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Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

popehat.substack.com

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Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#111

Post by krapp »

Latty wrote: post #5
BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

> "Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. When some people vaguely complain about “cancel culture” in a way that lends itself to promoting this constant partisanship, other people not unreasonably see it as partisan." Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Each one of us h…

> I don't know what Popehat actually wants here. For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm others would be a good start. People not wanting to patronize or associate with you when you cause harm to people they care about is really not a bad thing, and it's not new either, and yet it is what gets called "cancel culture" by a lot of people.…

>For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm others would be a good start.

That's never going to happen. Such people have a vested interest in gaining sympathy for their views and actions by discrediting their critics as nothing but a hateful mob or a conspiracy to silence and oppress them, and clearly their efforts are working. "Cancel culture" has itself become a moral panic akin to the Red Scare.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#112

Post by egberts1 »

biorach wrote: post #93
egberts1 wrote: post #70

I got blocked by Sacramento Bee (a California newspaper) Editorial from their Facebook page. Pretty sure that they didn’t like the different facts that I have pointed out over several different times as rebuttal to their dated opinions … with using each of their own website pages as counter-citations. But hey, Editorial folks reserve the rights to cancel me for their own idiocy of their own makings. It’s just the sli…

being blocked from a facebook page is not being cancelled

nope. that being blocked from a page is not the definition of “cancel culture”.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#113

Post by tptacek »

gambler wrote: post #105
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making White's point for him. You're implying that free speech should be at least as important as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic. This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How do you coherently isola…

A) Criticizing an idea so that others understand how it is flawed. B) "Criticizing" an idea to get it expunged from various media to manipulate what ideas people are exposed to. If you even pretend that there is no difference between A and B, you're not worth intellectually engaging with.

Then you shouldn't have any problem with what Ken White is saying here, because he makes that distinction at great length.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#114

Post by klyrs »

jimbokun wrote: post #76
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making White's point for him. You're implying that free speech should be at least as important as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic. This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How do you coherently isola…

It's a norm not a law. Be open to a broad array of viewpoints and opinions, as a general rule. It makes you a better human being.

My opinion is that Joe Dingleberry* should shut up, because I've already heard his opinion and find it uninteresting. Are you open to my opinion, or just Joe's?

* name changed to protect the uninteresting

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#115

Post by asdff »

amriksohata wrote: post #64

The mainstream media is getting choked with pressure from social media and alternate news sources. I have seen a pattern across many of the major outlets who used to have more conservative approach to reporting, are now becoming more and more daring and bombastic with headlines for clicks and attention

Seems to be keeping things afloat though. You would think if all the predictions were correct that mainstream media would cease to exist at this point, now that it's common for literally everyone to have a smartphone and social media. And yet, it survives to this day, so clearly there's demand for whatever they are serving.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#117

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jimbokun wrote: post #82
ashtonkem wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new. … One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. They used to kill people for advocating for integration and civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble…

Speech is far more free in the US today than in, say, the 1950s and 1960s. But I would argue less free than, say, the 1990s.

I can see an argument for it, but it's worth noting that there was quite a lot of censorship in the 90s that people don't often remember nowadays. Remember when MTG and D&D completely removed "demon" and "devil" from their lexicon? Remember when Nintendo localization policies required removing every cross from every game?

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#118

Post by TameAntelope »

lrem wrote: post #96

That's a lot of words to say "people are free to steer clear of people they don't like and always have been". And not much of thought into "what changed that now it is a problem perceived by some?" There has been a fundamental change to our reality over the past couple decades: things you say and do are now by default in public and permanent record. If your not-too-famous grandpa said something outrageous, he ruined…

> If you write an outrageous blog post today, you're hosed.

This just isn’t true, and I’m not sure why the discussion around cancel culture is framed like it is true.

It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing. You can say literally anything you want if you can figure out how to be nice when you say it, but you do have to put real effort into that endeavor.

Getting canceled isn’t a landmine, it’s a tar pit.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#119

Post by Animats »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

> "Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. When some people vaguely complain about “cancel culture” in a way that lends itself to promoting this constant partisanship, other people not unreasonably see it as partisan." Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Each one of us h…

Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity.

He does seem to be obsessing over nomenclature. A more useful question is, what happens if you express an unpopular opinion? Do you get fired? Arrested? Lynched? Torn to bits by a mob? Shamed on social media? Blocked by social media companies? Can't get published in major media? Attacked by TV pundits? Not invited to the good parties? Also, how long does this go on, and is it retroactive for things said in the past?

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#120

Post by danShumway »

pessimizer wrote: post #52
ashtonkem wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new. … One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings. They used to kill people for advocating for integration and civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble…

They used to imprison people for sending information about birth control through the mail. I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. The most common phrase quoted by people to describe a hypothetical rational limit on speech[*] was cribbed from a case that found it was ok to imprison people for passing out pamphlets against WWI. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fi…

There's a huge lack of education and cultural understanding about just how much freedom of speech we have today compared to what it was like in the past. Overall, people in America are more free today to say things than they used to be in the past, period. They have more mediums that they can publish to, it is easier than ever before for them to get support and to connect with communities, and legal protections have literally never been better.

I think part of it is that dominant parts of culture were never in a position to experience past censorship. Some of it might just be short memories. Some of it is probably bad faith, or that attacks on Twitter feel more real for some people. But the lack of perspective is a real problem. You don't have to go far into the past to find out that there were tons of taboo topics and ideas that could not be talked about, both because of legal restrictions and gatekeepers, and because of a lack of tolerance from society, and because the mediums through which to talk about them were just so much more centralized and exclusive than they are today.

Even today, I find that free speech advocates (and I consider myself to be a free speech advocate) are often uneducated about the scale of censorship that happens outside of mainstream culture.

It's really disappointing and frustrating. Academics get a tiny, tiny sliver of the kind of backlash that marginalized groups get when they protest dominant narratives, and it's the end of the world -- because many of them have just never encountered real, hard censorship before and they don't have a frame of reference. Or less charitably, they just don't care about having a frame of reference and it's all just a narrative tool for them.

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