument, get people to agree with you, and then use that
| to support the things you think are right.
|
| We don't have a better answer than that.
|
| I think there _are_ obvious cases we can personally make
| better choices: seek context and clarity, don 't jump to
| conclusions and pile on just because others say something
| without checking it is valid and proportionate, but again,
| that's never the "anti-cancel culture" argument.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > The answer, as with democracy and freedom of speech, is
| to make the better argument, get people to agree with
| you, and then use that to support the things you think
| are right.
|
| I find this difficult to agree with but not because of
| the sentiment but because of the environment. If a bad
| faith actor wants to smear even totally reasoned speech
| by spouting complete fabrications, so long as they have
| the bigger platform/microphone on social media no amount
| of making a correct argument will resolve the problem. I
| agree in a perfect world without these sorts of
| algorithmic effects, this would be the ideal solution--
| but if you simply aren't favored by the algorithm how can
| being reasonable save you from someone who is spewing
| lies?
| Latty wrote:
| Yeah, of course that's a problem, having a bigger
| platform gives you more political power.
|
| This... isn't new. Money is the classic way to attain
| platform, and the US has repeatedly doubled down on the
| freedom to spend as much money as you want politically,
| as a core freedom.
|
| Fox News is constantly broadcasting what I would classify
| as complete fabrications to their bigger platform, should
| the government be stepping in to stop that?
|
| I agree these things are a problem, but that's the cost
| of free speech, the two choices are the government
| deciding who's speech is right, or individuals deciding
| who's speech is right.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Once you start increasing the power to censor "false"
| ideas, who do you really trust to make those decisions
| and not abuse that authority?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Please note I never advocated for censorship. I'm only
| saying the ideal solution won't work. I don't want
| censorship either, but also I don't believe simply more
| speech is the solution. I don't know what the solution
| is.
| krapp wrote:
| If you define anything other than "simply more speech" as
| censorship, as many seem to nowadays, then a solution
| either cannot exist or must involve censorship.
| tines wrote:
| > If this is true, surely the right to not support people
| who's views you disagree with is just as necessary?
|
| Totally agree, but I think one of the nuances here is
| that what "support" means can be pretty narrow or very
| broad.
|
| For example, if you don't like someone's message and
| they're speaking at your college, you can show your
| disapproval by choosing a point on a spectrum of
| refusals. You can start light by going to hear them speak
| but refusing to agree with them, and get a little more
| intense by attending and listening and then rebutting
| their arguments (i.e. refusing to approve the message).
| Sliding further along the scale, you might refuse to go
| to the talk at all. Further, you might refuse to attend
| the college that allows them to speak. Further, you might
| refuse to use any social media that allows them to post.
| And so on.
|
| The further you go on that spectrum, the more your
| actions cause other people not to be able to support the
| speaker (or even hear them without supporting them), even
| if they want to. Not attending the speech yourself may
| cause the speaker not to be invited back if there is low
| enough attendance, which is just about the most minor
| form of that. Further along the spectrum, refusing to use
| social media that gives them a platform could get them
| banned if enough people do it, which is a more intense
| form of denying others access.
|
| That's really long-winded but I hope my point is clear. I
| think "cancel culture" isn't so much about retaining the
| individual's choice to not support something, but rather
| denying that choice to other people. And it's not even
| about supporting really; the ACLU that defended Nazis
| because they realized that if Nazis' rights can be taken
| away then so can any minorities' be taken away might not
| exist any more. Certainly they didn't support Nazism, but
| they felt that they didn't have to in order to defend
| them in a court of law.
|
| I think someone once said something like "it's the mark
| of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea
| without accepting it" and I feel like at a certain level
| you have to trust people to do that if you want to live
| in a democracy. My interpretation of opponents of cancel
| culture is that they don't want other people to keep them
| from entertaining ideas just because accepting them would
| be bad. You have to be able to entertain an idea to
| destroy it as well. The more you know about racist
| beliefs, for example, the more easily they're destroyed.
| The less you know, the more appealing they are. Best to
| bring them out in the light and let them be destroyed by
| the truth (would be their argument I believe).
|
| I guess it's a difference in world view. Some think you
| can put people on the right track by focusing on
| providing them with the right information, and others
| think you can put them on the right track by keeping them
| from harmful information. The latter might be the way you
| can instruct a child, but for adults, the former is the
| only way it can work healthily (they would say).
|
| Not sure whether any of that makes any sense, I could be
| completely wrong, would like to hear your opinion.
