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What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

171–180 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard it from the original claim: "Remember the bald headed crusty assed "well known" artist who went around groping female devs, and ended up having his face bit after trying to pour drinks down the throat of a girl whose already very intoxicated at the Massive Black workshop after party ?" ( https://twitter.com/BettyDesuJiang/status/127450059571858227... )

Nope, not true and a gross distortion of what happened that night.

Noah, why are you even replying to this guy? He is obviously a troll, and you won't be able to "explain" anything to him.

Personally, I enjoy ignoring his types in online debates. Bait them, and ignore them - priceless.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#172
I personally dont have twitter, insta, FB except for dummy work accounts, but I will say this. If a company or person takes Twitter half seriously, thats a red flag. What a person does outside of work should not even be considered until and unless there are legal ramfications.

The are a lot of scary things about cancel culture, one being that it is remarkably like of witch hunts or the purges of the middle ages. More closer to home, the most vile of facist regimes would be licking their lips in approval of how a mere toy, a trinket, can be used to such great effect with little no due process. The reason why the law exists and why it is essential in protecting the rights of indviduals and the whole idea of democracy probably doesnt register, at least in an academic sense, with our twitter warriors. But I cant blame them. They're child-like. We are unfortunately a generation that refuses to grow up and caught in some weird disney loop, pseudo-adult, stage still waiting for the day we actually get to be adults.

My gripe is with the people who have to make decisions and take it upon themselves to include schoolyard gossip as part of their process.

It's beyond reckoning at this point.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#173

I think the libel and defamation laws are too slack in the US. I think Twitter and News Companies who repeat libelous and defamatory tweets about people should be liable. Society has dealt with how to deal with people spreading rumors and falsehoods about people, and one of the solutions was libel laws. It is not surprising as the. US Supreme Court gutted those laws, and Congress gave safe harbor with section 230 to…

> I think Twitter and News Companies who repeat libelous and defamatory tweets about people should be liable.

Actually, given how defamation works in the US, even without Section 230, it's very hard to see how they'd be liable.

In the US, if the defamation is towards a public figure (which it is for every case you'll hear about), then it's not enough that the statement be demonstrably false, but it also has to be made with "actual malice." That means you need to demonstrate that the speaker either knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard as to its veracity.

Since Twitter basically publishes everything its users do, there's no way it can form sufficient mens rea to defame anybody merely by publishing a tweet.

Oh, and loosening up defamation law in the US would run afoul of this pesky thing called the First Amendment.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#174
post #5

Be anonymous. Be obscure. Stop talking to people on the internet.

I don’t understand your comment. He was cancelled over actions IRL. Whether he had a Twitter or not, other people do and they know his name and where he works.

He was cancelled because he wrote a public apology on Twitter and that's how people found out about him. Twitter is completely to blame here - maybe along with being so naive to think that writing an apology on Twitter is a good idea.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually while you're responding here, can you verify that you had these '48 laws of power' as your desktop? https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/1274765367957573632/photo...

> Noah Bradley fucking sucks. I have had him blocked for years and greatly dislike his online persona. What a fucking psycho. Imagine hating someone so much as to spend multiple years connecting dots to ruin their life. It's as if A Beautiful Mind was about some neckbeard living in his basement.

Where are you getting "multiple years connecting dots to ruin their life" from? I interpreted it as someone in an adjacent part of the same profession ("commercial art for nerd things") being not-really-surprised to find out a disliked person did something terrible.

(Has that never happened to you? Never found out that somebody you knew or worked with did something terrible and went 'huh, yeah that checks out'?)

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#176
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely that's up to their employers to decide. I don't think anyone should feel obliged to employ Noah Bradley just because you happen to think that his apology is sincere.

Your point well taken, but my issue is not so much that these companies decided to terminate his employment. I think that was cowardly and in essence caving to an imaginary mob, but let's leave that aside. My contention is that this whole spiraled up from discovery of some bad behavior from the past, that seems to have been inflated into an exaggerated character assassination. My contention with the grandparent comme…

I think the point in this case is pretty simple. A company can't employ this guy and also credibly claim to be concerned about creating a safe environment for women at conferences and other events. There's nothing 'exaggerated' about that.

Sometimes actions have long-lasting consequences. Apologies can't magically wash those away.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an odd strawman. I... wouldn't behave incorrectly in the first place. It's not a difficult concept to understand for most people I hope, especially with sexual harassment.

I hear this said a lot today by people I grew up with. No dude, I was there. I remember how much you loved to tell racist jokes. Not one example, dozens.

What does that anecdote have to do with me living my life and continuing to live my life without being a sexual predator?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#178
post #157

It seems it's better to stay away entirely from certain sensitive topics. No matter your intentions, no matter what you actually think, it just takes a bit of misunderstanding or bad faith and the whole thing explode.

No, just post anonymously. Way better. Then your voice is heard, but you don't have to suffer personal consequences.

bingo - this; add to that higher stakes conversations, like political grouping, and you have started down the path of why anonymity is irreplaceable in public discourse.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#180

Twitter is vile. I thought that the day the company started, and never created an account; nothing good can come from a platform like Twitter. It's a failure of our laws that there's no recourse to this kind of libel, either against Twitter for basing their business model on it, or the individuals responsible for spreading it. Lives are consistently destroyed and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and goes "aw-shuc…

> Lives are consistently destroyed and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and goes "aw-shucks."

There is such an asymmetry between how it feels to get piled on and watching someone else piled on.

If I was watching a stranger get their teeth pulled I can almost physically feel the pain. Watching someone harassed online is more like, "the internet sure can be mean" and then I move on.

My hunch here is this illustrates how our social systems aren't designed for a world the size of the internet.

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