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Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

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

#341

Post by ashtonkem »

jandrese wrote: post #306
akhmatova wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. This is the cortisone rush that tptacek was referring to. You need to let it go through you (or past you) until you feel your mental gears loosen up again. Then step back and look at the bigger picture. What the editorial author meant was not some kind of absolute freedom from the threat of being shamed or shunned. But that, once upon a…

> Spouting sheer idiocy can (and should) get you shunned and shamed This is where the modern world has an issue. The window of what is considered beyond the pale has grown quite a big larger than it was in the past. In the old days you would never hear the President of the US repeating obviously fabricated insane conspiracy theories.

> The window of what is considered beyond the pale has grown quite a big larger than it was in the past.

Nonsense. I was born into a world where being gay was beyond the pale. My parents were born into a world where interracial marriage was beyond the pale, and advocating for integration in some states could get you shot. For most of my grandparents lives it was literally a crime to be a socialist, or to hand out leaflets opposing WW1. When my parents were children the state was busy arresting people for distributing information about birth control, and beating up anti-war protesters. There was a government agency that controlled “decency” in media. When I was growing up people lost careers over protesting the Iraq War. Jon Stewart lost his first hosting job after Marilyn Manson burned a bible on set, and Sinead O’Connor got death threats for (correctly) accusing the pope of covering up child sexual abuse on SNL.

We are not a perfect country, there is always room for improvement. But the idea that the range of “cancelable” acts is wider than it used to be is absolute nonsense. We have way more free speech now than we’ve ever had in our past, its not even close.

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

#342

Post by rootusrootus »

president wrote: post #217
thrashh wrote: post #182

Cancel culture is just a symptom. As I see it, the Internet has created two problems: (1) Everyone now has a voice -- yeah that's cool but society isn't handling it too well yet (2) It's now easy to associate with people who think like you -- cool but absolutely terrible What happens is that now a bulk of the things you hear come from your own circle (which is self affirming!) and then when you hear something from ou…

IMO cancel culture wasn't as large as a problem until it was sanctioned by very large and influential people and institutions like the NYT.

Your name is ironic, I suppose. It doesn't get much larger than when the POTUS sanctions canceling people he doesn't like.

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

#343

Post by ashtonkem »

akhmatova wrote: post #244
TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. This is the cortisone rush that tptacek was referring to. You need to let it go through you (or past you) until you feel your mental gears loosen up again. Then step back and look at the bigger picture. What the editorial author meant was not some kind of absolute freedom from the threat of being shamed or shunned. But that, once upon a…

> But that, once upon a time, and it wasn't too long ago, there was a thing known as "civil discourse" in this country. In which (and granted the boundaries are fuzzy hear) -- in itself the mere fact of having an unpopular (or difficult) opinion on the state of the world ... did not run such an alarmingly and dysfunctional risk of getting you shut down in form or another as it does today.

This is so disconnected with history its almost delusional. Go read about how civil rights advocates were treated in the south, or gay rights advocates a mere 30 years ago. Go read about how distributing information on birth control was a crime, or how being a socialist brought the state down on you. Go read about the labor movement before WW2, and how many workers and would be reformers were shot for their words.

For a decent chunk of the 20th century, straying outside the bounds of “civil discourse” wouldn’t get you “shut down”, it might get you killed or jailed.

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

#344

Post by yeetsfromhell »

lliamander wrote: post #262
TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

I can't find the quote, but Norman Rockwell said that the inspiration for his Freedom of Speech painting was a town hall he attended where a man not much liked by the community was allowed to speak his piece, even when the people did not like what he had to say. I'm not arguing we shouldn't be able to shame or shun (the NYT itself would be my preferred target). I think the idea is that we should aspire to resolving o…

Once US society made the jump from "right vs wrong" to "good vs evil" it became an intractable problem.

@dang: was this a mistakenly flagged post? I don't think what I said was off topic or objectionable...to anyone, really.

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

#345

Post by lliamander »

DangitBobby wrote: post #302
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…

I think religious beliefs largely underly payment processors' refusal to do business with porn websites, wouldn't you agree? If it weren't for Christian beliefs, advertisers wouldn't be worried about being associated with porn and payment processors wouldn't either. That's the first example that came to my head, but I'm sure there are many, many such examples of the right having true social power to eliminate speech…

Perhaps initially, though today any religious influence is merely the result of organizational interia, not genuine concern for the opinions of Christians.

But I don't think that's the only reason. My thought is that there would be concern over connections to actual criminal activity (human trafficking, abuse, revenge porn, etc). I'm not saying all porn is those things, but I imagine it might be harder to be sure porn isn't connected to those things.

Edit: I think pram probably has it right.

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

#346

Post by causality0 »

coffeemug wrote: post #246
TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

From TFA: > Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a legal right to speak free of government interference, and it also means a cultural environment o…

We want to live in a culture where a joke on the internet doesn't lead to a struggle session at work. It isn't batshit insane, it isn't gobsmackingly wrong, and it isn't that difficult to understand.

I question, however, if there's been as much societal change between the internet wild west days we all miss and the current day. Sure, you could write a ten page screed on how much you hate those evil left-handed people and think they should all be put into death camps, but you weren't doing it under your own name and your next-door neighbor wasn't reading it. It's only when people insist on linking their online persona with their real-life persona that they have problems. That is what I think changed. Not the way people respond to speech but peoples' propensity for making that speech under their real name.

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

#347

Post by [deleted] »

akhmatova wrote: post #244
TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. This is the cortisone rush that tptacek was referring to. You need to let it go through you (or past you) until you feel your mental gears loosen up again. Then step back and look at the bigger picture. What the editorial author meant was not some kind of absolute freedom from the threat of being shamed or shunned. But that, once upon a…

[deleted]

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

#348

Post by ashtonkem »

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.

How old were you in the 1990s? I’ve noticed that for a lot of people, the golden age of no strife just happens to be right before they became aware of how people actually behave in public.

I too looked fondly back on the 1990s, but I was also a child. Looking back as an adult I can tell that my recollection of the era was colored by my inexperience. To draw one example, I totally missed all the moral panics of the 1990s, and how many people that harmed just for liking D&D.

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

#349

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

> One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings.

This is not new. People were shot and killed for pro-trade-union speech, for example.

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

#350

Post by evrydayhustling »

coffeemug wrote: post #246
TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

From TFA: > Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a legal right to speak free of government interference, and it also means a cultural environment o…

As the top post says, White would probably agree with you about the struggle session. But there is room for a wide gulf between a joke leading to a struggle session and "other people people saying mean things in response to your speech". The category potentially covered by "cancel culture" is too broad, and failure to dig into the details and trade offs is at best unserious. At worst, it's a dishonest way to use norms at one end of the spectrum (let's all take jokes in stride) to defend norm-breaking on the other side (Milo should get invited to university stages even though he uses them to bully individuals).
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