| Latty wrote:
| People have a right to expression, but not a right to a
| platform. Not everyone can go on TV every day to talk
| about what they believe, so it must be curated, and that
| curation is an expression in and of itself.
|
| Should we try and be proportional and fair in our
| responses to people personally? Of course. Should we as a
| society try to limit people's responses? No.
|
| There used to be literal lynching, and clearly active
| violence is over the line, but we allowed racists and
| other bigots to boycott places that employed people they
| didn't like and express their views like that.
|
| Now that the bigots face being denied employment because
| of their bigotry, suddenly it's wrong to boycott and deny
| them their jobs.
|
| Is it wrong to refuse to spend money at somewhere that
| employs (and therefore uses the money I spend there)
| someone who seeks to deny human rights to someone I love?
| It may get them fired if enough people take that stand.
| Does it hurt others if they can't access that bigot's
| speech? You can argue it denies them an opportunity, but
| then the fact I can't go to their boss and make my point
| is denying that person an opportunity to.
|
| The reality is you are talking about pitting two pieces
| of expression against each other, and just because one
| came first and the other is a response to it seems
| entirely meaningless to me, neither should be restricted.
| tines wrote:
| What do you think of the argument that the nature of
| boycotting has changed? In your example, people might
| boycott a restaurant they didn't like, but there were a
| ton of small restaurants, no one restaurant was very big.
| Now, we have a handful of websites that like 90% of all
| written human communication goes through, and people
| aren't boycotting a Twitter handle, they're boycotting
| Twitter itself (so to speak) to force it to deplatform
| someone.
|
| I guess it's somewhat related to the other argument of
| proportionality of punishment. Is it right to boycott
| someone to an unlimited extent if they're bigoted? What
| is the limit? would be the questions along that line.
| Latty wrote:
| This seems like an argument to have better "public
| squares" and better regulations against monopolies,
| rather than enforcing private entities to platform
| others.
| akira2501 wrote:
| To me "consequences" are sought when someone wants to
| alleviate their own burden or guilt over the situation.
| Rarely is "restitution" sought. It seems to me that the
| latter would be a far more useful trend if we're going to
| continue trying to deal with social problems using the
| awesome power of the internet.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| > Sometimes what is considered "reasonable consequences" is
| something as significant as loss of livelihood.
|
| What if it's reframed?
|
| If I call my boss a fatty and they fire me that's ok right?
| It's just their feelings and I'm losing my income, but in
| that case it's acceptable. Why?
| anamax wrote:
| The case we're talking about is I accuse you of calling
| me a fatty and get a bunch of people to tell your
| employer that they'll boycott, costing a bunch of people
| their income, people who didn't do anything, unless they
| fire you.
|
| Note that I said "accuse". Maybe you called me a fatty,
| maybe you didn't.
|
| Note that "get" is too strong. There appear to be people
| waiting for an excuse to go after "your employer" for
| pretty much any value of "your employer". I may not even
| be bothered - someone else may do the "get" even if all I
| do is mention that you called me fatty/thought that you
| thought of me as a fatty without any intent that someone
| do something.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Let's not move the goalposts. If you hurt your boss's
| feelings, should you lose your livelihood?
| iosono88 wrote:
| anamax wrote:
| I see your "move the goalposts" and raise a "mote and
| bailey".
|
| I'm describing cancel culture as it is, which is
| different from "calling your boss a fatty" (or a Nazi for
| that matter).
|
| We might well decide that the "right thing" in these
| situations is different.
|
| Which reminds me - does someone have an obligation to
| hire me after I call them a fatty?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's different from "cancel culture as
| it is". One common theme I've seen -- including in this
| thread! -- is people creating a dichotomy between "free
| speech" and "feelings". Usually that means they want to
| say something controversial, but their own feelings get
| hurt when they receive pushback, so they try to reframe
| the debate in such a way that they're the aggrieved
| party.
|
| The "insult my boss" is a good thought experiment because
| it reveals that motivation. Is it _really_ about "free
| speech" vs. "feelings", or is there something else going
| on?
| anamax wrote:
| Get fired is "their own feelings get hurt"?
|
| The boss situation is a lousy experiment because its
| result tells us nothing about what the result should be
| in the situation we're discussing. (For one, my boss
| isn't going to fire me by threatening the business if I
| call him a fatty.)
|
| For example, it's relatively easy to figure out who the
| person is behind this account. The mob could decide that
| I've "done wrong" and go after my income. That's no where
| near me screaming at my boss that he's a Nazi or a fatty.
