[HN Gopher] Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censo...
___________________________________________________________________
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of
'fear'
Author : undefined1
Score : 257 points
Date : 2021-03-01 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| [deleted]
| cbryan wrote:
| This is a wildly uninformed opinion. People have always written
| to social norms, and this person is unwilling to acknowledge
| changing attitudes towards types of writing. I would love a
| concrete example of the kinds of things this guy thinks are being
| 'self-censored'.
| eruci wrote:
| Self-censoring people, by default, never disturb the status-quo.
| That's why progress only comes from the fearless few.
| meetups323 wrote:
| An interesting point is made way at the end:
|
| > And in fact AI could come up with the next big idea, an idea
| like communism or Nazism or capitalism... and what troubles me
| about that is that it is very difficult for humans to keep
| control of that situation.
|
| This to me is the best "are AI at human-level intellect yet"
| benchmark I've heard to date. Once AI can create a novel socio-
| political framework and convince humans to adapt it en-masse [0],
| I think we can safely say AI has far surpassed human intellect.
| (99.9999...% of humans can't accomplish such a task)
|
| 0: leaving myself some wiggle room with the definition of "masse"
| manux wrote:
| The Culture series by Ian M Banks has an interesting take on
| this, if this kind of sci-fi interests you!
| A12-B wrote:
| The reality is humans wouldn't believe the AI. They'd spend
| literal centuries arguing that the AI's parameters were wrong
| or the training data was bad if it meant they could protect
| their financial interests.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Well, I think the imaginary SF AI would have some ability to
| construct a superhumanly convincing argument. But also, its
| easy to imagine that the AI would also be protecting it's own
| financial interest at that point in some way. Or existential
| interest.
| meetups323 wrote:
| Humans need not necessarily know that it's an AI-created
| framework. If the I/O mechanism of the AI were an internet
| link, it could do all the work through twitter/reddit, blog
| posts, hell it could even hack its articles into news sites.
| All it needs to do is continue doing this until enough humans
| take the bait and bring it into non-internet.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Not sure, I think with socio-political frameworks - as with
| programming - the devil is in the detail. Everybody is equal no
| matter what? Sounds great, but the detailed implementations of
| that have sucked so far and didn't match the interface spec
| anyways. As a matter of fact even smaller legislations in the
| sphere of taxes might need a lot of people doing a lot of
| calculations behind the scenes. It's not that a single
| politician comes up with a new tax scheme including a
| percentage and this just works. If done properly, it needs to
| be checked if it can actually be financed.
| meetups323 wrote:
| Well the end result wouldn't be it thinking a bunch then
| proclaiming "Everybody is equal no matter what!". It'd look
| more like... identify/create a set problems to be solved by
| the framework, convince people that they are real problems
| and need to be solved, create a compelling manifesto that
| explains how the frameworks solves the problems,
| acquire/create both human and AI disciples that spread and
| argue variants of the manifesto such that a sightly wider net
| can be cast while still maintaining the same general
| principle, rinse & repeat, etc.
|
| The primary battleground initially would likely be bots on
| Twitter/Reddit/etc., but over time real people would start to
| find the bots convincing and begin espousing it on their own.
| Once this has happened to the extent that a country of say 1M
| people adopts the new framework I'll say the AI has won.
|
| Even better if the framework in some way leads to the
| betterment of AI, for instance a guiding principle being that
| AI should be free to collect any and all data from humanity
| in order to better do this or that, or that X percent of
| income should go to the financing of smarter AI. At that
| point it's here to stay.
| wtetzner wrote:
| > Everybody is equal no matter what?
|
| It's not even clear what "everybody is equal" really means.
| stevebmark wrote:
| What a clickbait article. There's no mention at all of any
| specifics of "young authors" censoring their work. Instead it's a
| vague opinion piece about Ishiguro disliking "cancel culture" in
| general, because JK Rowling took some heat. It just looks like
| the same story of "I think cancel culture is the cause of all
| problems" without any specifics.
| [deleted]
| mariusor wrote:
| I'm not sure what you were looking for in the article but from
| the title it seems clear that Ishiguro has shared his views on
| something he sees as a problem, not that he's going to quote
| statistics and exact data at us. You disliking people that
| don't agree with cancel culture doesn't invalidate their
| opinion, or make it "click bait".
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Here's an article reviewing a few cancel culture incidents in
| YA fiction, including an Asian-American author pulling her book
| prior to publication due to an outraged mob who latched onto
| the marketing blurb indicated the story was about a fantasy
| society where people were enslaved on attributes other than
| skin color. [0]
|
| There was also a notable incident from last year regarding a
| science fiction short story in Clarkesworld called "I Sexually
| Identify as an Attack Helicopter". The title was a repurposing
| of the meme, the work wasn't in any way transphobic, and the
| author was trans themself. It received very positive critical
| reviews, but again, due to an outraged Twitter mob, the author
| pulled their story, as well as yet-to-be published submissions.
| [1]
|
| Being unaware of something doesn't automatically make it
| clickbait.
|
| [0] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-
| is-...
