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

bbc.com

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

#481

Post by 3np »

d1zzy wrote: post #382
IAmWorried wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, poisoning my dog or vandalizing my car is illegal. Whipping up a twitter mob is legal and highly encouraged by an enormous number of people. I try not to be an ass to anyone, but jealousy and envy exists. It's now impossible for me to relax around some acquaintances who are unemployed while I pull in a big tech salary. All in all, I really made my mind up on this issue back during the BLM protests. This cancel…

I've unfortunately have discovered that the people who I thought to be friends (smart, funny, kind) have completely changed their attitude once they found out my employer. Now I have to watch out everything I say around them because it's all assumed to come from a place of evil intent and interpreted in the worst case possible. Lesson learned: do not share your work place with anyone you want to keep being friends wi…

Do you work at Palantir or the GOPs social media department or something? Because that sounds extreme and can’t be just about income levels

BTW it’s freeing coming from a country where discussing income and money is taboo. I don’t even know what my parents earn. It has its downsides as well, but it’s nice not even being able to judge.

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

#482

Post by WillPostForFood »

KittenInABox wrote: post #452
IAmWorried wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's viewpoints like yours that I despise the most. We have innocent people losing their careers with no due process, just mob justice, and what do you people do? "Oh, republicans did it 30 years ago, so any criticism is invalid." Honestly, F that. I was never even alive for what you are talking about. How about we try to build a better society where people don't lose their jobs for their views, rather than…

I think this person isn't saying it's fine. They're pointing out that the outrage about this is dissociated from the fact that this has been a longstanding problem and therefore likely has significantly deeper issues than the surface-level symptoms (eg. self-censorship).

Pointing out one incident almost 20 years ago isn't evidence of a long standing problem. The world is a different place with social media today, making the problem both more widespread, and more damaging to people. There have always been boycotts and attempts at cancellation, but the power of the mob is amplified in the current moment.

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

#483

Post by throwawaygh »

xenophonB wrote: post #386
throwawaygh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things happen to homosexuals and non-Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and with MUCH greater frequency. When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take the cancel culture bugbear seriously.

It's not 1960 lol, there are not vast swathes of the country where that happens, since the liberal left has almost total control via the Federal bureaucracy for enforcing their values everywhere, not just in blue states

This isn’t true.

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

#484

Post by UncleMeat »

swayvil wrote: post #444
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…

Cancel culture used to be just a bear in woods. Scary but not super scary. Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle. It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference. And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.

It was just never scary to social conservatives. Gay people got "cancelled" so hard they were thrown in jail and disowned from their families.

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

#485

Post by dghlsakjg »

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.

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'anti-racism', even if the 'punchline' hinges on the uncomfortable truth that black africans are disproportionately the victims of HIV, it is very much punching down.

Is it in very bad taste? absolutely yes. Is it something that needed to be #1 trending on twitter? no. Is it something that should noticeably alter the path of someone's life? Not in any world I would choose to live in.

I do agree with your premise, a single joke in very bad taste by a non-public entity is a non-event. I think that we all have something somewhere in our closet that could be twisted against us by cancel culture.

The scariest part is that there is no redemption. A picture or recording of you doing something reprehensible when you were 17 will be used against you years later. Cancel culture needs to recognize that people grow and change. We need to recognize that young people say and do stupid shit without understanding the full context of what they are doing, or the potential consequences.

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

#486

Post by KittenInABox »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #482
KittenInABox wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this person isn't saying it's fine. They're pointing out that the outrage about this is dissociated from the fact that this has been a longstanding problem and therefore likely has significantly deeper issues than the surface-level symptoms (eg. self-censorship).

Pointing out one incident almost 20 years ago isn't evidence of a long standing problem. The world is a different place with social media today, making the problem both more widespread, and more damaging to people. There have always been boycotts and attempts at cancellation, but the power of the mob is amplified in the current moment.

Multiple incidents were pointed out, and I legitimately don't know if it's more damaging today than it was before. This is a country that burned black wall street to the ground over an accusation. I actually, seriously don't know if the problem is more widespread or more damaging given the history in the USA.

I will say it is most certainly a problem, and I think it likely has much deeper roots than "social media exists, only now are people being hurt by mob mentality". It may be that social media only makes mob mentality more obvious to people, so now everyone is aware of it. But then the problem is why did we ever develop mob mentality in the first place....

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

#487

Post by mc32 »

3np wrote: post #468
mc32 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s in poor taste. Should not have been tweeted. It was an anti-racist commentary, but you know the mob, throw them some fresh meat.

In firing her the company is complicit in casting her as racist when her sarcasm was pointed at low brow racism. But that escaped the shamers and cancellors. They were too busy frothing at the mouth.

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

#488

Post by UncleMeat »

runawaybottle wrote: post #35
BitwiseFool wrote: post #14

I genuinely wonder what cancel culture is going to look like in the next 5-10 years and beyond. 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. But as much as I loathe cancel culture and it's chilling effects on the free exchange…

Cancel culture scared the ever living shit out of everyone, even everyday people. Whether you like it or not, it got every male in the workplace to not even breathe in the direction of women you work with. The movement permeated through normal life fast . It was extremely efficient in bringing forth the necessary changes. I have no problem with using the chainsaw as needed, but we need to careful about when we use it…

> Whether you like it or not, it got every male in the workplace to not even breathe in the direction of women you work with.

Jesus Christ. No it didn't.

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

#489

Post by throwawaygh »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #371
core-questions wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Seems like a typical parenthetical elite, with all the connections and intrigue that go with it. His history is a standard playbook of actions benefiting himself and his people over everyone else.

His speech elicited a walk-out. It was received very badly and it led to his ouster. As far as I can tell he’s done well for himself since then, but that’s because he already had a network of connections. One misconstrued speech was all it took to ruin a chance to lead a premier east coast uni.

This thread started as a discussion about Liberty discriminating against boring rank and file faculty/gay students, and ended with “the world is ending because being president of an elite university is a GASP political job!” (Newsflash: uni prez is a deeply political job in every sense of the word and has been since the birth of the university many hundreds of years ago)

The idiocy of that conversational arc is basically the point I’m trying to make.

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

#490

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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