| kritiko wrote:
| In America, in most jobs you can be fired for any reason
| as long as it is not discriminatory against a protected
| class.
|
| What do you mean by "acceptable" here? As in, an average
| person would consider it fair?
| liquid_bluing wrote:
| I think it's broadly considered acceptable because
| insulting your boss is an aggresive behavior directed at
| a colleague. Simply stating an opinion is not.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Does it matter at all what the opinion is?
| cowuser666 wrote:
| That's exactly the point that was being made to you. The
| debate here is precisely what is reasonable, and what is
| harm.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| The comment I replied to seemed to trivialize emotional
| harm and suggest that loss of livelihood might be too
| severe. Did I read too much into it?
|
| I was providing an actual scenario as a basis of
| comparison. I think concrete examples are more useful
| here.
| cowuser666 wrote:
| It's not really an informative example. You're not losing
| your job in this case for emotional harm. It's because
| you insulted your boss. You could lose your job even if
| he didn't care.
|
| If you had to let an employee go and caused even more
| emotional harm (brought on by their no longer being
| employed), you wouldn't receive a reprisal.
|
| Why are you pointing out that speech sometimes is
| reasonable to punish? How does this clarify the question
| of whether we have become too punitive regarding
| political and controversial social speech.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever
| they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that
| harm others would be a good start._
|
| the article is about free speech, but you sneak in the word
| actions, and then you label the damage (of free speech) as
| harm to others, and the consequences as reasonable.
| Therefore, I'd say you fit what this editorial is about,
| "many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture
| exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are
| offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech."
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| When I mention that I don't understand what Popehat actually
| wants, I'm looking at it in the context of the concept of
| "competing rights" that he writes about.
|
| >"People complaining about "cancel culture" frequently
| suggest that it chills speech. Perhaps. But so does a vague
| denunciation of other people's speech."
|
| My confusion stems from the fact that Popehat seems to want
| to have it both ways. On one hand, he entertains the idea
| that "cancel culture" has a chilling effect. It is not a
| stretch to say that "cancel culture" is a kind of
| "denunciation of other people's speech". But he's
| simultaneously criticizing people who want to end "cancel
| culture" because he sees them as _also_ committing a
| "denunciation of other people's speech".
|
| If Popehat's main gripe is that the liberty of speech is
| being limited, both "cancel culture" and "anti-cancel
| culture" lead to speech being denounced and limited. With
| this contradiction in mind, I don't understand what Popehat
| hopes to achieve.
| _jal wrote:
| He's pointing out that many (not all) people complaining
| are asking for criticism - other peoples' speech - to be
| shut down.
|
| There are a few sincere people out there. But most whining
| about cancel culture are just asking to be free from
| criticism. Sometimes it is blatantly obvious [1], more
| frequently layered with complaints about legitimately out
| of line acts and misdirects.
|
| The answer to bad speech is more speech. End of story.
|
| [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/palin-criticism-
| threatens_n_1...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"But most whining about cancel culture are just asking
| to be free from criticism"
|
| This assessment doesn't sit right with me because I don't
| sense the people 'whining' about cancel culture are
| trying to get out of ideological critique. I sense
| they're calling for tolerance because the 'critique' is
| laden with threats to livelihood and societal standing.
|
| From that perspective, I don't believe that calling on
| people to be more tolerant of other people's speech is a
| substantial reduction in speech. One could say it results
| in a net gain of speech.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I don't know if tolerance of speech is always a net gain
| of speech. Communities can enter death spirals where only
| extreme speech exists because everyone reasonable is so
| turned off by the extreme speech that they leave. (Edit:
| I'm not saying that tolerance of speech is always a net
| negative either. I'm just saying it might be too complex
| to say.)
| Banana699 wrote:
| >Communities can enter death spirals where only extreme
| speech exists because everyone reasonable is so turned
| off by the extreme speech that they leave.
|
| This never happens in a country, people will not abandon
| their land and their social networks because $MEAN_PERSON
| said something bad about trans people. What you describe
| only happens in online communities or hobby clubs, and
| not all of them at that.
|
| In practice, fears from "unpolite" speech is almost
| always hysterical reactions by those unprepared and/or
| ill-equipped to counter speech with speech.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > This never happens in a country
|
| I'm super confused where I ever invoked the idea of what
| this looks like outside of online communities. I'm sorry
| if I caused you to misunderstand my speech.
| Imnimo wrote:
| >But he's simultaneously criticizing people who want to end
| "cancel culture" because he sees them as also committing a
| "denunciation of other people's speech".
|
| Right, but I think his criticism here is not that "they
| should not denounce other people's speech", it's that they
| are being hypocritical in their reasoning. He's arguing
| against the soundness of their denunciation, not arguing
| against their right to make it.
| lazide wrote:
| The type of people who complain and lash out when they face
| reasonable consequences for harming someone else are the
| least likely to follow any such guidance here though?