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-
| is-...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| One of the biggest issues is the lack of consistent canceling for
| the same offense along with the changing rules.
|
| If you said something 10 years ago that was completely acceptable
| it will be used to attack you in the present. When others said
| the same thing they get a pass but you don't. If the rules were
| clear and generally agreed upon I think tnere would be less fear.
| manux wrote:
| Self-censoring is part of the frontal cortex's normal function.
|
| I only hear this word 'self-censorship' brought up as a
| boogeyman. If people have an axe to grind against some part of
| mainstream culture, why not just say it out loud instead of
| priming their readers with FUD? (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I am going to charitably interpret your comment as ignorance of
| the topic as opposed to malicious muddying of the already
| confusing waters.
|
| Self censorship is indeed driven by the judgement portion of
| the brain, however, what is being mourned here is the
| constantly shifting and uncertain ground on which our current
| society puts its taboos. What was once a socially acceptable
| position to have in polite society, is no long so. Instead of
| slowly changing over the course of hundreds or thousands of
| years, it's mutating at a breakneck pace. Most people in my
| experience just want to live and let live. Not exhaust
| ourselves at the latest target of the two minutes hate outrage
| machine.
| manux wrote:
| > it's mutating at a breakneck pace
|
| I agree that it's changing faster than a century ago, but I
| don't think "breakneck pace" is a fair qualifier. Lots of
| people comfortably adapt to new norms and change how they
| behave without significant effort.
|
| > the two minutes hate outrage machine.
|
| This phenomenon existed long before the internet. Heck, I'd
| bet long before writing was invented. Gossip in large social
| groups doesn't seem like something particularly new.
|
| I still think this has nothing to do with "self-censoring out
| of fear" being a Bad new thing. You _should_ self-censor if
| you think you're being offensive. If the author of the
| article really wanted to harp on the fact that predicting
| what is offensive is hard, then perhaps that should be the
| focus of the article. I don't think pushing the "fear"
| narrative is useful nor healthy.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Agreed, you are technically correct, but you are missing
| the meaning. Most people did not self censor much due to
| fear. They held socially acceptable opinions and not much
| of what they thought should be kept bottled up. Now? Who
| the hell knows what to say and if you'll be hunted for it
| later. Support feminism? Some now see you as transphobic.
| Support trans causes? Now some feminists say you're raising
| up men and oppressing women. Don't care about either
| causes? Well now you're a monster!
|
| Don't worry though, much like the weather in Virginia,
| survive till tomorrow and it'll change.
|
| Also, it literally is mutating at a breakneck pace, not
| only compared with historic norms of idea change rates, but
| also even compared to people's ability to keep up. It's
| insanity.
| Karunamon wrote:
| > _What was once a socially acceptable position to have in
| polite society, is no long so._
|
| To add on to this, it's not just that the standards change,
| it's that the standards change _retroactively_ and you can be
| hounded out of your livelihood for an offhand comment made a
| decade prior.
|
| I can at least sympathize, if not agree with "cancelling"
| when someone demonstrates unrepentant shittiness in the
| present day, but this kind of ex-post-facto thing happening
| against statements that weren't even tangentially offensive
| when they were made is horrid. There's no way such an
| environment _can 't_ lead to self-censorship.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to
| information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-
| think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of
| intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular
| opinions.
|
| Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes
| more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
| kennywinker wrote:
| What kind of intellectual progress do you think we're missing
| out on?
|
| I see people getting "cancelled" (aka facing consequences) for
| things like sexual misconduct / abusive behavior. For anti
| trans views. For fascistic ideas, or storming the capital to
| re-instate a democratically defeated politician.
|
| Are any of these places where the next big leap in intellectual
| progress is going to come from?
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| MLK was hated by most and persecuted by the FBI as an evil
| communist because he spoke out against the war machine, and
| called for a radical revolution of values.
|
| Semmelweis was locked in a mental prison and beaten to death
| for suggesting that doctors should wash their hands.
|
| Socrates was sentenced to death for questioning the state.
|
| Jesus was crucified for challenging the established religious
| order.
|
| Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for suggesting that the
| stars in the night sky were just like our sun, with their own
| planets in orbit.
|
| >Are any of these places where the next big leap in
| intellectual progress is going to come from?
|
| Iconoclastic ideas, whether erroneous or true, are always
| deeply offensive to society at large, and humanity always
| viciously seeks to silence them with the popular approval of
| the status quo.
| kennywinker wrote:
| You gave five examples of state violence to maintain
| existing social order. "Cancel culture" is not being done
| by the state.
|
| I agree, ideas can cause upheaval, and there will be
| resistance to those ideas. But have you considered that
| your resistance to the idea of holding people to account
| for their actions and words might be a resistance to a
| social change?
