Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear' • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by dash2 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 8:58 AM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #659

dash2 wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how your first paragraph is relevant. Nobody here is claiming that we need to end democracy! Similarly, nobody is arguing for a system where a few control the entire popular media. (And the current media landscape looks nothing like that: there have never been more different news sources available at the click of a button, and anybody who wants can start one up.) Lastly, again your third paragraph…

> And the current media landscape looks nothing like that Yes, congratulations, you found the point. The current media landscape is nothing like that, because the current media landscape is only about 10 years old. For all of modern history until the introduction of social media sites like youtube, twitter, and facebook, the only way to spread information or opinion was to get the editors of for-profit media companie…

That is obviously not an adequate description of cancel culture.

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

#682

Post by nyolfen » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #541

nyolfen wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe internally, but i haven't heard of conservatives getting random kids on twitter expelled from school lately

> haven't heard of conservatives getting random kids on twitter expelled from school lately I have, for actual kids (as in children, not young adults), including lately. Usually for something like “their mother has an OnlyFans page”.

this example is obviously reprehensible but does not seem like the same phenomenon

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

#683

Post by PhilosAccnting » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #415

standardUser wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the realm of music, I think the mainstream has stayed roughly the same size but the rest of music has exploded in size and variety via Spotify/Bandcamp/Soundcloud/YouTube. Instead of zines there's a million or so blogs and forums and newsletters. Podcasts are an entirely new realm and only a tiny sliver of it cracks the mainstream. The number of outlets for "TV shows" has exploded, so there's plenty that comes and…

If they rely on YT, IG, etc for monetization or promotion, they risk having monetization revoked or being entirely deplatformed.

While that's true, I tend to imagine it like a horde of mosquitoes, a bit like Paul Graham's idea[1], but applicable to social trends. I wrote a whole essay on trend movement that leads me to believe the pendulum is close to swinging.[2]

[1] https://observer.com/2011/06/paul-graham-outlines-the-mosqui... (and he also has an essay that I was too lazy to find about startups) [2]https://gainedin.site/trends

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

#684

Post by mywittyname » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #457

mywittyname wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.

By “vanished from the mainstream” you mean their 2003 album still went 6x platinum, and then their 2007 album went 2x platinum and won 5 Grammys?

Yeah, you unexpectedly demonstrated how effective the ban was. After being blacklisted from thousands of radio stations (including ClearChannel, one of the biggest), their album sales plummeted. Except in Canada.

Also, their next studio album came 14 years (!!!) after Taking The Long Way.

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

#685

Post by jtbayly » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

bosswipe wrote: post #674

jtbayly wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re trying to tell me what I believe, you’re wrong. By the way, I’m a pastor. If you’re trying to tell me what Muslims believe, you’re also wrong. Saying that Jesus is the Son of God is very different from saying that He is a prophet of God. That difference is precisely why Muslims cannot agree that Jesus is the Son of God and why I cannot agree that Muhammad is a prophet of God.

Geez Christians can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that the traditions derive from the same jewish abrahmic God. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.

Me: Javascript is a version of Java for the web.

Techy: Ummm... no.

Me: Techies can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that Java and Javascript are both programming languages. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.

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

#686

Post by throwaway894345 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #662

jokethrowaway wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not parent throwaway) Just because nazis used their free speech right to do their propaganda, that doesn't mean free speech caused nazism. In order to do any propaganda (whether that's for a morally good or bad cause), you need to be able to talk to people. The first thing nazis did was to revoke free speech rights. That's an example of authoritarianism and free speech being opposites.

The parent commenter was claiming that free speech prevents nazism, which any honest look at the history of authoritarianism shows to be categorically untrue.

I argued no such thing. Allow me to quote myself:

> Indeed, authoritarianism in general and Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc in particular always starts with speech restrictions

Authoritarianism virtually requires restrictions on speech to come into its own.