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| But who decides what "actions they take that harm others" is?
|
| If you look up if there are nazis in Ukraine army in US news,
| it will claim it's false, but international news sources say
| it's true.
|
| Since nazis are the worst ever, don't you think it's
| important to get this right? And how can we tell if we can't
| have openly opposing sources that don't get cancelled?
| Latty wrote:
| Individuals make that decision, just as they do when it
| comes to democracy as a whole. That's the point of freedom
| of speech: we can't have an authority on the truth.
|
| The alternative is you _aren 't allowed_ to dislike and
| refuse to patronize someone because of their actions, which
| is obviously absurd.
|
| Everyone agrees people shouldn't face disproportionate
| responses, so arguing for that is nothing. Either you need
| to argue there are general things causing that (e.g: not
| looking into context, retractions, etc... before making
| judgements, which is a real problem) or argue the ethics of
| the particular situation, which is unique to a case.
|
| Almost always, I see "cancel culture" used as a shield to
| avoid having to defend the actual harm done.
| [deleted]
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> The opposite stance, not calling on people to end cancel
| culture, is also accepting a reduction in speech._
|
| I'm not sure that accepting certain spaces becoming unwelcome
| is the same as a reduction in speech.
|
| The quote toward the end of the article really hits the nail on
| the head for me:
|
| _> The room felt tense... I was shaken, but also determined to
| not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students
| stuck with me. I was a welcome member of the group -- and then
| I wasn't._
|
| Feeling tense and unwelcome in a space where people disagree
| with you is totally normal and to be expected. A huge fraction
| of people grow up feeling exactly like that in virtually every
| space they inhabit.
|
| (BTW, I'd be unsurprised if the tenseness in this case was more
| about annoyance with a loudmouth once again derailing a seminar
| with what they think is profoundly courageous iconoclasm but is
| actually annoying low-effort culture war trolling that's
| spoiling a quite expensive educational product for the rest of
| the paying customers...)
|
| I grew up non-straight and atheist in the midwest, decades ago,
| and not in a city. The feeling of tenseness described here is
| totally normal. Gays are not entitled to a complete absence of
| tenseness in midwest churches or sports bars. That tenseness
| and unwelcomeness will result in lost opportunities for
| socialization, employment, etc. even without overt
| discrimination.
|
| Not everyone will feel comfortable in every space. Not everyone
| will fit in everywhere. That's life. It seems like literally
| everyone except a certain brand of conservative hothead
| understands this.
|
| To me, the entire cancel culture thing can be summed up as:
| "apparently some people went through a lot of life without ever
| desiring to inhabit a space where they weren't 100% welcome
| and, unsurprisingly, react in an emotionally stunted and
| frankly embarrassing way when encountering this situation."
|
| IDK. Half the country -- and a much larger percentage of its
| landmass -- is wholly hostile to anyone who _isn 't_ a died-in-
| the-wool conservative. Whence the entitlement to also fit in
| perfectly everywhere else with zero friction? As a queer
| person, I don't even have that much sympathy for fellow queer
| people who try to get along in conservative religious
| communities. You have a right to free association. If you don't
| like feeling tense and unwelcome, exercise that right. If you
| choose to inhabit spaces where you aren't welcome... well, I
| can sympathize up to a point, but I'm mostly going to roll my
| eyes if you complain too much.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm a dark-skinned
| POC straight man that grew up in poverty (and that in the
| SFBA I feel like a unicorn, especially in my climbing gym
| where sometimes I'm the only dark-skinned POC for my entire
| workout).
|
| > Feeling tense and unwelcome in a space where people
| disagree with you is totally normal and to be expected. A
| huge fraction of people grow up feeling exactly like that in
| virtually every space they inhabit.
|
| I grew up very used to the idea of feeling unwelcome because
| of my skin color. I didn't and still do not feel the most
| comfortable in many spaces. That uncomfortability has made me
| keenly aware at how alienating the feeling is. When I see
| other people feel uncomfortable, I don't think "good now you
| feel how it's like to be me", I feel that humanity has lost
| yet another victim to intolerance. I do not think that
| normalizing this feeling helps anyone, even if the person
| feeling this pain is a straight, white man.