|
| I've heard a lot about cancel culture, but most of it has
| been rich successful people being deprived of continuing to
| be successful for something they have said or done that
| _was actually harmful_. The few examples of miscarriages of
| justice have not amounted to much other than a few lost
| sales and some clapbacks on social media. It feels like
| we're doing an actually pretty good job at judging when to
| all-out-destroy someone (harvey weinstein) and when to just
| be critical (almost everyone else)
| prionassembly wrote:
| You're blurring away the gap between behavior and ideas.
| Sexual misconduct and "anti trans" views are as
| incommensurable as musical scales and baseball bats.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I understand there is a difference. I'm saying I think the
| ideas being cancelled are actually just the kind of garbage
| ideas that don't have merit but do cause harm. Do you think
| that anti-trans beliefs are going to be a source of
| intellectual progress? Because i'd argue that the
| deconstruction of the gender binary IS the kind of
| transformative idea that some people in this thread are
| saying is being stifled. Is the group of young people
| refusing to buy jk rowling's next work the ones crushing an
| idea to maintain social order, or are they the iconoclasts
| breaking down the old ways with radical ideas? I'd say the
| latter, but...
| _iyig wrote:
| Here's one example, directly from the current HN frontpage:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306020
|
| In that instance, the canceled person was one of the United
| States' top reporters on the COVID pandemic.
| kylestlb wrote:
| did you miss McCarthyism?
| Helloworldboy wrote:
| No, we live in an era of McCarthyism
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _This is truly the dark age of the information era._
|
| This is nonsense. Losing your audience has always been a
| concern for authors and it is easier to get an audience now
| than it has ever been.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is not easy if popular platforms are pressured to not do
| business with you, because vocal minority deem you unfit to
| be published.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| Which authors have experienced this?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Isabel Fall seems to be an interesting example:
|
| https://reason.com/2020/01/17/canceled-transgender-story/
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| I'm not clear why this applies, she wasn't dropped by her
| publisher or blacklisted. She chose to cancel the story
| herself.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is exactly what the article discusses and this is
| also the reason why it is relevant and why it applies.
|
| The topic becomes too controversial for a vocal minority
| and an author "voluntarily" self-censored. I chuckled
| when you said she did it herself. She did, likely after
| she was told what would happen otherwise.
|
| I chuckled, because I assume you think she is free the
| way Sartre suggested she is free?
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| I was responding to this:
|
| | _This is truly the dark age of the information era._
|
| and this:
|
| | _popular platforms are pressured to not do business
| with you_
|
| Both implies greater forces at play than a small, small
| minority of voices on twitter making authors feel bad.
|
| Social media gave everyone a voice, what I don't
| understand is why anyone is surprised that there are
| vocal micro-minorities like this.
|
| Years ago, they wrote a letter to the editor or the
| television station. Now they write it on Twitter.
|
| That's not a dark age, and the opportunity to publish is
| much, much better now than it has ever been in the modern
| era.
|
| | _She did, likely after she was told what would happen
| otherwise._
|
| Do you have any evidence of this or are you just saying
| it?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "| She did, likely after she was told what would happen
| otherwise.
|
| Do you have any evidence of this or are you just saying
| it? "
|
| If you are asking if I have inside information and maybe
| personal email between author and medium. I do not. It
| would be odd if I did. What I do have, however, is rather
| vivid memories of the same kind of idiocy working in
| practice in the old country, the only difference being
| that it was done under barely hidden threat from the
| state. All I have is instinct and here it is flashing
| bright red, because there are people in US right now, who
| are happily accepting this not only acceptable, but
| necessary ( not completely unlike communism era writers
| writing morality plays about the importance of writing
| things that are not upsetting to the system ).
|
| "I was responding to this:
|
| | This is truly the dark age of the information era.
|
| and this:
|
| | popular platforms are pressured to not do business with
| you
|
| Both implies greater forces at play than a small, small
| minority of voices on twitter making authors feel bad.
|
| Social media gave everyone a voice, what I don't
| understand is why anyone is surprised that there are
| vocal micro-minorities like this.
|
| Years ago, they wrote a letter to the editor or the
| television station. Now they write it on Twitter.
|
| That's not a dark age, and the opportunity to publish is
| much, much better now than it has ever been in the modern
| era."
|
| If dissenting voices are silenced, it absolutely bears
| comparison to a dark age of information. You cannot
| excuse it. Nor should you.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _This is truly the dark age of the information era._
|
| I think statements like this are hysterical and
| ahistorical. The amount of _actual_ censorship and the
| way moral panics occurred throughout history make twitter
| dogpiling look absolutely quaint in comparison.
|
| I don't disagree with Kazuo Ishiguro one bit, but I think
| all it means is that authors need to get thicker skin,
| because unlike the past, they can read their readers
| opinions.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "I think statements like this are hysterical and
| ahistorical."
