Live data from Hacker News

What it's like to be cancelled

noahbradley.com

91–100 of 613 posts

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a very tunnel vision view of the early web. You're ignoring BBS's, AOL, usenet, IRC, etc. which were all created with the explicit purpose of people connecting and talking to other people. You can go even further back to things like Community Memory and the Homebrew Computer Club--computing has firmly been embracing people connecting to other people since the early days.

None of those need, or benefit from, your real name.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#92
post #78
post #9

I looked into this briefly (against my better judgment). He stated in his apology that he was a 'sexual predator' and that he 'pressured women into sex'. So yeah, a lot of organisations now don't want to associate with him. It's nice that he's sorry for what he did, but actions have consequences. And the line between pressuring people into sex and raping them is very, very fine.

My impression is he made himself sound worse than he really was.

Well, that's what he says now. We only have his word for it.

If you put out a statement saying that one of your past statements was inaccurate, then that's hardly likely to increase confidence in the accuracy of your current statement.

Ultimately, people criticised him for doing things that he himself admitted to doing. As those things were pretty awful, I don't see that he really has anything to complain about.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't grope anyone and I'm not sure where you've heard that, but it's 100% false.

I heard it from the original claim: "Remember the bald headed crusty assed "well known" artist who went around groping female devs, and ended up having his face bit after trying to pour drinks down the throat of a girl whose already very intoxicated at the Massive Black workshop after party ?" ( https://twitter.com/BettyDesuJiang/status/127450059571858227... )

Nope, not true and a gross distortion of what happened that night.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#95
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...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#96
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…

I got triggered by "Twitter knows". It doesn't. It's just a bunch of mostly toxic wannabe-in-group imbeciles.

There are lots of exceptions, sure. But still. I lost count by orders of magnitude where the twitter mob-opinion was simply totally wrong (be it "masks are not useful" or whatever you name it). Thanks to the collective Alzheimer's, despite archive.org etc., this somehow doesn't hurt the mob mentality at all.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#97
post #5

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

Alternatively, don't be a sexual predator that assumes it will never lead to any consequences later in life.

Alternatively, stop labeling everything and everyone sexual predator.

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#98

The author is the one who groped all those women at conventions, but is acting like he's the victim here.

I didn't grope anyone and I'm not sure where you've heard that, but it's 100% false.

Actually while you're responding here, can you verify that you had these '48 laws of power' as your desktop? https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/1274765367957573632/photo...

Re: What it's like to be cancelled

#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, they care about signaling. So an apology only vindicates them.

As far as I can tell, the thing to always keep in mind is if you wait a few days these things always pass pretty quickly. The internet has a very short attention span. As long as you never give those people a confirmation that you did something you regret, you're much better off in the future.

Of course you should privately apologize and make amends for things you've done wrong; but those things are always more effective privately and personally done anyway.

Post reply on HN