|
| Moreover when someone hates me for my skin color (and
| perceived behaviors associated with my skin color), I
| certainly become uncomfortable and angry, but at the end of
| the day I realize it's something I cannot fundamentally
| change. My skin color and body type will stay with me for the
| rest of my life. But when people become uncomfortable by _my
| ideas_ that's what hurts more; I feel that people disapprove
| of the fruits of my own agency. It's why I've always felt so
| keenly for transgender folk who endure endless discrimination
| for simply choosing how to live their own lives.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> I certainly become uncomfortable and angry, but at the
| end of the day I realize it 's something I cannot
| fundamentally change._
|
| This is the point on which we agree. When I say
|
| _> > Feeling tense and unwelcome in a space where people
| disagree with you is totally normal and to be expected. A
| huge fraction of people grow up feeling exactly like that
| in virtually every space they inhabit._
|
| I'm not excusing intolerance. I'm simply saying in my own
| way what I quoted from you above. One must choose: either
| avoid discomfort or grow some callouses. You don't get to
| climb 5.14 with no pain, and as far as I can tell a lot of
| the noise around cancel culture is from folks who were
| climbing 5.12 and are now demanding the guidebook author
| soften the grades because they can barely huff up a 5.9.
| The ground shifted and they aren't willing to put in the
| work but feel entitled to the send. I have some sympathy,
| but only to a point.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| If the government requests a social media company to suppress the
| speech of a user does that constitute a violation of the first
| amendment?
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| How different is cancel culture from say the Hollywood blacklist?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
| legitster wrote:
| > Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining "cancel
| culture" encourages this.
|
| Can we please just define it so we can move on as a society? I'm
| equally tired of this game where snarky writers try to pretend it
| doesn't exist. The first amendment doesn't protect against secret
| blacklists or mobs but we can still agree they are "bad things"
| and could agree on at least some new set of common courtesy.
|
| All sorts of examples come to mind of unfair public shaming
| spectacles against largely undeserving targets:
|
| John Roderick losing all sorts of shows and bookings for the
| "bean dad" episode: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-
| culture/viral/bean-dad-john-rode...
|
| "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" is full of examples. Here's an
| excerpt where the offender and the offendee where BOTH fired in
| retributions:
| https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/news/a7933/exclusive-extr...
|
| A recounting of a former blogger who ended up on a secret
| industry blacklist: https://miketunison.substack.com/p/fun-with-
| drew-magary
|
| And it's not just a far off issue, this kind of stuff is
| happening in my area! To normal people!
| https://pdx.eater.com/2017/5/22/15677760/portland-kooks-burr...
| tootie wrote:
| It doesn't have a definition and doesn't need one. It's
| liberally applied to all forms of "people being offended". It
| exists in the space between behavior that is legal yet morally
| unacceptable. Like abject racism. The actual quality of
| offending is purely subjective and always has been. Someone can
| be considered "cancelled" when a critical mass of people agree
| and refuse to support them. This is how every society has
| existed forever.
| bloaf wrote:
| In my mind it's just a colloquialism for a certain kind of
| illiberalism:
|
| > "Cancel culture" is the belief that certain beliefs about
| race, gender, and equality are so utterly indefensible that
| anyone holding them is _necessarily_ acting in bad faith and
| consequently deserving of punishment.
|
| In practice, this means moral condemnation in place of
| consideration and argumentation, which is precisely
| illiberalism.
|
| What distinguishes "cancel culture" from, say, the conservative
| hatred of communism, is the whiff of hypocrisy that comes from
| the use of mob rule to enforce what are ostensibly academic
| positions, and the frequent reference to inclusivity as a
| justification of social exclusion.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Popehat did, I think, an excellent job of it, even though he
| doesn't believe this is synonymous with cancel culture:
|
| > some responses to speech are disproportionate and outside
| norms of decency
| legitster wrote:
| I largely agree. But this is an awful lot of faff to
| ultimately agree with their concept but complain about their
| scope.
|
| We can all agree there is a problem. Why wait for your
| political opposition to give you the correct parameters
| before you start solving it?
| hraedon wrote:
| Because "solving it" can look radically different depending
| on the definition or group trying to do the "solving."
| Platforms enforcing their terms of service to ban, say,
| holocaust deniers, is not what I consider "cancel culture,"
| but a lot of people on the right would disagree.