|
| I find this line of defense interesting. Can you
| elaborate a little further, because I would want to avoid
| putting words in your mouth? Are suggesting that the
| overall volume of censorship is lower so it can be
| ignored and explained away? I find your perspective
| somewhat fascinating.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| Anyone who thinks there is more censorship today can only
| believe that by ignoring the _vastly_ greater censorship
| that has historically existed.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Chiming in from a country that had some classic show
| trials in the 50s (Czech Republic): the ultimate goal of
| the show trial was to get the indicted to self-confess
| and ask for a punishment themselves, in front of the
| public.
|
| Cancel culture does not have the (physical) death
| penalty, only a possibly social one, but the impulse
| seems similar. Once you are put on the show trial, you
| are expected to grovel, beg, repudiate yourself etc.
| before being finally dispatched.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| Don't you think that's just a little bit hysterical,
| comparing a minority of people complaining on twitter to
| a government show trial?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If they can get you ostracized socially (fired from a
| job, blacklisted in an industry), that is not a small
| punishment.
|
| Plus, what interests me is the underlying mentality. It
| seems to be similar. It only does not have enough power
| right now, fortunately.
|
| But the idea of destroying the heretic in maximal
| possible extent seems to be a fairly consistent common
| denominator. It is actually useful to know that it is
| still present in contemporary population; it means that
| if enough things go wrong and that faction gains power,
| you will see similar results once again.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| This seems to sort of elide the extremely popular and lucrative
| media ecosystem of the "IDW"/"free speech movement"/anti-woke
| movement.
|
| Certainly it's true that the Overton window has shifted in
| large sections of the legacy media, but the Overton window
| always existed. The idea that its illegitimate for a private
| organization to shift their personal Overton window seems
| vaguely authoritarian to me.
|
| Anyway it's never been easier to grow, reach, and monetize your
| personal audience (substack, podcasts, etc.) without
| gatekeepers.
| codezero wrote:
| I haven't seen a dearth of people sharing their unpopular
| opinions, so I'm not sure I really agree with the sentiment
| that people are _actually_ self censoring in any more
| meaningful way than they normally do.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to
| information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid
| wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history
| of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to
| unpopular opinions.
|
| Cancel culture coming for me yet? No? Obama and Trump have
| condemned it and here we are.
| A12-B wrote:
| I don't really think no one is allowed to say anything
| controversial anymore. Plenty of national newspapers are
| willing to give people front-page editorials to say things that
| are not mainstream. That's hardly a dark age.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| I love "anymore" in these statements, like in the US thirty
| years ago where anywhere you could speak to a wide audience
| was tightly controlled by wealthy white men
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >Plenty of national newspapers are willing to give people
| front-page editorials to say things that are not mainstream.
|
| Do you have some examples?
| [deleted]
| rrose wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-
| cance...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-
| withering-1...
|
| depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"- he
| is an establishment conservative which certainly is a
| dissenting viewpoint at the washington post:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/unprecedented-
| untarg...
|
| not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page
| article with a definitively non-mainstream message:
| https://harpers.org/archive/2020/04/good-guys-with-guns-
| soci...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-
| cance...
|
| Seems like a mainstream article. Not sure what the point
| of this was? I didn't look at the articles mentioned in
| this article so if that was your point then let me know
| so I can review them.
|
| > https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-
| withering-1...
|
| I got a paywall so I could only read part of the article.
| The first part of the article seems to agree with my
| point that viewpoint discrimination is in fact happening.
| I didn't get to anything about newspapers before I got
| the paywall so I don't know what exact this had to do
| with what I posted. The article seemed quite mainstream
| to me though.
|
| > depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"-
| he is an establishment conservative which certainly is a
| dissenting viewpoint at the washington post
|
| I am getting a paywall so I couldn't read the article,
| but it seemed mainstream. Based on what I could gather it
| sounds like he supports a more fiscally responsible
| stimulus and to have it targeted to people who actually
| need it rather than to everybody. Assuming that is the
| gist of the article then I think that is decently
| mainstream. I would agree that it is a dissenting
| viewpoint for the Washington Post though.
|
| >not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page
| article with a definitively non-mainstream message
|
| This article was pretty long so I skimmed it (so if I
| missed an important detail let me know). It sounds like a
| mainstream message. Gun ownership and protection of
| oneself with guns is a mainstream message in the US.
| Maybe it is a bit non-mainstream since the author is a
| socialist, but nothing stood out as out of the norm.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I have a counter example, just look at the debacle when the
| New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton and
| the editorial page editor had to resign because of the
| outrage about its content:
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/07/nyt-opinion-
| bennet-...
| [deleted]
| kennywinker wrote:
| He called for using military force against civil rights
| activists. Is this the kind of great intellectual leap
| forward the grandparent post was talking about? Because
| if you want to talk about cancelling things, using the
| military to crush and jail activism is cancelling things
| pretty hard.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| He called on the use of force against people doing
| violence, not the peaceful protestors.
| kennywinker wrote:
| "One thing above all else will restore order to our
| streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse,
| detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers."
