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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

#121

Post by letmeiiin »

TameAntelope wrote: post #118
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…

Sometime it's basically impossible to nicely say that something is just moronic.

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

#123

Post by kbelder »

commandlinefan wrote: post #43
Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Cancel culture happens because it works, and it not even be true. Until businesses, universities, and institutions say no to the digital mob, it will continue.

Cancel culture isn't particularly new, either - the name is, but it was going on when I was a kid. The only difference was that the same people who are cheering it on now (like, I'm sure, Popehat) are the same ones who were raging against it when it was the religious right doing it.

It's not new, but it's scaled up. Computers are a force multiplier.

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

#124

Post by Misdicorl »

parineum wrote: post #77
Misdicorl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Certainly it leads to more clarity. Two parties talking "past" each other is one of the most common sources of disagreement in my experience. Of course it isn't a panacea and there will still be disagreement on when the definition is being used correctly, and bad actors, and .... Bu…

> Two parties talking "past" each other is one of the most common sources of disagreement in my experience. A prime and recent example of this is "defund the police". You could talk to 10 people at a protest and get 10 different answers on what that means, and that's among supporters. Any actual conversation on the topic has to start with "well what do you mean?". You would often hear a refrain of "nobody is talking…

Yes, the "vague idea anyone can attach meaning to" is often an intentional aspect of these movements to gather larger support. Its also easy to subsequently exploit and I think the venerable CIA handbook from the ~60s goes into detail on that. Of course having a narrow focus doesn't really stop exploitation from a motivated counterparty with sufficient resources, especially when you need broad source support (e.g. large political reform issues).

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

#125

Post by legitster »

oh_sigh wrote: post #57
legitster wrote: post #45

> Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. Can we please just define it so we can move on as a society? I'm equally tired of this game where snarky writers try to pretend it doesn't exist. The first amendment doesn't protect against secret blacklists or mobs but we can still agree they are "bad things" and could agree on at least some new set of common courtesy. All so…

Popehat did, I think, an excellent job of it, even though he doesn't believe this is synonymous with cancel culture: > some responses to speech are disproportionate and outside norms of decency

I largely agree. But this is an awful lot of faff to ultimately agree with their concept but complain about their scope.

We can all agree there is a problem. Why wait for your political opposition to give you the correct parameters before you start solving it?

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

#126

Post by Latty »

tines wrote: post #75
Latty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, it depends on what you view as harmful, and who's opinions you agree with. There is no obvious right answer. Pretending we can say "so this should never happen" is absurd in my view, it implies people have to give their money to people that will use that money to fund harm. The core of free speech is that even abhorrent views should not face censorship by the government, because democracy requires it. If t…

> If this is true, surely the right to not support people who's views you disagree with is just as necessary? Totally agree, but I think one of the nuances here is that what "support" means can be pretty narrow or very broad. For example, if you don't like someone's message and they're speaking at your college, you can show your disapproval by choosing a point on a spectrum of refusals. You can start light by going t…

People have a right to expression, but not a right to a platform. Not everyone can go on TV every day to talk about what they believe, so it must be curated, and that curation is an expression in and of itself.

Should we try and be proportional and fair in our responses to people personally? Of course. Should we as a society try to limit people's responses? No.

There used to be literal lynching, and clearly active violence is over the line, but we allowed racists and other bigots to boycott places that employed people they didn't like and express their views like that.

Now that the bigots face being denied employment because of their bigotry, suddenly it's wrong to boycott and deny them their jobs.

Is it wrong to refuse to spend money at somewhere that employs (and therefore uses the money I spend there) someone who seeks to deny human rights to someone I love? It may get them fired if enough people take that stand. Does it hurt others if they can't access that bigot's speech? You can argue it denies them an opportunity, but then the fact I can't go to their boss and make my point is denying that person an opportunity to.

The reality is you are talking about pitting two pieces of expression against each other, and just because one came first and the other is a response to it seems entirely meaningless to me, neither should be restricted.

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

#127

Post by jimbokun »

tensor wrote: post #80
Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Cancel culture happens because it works, and it not even be true. Until businesses, universities, and institutions say no to the digital mob, it will continue.

I think it should continue. For a while I was leaning against it, but on reflection I realized that there is no obligation for me to listen to or engage with people that have abhorrent views. Rarely will doing so actually change their mind, or mine. What corporations are allowed to do is one thing, but as an individual I've decided to take cancel culture to heart. When possible, I now just put anyone with awful views…

Cancel Culture would be actively seeking to enact consequences on those people beyond disagreeing with them, blocking them, or calling them a poo-poo head.

Like contacting an employer to get them fired, trying to ruin their business, trying to get them banned from social media sites or organizations, etc.

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

#128

Post by tptacek »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #63
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the definition, White says, the appeal to an "end cancel culture norm" is, overtly, a call to broadly restrict people's speech. If you dismiss the demand for clarity, you can't coherently rebut his assessment of what "end cancel culture" means.

>"If you dismiss the demand for clarity, you can't coherently rebut his assessment of what "end cancel culture" means." I'm dismissing his standard of what counts as "clarity" because I sense he's expecting a lawyerly definition based on something akin to precedent and case law. In other words, he's seeking past examples of alleged "cancel culture" and trying to define what made each event count as, or not count as,…

If you want to erect a new societal norm around "cool", it would in fact fall upon you to define "coolness".

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

#129

Post by Gimpei »

The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses.

For example, there is the case of Dorian Abbot, who was disinvited from an MIT lecture after he wrote an op-ed criticizing affirmative action [1], even though the MIT lecture had nothing to do with affirmative action. I just don't see how allowing him to speak about climate science significantly impinges on the free speech of the members of the MIT community who found his views objectionable. I think it's also significant that 73% of the US population agrees with Abbot (I support affirmative action for the record). Basically the message that I get from MIT's behavior is that if you have a thoroughly mainstream opinion, you better not mention it in public if you want to have a successful academic career. This is chilling for science. If I were still a practicing social scientist, I wouldn't touch any hot button social issue with a ten foot pole. Or at least not if I wasn't prepared to p-hack a socially acceptable result.

I also think that shutting out views that you disagree with is terrible for personal intellectual development. Only hearing views that correspond to your priors is a recipe for group-think and intellectual laziness. I make a point of trying to read a wide range of opinions (National Review to Jacobin) because I believe having my ideas challenged makes them stronger. I don't see how you can have an informed opinion about anything without doing the same.

Lastly, if the polls that nytimes cite are true, "cancel culture" is a huge political mistake for progressive. It risks making the democratic brand toxic so that electoral victory, and any real change is impossible.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html

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

#130

Post by TameAntelope »

davesque wrote: post #44
elil17 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For the supposed paper of record, I found the choice to use the decidedly contemptuous language to refer to the right wing (that I italicized above) very telling. I genuinely don't know how else they could describe what's going on. Braying means speaking loudly and harshly - an accurate description of how many public figures on the right discuss cancel culture. It's colorful language, sure, but it's an op-ed, which…

I don't disagree that it is an accurate (and somewhat inflammatory) description of how figures on the right discuss cancel culture. What I'm saying is that it is an ineffective means of changing anyone's mind that they must care about changing. As participants in the culture war often do, they claim to want peace while also wanting victory.

Why must the tone always be conciliatory? Why must both sides have a point? Why must we write everything to try and change minds on every topic at once?

Maybe for the rational people, the argument you’re talking about is over; at this point maybe we’re just discussing the problem directly. Maybe everyone who would be convinced has been convinced, and the people who remain can be dealt with differently than how we’d deal with genuine difference of opinion.

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