We haven’t heard so much about cancel culture in MSM lately, but I assure you it is still going strong. And I think it will get much stronger if Trump is elected US president next year; they’ve backed off a bit while Biden is president. So let’s analyze the issue a bit here.
To add to the ambiguity dimension, maybe we should also have a temporal dimension. Something a person in their 60s wrote when they were 25 shouldn't really carry as much weight as something they wrote last week. Seems like elementary bayesian math.
Why the MSM cancel culture peddlers have backed off during Biden and will be reinvigorated for Trump 2.0 would make for an interesting topic of analysis.
RH: I'm guessing that for those who follow you, the "main point [you] want to make in this post" is obvious. Your Wikipedia page ("gsr") is the case-in-point for how obvious this is.
There's a dilemma here: you make a perfectly reasonable and logical point, yet the mob is incapable of hearing your point almost by definition. I say fuck em, and let's burn the mob down. Who's with me?
Cancel culture or at least rank censorship has not calmed down under Biden. Biden has admitted that the FBI and other government entities practices censorship by getting Big Tech companies to do it for government. And he has insisted that such government censorship via proxies is good for us! The moves toward forcing ID to be on the internet are moving along with several pushes and partial successes of legislation passed through the Western World. The demonization of dissenting speech as "misinformation" and even such dangerous absurdities as "information terrorism" has gotten stronger.
I have no love for Trump to say the least but an insinuation that Trump would harm the free speech gains made under Biden (there are none) is completely absurd.
As someone a bit more sympathetic to "cancel culture" than you, I think you are missing something about why it's desirable to those of us who see value in it, and why the idea of "cancel courts" seems deeply beside the point.
While not all "cancel culture fans" believe in upholding the US tradition of free speech, I do. I do not think it should be illegal to express an opinion.
Like almost everybody (including you, I expect) I think it is reasonable to *judge* people by the opinions they hold and express.
*Unlike* you, and like other "cancel culture fans", one of the things I judge people negatively for is something like political incorrectness or offensiveness.
I think it would be hugely disproportionate and counter to our national traditions to legally ban offensive speech, but I do view people more negatively for it, and don't in general object to firing people over it.
I also don't think it would be good to have anything resembling a "court proceeding" to see if the offensive speech really reflects a deep-seated or consistent attitude in the speaker. Fundamentally that's not the point, as I see it.
If someone speaks offensively, I don't generally feel better about it if I find out that they were joking or misspoke or had been misinterpreted. They still *didn't care enough to avoid giving offense*, either before they spoke or in an apology afterwards.
The fundamental problem is not that offensive speech reveals some objectionable *belief* (such as bigotry) but that offensive speech reveals an *objectionably low priority given to being inoffensive in speech.*
I find that I am much more forgiving of offensive speech from the past (when the speaker wasn't violating *his* culture's social norms) even when it clearly *does* indicate a bigoted attitude, than I am of offensive speech in the present that *doesn't* indicate a bigoted attitude but does indicate a cavalier attitude towards the rules of "political correctness."
And I am almost entirely OK with non-offensive speech that indicates bigoted beliefs but doesn't sound like it's violating a taboo.
It's really not the kind of thing where a court-like investigation would help achieve my goals better.
How people respond to being accused of offensiveness is much more informative. Silence, pro forma apology, or sincere apology means they care at least somewhat about avoiding offense. Insistence on their good intent ("it was a joke", "it was ironic", "I didn't mean the thing you're reading into it") , or strident insistence on their right to offend means they don't actually care to avoid upsetting people.
Tearful complaint about how hard their life has been since being "cancelled" also tends to make me more sympathetic, I think independently of whether they apologize.
Like many things, it's about showing how much you care.
In some contexts, I want people to *care about other people's wishes*. I want people to aim to please, to fear giving displeasure, and to suffer when socially disapproved of -- and I *don't* want people to defy social norms or revel in giving offense.
But it is such fun to judge others, for the worse. Historically this has been the function of the community court known as the gossip circle. Without pariahdom and social shunning, a lot of novels would never have been written. Even today, one gender tends to indulge in it more. The other gender tends to limit personal judgements to "The boss is a ****" or "Brad Blag the greatest ball player of all time BS."
Cancel culture is extremely unfair to those without the social skills to properly thread the needle. Folks on the autism spectrum (James Damore at Google for example) think they're having a reasonable discussion and get crucified because they violated a social taboo they can't perceive. It's like getting mad at a sight-impaired person for bumping into you.
I’m not sure I understand where you are going with this. Are you suggesting fines and/or jail for hurting peoples feelings? Ostracism for being rude? Saying something politically incorrect gets you banned? Who gets to judge?