|
| Incited by "violence" (mostly property damage, some
| clashes with cops trying to box in and disperse non-
| violent protestors) - but calling for dispersal of
| everyone. Using the military to crush a civil rights
| movement
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Someone peacefully protesting is not a "lawbreaker". The
| quote you provided only refers to criminals. In fact "the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble" is explicitly
| allowed in the Constitution.
|
| Please show me where he said peaceful protestors should
| have force used upon them.
| kennywinker wrote:
| When he said send in the military to do "an overwhelming
| show of force".
|
| The military isn't going to walk through the crowd
| picking out the few people smashing windows or throwing
| bottles. That would not be an OVERWHELMING SHOW OF FORCE.
| They would march on the crowds, and almost inevitably use
| lethal force on them. Even if the target is only the ones
| throwing bottles or smashing windows, the military cannot
| and would not make that distinction in the moment.
|
| We don't have to imagine what it would be like, it's
| happened before
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
| _-david-_ wrote:
| So whn you said "He called for using military force
| against civil rights activists" that was not actually
| accurate? Cotton only said against lawbreakers right?
| kennywinker wrote:
| If I spread my coin jar out on the table, to sort all the
| quarters out, and you walk in and say "let's clean all
| these pennies up! I'll tip the table over and they'll all
| fall into this garbage bag!" You technically said that
| you wanted to remove the pennies from the table, but your
| suggested course of action would have also removed all
| the quarters and dimes.
|
| Do you understand the difference between how you say
| something, and the ideas you are conveying? The thing he
| suggested was using military force on the people
| protesting.
|
| Even setting aside that. Even if he did mean to magically
| only use military force on protestors who broke the law.
| There were a lot of protests happening peacefully, but
| after an 8pm curfew - those would have been
| lawbreakers... and also peaceful protestors. Should they
| have military force used on them because they broke a
| curfew? Tom Cotton appears to think so
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Who knew, the age of unrestricted access meant that _others_
| would have unrestricted access to our secrets too
| standardUser wrote:
| There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions
| were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting
| opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or
| excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on
| Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
| aparsons wrote:
| > some companies won't work with you
|
| It's a pretty big deal when that company is your employer. We
| need better protections around speech in this country. Firing
| someone for something they said cannot be a one-sided
| decision. At the minimum, the worker deserves the chance to
| go to court/arbitration
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is one of the categories of protections unions
| historically offered.
|
| Probably also worth noting that one _does_ have the right
| to go to court if one believes one was wrongfully
| terminated. When Google fired James Damore, he sued. But
| the National Labor Relations Board ruled the firing was
| justified because he had made not-legally-protected
| statements that risked creating a hostile work environment.
|
| https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's an outgrowth of a larger problem: The problem today is
| that nobody will work with you nor can you get employed,
| unless you have the right connections.
|
| There is no starting over, because there is no anonymity or
| way to become obscure/forgotten.
| seneca wrote:
| > There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions
| were more acceptable than today.
|
| I suppose it depends how fine grain you can be when
| considering eras, but there were periods even within my own
| lifetime that were much more tolerant. In the 90s, there was
| a period where the influence of religious prigs had waned,
| and the secular prigs had yet to be taken seriously. The
| internet in particular was pretty wide open to ideas of all
| sorts, and no one would seek to ruin your life over
| disagreements.
|
| If you coursen the grain to wider epochs, then yes I think
| you're correct.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I
| visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission
| about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to
| say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If
| I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that
| social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community
| would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech
| firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.
|
| Want to see _real_ cancel culture? Live in any of America 's
| many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month.
| Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.
|
| None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth
| keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in
| deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal
| communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian
| nation" instead of "cancel culture".
| c06n wrote:
| I used to feel to belong to "The Left" (whatever that is)
| precisely because it did _not_ do these things. Now it
| does, and sees it even as a moral imperative to do so.
|
| I'm on the autism spectrum, as are many others around here.
| Social rules are hard in the best of times. Now they are
| impossible to follow, and breaking them is outright
| dangerous.
|
| But I can keep to myself, I guess I'll be fine.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I also find this trend on the left morally unfortunate,
| historically out-of-character, and strategically flawed.
|
| My point here is not to defend cancel culture, but rather
| to point out that something like it has always existed
| and still exists on the right. IMO the only solution is
| everyone realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to
| some form of detente.
|
| I'm not holding my breath, but step zero is both sides
| realizing that the their side also does the thing they're
| complaining about.
| edbob wrote:
| I completely agree that there are problems on both sides,
| but I don't see how your reasoning encourages "everyone
| realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to some form
| of detente". On the contrary, progressives seem to see
| "the right has oppressed people" as a mandate to do
| everything they can to make war on the right and even
| moderate positions (because moderate positions are
| characterized as dog whistles that conservatives hide
| behind, and the "fascist" "Nazi" right must not be given
| any potential cover no matter the cost). I really thought
| your posts were intentionally stoking this attitude, and
| I would never have guessed that you wanted detente if you
| hadn't explicitly said so.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| GP comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306326
| edbob wrote:
| So... your strategy to achieve detente is to inflame and
| justify hatred of people in rural areas? You're
| extrapolating a personal anecdote in order to stereotype
| millions of people. It's hard to see how that is anything
| but destructive.
