'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry' • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#301

Post by jandrese » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #187

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #7

what interests me is: how do people maintain their integrity in such a foul environment? I mean if you can't look yourself in the mirror then how do you keep on creating anything?

I'd have sex with a rich and powerful woman in exchange for millions of dollars and I wouldn't feel the slightest bit of shame.

Remember that said woman would look like Harvey Weinstein.

But this sort of behavior reinforces the idea that the industry would be filled with shameless people who would do anything to get ahead. Actual talent would be at best a secondary factor to success. We have lost generations of talented artists simply because they had a shred of integrity.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#302

Post by mr-wendel » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

mathgorges wrote: post #240

mr-wendel wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great questions, and I applaud your ability to approach a sensitive topic with such open curiosity. Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit. - The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized p…

Thanks for this. These sort-of argument catalogue comments are very helpful in these discussions. And your call out at the bottom is good wisdom :) Edit: this->these

You bet! Now, if you'll allow me to try to present the other side for your consideration:

- Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick.

- That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic.

- People are learning how horrible it is to rely on power and privilege to isolate you from the effects of your wrong-doing. Even if we assume the best of people and that they aren't consciously doing this, it is still pushing awareness closer to consciousness and thus (hopefully) better decision making.

- The importance of allyship is making massive strides. As oft quoted, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". On a personal note, as a kid watching a neighborhood kid get his bully-buddy to stop throwing snowballs at another kid taught me a lesson I've never forgotten.

- "Good" and "bad" deeds always have a "blast radius" and require support of some kind to sustain. Engaging organizations and platforms that surround people is a critical component to making a change, or all you're doing is swapping the hood ornament on the car without touching the engine underneath.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#303

Post by jandrese » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

FriedrichN wrote: post #3

I would be surprised if it wasn't the case. Industries like these have too many 'king makers' and people idolize the established figures too much. It's basically the same mechanism by which the abuse is facilitated in closed religious communities.

Power corrupts. If you want to find industries with sexual abuse problems look for ones where the power is concentrated in a handful of unelected people, doubly so if those people form an "old boys club".

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#304

Post by trhway » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #252

nostromo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roman Polanski won an Oscar after pleading guilty to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Look at all these vile people applauding this villain, who couldn't accept his Oscar because he fled the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnNOBj26lk In some ways I think we may have over responded (Aziz Ansari is not Harvey Weinstein), but it was shocking what behavior people were excusing from the powerful even in r…

> Look at all these vile people applauding this villain Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. Not at all. Imagine a clearer example. Imagine that somebody is on a life sentence convicted of a murder that they have commited. Do you think that this person has the right to write a book? Can this book be sent for participation at a literary contest? Can it win? Does the jury that gives th…

>Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile.

depends on the way of the acknowledgement. If the movie is the best - you give the Oskar as that is the rules of the game (though you can also follow the example of many professional associations like say doctors and lawyers who completely exclude criminally immoral people, talented or not, from their ranks. Movie industry not doing it is already a kind of a tell about the industry's ethics.), yet you definitely don't have to applaud and celebrate. Applauding and celebrating is what makes you personally vile and supporter and validator.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#305

Post by 01100011 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #91

I've been working for 25+ years in huge, international, rich companies — at very senior (tech) levels. Plenty of travel, plenty of team building, plenty of dinners and hotels. My wife asked me a few times about the orgies the movies show, and damn it, I must have always been at the wrong parties. It is interesting how this varies by companies and organizations.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of serious, dedicated folks in the upper ranks of most businesses... and then there are other types of folks. Ex-CEO of Broadcom is one example. I worked at a startup where the well-connected CTO invited me to come to Tijuana with him and the secretary for a night of indiscretions. I've found having long hair and looking like a partier gets people to open up to you and you find out some of the straight laced folks you thought you knew are much different.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#306

Post by munificent » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

mathgorges wrote: post #194

mensetmanusman wrote: post #61

The internet is enabling a new norm in reducing the cost of calling out behavior. Some of this is good, e.g. calling out sexual abuse. Some of this is bad, e.g. cancel culture that has no means of forgiveness.

I've seen this take quite a bit lately with respect to cancel culture and I'm a bit confused about it. Since HN is amazing, I'm hoping someone here can help me understand without it turning into a flamewar. I don't understand how "cancel culture" is substantially different from what we used to call "boycotts", just with the internet for more social lubrication. I suppose theres a risk that the allegations at the cent…

The surface level distinction is that a boycott is aimed at an organization while canceling is aimed at a person. That has deeper consequences because our mental model of organizations and people is different.

With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved.

But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future.

Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill.

It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of.

In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#307

Post by jandrese » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #107

api wrote: post #14

Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse. It comes in various forms: sexual or other inappropriate favors for advancement, verbal abuse, or just abusive working conditions like sweatshop hours and burnout culture.

I wonder about game development, it shares a lot of the traits.

Game development is probably saved because most studios had (have?) really serious gender imbalances. I wouldn't be surprised of reports of harassment by the female devs, but they make up such a small percentage of the population that it doesn't change the entire hiring dynamic like it does in the music industry.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#308

Post by jmoss20 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #136

api wrote: post #14

Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse. It comes in various forms: sexual or other inappropriate favors for advancement, verbal abuse, or just abusive working conditions like sweatshop hours and burnout culture.

> Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse. You've perfectly described capitalism where every capitalist state consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace. Once they've done that, people are always fighting each other a…

As far as I understand, the first claim:

> [capitalist states] consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.

is true, and not particularly controversial. Too little unemployment is assumed (true or not) to lead to inflation and inefficiency.

(Although, I'm not sure the second claim follows. If unemployment is reduced by, say, drastically lowering the minimum wage, I don't see why things would look any different. Unemployment isn't the problem, here anyway.)

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#309

Post by dkersten » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

mathgorges wrote: post #226

jimkleiber wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one thing that I've noticed is that defamation laws seem really hard to enforce on people speaking on the internet, especially when one can hide behind a pseudonym or straight anonymity. I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civ…

Thats a fair take. I hadn't considered the sort-of agenda that boycotts tend to have. I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling. _____ You lost me a bit on: > Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual... I've been conceptualizing the…

When I hear "cancel culture", I think of the cases where someone is accused of something, usually over social media, and without any real chance to defend themselves gets attacked and harassed by a hordes of anonymous strangers online in a witch hunt, typically alongside death threats and demanding that their employers fire them.

So, unless you sent DojaKat death threats or tried to have her fired/have her l7income taken away, I don't see a boycott like that as the same as "cancel culture" at all.

Re: 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

#310

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #186

alexashka wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse. You've perfectly described capitalism where every capitalist state consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace. Once they've done that, people are always fighting each other a…

I would qualify this by saying many want to be in specific entertainment industries for the (potential) glamor and fame, and will sacrifice a lot to reach that goal. Many may have more practical alternatives , but are driven by a goal. This is the land of opportunity, and many dream of taking a shot at the big-time while still young and attractive. That window of time closes fast. The idea of possibly being the next…

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