To add to the ambiguity dimension, maybe we should also have a temporal dimension. Something a person in their 60s wrote when they were 25 shouldn't really carry as much weight as something they wrote last week. Seems like elementary bayesian math.
Why the MSM cancel culture peddlers have backed off during Biden and will be reinvigorated for Trump 2.0 would make for an interesting topic of analysis.
RH: I'm guessing that for those who follow you, the "main point [you] want to make in this post" is obvious. Your Wikipedia page ("gsr") is the case-in-point for how obvious this is.
There's a dilemma here: you make a perfectly reasonable and logical point, yet the mob is incapable of hearing your point almost by definition. I say fuck em, and let's burn the mob down. Who's with me?
Cancel culture or at least rank censorship has not calmed down under Biden. Biden has admitted that the FBI and other government entities practices censorship by getting Big Tech companies to do it for government. And he has insisted that such government censorship via proxies is good for us! The moves toward forcing ID to be on the internet are moving along with several pushes and partial successes of legislation passed through the Western World. The demonization of dissenting speech as "misinformation" and even such dangerous absurdities as "information terrorism" has gotten stronger.
I have no love for Trump to say the least but an insinuation that Trump would harm the free speech gains made under Biden (there are none) is completely absurd.
Duels, even a credible threat of one, would solve this far more effectively
As someone a bit more sympathetic to "cancel culture" than you, I think you are missing something about why it's desirable to those of us who see value in it, and why the idea of "cancel courts" seems deeply beside the point.
While not all "cancel culture fans" believe in upholding the US tradition of free speech, I do. I do not think it should be illegal to express an opinion.
Like almost everybody (including you, I expect) I think it is reasonable to *judge* people by the opinions they hold and express.
*Unlike* you, and like other "cancel culture fans", one of the things I judge people negatively for is something like political incorrectness or offensiveness.
I think it would be hugely disproportionate and counter to our national traditions to legally ban offensive speech, but I do view people more negatively for it, and don't in general object to firing people over it.
I also don't think it would be good to have anything resembling a "court proceeding" to see if the offensive speech really reflects a deep-seated or consistent attitude in the speaker. Fundamentally that's not the point, as I see it.
If someone speaks offensively, I don't generally feel better about it if I find out that they were joking or misspoke or had been misinterpreted. They still *didn't care enough to avoid giving offense*, either before they spoke or in an apology afterwards.
The fundamental problem is not that offensive speech reveals some objectionable *belief* (such as bigotry) but that offensive speech reveals an *objectionably low priority given to being inoffensive in speech.*
I find that I am much more forgiving of offensive speech from the past (when the speaker wasn't violating *his* culture's social norms) even when it clearly *does* indicate a bigoted attitude, than I am of offensive speech in the present that *doesn't* indicate a bigoted attitude but does indicate a cavalier attitude towards the rules of "political correctness."
And I am almost entirely OK with non-offensive speech that indicates bigoted beliefs but doesn't sound like it's violating a taboo.
It's really not the kind of thing where a court-like investigation would help achieve my goals better.
How people respond to being accused of offensiveness is much more informative. Silence, pro forma apology, or sincere apology means they care at least somewhat about avoiding offense. Insistence on their good intent ("it was a joke", "it was ironic", "I didn't mean the thing you're reading into it") , or strident insistence on their right to offend means they don't actually care to avoid upsetting people.
Tearful complaint about how hard their life has been since being "cancelled" also tends to make me more sympathetic, I think independently of whether they apologize.
Like many things, it's about showing how much you care.
In some contexts, I want people to *care about other people's wishes*. I want people to aim to please, to fear giving displeasure, and to suffer when socially disapproved of -- and I *don't* want people to defy social norms or revel in giving offense.
But it is such fun to judge others, for the worse. Historically this has been the function of the community court known as the gossip circle. Without pariahdom and social shunning, a lot of novels would never have been written. Even today, one gender tends to indulge in it more. The other gender tends to limit personal judgements to "The boss is a ****" or "Brad Blag the greatest ball player of all time BS."
Cancel culture is extremely unfair to those without the social skills to properly thread the needle. Folks on the autism spectrum (James Damore at Google for example) think they're having a reasonable discussion and get crucified because they violated a social taboo they can't perceive. It's like getting mad at a sight-impaired person for bumping into you.
>we should have court proceedings regarding such accusations. Either because we’ve made saying bad things illegal
oh god
Do you think cancel culture is less bad in europe *because* they have criminalized the worst excesses of speech?
I’m not sure I understand where you are going with this. Are you suggesting fines and/or jail for hurting peoples feelings? Ostracism for being rude? Saying something politically incorrect gets you banned? Who gets to judge?