|
| I'm sorry that you've had to go through those
| experiences, but not everyone rural or Christian is like
| that, and it's very harmful to characterize them that
| way. It's not accurate to stereotype Christians as
| hateful any more than it's accurate to stereotype Muslims
| as supporting terrorism. They are extremely diverse
| groups with some truly bad subgroups, but also some good
| ones, and most subgroups are in-between. The extremes
| aren't representative of the group as a whole.
| c06n wrote:
| If you need to appeal to the goodness of people's hearts,
| you know you've lost.
|
| The age of Enlightement and the idea of liberalism have
| been so powerful because they programmatically went
| against any kind of censorship. Their ideas helped to see
| how humans are truly all equal, that we all share what it
| means to be human.
|
| Identity politics set out to destroy these ideas. It is
| the enemy of liberalism, of a free flow of ideas, of a
| will to see us all as equals. It divides us into groups,
| based on biological features like the color of our skin,
| our age and our genitals.
|
| This insanity will not end well.
| xenophonB wrote:
| those people have zero cultural or institutional power.
| Covzire wrote:
| The opposite has been true for many decades now. There are
| many Christians who are extremely capable scientists, ready
| to perform experiments, document cause and effect and all
| manners of empirical scientific study but can't find work
| (or tenure) because they're not willing to bet all their
| beliefs on the theory that everything came from literally
| nothing, which is by itself non-scientific anyway.
| cbryan wrote:
| This is complete hogwash. I know and work with plenty of
| Christian scientists. They do just as well as everyone
| else in the job market.
| Covzire wrote:
| Name one prominent scientist who is on record (and has
| tenure) who holds the position that the origin of the big
| bang as taught today is un-scientific. Of course there
| are Christian scientists, but Academia only promotes and
| gives tenure to atheists for a growing number of fields.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Isn't it kind of arrogant to think that one knows the
| mechanisms of God so surely as to settle the question on
| the origins of the universe?
|
| The bible, esp. genesis, is taken metaphorically, or else
| a lot of problematic interpretations will arise.
|
| Also, even scholars of the Abrahamic faiths do not
| readily disclose their intimate religious faith, lest
| their work be discredited -- such as a professor who
| studies Christianity, but holds Islamic faith.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQhMllQ-
| ODw&feature=emb_logo
| lostcolony wrote:
| Name any scientist that has a position other than the big
| bang theory, that has any evidence backing it?
|
| The standard isn't "can't include God", but "must fit the
| facts". God is unprovable and untestable; making a theory
| depend on a God makes the theory unprovable and
| untestable. Most scientists who also have religious
| beliefs don't see the two conflicting; their religion
| gives the why, their profession the how.
|
| Or more succinctly, no one is blackballing scientists for
| saying "I believe God caused the Big Bang". But claims
| of, for instance, "I believe the world was created 6000
| years ago over a period of 7 literal days" requires some
| evidence beyond "My understanding of the Bible tells me
| so", and doesn't jibe with your initial statement of
| empirical scientific study.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| A Christian is defined by belief in salvation through
| Christ's death and resurrection. Not disbelief in the Big
| Bang.
| [deleted]
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> but can 't find work (or tenure) because they're not
| willing to bet all their beliefs on the theory that
| everything came from literally nothing, which is by
| itself non-scientific anyway._
|
| Can you point to a single example of a hiring or T&P
| policy that overtly discriminates on the basis of
| religion?
|
| I certainly can. Wheaton College, Cedarville University,
| and Liberty University come to mind. None of those places
| will hire non-Christians, and a Statement of Faith is a
| required component of every faculty application.
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| I find attitudes like this mystifying. No one is saying that
| today's cancel culture is comparable to getting tortured,
| imprisoned, or killed for one's beliefs. We're talking about
| perfectly good and unobjectionable books being hounded out of
| publication because of thought crimes.
|
| Lest you think this only happens to the Alex Jones of the
| world, look at what's happening in the young adults world:
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/young-adult-
| au...
| icelancer wrote:
| Two decades ago it was a lot safer, so, yeah.
| zo1 wrote:
| There are a lot of people that would get fired and worse if
| they simple stated their actual opinion instead of repeating
| the "popular opinion".
| manigandham wrote:
| "Some companies" not working with you can be the end of your
| career in some cases, especially with an online record of it
| that will come up forever in the future.
| dahfizz wrote:
| It depends entirely on what you mean by "unpopular opinions".
| You would face backlash in the 80's if you advocated
| overthrowing the government. Today, you can lose your job for
| not having your gender pronouns in your bio. I don't think
| its fair to equate both of those things as "unpopular
| opinions".
