What it's like to be cancelled • Hacker News Board

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#431

Post by nathanaldensr » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

meowfly wrote: post #180

theossuary wrote: post #4

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 illustrate…

It's a good hunch. The intellectual among us often treat their imaginations as if the imagination is reality, thus neglecting natural--as in nature--limits and boundaries to the human condition. Not everything we can imagine is right, possible, or desirable. Twitter and social media in general are manifestations of this.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#432

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #190

jrochkind1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone makes mistakes, behaves incorrectly, and causes harm though. Everyone has. You, me too.

I don't follow your logic. So like, because I ran through a red light once we should forgive all sexual predators?

No. Because we all behave incorrectly and cause harm -- most of us at some points in our life, serious, grave, harm even -- we should not cast out anyone who has from society and say "well, if you don't want to be cast out from society don't behave incorrectly." Because we all would be. (Someone that runs a red light can run over a pedestrian, and sometimes do, it's not thing separate from causing grave harm...)

This isn't talking about "forgiving" at all, in fact. i think the only person who can "forgive" someone who has done harm is the person they have done harm to, that's not even in the capacity of anyone else to do, is it?

This is, by the way, very related to "abolish prisons/policing" stuff.

When someone has done grave harm, and the recommended response is to try to keep anyone else from employing, doing business with, or even socializing with them -- what is the goal, what do you expect to accomplish? Preventing them from doing further harm? Repairing the harm done to those who had harm done to them? Making it less likely others will do harm? Just pure vengeance? Which of these are accomplished, how well, by this technique? What kind of community or society is creating, knowing that we will all do harm and all have harm done to us?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#433

Post by a1369209993 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #360

mcosta wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journos are the new clerics. The western moral compass

There's probably a better way to frame this in a context where journalists are increasingly under attack just for doing their jobs. https://cpj.org/2020/12/in-2020-u-s-journalists-faced-unprec...

That (better) framing would probably need to involve making a distinction between legitimate (eg investigative) journalists versus primarily-twitter-covering psuedo-tabloid journalists, which is rather fraught at the best of times, since most authorities (formal or informal) have a obvious incentive to misclassify legitimate journalists as tabloidists, and a less obvious incentive to misclassify tabloids as legitimate journalism. (This gets much worse if you try to do anything material with the distiction, thanks to [0].) Not that it's impossible, but I'm not optimistic.

Besides, there were plenty of clergy who were otherwise fairly decent people.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#434

Post by robocat » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #125

noahbradley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mayb…

this is typical of people self-labeling as, and seeking pity for, being 'cancelled' in my experience... What happened is quickly glossed over in vague terms with a half hearted apology and treated as a mere unimportant sideshow to the real problem: I faced consequences . Ignoring the pushback or saying 'well I could have provided more detail about what I learned as a person' isn't actually explaining what you did wro…

Do you believe every man is a liar? Can a man change their spots? Is it acceptable to attack someone in the court of Twitter, victimise them, hurt them, and hurt their friends and family?

Should society try to help everyone learn to be better, or should society righteously punish those who trangress the invisible boundaries of decency?

His narrative is certainly believable, although I am in no position to judge your accusations against him.

I fear to even answer you, as I am sure others are, because perhaps you are someone to start a crusade against me for no reason more than you have the ability to do so.

All adults need to take some responsibility for his his actions: he is steeped in a society that tacitly accepts womanising in its media (think “Two and a Half Men”), a society that has accepted sleezing as a valid sport (jock culture). Neither you nor I accepts such hideous behaviour, but clearly we are not yet winning against the wider society of the world, and what should we do with those that get sucked into red pill culture?

I am not apologising for his behaviours, nor am I defending myself by proxy. I do fear for where “cancel culture” is trending towards silencing any discourse. (Disclaimer: I am a white guy who isn’t in the US. I try to always do my best, although I am as fallible as any other person).

Edit: perhaps this comment would have been safer made using a throwaway account?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#435

Post by naravara » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

defaultname wrote: post #195

Animats wrote: post #143

What he's supposed to have done: “I was terrible to women. I preyed on them. I ceaselessly hit on them. I pressured them into sex. I got too drunk and did all manner of dumb things.” None of which is illegal. It's not even a matter for civil litigation. He was not accused of doing this as a boss in an organization. Or in a workplace context. There were apparently no criminal charges. No EEOC complaints filed.[1] No a…

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…

In Noah Bradley's case, a lot of people just disliked him because of a reputation that he was a self-important jerk who jumped on every opportunity he could to self-promote and had some annoyingly devoted fanboys (a similar dynamic follows Elon Musk).

When the cancellation was in full swing I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were piling on to settle scores or because they just hated seeing him and his fanboys spamming up his stuff all the time, regardless of whether they actually knew him to be a creep or not.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#436

Post by cwbrandsma » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

Seattle3503 wrote: post #321

It's disappointing how many people say "apologies don't work". The purpose of an apology isn't to salvage your reputation, it is to help victims move forward.

