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Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

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Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#461

Post by tryonenow »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #403
falcolas wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that even matter? It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.

Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with. Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a co…

>Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with

This is the mindset at fault. This idea that intolerance is objective, when clearly it isn't. This idea that certain ideas, regardless of their merit, are simply intolerant and must be met with collective, unilateral intolerance, which typically aligns with progressive politics.

>Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it

This is an ironic take, considering the entire premise behind cancel culture is a collective authoritarianism.

>Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract.

And this is perhaps the most misleading part of the comment. This isn't strictly about private companies cancelling people (although that's also a problem when incentives are aligned to effectively remove cancelees from the public square). This is about rabid, authoritarian mobs attacking individuals for dissent, and the fact that loud minorities are dictating corporate action with a specific political slant.

People were complaining about cancel culture long before politicians. And possibly the most pressing issue is the fact that it isn't that these ideas themselves are intolerant, or even factually incorrect, it's the fear of some of their implications that is responsible for this conditioned suppression of their discourse, and unpersoning of anyone daring enough to ask certain questions. It's like banning research on fission because it could be used to create nuclear weapons. It's egregious anti-intellectualism to forbid certain questions or discussions strictly because of their worst implications.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#462

Post by KittenInABox »

dogman144 wrote: post #113

If you talk to someone who works/worked in publishing or the creative arts scenes (MFA programs, etc.), you'll see that KI is likely specifically addressing that crowd - his industry. I think a lot of the general populace is aware of the dynamics that he's talking about, but in publishing it's another world/level. Interesting example that's the norm in the space: the story "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter…

Some of the things to point out about Isabel Fall:

1. Isabel Fall was a pseudonym, with no other works attached to this pseudonym.

2. Isabel Fall only states in the bio having been born in 1988. (88 is a dogwhistle for nazi).

3. The piece itself was military science fiction, which already has a bad reputation among progressive circles (case in point: a prominent military scifi publisher's forum just got closed down after it was reported their mods were literally calling for violence against the cops protecting the white house at the 1/6 riot).

4. The work was describing gender in a way that itself has some controversy, commentating on the physical/body expression of gender as well as the nonphysical/performance expression of gender.

All these together created a powder keg where people literally believed that somehow Isabel Fall was a nazi who had pulled the wool over the eyes of one of the most prominent science fiction and fantasy magazines in the industry to get paid professional rate work and platform transphobia. The actual truth was extremely messy, Isabel Fall herself reportedly was hospitalized for suicide, and people are still talking about it year+ later.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#463

Post by rayiner »

standardUser wrote: post #27
bitcharmer wrote: post #5

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.

Do you remember the 1990s?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#464

Post by colllectorof »

bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

>We've always had cancel culture.

It seems pretty obvious that you don't understand that any culture has norms and boundaries, but only pathological cultures become entirely reactionary and define themselves purely in terms of opposition to something.

>You can go back further to McCarthyism

That's exactly what we're going back to and you have to be truly blind to think this is a good thing.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#465

Post by KittenInABox »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #80

Can you really blame authors? Anything that is even mildly controversial can easily result in effectively being banned from participating on various platforms. More recent example of this weird feedback loop is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Atta...

Isabel Fall is a pseudonym; she can likely publish elsewhere under a different name.

(This doesn't mean the response was proportionate or appropriate. The response to that story was way too far. But Isabel Fall herself can publish elsewhere under another pseudonym.)

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#466

Post by cozuya »

guerrilla wrote: post #460
cozuya wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of people being cancelled by a small amount of anonymous people? I can't think of any. Lets looks at Gina Carano for example. She was "cancelled" (fired from her job) as the direct result of her social media posting things a large number of people found offensive and inappropriate, not a small amount. 10 anonymous people didn't cause it, hundreds of thousands of people thought it was wrong.

The Inquisition, witch trials, outing people as gay, most of the history of the Jews..

The OP specifically says "social media".

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#467

Post by president »

nine_k wrote: post #450
bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

The underpinnings of the "cancel culture", the intolerance and mob mentality, were always around. The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not…

Spot on. The interesting thing to note about the "mob mentality" of cancel culture in 2021 is that it is truly "power to the people". Essentially you have major corporations, politicians, and a media environment that are ceding to the cancelling demands of a certain majority because they will reap the rewards of this massive group of people whether that is more sales/profits, more votes, or more views. It is a story of a society that does whatever it needs to win, regardless of the collateral damage it creates.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#468

Post by 3np »

mc32 wrote: post #395
dahfizz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just about everyone I speak to about the subject agrees that cancel culture is bad but very few people seem willing to confront it. I sense that people hope the rest of society will come to its senses and we all stop being so judgemental. I found this[1] article very interesting. Basically, only 2% of American adults generate over 80% of all tweets. "Cancel Culture" really is run by a few extremists who have a loud…

That may be so, but you don’t want to end up being an unwitting victim. One of the first instances early on on Twitter was that young marketing woman going to South Africa making a sarcastic anti-racism tweet before boarding only to learn after landing a brouhaha was brewing leading to her firing because the mob wanted to see it as racist.

I guess you’re talking about the IAC PR director publishing the following:

  Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!
if you’re directing PR for internet companies and post something like this from a public profile associated with your workplace - yeah, I wouldn’t call them an “unwitting victim”, and I think they would have lost that job if they made the same joke on a talk show in the 90s.

That being said, I find it crazy how easily people get fired with no recourse in general in the USA. Seems like even personal dislike from management is legal grounds for termination?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#469

Post by mxcrossb »

Solvitieg wrote: post #435
bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right. I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/

I also find this topic far more interesting than the fairly cliche discussion over “cancel culture”. It seems like conservatives have caught up to post modernism, whereas liberals are now passionate about objective truth and morality being black and white. I really wonder how tenable these positions are going forward.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#470

Post by dragonwriter »

fallingknife wrote: post #224
whimsicalism wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago. Hear about them all the time now.

> I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago.

That's probably because you weren't listening, possibly because it was 30 years into the right whining about that under the label “political correctness” and everyone had learned to tune it out.

Now they've got a new label and marketing effort behind selling it as the boogeyman, and everything old is new again.

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