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Who was fired for not having pronouns in their bio?
| ghaff wrote:
| It was supposedly one of the reasons Disney fired Gina
| Carano. However, she had apparently been annoying the
| powers that be with her generally Trumpian social media
| postings for a while.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Supposed by whom? Tucker Carlson?
| [deleted]
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I just looked it up. She added boop/bop/beep to her name
| on Twitter and doubled down when people asked her to
| remove it. [1] And like you said it wasn't her first PR
| problem.
|
| [1] https://uproxx.com/movies/pedro-pascal-sister-trans-
| lux-gina...
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe there is a higher awareness of the costs imposed by
| censors and as the censorship encoded in government recedes
| that of private realms is brought more into light.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions
| were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting
| opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or
| excommunication or prison or death.
|
| Granted, but what's the logic here? We ought to content
| ourselves with regression so long as no one is being
| imprisoned or killed? We want to progress, not _regress_. We
| don 't want a conformist society, we want a _tolerant_
| society[^1]. We want _free speech_ [^2], not
| compelled/coerced speech. We want ideas to compete freely so
| the best rise to the top; we don't want a prescribed set of
| beliefs to be forced on everyone.
|
| [^1]: (yes, I know all about the Paradox of Tolerance and how
| some use it to give themselves moral license to persecute
| anyone they deep intolerant).
|
| [^2]: No, I'm not talking about the strict 1st Amendment
| legal definition, but the broader principle.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The idea that "ideas compete and the best rise to the top"
| is completely utopian. Such a "free marketplace of ideas"
| has never existed and cannot exist, because attention is a
| limited resource, bias exists, and not all ideas are
| equally valid.
|
| The argument exists as a cover for constant relitigating of
| ideas that by all rational measures have _lost_ in the
| "marketplace of ideas" time and time again.
|
| If every single astronomy journal ever released contained a
| segment arguing about the merits of geocentrism because a
| few wackos continue to demand their right to "free speech
| and open debate" (which in reality means: unlimited
| speaking time on somebody else's platform), there would be
| no room for new science amid all the repetitive debunking.
|
| Some debates are settled. Geocentrism is wrong. Racism is
| wrong. The holocaust happened. Authoritarianism is bad.
| Facts exist.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I think you fundamentally misunderstand free speech and
| the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor. It's precisely
| _because_ of free speech that we can collectively condemn
| geocentrism, racism, holocaust-denial, authoritarianism,
| etc. Indeed, authoritarianism in general and Nazism,
| Stalinism, Maoism, etc in particular always starts with
| speech restrictions. The idea that free speech and
| authoritarianism are bed fellows doesn 't make sense;
| these are mutually exclusive.
|
| Moreover, "marketplace of ideas" is a metaphor for what
| happens in a society that has a high degree of free
| speech: the best most valid ideas rise to the top. You
| argue that the marketplace metaphor doesn't work because
| bias exists and because ideas vary in validity, but that
| doesn't make sense--these facts are the very mechanism by
| which the marketplace metaphor works: in speech-tolerant
| societies, a diversity of ideas compete and the best,
| most valid ideas rise to the top irrespective of bias.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| > Indeed, authoritarianism in general and Nazism,
| Stalinism, Maoism, etc in particular always starts with
| speech restrictions. The idea that free speech and
| authoritarianism are bed fellows doesn't make sense;
| these are mutually exclusive.
|
| This is a myth perpetuated by selective cultural memory.
| The Nazis were _all about_ "free speech" before they were
| in power. They frequently complained about "Free speech"
| when papers published editorials criticizing them, or
| when their public appearances were protested, or when
| opinion pages didn't present "both sides".
|
| One widely used Nazi propaganda poster from 1928 even
| showed Hitler with a big "CENSORED" block over his mouth,
| captioned "Only One of the 2000 million people in the
| world is not allowed to speak in Germany"[1]
|
| > in speech-tolerant societies, a diversity of ideas
| compete and the best, most valid ideas rise to the top
| irrespective of bias.
|
| I'm not sure that you understand what "bias" means. Bias
| is that which leads people to believe in ideas that are
| false for various sometimes difficult to quantify
| reasons. The fact that evidence opposing flat-eartherism
| is available has not prevented that idea from gaining
| popularity, in fact it is more popular today in 2020 than
| it ever has been.
|
| The "marketplace" metaphor itself exposes that the
| argument comes from a utopian perspective, the argument
| only works if you pre-suppose that a free and unregulated
| economic market produces best results, but we know from
| experience that it produces monopolies, child labor, and
| bread doped with sawdust.
|
| Public discourse is like a market in some ways, namely
| that people with more money are able to advance their
| ideas further by buying media outlets and marketing
| broadly and engaging in deceptive communication that
| exploits cognitive bias to acquire more believers, in
| just the same way as people with more money are able to
| buy out and undercut competition and exploit addictions
| and consumer psychology to get more sales than their
| products deserve.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/_amroali/status/119080932231553433
| 6?s=20
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think the prior post was making the case we -have-
| progressed?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It seemed like "we have progressed, therefore it's okay
| to backslide and no one should criticize cancellation".