|
| Similarly, I think that David Shor was unfairly maligned
| and fired over hugely disingenuous misreadings of his work,
| but how do you solve that in any meaningful way? I don't
| think we should make "twitter user" a protected class, but
| I fail to see how else you can realistically prevent
| businesses from responding (read: caving in) to bad PR.
| tootie wrote:
| Some are disproportionately harsh. Some are
| disproportionately lenient. Some are just right. Popehat has
| discovered that human perception is subjective and imperfect.
| Wait until he discovers this applies to literally everything.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I feel like he just kicked the can down the road and
| introduced additional ambiguities by invoking the concepts of
| norms and decency. Both of which are very contextual and
| highly variable.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Sure people can 'cancel' people if they like. I guess decorum and
| common human decency take a backseat to the right to call
| everyone who doesn't agree with your point 99% an idiotic mouth
| breathing alt-right pig. The NYT got it right. People are
| forgettting to debate and the possibility they might be
| overreacting on some factoid or area of life. They equate
| loudness and shouting down as just fine ways to go through life.
| If you want to have a civil war in the next 20 years or so, keep
| it up.
| fleddr wrote:
| A piece of pseudo-intellectual drivel that fails to get to the
| point.
|
| "just as we constantly debate norms of what speech is socially
| acceptable, we debate norms about what responses to speech are
| socially acceptable."
|
| I consider the above section critical in his misunderstanding.
| The measuring stick by which people are cancelled, here referred
| to as socially acceptable norms, are in fact not norms at all by
| any stretch of the imagination. Meaning, these are the enforced
| norms of loud outrage-addicted unhinged characters forming mobs,
| not the common norms of the population at large.
|
| Further, there's nothing to debate about these "crazy norms" or
| their disproportionate responses to non-compliance as they are
| uncontrollable. Learn how a mob works.
|
| When people cannot express their feelings on political topics,
| with opinions commonly found acceptable by the public at large,
| then that is a big problem. It's incredibly dangerous and this is
| how you get extreme counter movements.
|
| The heart of the matter is not the shouting at each other, that
| will always happen, it's real world consequences. When they go
| for your job or inflict life long reputation damage, that makes
| people anxious to express themselves.
|
| We have to understand that this is a new problem. Before, in the
| physical world, if you would say something controversial, people
| might verbally counter you, which is business as usual and the
| free exchange of ideas, including bad ideas. That's quite a
| different experience from a pile-on by the mob, smearing you,
| calling your employer to get you fired, digging into everything
| you ever posted online to do maximum damage.
|
| That dynamic is new and it has to be fought. It's cruel and
| sadistic.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There has to be some kind of term for making your case against
| the absolute least sympathetic adversary ("We're allowed to
| boycott giant corporations right?") while using the same word
| that describes the absolute most sympathetic cases ("Are all
| companies allowed to get together and jointly refuse to sell food
| to farm animal rights activists?")
| galimaufry wrote:
| I've heard it called a "non-central example". That has a
| negative connotation though, I wish there was a more neutral
| term. The statement "all natural numbers are greater than 1" is
| false, and it's not helpful to object that 0 and 1 are
| noncentral examples.
|
| (It's not a motte-and-bailey, that's about a particular sort of
| shifting goalposts)
| tines wrote:
| Nitpick, I don't think 0 is a natural number
| whatshisface wrote:
| Zero is sometimes a natural number and sometimes not. N is
| written as N_+ or N_0 sometimes to indicate which one is
| being used.
| tines wrote:
| Ah, that's annoying.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Matter of taste/notation. Both definitions 0,1,2,... and
| 1,2,3,... are very, very common.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| 1 is still not strictly greater than 1, though.
| psyc wrote:
| When using the same word is the main problem, that's
| equivocation. When the problem is treating distinct situations
| as if they're the same, that's false equivalence.
| pas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy ?
| [deleted]
| commandlinefan wrote:
| "Motte and Bailey" is the term you're looking for - although I
| wish there were a less pretentious term (or at least one that
| didn't have two words that you then have to define when you use
| it).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _All of this is to say that Americans' perception that they
| can't speak without disproportionate blowback is not
| unimpeachable_
|
| It's strange to argue that chilled speech should be measured by
| something other than people's perception of the risks of speaking
| freely. If people say they are afraid to speak out, then they are
| afraid. One could argue that the press is making too big a deal
| out of a particular topic, but I don't think there's a strong
| argument that places like the NYT are talking too much about
| cancel culture (conservative outlets do talk about it frequently,
| but polling indicates that cancel culture is perceived to be a
| problem by non-conservatives as well).
