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What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

21–30 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#21

I'm a bit sceptical about this because it talks very little about what happened that caused OP to get "cancelled", and an awful lot about how they came back from it. I do understand, first-hand, the trauma that comes from being cancelled (although I have like 1500 followers on Twitter so you could argue the stakes are less) and there's no doubt that it is a bitch. But there is something to take away from it - or at l…

Fair point! I guess I was writing this to people who have already heard the story. But I do get into what happened and why it happened in the podcast I recorded, if you're genuinely interested (and have some time to spare).

Put simply, there's a lot to cover here. There's a lot of history, context, perspective, etc. and covering it all would take, well, probably a book. I couldn't get it all in this article, but maybe I should have included a little more on the lessons I learned before and why I had already changed. Next time.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#22
I still don't understand "cancel culture." It seems the equivalent of a random person saying "I put a voodoo curse on you." What non-mythological power does it invoke? Does it ever lead to mainstream, widespread shunning?

The next part I don't understand is the weak culture of profuse and repeated apologizing and contrition for a "microaggression." This is something Bill Maher harps about from time-to-time.

Finally, the culture of competitive, and sometimes crybully, victimhood is tedious and nauseating. Why does everyone have to outdo themselves to be the biggest victim? Are you "The Man" to be collectively punished and assaulted if you don't have enough victomology points?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#23
post #8

I'm a bit sceptical about this because it talks very little about what happened that caused OP to get "cancelled", and an awful lot about how they came back from it. I do understand, first-hand, the trauma that comes from being cancelled (although I have like 1500 followers on Twitter so you could argue the stakes are less) and there's no doubt that it is a bitch. But there is something to take away from it - or at l…

There's a little more context here: https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...

[deleted]

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#24
The "You're Wrong About" podcast recently had a very good episode on the topic of Cancel Culture[1]. For me, one big takeaway was how the modern form of this phenomenon is largely localized to a small group of people - primarily on Twitter. Thus I was not surprised to see Twitter be ground zero here as well.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#26
post #11

I think the biggest problem with Twitter is that we can’t determine a denominator. Twitter knows, but we don’t know. 100 people tweeting about how this guy is bad might be indicative of a general consensus or might just be 100 people out of a billion Twitter users. People then interpret it as general consensus and pile on. We know the numerator but since we don’t know the denominator of people who didn’t comment, or…

A lot of it is that journalists will amplify it as well if they are one of the 100 who sees it. Seen journalist job postings where checking Twitter for stories is part of it.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#27
post #5

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

That is - stop using the internet as the disruptive communications network it way designed to be.

Originally, the Internet (including, but not limited to, the World Wide Web) was a place where nobody was interested in who you were as a person. It was and is geared towards structuring and disseminating knowledge.

In that sense, the entire somesphere is a tumor to the Internet.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#28
> I had apologized privately for everything, but I hoped it might show my sincerity and commitment to being better to address it publicly. So I wrote up a statement

First mistake. You can’t give in to this stuff. It does not make it better. It makes it worse.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#30

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…

I didn't see any libel mentioned in the article. The author seems not to dispute the claims made against him.

He absolutely disputes the allegations of, rape which are at the crux of the his larger cancellation.

> So I wrote up a statement saying I had slept with women at events and sometimes I was a dick. The statement was heavily (and perhaps hastily) worded in an effort to convey my understanding of the gravity of hurting people and my desire to set a good example. The internet, though, misinterpreted some of what I had said and began accusing me of rape. No one has ever accused me of raping them. But twitter latched onto that narrative and couldn’t let it go.

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