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What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

241–250 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original complaint claimed that he was a groper. That's sexual harassment. It's illegal. It's incredibly toxic and creepy , and people who do it are out of touch cretins who make everything worse. Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now. But yeah, if he's associated with a brand and he's going…

I never groped anyone.

I wasn't there. I don't know you or any of the other players. I know nothing about this beyond basically the synopsis.

Yet what is cited as the origin of the torch mob -- a twitter thread -- has a lot of pretty clear accusations by long time Twitter users, some of whom are fairly well known figures.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#242
post #142

Earlier this year when Richard Stallman was re-instated to the Board of the FSF, there were a lot of tweets expressing dismay. To one of them, I replied that I personally don't think he has done anything wrong at all - and linked to a well-known article by a woman who defended him better than me. While I found some support among a few people, the amount of hate I received shook me a bit. People started adding me to l…

Yeah Twitter is very toxic. I got on a few lists as well. I tried to talk to the NZ civil liberties association about freedom of speech. As it turns out they are against free speech and pro hate speech laws. I didn't know that going in. Then some people put me on a hate speech list. After that I was blocked by a large group of people I'd never encountered. It's a weird place and I'm glad to be off the platform.

NZ Twitter is nuts. If you think US Twitter leans left you haven't seen anything like NZPol Twitter.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#244
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never groped anyone.

Noah you are saying this now but your original apology says the opposite. Which is it?

Where do you see that in the original apology?

https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#245
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noah Bradley did not get cancelled for online behavior, he got blacklisted in the art industry for being a sexual predator.

I find it a little odd that in the original apology he refers to himself as a sexual predator but in this blog post he was a “womaniz[er]”. The term womanizer generally refers to people that have lots of sexual encounters with different women, and has a strong connotation of “I’m very attractive to the opposite sex and am sometimes careless about which sexual advances I accept” “Sexual predator” on the other hand ind…

The term Sexual Predator has been expanded to cover a lot more in that circle. It's similar to how anybody who has sex with a celebrity is technically raped because of the power difference. It's impossible to give consent when your partner is more important than you are.

You might think this sounds insane, but it's a real thing: https://www.nsvrc.org/i-ask-how-power-impacts-consent

The handouts on here handwave the issue at the end "consider how holding a position of power might influence the situation" but some people advocate that any power imbalance inherently makes consent impossible and they will attack people on Twitter over it.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original complaint claimed that he was a groper. That's sexual harassment. It's illegal. It's incredibly toxic and creepy , and people who do it are out of touch cretins who make everything worse. Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now. But yeah, if he's associated with a brand and he's going…

I never groped anyone.

[deleted]

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#247

I'm terrified of interacting with female coworkers. I don't have a "-ist" bone in my body. When I review code, I only see the code and not the person that wrote it. When I pick a team, I look at engineering ability and nothing else. I abhor discriminatory behavior and would be the first to put my career on the line to defend someone getting discriminated against. And of course I keep anything sexual FAR FAR FAAAR out…

Or you know, just don't be a creep and treat women like human beings and you'll be fine?

If you're giving negative feedback because they did something wrong/substandard work, you document it and move on. If there are questions later, you refer back. I've literally never had this be a problem.

I'm not sure why talking about your personal life would be grounds for issues unless you decided to talk about your bedroom, politics, or religion. "I went hiking on X trail this weekend, it was pretty cool" isn't going to get you called into HR.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#248

I've fortunately never been cancelled (I don't think I even have enough of a footprint or visibility for that to happen). From everything I've observed, the absolute worst thing you can do is apologize to the people attempting to cancel you. It's just pouring gasoline on the fire. These people will never say "oh, you learned from your mistakes, I guess I'll back off" . Most of them don't really care about the truth,…

Every single internet apology I've seen has been met with "this is such a bad apology / isn't a real apology." I'd love to see an example of an internet apology where people don't criticize the apology itself (if one exists).

The Dan Harmon apology is very good and, as far as I understand (I'm not on Twitter), was generally well received: https://time.com/5100019/dan-harmon-megan-ganz-sexual-harass...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The point is: In a society in which we have violent factions opposing one another on an single basic idea, what sins are truly and permanently unforgivable by a society? We would all seem to agreed that a legal framework is more valuable than vigilante justice, but people on all sides admit the courts don't work all the time. What is the right choice? And can offenders reform?

For example, I'm of the (extremely unpopular) opinion that we're too hard on sex criminals. The framework the US has put together doesn't just not help reformation, but in many ways encourages recidivism by limiting employment and housing options. But what's the right choice? Am I right because I'm backed by dozens of studies by social scientists? Or is the local parent mob right to "protect their children" by keeping laws on the books that keep sex offenders in the fringes of community? If a child molester gets off on a technicality, is the victim's father who murders him a hero or a villain?

What about other crimes? In China you can go to jail for 10 days without prosecution for possessing pot. Here in NJ I can smoke a blunt on my front lawn as a police parade goes by and I'm fine. Who is right?

IDK, I'm just rambling at this point. This whole debate is so stupid and circular and hypocritical and fluid on all sides.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#250

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.

Yes, and misunderstanding is not required, only an uncharitable interpretation, sometimes on purpose.

There are quite a few topics where any appeal to logic is not condoned or appreciated. To the extent that mere mention is enough for the mob to turn. For example, any time a woman or child may have been mistreated. There are others of course, but too charged to list.

Steer clear of these subjects, especially if on the autism spectrum and can't read that the discussion has changed to emotion-only mode.

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