221–230 of 694 posts
It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
did you miss McCarthyism?
The high number of upvotes and low number of comments here says something, I think...
It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
Here's a counterpoint: in the last 150 years we've seen the enslavement and legally mandated racial segregation of African-Americans, same-sex marriages illegal until recently, enormous and largely forgot historical support of Hitler and Franco, a mass shooting of a synagogue amid a resurgence in neonazism, and are only celebrating 100 years of womens' right to vote. It's hard, from the outside of the bubble of this…
* The dutch translator for Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem quit after backlash due to the fact that they are a white, nonbinary individual rather than a "spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black". This despite the fact that they were specifically chosen by Gorman, herself a black female. [0]
* Back in 2018, a black female student at Smith College complained of being discriminated against for "eating while black" because she was asked to leave an area that had been marked as off-limits to everyone. Subsequent investigations revealed the employees involved did nothing wrong and did not target the student. Despite this, the New York Times reported last week that they continue to receive harassment and threats. One woman, a cafeteria worker who suffers from chronic health issues, can't find employment because of it. The ACLU has continued to insist that the employees wronged the student, despite the result of the investigations. [1]
* The YA fiction scene is constantly embroiled in controversy, often due to perceived crimes against woke culture. In one notable instance, the author Amelie Wen Zhao, a Chinese-American immigrant, had her upcoming novel cancelled and her career derailed due to the story involving a society in which people could be enslaved on a basis not involving the color of their skin. [2]
* A highly praised science fiction short story published in Clarksworld magazine called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter", written by a trans author who was repurposing the meme, was pulled (along with all of the author's future submissions) after intense public backlash towards the author by the Twitter woke mob. [3]
* Glenn Greenwald, a gay journalist, has been targeted in recent weeks as a "transphobe" for drawing attention to recent study defending a book questioning if young people are being pressured into transitioning too strongly against an ACLU lawyer who was publicly arguing the book should be censored, and for drawing attention to recent research regarding the skyrocketing rates of those who identify as LGBTQ in the youngest generations [4] [5]
Plenty of women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and the poor are being targeted and harmed for not toeing the cultural party line. This cultish group think is dangerous for individuals, and it's dangerous for our society, regardless of who you are.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-gorman-...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.htm...
[2] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/17/sci-fi-magazin...
[4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-s...
[5] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1364617687423471621
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normal feedback is down votes and replies. Cancel culture is messaging dang and asking him to ban you.
> Cancel culture is messaging dang and asking him to ban you. And your claim is that this sort of thing just started happening in the last decade or two?
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The easiest way to confront cancel culture is to embrace it and try to get everything cancelled for the most minor of reasons. Hopefully, people will just get fed up and ignore it. The hardest part will be to stop companies bowing to the twitter mob for fear of bad publicity. Also, twitter needs to go. Humans can't handle it.
I wonder if cancelling of really big companies start to happen. Make one misstep in advertising or messaging even in past and then have people attack your partners telling them to stop associating with your brand... I wonder if we ever properly reach that level. And if after a few big attempts social media companies would put stop to that...
[0] https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1395314/Andrew-Ne...
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Hardly so. There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive reach without much consequence or effort. The idea that we're in a dark age of thought is purely rhetorical and only serves to frame a narrative that further amplifies ideas that would never had a chance to propagate before the information era. Furthermore, we are living in a time of such…
Tell that to David Shor, among others - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...
> Shor is still consulting in Democratic politics, but he is no longer working for a firm that restricts his freedom to publicly opine.
This is why claims of "cancel culture" aren't taken seriously. If he was "cancelled", but is still gainfully employed in the field of his choice and expertise what does "cancelled" really mean?
It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
In 200 BC, if you were excommunicated from a tribe, it would be horrible, but you could walk 20 miles and join another tribe that hasn't heard or bought into the ostracization.
In 2021 AD, if you are excommunicated from an industry on the internet, there's nowhere else you can physically go. The entire intellectual globe is connected online. Excommunication is now worse than it used to be -- it's global.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting is that heretical liberals have the most to fear in this environment. MAGA people can't be cancelled, and it's a badge of honor if attempted. But well-meaning unorthodox liberals really have to watch themselves.
Leftists get canceled all the time (by liberals). Look at the censoring/smearing of Bernie Sanders and his supporters during the primary. Twitter bans leftist accounts all the time as well. Take a look at every VC in our industry and they espouse staunchly establishment neo-liberal policies. Calling Biden into question (which anyone on the left would do) is risking your career. The focus is often on censoring those o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's specifically about speaking properly. Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits, but everybody cares about the propriety of master/slave replication terminology. We're dealing with police violence by capitalizing Black in our style guides. Etc etc etc.
> Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits, I think quite a few people gave a shit? I think you're attacking a straw man, it is perfectly possible to have opinions on small stylistic issues (like master vs main) while also thinking that there are fundamental economic things that need to change.
I'm sure that people 'care', and I suppose I'm straw-manning those people.. I'm not straw-manning the system. Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged. It's an energy outlet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The easiest way to confront cancel culture is to embrace it and try to get everything cancelled for the most minor of reasons. Hopefully, people will just get fed up and ignore it. The hardest part will be to stop companies bowing to the twitter mob for fear of bad publicity. Also, twitter needs to go. Humans can't handle it.
I wonder if cancelling of really big companies start to happen. Make one misstep in advertising or messaging even in past and then have people attack your partners telling them to stop associating with your brand... I wonder if we ever properly reach that level. And if after a few big attempts social media companies would put stop to that...