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What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

471–480 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#471
post #470
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point still stands, though for any amount of figurative-ness. That's the point. The author had an experience which amounted to a terrible year, after admitting some terrible misdoings. Almost everyone had a terrible 2020 regardless of their past, and employers fire people from jobs for much more tenuous reasons than what the author admitted to. Homosexuals, African Americans, other minorites, etc. have their lives…

Ok, but where is he comparing his suffering to other people? I didn't have a sense he's minimizing suffering of others on his webpage.

I didn't make this claim, so I can't really help you out there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#472
post #471
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but where is he comparing his suffering to other people? I didn't have a sense he's minimizing suffering of others on his webpage.

I didn't make this claim, so I can't really help you out there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You didn't make any claim. You just described that some people have it worse.

Some people on this Earth have it way worse than most african americans in US. But what's your point?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? What you are mentioning regarding the case of Stallman’s cancelling is the same pattern I have seen applied against every other voice that has a dissenting opinion of the current culture that dominates social media.

> Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? No. Spacey, Weinstein, and Epstein, to name a few, felt the opposite of manufactured. Repressed? Those stories took years, or decades to break, even with high profile advocates. Now, you might say that they didn't have a "dissenting opinion of the social media culture" - but their actions would show otherwise.

None of those characters were individuals who were cancelled based on their opinions against the dominant culture in social media.

Also, they weren’t cancelled, they got charged with one or multiple felonies, which is different, and there are plenty of apologists for their behavior.

For example, this was a real tweet that got taken down.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E32Pup-WEAIhQvz?format=jpg&name=...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

A mob on twitter doesn't decide anything The idea that unless something is criminally prosecuted there should be no repercussions is toxic.

I never said that criminal prosecution is the only way there can be repercussions, it was just the obvious factor in the examples OP gave. Aside from civil prosecution, it is perfectly reasonable for companies, schools, etc. to enforce their own rules - so long as they are made clear from the outset and enforced as evenly as possible across the applicable population. The problem with social media justice is how unpredictably it is enforced, which is part of the problem I was describing where we can't just make things retroactively illegal at the drop of a hat. "Illegal" extending to actions that are forbidden by an organization for example, not just the US government.

Mobs on Twitter absolutely do decide things. Yes, a company or school or whatever has to be kowtowing to said mob for there to be "real life" consequences, but in a number of cases the mob has absolutely acted as the jury. This is something that OP was literally praising.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not compatible with people whose livelihood directly or indirectly relies on having a large and/or dedicated audience on Twitter or other social networks, or people who by the nature of their livelihood are public figures even if they're not active on social media. Which isn't to say that your advice is poor advice!

If your job requires you to put on a public performance on social media -- do exactly that .

Key word there being "performance". Lie.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice. That's why we have a justice system.

In fact, it is not the purpose of a justice system to ensure that you retain all your clients when you're accused of misconduct. In our justice system, it's rather the opposite: most of the function of the justice system we have is to ensure that people retain the freedom not to associate with people, with only very narrow exceptions. You can lose jobs, friends, and clients simply for being a jerk. There's nothing il…

The justice system's mechanism for protecting from the "someone's speech cost you clients" scenario is libel (or slander). Both protect a person from defamatory, factual, untrue statements.

"That guy is an asshole" isn't one of those, and the only protection American law offers in that case is "People should think for themselves."

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#477
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…

Indeed. Nowadays small groups of coordinated people can cause a lot of chaos in internet.

Is it possible that this is a reaction to extremely small groups of coordinated people causing a lot of chaos in everything outside the internet?

https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-top-01-households-h...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mob on twitter doesn't decide anything The idea that unless something is criminally prosecuted there should be no repercussions is toxic.

I never said that criminal prosecution is the only way there can be repercussions, it was just the obvious factor in the examples OP gave. Aside from civil prosecution, it is perfectly reasonable for companies, schools, etc. to enforce their own rules - so long as they are made clear from the outset and enforced as evenly as possible across the applicable population. The problem with social media justice is how unpre…

Whoa, try reading my comment a little more generously, please. I specifically said the current iteration of cancel culture is going overboard. I was not praising cancel culture.

My main point was that cancel culture arose because of a real gap in our society's ability to handle certain types of people doing certain types of awful things... you mentioned that a lot of it could be handled by the legal system, but the reality was, it wasn't.

Weinstein wasn't charged until after he was cancelled. Same with Spacey. Lauer has never been charged. Epstein had been hit with some stuff, but basically let off with a slap on the wrist.R. Kelly had been acquitted before, and was basically unpunished.

All of these people's actions were (1) well-known in their communities ("open secrets"), (2) ongoing, and (3) not punished by any of the traditional institutions of society. Given that reality, and a global communications network where anyone can share their story, how could cancel culture not arise?

If I was praising anything, I was praising the fact that real abusers who operated with impunity for years were finally getting told to just stay home. Because other than Weinstein, that's basically all that happened.

Now, cancel culture being wielded against people like in TFA, that's way overboard, it's counterproductive, and people should stop it. But I think that's something we're going to have to solve as a society, through social discourse, not with government regulation.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, it is not the purpose of a justice system to ensure that you retain all your clients when you're accused of misconduct. In our justice system, it's rather the opposite: most of the function of the justice system we have is to ensure that people retain the freedom not to associate with people, with only very narrow exceptions. You can lose jobs, friends, and clients simply for being a jerk. There's nothing il…

The justice system's mechanism for protecting from the "someone's speech cost you clients" scenario is libel (or slander). Both protect a person from defamatory, factual, untrue statements. "That guy is an asshole" isn't one of those, and the only protection American law offers in that case is "People should think for themselves."

And, of course, the mirror image of the terribly stupid argument that if there isn't a criminal trial, no assault could have occurred is the argument that if the accused doesn't win a suit for libel, the accusation must be valid.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice. That's why we have a justice system.

In fact, it is not the purpose of a justice system to ensure that you retain all your clients when you're accused of misconduct. In our justice system, it's rather the opposite: most of the function of the justice system we have is to ensure that people retain the freedom not to associate with people, with only very narrow exceptions. You can lose jobs, friends, and clients simply for being a jerk. There's nothing il…

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