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

#687

Post by tptacek » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #553

jtbayly wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. That’s pretty much like saying that you’re attempting to further Facebook’s goals as a Google employee. Of course you get fired.

She was fired for saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same god, which is literally heresy according to many Christians: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-m... . Jews and Muslims reject the trinity, which is an essential part of the confession of faith in most branches of Christianity. So it’s quite loaded to say that the Jewish and Muslim god is “the same” as the Christian god.

I guess. The Jesuits taught me they were all pretty much the same dude.

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

#688

Post by idlewords » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #553

jtbayly wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. That’s pretty much like saying that you’re attempting to further Facebook’s goals as a Google employee. Of course you get fired.

She was fired for saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same god, which is literally heresy according to many Christians: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-m... . Jews and Muslims reject the trinity, which is an essential part of the confession of faith in most branches of Christianity. So it’s quite loaded to say that the Jewish and Muslim god is “the same” as the Christian god.

It's exactly the same God. Islam is basically Judaism fanfic, and Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet of God (though denying his divinity). Christians are upset about the Mohammed thing, and about the two other faiths downgrading Jesus, but there's no question that the dude doing the smiting in the Old Testament is the same God in all three Abrahamic traditions.

Different religions are going to have angry doctrinal differences by definition, but you can't let that obscure the obvious. We're not talking about tengrism or Brahma here.

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

#689

Post by dogman144 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

KittenInABox wrote: post #462

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 a…

It seems Isabel was "verified trans," and had sensitivity reading done. As lived experience is the metric that matters here, and then she/they got the additional verification done, that's the full stop here. She/they lived it, she/they got sensitivity readings done, and QED she/they can write about it... at least as the current rules go.

All your points largely summarize to there being some suspicious aspects to her/their identity, and because of that, shoot first and ask questions later was apparently ok.

"Because we as an industry are hyper tuned to any slip up on these key metrics, let's verbally slaughter whoever has some oddities to their author profile regarding these metrics."

Given that Isabel ended up in a hospital, as you said, the lack of introspection from the publishing community once the facts of the matter came out is ugly and why many authors are terrified for their careers.

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

#690

Post by dogman144 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

heterodoxxed wrote: post #354

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…

| that's an insane dynamic to create in What do you think Twitter would have looked like in 1956 when James Baldwin published Giovanni's Room ? Is the problem "cancel culture" (a nebulous term which means little) or simply the result of giving everyone on earth a place to complain?

I don't think it's cancel culture in the way normal folks are tuned into it, but it's pretty similar.

Writers aren't homogeneous in their beliefs, but a lot of writers and a lot of publishing/news industry folks all went the same schools for university, MFAs, writer-in-residences, and so on. The dynamic at those shared spaces is source code of wokeness. If you read that NYT article on Smith recently, that's the vibe and also the tip of the iceberg.

What goes on is well meaning but emotionally immature adults hyper-policing each other. As they all sort of believe the same stuff anyway (vaguely left/progressive), there's an odd aspect of one-upsmanship to it. If you add in the stress of a career in the arts, I think power-seeking/insecurity is heavily involved as well: I'm going to make no money unless I really luck out, I'm going to go face a 0.01% chance of getting published, I won't have much medical or retirement savings, but I can control this aspect of my life and my community, so I'll do that.

The end result is this wild form of cultural policing that has all the hallmarks of bullying.

As it's a very tight network of a few undergrads and a few MFAs which produce a lot of the artists and folks working in publishing and journalism, you see it spilling out of their dorms and into corporations and profit spaces. The mainstream workforce gets a little bit of this through their HR departments now, but it's a different level in publishing.

It's hard to describe without talking to someone that's done an MFA or similar, but hopefully that helps. Testimonies of professors who finally lost their s*t with their universities over this same stuff are also accurate, but because it's often an old white dude who's a comp sci professor doing the public pushback, they'll never be the right advocate to turn things around. That's what makes the Smith admin employee who's finally speaking out so interesting, as that's "one of their own."