They can work to apologies to the actual victim, if made in some direct way. You might even get the victim to accept the apology. But all the people that feel victimized on behalf of the victim...they never forgive, and they will never move on. It is simply too easy to continue spewing their anger, they were already angry, this just gives them direction.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#437

Post by newbie789 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #424

newbie789 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From his apology: “I preyed on them. I ceaselessly hit on them. I pressured them into sex. I got too drunk and did all manner of dumb things. Yes, I was one of those shitty, creepy sexual predators you hear about.” I do not get the impression that he apologized for having sex with people while also being guilty of being prominent in his industry. I’m not entirely clear how “any sex with a celebrity is rape” is a sali…

Would have to ask him but I wouldn't be surprised if he used the terminology in this new loose way, and now regrets doing that.

Aside from his stated specific behaviors that are generally accepted as being under the “old” umbrella of sexual predator, I suppose it is entirely possible that he meant to call himself “a sexual predator” under the “new” definition that somehow applies to any sexually active person that is wealthy or employed as a manager.

I genuinely am just now learning about this “new” shift in definition as my understanding was that the term was applied to people due to their behavior towards others and how they’re experienced by the other involved parties. Expanding it to mean “anybody with money or status” doesn’t seem useful aside from maybe diluting the phrase’s meaning in such a way that it provides cover for actually abusive people.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#438

Post by caddemon » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

clucas wrote: post #369

njharman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why cancel culture is so toxic (and to lessor extent all "political correctness"). It is oppression, repression and censorship. It is mob rule, happy only when they get a lynching, no matter the guilt or innocence.

Do you think Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, or Kevin Spacey should have been cancelled? I agree that it's overboard on a lot of things, especially in the past couple years, but I think it's important to remember the "cancel culture" started as a way to hold certain people to account who were exhibiting socially unacceptable behavior, but were not being socially punished. All societies have social norms, and all societ…

Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey were literally charged with crimes, and Matt Lauer probably could be. There is no reason in theory that the criminal justice system couldn't handle the cases you brought up. Whether we need Twitter in practice to hold the justice system accountable is another can of worms, but there's a huge difference between calling out criminals that slipped through the cracks and calling out people that did random things we've now decided should be punished despite having no formal process in existence to do so.

I think people are way too impatient honestly. There will be things we will realize should be illegal, there will also be things we think we realized should be illegal but then turn out to be horribly wrong about. If people want next day enforcement there will be a lot of damage caused by these latter cases. I'd much rather a few assholes get off while we work out the proper way to enforce something (if at all).

The problem with allowing the people as a completely unmoderated mob to decide things is twofold - group dynamics make people utterly irrational, and there is little way to hold someone accountable if they falsely set off a mob. There would need to be some sort of anonymous voting function if we wanted to combat the former. For the latter, how about we introduce a formal mechanism for suing a Tweeter for slander?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#439

Post by caddemon » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #430

caddemon wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are also some topics where people are conditioned to respond emotionally. Once responding emotionally of course a fair reading is out the window. I do think there is a lot of silence due to social expectations, also probably many of the likes/shares with little additional commentary come from such expectations. But IME the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately u…

> the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately upset, or have an agenda way beyond trying to fit social expectations These would be the activists who are- as you call them- the instigators, and who might be close to the origin of the events. But the second level is the media- and here you have journalists and bloggers, who are already far removed from the original events and are…

Is the media driven by aligning with peers? Or is it driven by putting out the story that will maximize clicks/engagement?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#440

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

cwbrandsma wrote: post #436

Seattle3503 wrote: post #321

It's disappointing how many people say "apologies don't work". The purpose of an apology isn't to salvage your reputation, it is to help victims move forward.

They can work to apologies to the actual victim, if made in some direct way. You might even get the victim to accept the apology. But all the people that feel victimized on behalf of the victim...they never forgive, and they will never move on. It is simply too easy to continue spewing their anger, they were already angry, this just gives them direction.

So, if you have done harm to someone, are you going to prioritize helping those you have hurt move forward, or are you going to prioritize your reputation?

I don't think the mob mentality of destroying someone who has hurt others with no way out is helpful or appropriate.

But if we want to be good people who treat people right, then we realize we have hurt someone severely, we try to make it right -- even if there will be a cost to our reputations, deserved or undeserved. Even undeserved. If it's the cost of making it up to someone you have hurt severely, that's how it goes, even undeserved.

Valuing only our reputation against the mob and not the well-being of the people who we have hurt and want to try to make it up to -- is sociopathic behavior. Refusing to ever admit, even (or especially) to ourselves that we have hurt someone is sociopathic behavior.