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What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

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Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#521

Post by a1369209993 »

wvenable wrote: post #514
a1369209993 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key word there being "performance". Lie.

The key word is definitely performance. But people generally don't call actors liars for doing their job. One should not pretend that social media is a place to broadcast your unedited inner-most feelings. It's media. Even if you are honest, it doesn't mean you're good enough at expressing yourself that what you intend to come across actually does. If you don't feel you'd be confident expressing yourself millions of…

> But people generally don't call actors liars for doing their job.

That's a fair nitpick, actually. What I meant to emphasize is that the truth should have no bearing on your performance, except to the extent that it affects which performance you elect to give. As the saying goes, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, nor should they.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#522

Post by rvz »

overgard wrote: post #99

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,…

Absolutely. From them, there is no such thing as redemption.

They want to look good on Twitter (with added outrage) for playing the hero and cancelling the 'villain of the week' with their insults and libellous accusations until the target is deleted everywhere; including their livelihood.

By not apologising, ignoring or saying anything (I mean anything), they get bored quickly and the whole story falls apart with the heat dying out. You have to waste their time enough for them to give up to move on to the next victim.

It is in your favour if you don't apologise in public. Otherwise it is in on the record that you are finished and the mob will make ridiculous demands such as: 'If you're truly sorry, do xyz...'.

See where this goes?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#523

Post by foobiekr »

bigbillheck wrote: post #175
EvilEy3 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'?)

And posting about it? No, really, what is wrong with that person?

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#524

Post by radmuzom »

mandmandam wrote: post #151
radmuzom wrote: post #66

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…

Good for you for doing the right thing. Let me ask you - did you feel like the hate thrown at you on Twitter was completely organic? Was there anything that made you question the motives of the involved Twits? I ask because the whole smear job vs Stallman felt quite manufactured to me; from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this…

Many good points in the discussion below. However, when one of Stallman’s “crimes” was comparing US laws against that of Sudan (as mentioned in the open letter), I could not help but feel that people are looking for an opportunity to take him down for reasons other than his views on Minsky, adolescent sex, etc.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#525

Post by aeturnum »

pdonis wrote: post #506
aeturnum wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you point to the basic question here: is it fair to only judge him for the things he has apologized for and taken ownership of, or would it be moral to form and act on our own opinions? If you feel it's only appropriate to judge people on the behavior they admit to, then I think your read is correct. That also, to me, feels like it becomes tautological - it places the locus of power on the accused and the onu…

> False accusations exist (though research suggests they are extremely rare). What research are you referring to?

For a journalistic take I recommend[1], but if you would like to go right to the papers the wikipedia article has a good overview[2]

[1]https://www.thecut.com/article/false-rape-accusations.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#526

Post by steveBK123 »

a1369209993 wrote: post #433
mkr-hn wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 legitimat…

Well it's also hard to blame journalists for writing the kind of stuff that gets clicks, which is what gets them all paid.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#527

Post by wvenable »

a1369209993 wrote: post #521
wvenable wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key word is definitely performance. But people generally don't call actors liars for doing their job. One should not pretend that social media is a place to broadcast your unedited inner-most feelings. It's media. Even if you are honest, it doesn't mean you're good enough at expressing yourself that what you intend to come across actually does. If you don't feel you'd be confident expressing yourself millions of…

> But people generally don't call actors liars for doing their job. That's a fair nitpick, actually. What I meant to emphasize is that the truth should have no bearing on your performance, except to the extent that it affects which performance you elect to give. As the saying goes, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, nor should they.

I see what you meant. We are in total agreement.

These days it seems somewhat more difficult to be anonymous online. I'd be better off having a username of numbers, such as yourself. I have published a few writings online but if I really wanted to throw that into a blog I'd definitely construct a new online persona to do it.

I've tussled accidentally with mentally ill individuals online and experienced harassment that was bordering on dangerous. I would not be quick to put myself in that position again.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#528

Post by steveBK123 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #88
steveBK123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists participate in Twitter at a rate probably 10-100x the overall population. Most people don't ever log into Twitter, most journalists do daily. I think you can look at it this way: * For normal people, Twitter is not real life. * For journalists, Twitter is real life. Journalists then become the vector by which BS Twitter drama becomes mainstreamed.

Incidentally, I deleted my Twitter today. 4600 followers in hell, which is quite a lot for a Czech language community (10 million speakers only), but I can no longer tolerate the toxicity. Yes, journalists are overrepresented there and yes, their journalism often degenerates into "we are covering what happened on Twitter". But the worst offenders in terms of toxicity aren't journos. They are ... well, tormented human…

I think one can insulate themselves from the worst of the noise with some very selective follows/blocks/etc,

But anyway, re: your comment on the worst offenders, a related quote that came across my twitter this weekend-

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats" - Aldous Huxley

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#529

Post by prepend »

heroHACK17 wrote: post #95
prepend wrote: 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…

We actually do know what, or who, the denominator is. A large majority of tweets come from a small minority of tweeters: roughly 10% of tweeters account for roughly 80% of all tweets on the platform [1]. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...

What I meant is denominator of responses.

If I have 10,000 followers and post something with 100 likes, that might mean 100 people saw it and everyone liked it. It might mean 10,000 saw it and 9,900 hated it. It might mean 500 saw it, 100 liked, 100 hated, 300 didn’t care. Etc etc.

This would help understand if it’s just a few loud people or indicative of all the people.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#530

Post by prepend »

jollybean wrote: post #516
prepend wrote: 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…

Likes and shares give us a reference for that. The problem with twitter is that it's 240 characters of 'whatever' and that's not enough to arrive at any truth. It's usually an emotional loaded de-contextualized statement and that's that.

It doesn’t give us a reference for who dislikes. Or who is ambivalent. It just lets us know who liked and shared.
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