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture
| exists at all,
|
| May on the right refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture has
| always existed (and that they historically used it to their
| advantage). It seems their outrage has more to do with the loss
| of social influence.
|
| It wasn't that long ago when _knowing_ a Communist was enough to
| be blacklisted from jobs. Lots of famous, intelligent, and
| influential people were cancelled by McCarthyism.
|
| Criticizing your opponent for using your own tactics against you
| is a time honored tradition.
| lrem wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say "people are free to steer clear of
| people they don't like and always have been". And not much of
| thought into "what changed that now it is a problem perceived by
| some?"
|
| There has been a fundamental change to our reality over the past
| couple decades: things you say and do are now by default in
| public and permanent record. If your not-too-famous grandpa said
| something outrageous, he ruined the relationship with the people
| that heard it and the people they talked to. In the worst case it
| went into a filler column of the local newspaper. He had a
| limited number of people to apologise to. And in the worst case
| could move to another town and start fresh.
|
| If you write an outrageous blog post today, you're hosed. Even if
| you're not famous, or in any other way a "public figure". But
| just because your outrageous writing (or second-hand - someone
| else writing about a thing you said) is in public record today,
| you will find that some people in the far future will get
| offended by it. You get hired in 20 years as a VP of a large
| company in another country? Well, someone will dig up that post
| and before you know it you're out of a job. Saying sorry and that
| you're wiser now, than when you were a teenager, is likely not
| going to help. Bonus points if what you wrote is within the
| mainstream today, but the cultural norms move in the following
| decades.
|
| I think that's a problem. But it cannot be solved by laws. Right
| to be forgotten won't work well enough (just a hunch, but
| international enforcement of soft issues like this doesn't have a
| reassuring track record). Nor by telling people they have to
| listen to jerks. That's what the OP deconstructs as obviously
| absurd. What we need is to build into our culture and
| understanding that people do change and can reach redemption.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > If you write an outrageous blog post today, you're hosed.
|
| This just isn't true, and I'm not sure why the discussion
| around cancel culture is framed like it is true.
|
| It's exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you're acting
| genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you're
| discussing. You can say literally anything you want if you can
| figure out how to be nice when you say it, but you do have to
| put real effort into that endeavor.
|
| Getting canceled isn't a landmine, it's a tar pit.
| Aromasin wrote:
| Could not agree more. Time and time again I've seen people
| broach taboo topics on various media and walk away unscathed,
| often lauded if anything for their tact. Likewise, I've seen
| many people do the same with an air of arrogance and
| superiority, get lambasted by the general public, and go on
| to preach about how they're a victim of some new, alt-left
| system of oppression.
|
| Guile and wit get you just as far in today's 21st century
| "cancel culture" as they did in a 1800's gentleman's club, a
| 1400's king's court, or a BCE Roman senate. What you say is
| much less important to most people than how you say it.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >It's exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you're acting
| genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you're
| discussing.
|
| This a hypocritical Isolated Demand For Rigor[1], or in this
| case for Niceness. Many people doing the cancelling don't
| have to be and don't bother with civility or politeness, they
| are entirely ok with the worst slurs if it came from mouths
| they support. The kindness they demand is a thin wrapper over
| ideological conformity, and the demands are demonstrably done
| in bad faith to silence the discussion not to shape it.
|
| It also, rather naively and hilariously, imagines potential
| cancellers as ideal rational censors who will read all of
| your words before arriving at a fair judgment. This is in
| stark contrast with what actually happens, where cancellers
| read a headline and then reach a red 100 Celsius before
| reading a single additional word. The off-the-top-of-my-head
| example is a whole ironic saga of twitter cancelling a trans
| scifi author[2] because a pro-trans story just so happened to
| have an "offensive" title (that turned out to be literally
| true in the world of the story.)
|
| >Getting canceled isn't a landmine, it's a tar pit
|
| Both are public dangers that civilised societies hunt and
| eradicate.
