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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

#331

Post by _moof »

ashtonkem wrote: post #321
Latty wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. Obviously not always, but often because you are viewing it through the a different lens: there is an unspoken "for people like me" missing from the end of their statement.

I think thats a big part of why powerful writers and journalists are complaining. They’re not used to the masses talking back to them, and they don’t like it very much.

They especially don't like that now, the people they're talking about get to respond directly to them.

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

#332

Post by coffeecat »

enraged_camel wrote: post #323
rayiner wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a "member of an unprivileged group?" If not, what exactly do you think life is like for us that we can't take a joke? Sticks and stones and whatnot: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rP0nqe... > Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent),…

>> Are you a "member of an unprivileged group?" If not, what exactly do you think life is like for us that we can't take a joke? ... In 30+ years of being a "brown guy" in the U.S., the only thing that's ever really gotten under my skin is the self-righteous paternalism of white liberals when it comes to the social norms related to race and identity. As another "brown guy" who has been in the US for decades, I can on…

What are some examples of jokes/bullying that you've encountered?

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

#333

Post by wanderer_ »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #223
gopher_space wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one. You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. My charitable view is that people are actually complaining about a monopoly on attention. It's an interesting subject but doesn't have anything to do with speech.

> You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and registrars refuse to register your domain. But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well.

While we're at it, let's just make an entirely new IP infrastructure.

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

#334

Post by javajosh »

noduerme wrote: post #21
Latty wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to. The underlying mechanism of Twitter is what gave birth to the term, regardless of whether it's used by haters to justify hate speech. One other thing that's ne…

>modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to

Wonderfully written, noduerme, and I comment first to expand on this part. The mob includes friends and family. To be shunned, or ostracized by friends and family can and does happen because of these incidents. To become associated with an ideology, even against your will, can put your employment at risk, as your employer does not want to be seen as supporting you. These are very dire consequences, equivalent to significant jail time, IMHO.

Second, I want to note that the phenomena is a failure of the justice system. That in an ideal world there would only be one justice and it would be fast and easy to access, and handle even the smallest matter promptly and fairly. These antics are wrong, but they point to a demand for righting wrongs that isn't being met by the current justice system.

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

#335

Post by mastazi »

In my opinion the main point that most discussions on "cancel culture" are missing, is that the real issue is actually deplatforming, not cancel culture.

In most of our recent history, the agora was the place for public speech, and the town square was not on private land, access to it was regulated by public laws, not by private corporations.

White in his article makes a distinction between free speech in the sense of being free from government censorship, and free speech in the sense of being free from other people's shunning.

But there is a third category now, free speech in the sense of being free from a handful of mega corporation's censorship.

They own the agora, and as such their censorship policies should be subject to similar strict regulations as government-enacted censorship.

When you see it from this angle, I think it's a fairly bipartisan problem, it's not just some bigot complaining that they can't say racist slurs on social media.

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

#336

Post by lliamander »

Misdicorl wrote: post #307
lliamander wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That grab-bag of issues suggests you have a confused notion of what constitutes "the right". For instance, how is police brutality a example of "right-wing cancel culture" when some of our most salient examples occurred in left-wing dominated cities? Not everything you disagree with is a political weapon used by your enemies. I will concede (though you didn't make this point explicitly) that the religious right has h…

Even left wing dominated cities have large numbers of right wing constituents. There are more registered Republicans in NYC than live in the entire state of Wyoming. Right wing cancel culture are lynch mobs and the literal bombing of an American city and the imprisonment of an unconscionable number of black males. While I agree the power is waning, saying that it isn't on par with a few people losing their jobs due t…

> Even left wing dominated cities have large numbers of right wing constituents.

To think this is the cause of police brutality is a stretch to put it mildly.

> Right wing cancel culture are lynch mobs and the literal bombing of an American city and the imprisonment of an unconscionable number of black males.

Again with the random grab of different grievances. None of these are relevant to this conversation, but explaining why would require a separate explanation for each one.

Instead of trying to throw whatever you can against the wall to see what sticks, why not pick one or two things you think are the best example of what you are arguing, and I can just refute that?

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

#337

Post by oh_sigh »

olivermarks wrote: post #255
tootie wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's still posting Ukrainian Nazi tweets. He owned up to the thing he was incontrovertibly wrong about but doesn't seem to be rethinking his approach.

I'd suggest that openly discussing the fact that Ukraine has a huge neo nazi problem is responsible reporting. I'm frankly surprised the many BBC and other documentaries on this huge problem from the last few years have not been removed from youtube given the sudden transformation of Ukraine into white hats in the current 'western'. This is why I read Taibbi, because the legacy media has lost so much credibility. (It…

Can you quantify "huge" for me? Is it bigger than the neo-nazi problem in Russia, or the US?

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

#339

Post by Banana699 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #303
Banana699 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor. It's bizarrely hilarious how "Progressives" mirror religious fundamentalists, down to the particular language used to dispel accusations of censorship and closed-mindedness. "You c…

> Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor. Completely disagree. Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language. > "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)" The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

>Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language

You completely missed the point, the "selective" part is doing most of the work. By having a vague and ill-defined rulebook that nobody but an ideologically homogeneous group of people can invoke and enforce, this group acts as a censor that selectively switches on and off certain expressions it deems "not polite".

You also uncritically assume that polite language is universal, capable of expressing any possible issue. If I told you "you can write any program you want, just don't use C/C++/Rust" I have effectively banned you from writing a huge variety of programs, from OSes to Interpreters. Similarly, some things are inherently non-polite to say, because they express non-polite truths, and those truths will always exist because the universe is under no obligation to be polite. You can never discuss (say) Putin's human rights abuses in polite language, nor can you ever discuss how sexual predators use a trendy identity to escape retribution in a polite way using nice words.

>The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

Not at all, see above for my reasoning for why this is a natural implication of your words. You are free to dispute the major 2 points it rests on.

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

#340

Post by rootusrootus »

lliamander wrote: post #238
Misdicorl wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Left has generally been far more likely to cancel people than the reverse. There are a number of possible causes (people on the left are more politically active, will be amplified by a left -leaning media industry, etc) I think this is more neatly described by the right having more mainstream and surreptitious avenues of "cancelling" people they don't like. Gang lists, credit scores, police intimidation/brutali…

That grab-bag of issues suggests you have a confused notion of what constitutes "the right". For instance, how is police brutality a example of "right-wing cancel culture" when some of our most salient examples occurred in left-wing dominated cities? Not everything you disagree with is a political weapon used by your enemies. I will concede (though you didn't make this point explicitly) that the religious right has h…

> that power has arguably been gone

That must be situational. In my circle of family and friends, religion is still extremely powerful. Even to the point where I demur when the topic of religion even looks like it could be discussed. I "pray" right along with everyone else at the dinner table at family gatherings.

And even on a national stage -- how many politicians will admit to being non-religious? There is still a tremendous amount of social power from the right.

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