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'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assumpt…

>This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians.

I was with you up until here. This is blatantly wrong. Regular people are being cancelled all the time. Besides, people in prestigious positions deserve due process just like anyone else. Cancel culture intentionally circumvents any semblance of due process or fairness.

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

#352
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.

To be a little more precise, I think the conditions are

1. The job is incredibly rewarding, both in terms of money and fame.

2. There are thousands of pretty much equally qualified people for the job.

Here the "hiring manager" clearly has enormous leverage.

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

#353
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds nice. But in the real world all humans are both sinners and saints at the same time. Good luck being the one with the power to decide what an upstanding citizen is. This is cancel culture in a nutshell. There’s a reason “don’t meet your heroes” is a saying. The problem is not appreciating the good works of someone who has also done bad things —- the problem is when we assume prima facie that just because someo…

I'm reminded of this quote which I once saw on lesswrong.com The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .” —Marc Stiegler, David’s Sling It's t…

This sounds like an ungenerous interpretation of the parent. They are saying - all humans do good things and bad things. You are attacking the argument - all humans are the same. Those two assertions are totally different.

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

#354
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone on HN once linked this Twitter thread and I made a point of jotting it down. https://mobile.twitter.com/sooppressed/status/12824046471609... I feel a real urge to say, for the record, that I don’t consider myself strongly “anti-cancel culture” or whatever, just that I understand the skepticism towards it and think that it’s referring to something that exists and at the very least has amped up since the end of…

Yeah, but huge grain of salt there. Several of references in that thread are being twisted out of proportion. Also, they couldn't be bothered to find single example where someone is being "canceled" or ridiculed for being too PC, which makes me think this is an axe-grind-with-the-left issue and less decrying the practice.

There are a plethora of examples. Republicans who disagree with Trump are getting labeled "RINO" and censured by their parties.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assumpt…

_Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I posted about the only cancel I've intentionally been involved in elsewhere: I like an artist named DojaKat. A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it. I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel). Some…

> _Are_ cancels intended to be permanent?

I mean, I'm no authority on any of this. But my impression is that most of the high profile cancelations I've seen have no attached list of demands at which point the person is considered to have made amends and can return to their previous stature.

> Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?

Unless you were publicly telling other people that they shouldn't stream her then I wouldn't interpret it as any kind of "cancel". We're all free to stop consuming from anyone for whatever reason we like. That's not canceling people, it's just having a preference.

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

#357

I'll be bold and say it's the media industry has a problem. I remember family members having problems/reservations with Weinstein's behavior back in the 90's . People like Corey Feltman have been speaking up for years. But nobody cares because we're getting good cinema and TV, right? A huge part of these industries are based on 'favors' and 'networking'. Toss in the theory that you have a higher-than-baseline level o…

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…

You can see Harvey Weinstein applauding at 1:17 in the linked video.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assumpt…

>This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. I was with you up until here. This is blatantly wrong. Regular people are being cancelled all the time. Besides, people in prestigious positions deserve due process just like anyone else. Cancel culture intentionally circumvents any semblance of due process or fairness.

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

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assumpt…

>This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. I was with you up until here. This is blatantly wrong. Regular people are being cancelled all the time. Besides, people in prestigious positions deserve due process just like anyone else. Cancel culture intentionally circumvents any semblance of due process or fairness.

For the record, I'm not making any statement either for or against "cancel culture" in general, just articulating how I think it differs from boycotts.

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

#360
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entertainers can work their whole lives to break into the business, investing their heart and soul into it, only for one gatekeeper to hold all of that hostage. They hold incredible leverage. That's in no way similar to offering someone a few quid for sex.

It's exactly the same, as long as someone will want to go the extra inch to make anything more than their competitor, this behavior will stay.

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