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-
| demand...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an
| _At...
| letmeiiin wrote:
| Sometime it's basically impossible to nicely say that
| something is just moronic.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Sufficiently talented communicators more or less only have
| these "cancel culture" problems through choice, not through
| inability to express themselves.
|
| Which is honestly why I have little sympathy for the
| "cancelled", in many cases.
|
| Occasionally, I do feel a pang of empathy for people like
| Gina Carano, for example, who genuinely don't seem to know
| how to say what they want to, and may not have
| intentionally wanted to harm others, but through ego end up
| refusing to reword their expression or to account for how
| their words might hurt others.
|
| It's a small pang, and not a long lasting one.
|
| I can see how the confusion might happen, but even for the
| least articulate among us there are clean off-ramps that
| get ignored.
| cowuser666 wrote:
| no chilling effects here..
| TameAntelope wrote:
| My point is cancel culture is not very chilling if you're
| a competent speaker/writer, and it ought to be even less
| chilling than it is (possibly not chilling at all).
|
| If you believe you're entering a conversation with
| positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for
| others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >If you believe you're entering a conversation with
| positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for
| others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled
|
| Any sufficiently selective style guide is
| indistinguishable from a censor.
|
| It's bizarrely hilarious how "Progressives" mirror
| religious fundamentalists, down to the particular
| language used to dispel accusations of censorship and
| closed-mindedness. "You can say whatever you like, just
| in ways we like (which will sometimes include you
| shutting up entirely)" looks painfully familiar for any
| closeted atheist.
| ryandrake wrote:
| We have no idea what the prevailing norms and taboos will be
| 20 years from now. Something you write today that is benign
| and uncontroversial, might be utterly offensive in 20 years,
| and all someone has to do is dig back in the internet
| archives and find it. I think back to 20 years ago, and I
| know I've told some (at the time) harmless, slightly off-
| color jokes, which today would get me fired instantly. You
| don't know which way the sensitivity wind will blow in the
| future, so your only safe play is to limit yourself to
| Rated-G "genuine, kind, and with empathy" speech, as you put
| it.
| lrem wrote:
| > It's exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you're acting
| genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you're
| discussing.
|
| Sure, but that isn't the premise of what I wanted to express.
| You've had a bad day, or are a genuine jerk, and wrote
| something that you _really_ shouldn 't have. Passage of time,
| personal growth, change of opinions, conduct that
| demonstrably disagrees with the post and an apology does not
| prevent that from possibly ruining your future.
|
| Who of us wasn't an easily influenced jerk as a teenager?
| Well, right, some weren't. But many more outgrew that. Some
| took more time than others. Some remained jerks, at least for
| now. But I prefer to hope they will change for the better.
| And would prefer if we recognized the change in those who
| succeeded.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| What changed is politics. One side of the political spectrum
| was tired of being called out for unacceptable speech that they
| didn't understand and decided they could make hay by stirring
| up a fresh culture war. They've discovered that they can be
| offensive and hateful then blame "cancel culture" when they get
| called out and gain favor with their base.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > I think that's a problem. But it cannot be solved by laws.
|
| I actually think that there is a solution that not many people
| have mentioned.
|
| What we can do is actually fund enforcement of the actual
| really bad stuff that people do during these hate/harrassement
| type situations.
|
| And by that I mean, when people make death threats against
| someone, or harassment or target them in a similar way, then
| you have a government run doxxing squad that finds out who sent
| the death threats, and they arrest them, send them to jail, and
| put a felony on their record, even if it is a 1 time/first
| offense.
|
| Right now, if you send a bunch of deaths threats to people,
| you'll probably get away with it. But if the government
| actually enforced the law, and sent you to prison, the first
| time you did that to anybody, well I think the worst of the
| "cancel culture" type harassment would end really quick.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| His "First Speaker Problem" is exactly why I've hated these
| discussions thus far; why is the speech of one person sacred, but
| speech in response to that person not? The idea that the First
| Speaker is, themself, responding to yet someone else is a great
| follow up that I hadn't considered.
|
| I also have very low expectations for this community's ability to
| discuss this reasonably. So far is seems like folks are posting
| responses to the topic, rather than the article, and that hardly
| bodes well.
| croes wrote:
| If you say something and someone calls you an idiot it's free
| speech but if hundreds do it at the same time it's bullying.
| topaz0 wrote:
| From the essay:
|
| >> Saying "colleges shouldn't disinvite speakers because of
| controversy" is a good specific action item; we can debate
| it. Saying "Ken, stop piling on 20-follower Twitter accounts
| when they say stupid things" is an action item; I can debate
| it. [Shan't.] Saying "stop demanding that businesses fire
| people for what they say off the job" is an action item. I
| might not agree but we can discuss it. Saying "if a minor
| says something racist in a semi-private setting we shouldn't
| put them on blast and make them infamous" is an action item.
| We can grapple with it. We can't grapple with "the culture
| makes me feel uncomfortable speaking." Saying that just
| returns us to our cultural and partisan priors.
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