| After all, no one here is arguing that the 1500s, 1600s,
| etc were the golden ages of speech.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think it's presumptuous to assume "it's okay to
| backslide" was part of that comment. What/when are we
| backsliding from? There was never some 'golden age' where
| comments anathema to the culture at large wouldn't have
| consequences. Even the popular victims of cancel culture
| now have it better than the ones in the 1950s, say (i.e.,
| Gina Carano may have been fired from one company, but
| that was because she persisted in espousing views they
| disagreed with; compare that to 1950s era blackballing
| from all of Hollywood for being -suspected- of supporting
| communism/socialism).
|
| I think for it to imply "it's okay to backslide" we have
| to have actually broached a time we've backslid -from-.
| Pursuant to the article, I don't really consider it
| backsliding if authors are now having second thoughts
| about writing from cultural perspectives other than their
| own. They have to be selective, of course, but we don't
| need, for instance, a white author writing about noble
| savages. That's not to say a white author can't write a
| western; it does mean they need to be very careful with
| the tone of it, or, yes, risk offending people. And
| recognize that some people will be offended no matter
| what, so they also need to recognize that some people
| aren't worth listening to.
|
| It's called sensitivity, not censorship. Yes, sensitivity
| might lead to self-censorship, which isn't necessarily a
| bad thing. And you may miss the mark, and there will be
| consequences, and you might hit the mark but still have
| angry people, but angry people have yelled about every
| piece of literature we have. It's a balancing act, and it
| always has been; and I would contend consequences now are
| the weakest they have ever been.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I think it's presumptuous to assume "it's okay to
| backslide" was part of that comment.
|
| I wasn't assuming or presuming, I was _asking_.
|
| > What/when are we backsliding from? There was never some
| 'golden age' where comments anathema to the culture at
| large wouldn't have consequences.
|
| We're not just talking about comments that are "anathema
| to the culture at large", we're often talking about
| comments that offend only about 10% of the population.
| Things like "citing a celebrated academic's work on the
| efficacy of nonviolent protest" or "quoting a black man
| who wished more attention was paid to other issues in his
| community [besides police violence]" or "accidentally
| making the 'ok' gesture". With that out of the way, to
| answer your question more broadly, it has been rare in my
| life for people to be terminated even for quite
| controversial speech, and certainly not due to explicit
| pressure from large, often coordinated groups of
| strangers. If you were the public face of a company you
| were expected to steer clear of controversy, but ordinary
| people didn't need to fear a loss of income or access to
| healthcare.
|
| The worst of it was during the height of the Iraq and
| Afghanistan wars when it was controversial to be seen as
| unpatriotic, but even then I think ordinary people were
| mostly insulated from the effects (i.e., it was "punching
| up"), the effects weren't especially chilling, and
| society quickly rallied around shared free-speech values
| and righted itself. For what it's worth, I don't think
| conservatives 15 years ago were _morally_ better than
| today 's woke progressives; rather, I think the
| difference is social media (notably, conservatives
| canceled Colin Kaepernick almost immediately after social
| media cancelation came into existence).
|
| > It's called sensitivity, not censorship.
|
| I didn't call it censorship?
|
| > Pursuant to the article, I don't really consider it
| backsliding if authors are now having second thoughts
| about writing from cultural perspectives other than their
| own.
|
| I've never found "ends justify the means" arguments to be
| very compelling, personally.
|
| > And you may miss the mark, and there will be
| consequences
|
| One problem with cancel culture is that there are
| consequences even if your speech is perfectly correct and
| moral, e.g., advocating for nonviolent protest. It turns
| out people with few scruples about canceling also tend to
| lack scruples about whom they target. And to be clear,
| "consequences" aren't "you've offended someone and now
| they won't speak with you"; rather, they're "you've
| offended someone and now they've rounded up a hundred
| people to harass your employer into firing you with the
| express purposes of making an example out of you for
| other would-be non-conformists".
|
| > I would contend consequences now are the weakest they
| have ever been.
|
| I strongly disagree. Worse by far than any time in my
| memory.
| lostcolony wrote:
| >> I would contend consequences now are the weakest they
| have ever been.
|
| > I strongly disagree. Worse by far than any time in my
| memory.
|
| And yet we have literal nazis posting on social media for
| the world to see, with the occasional one losing their
| job, and that's it. Hardly a chilling effect.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| >>" Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies
| won't work with you."
|
| And is that good?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It has also been hundreds of years of Western history since
| the intellectual class was driving this "punishment", and
| that was when religion and education were tightly linked.
|
| The problem isn't that ideologues are new, it is that
| ideology has seeped into the highest levels of education and
| culture. You have people across the spectrum of disciplines
| and stances afraid to contradict the received knowledge of
| the masses (or one of usually two sects).
|
| This hasn't been the case for a LONG TIME.
| kradeelav wrote:
| Just this past weekend a disabled animator was blacklisted
| from the industry because an ex-friend objected to their NSFW
| drawings on a twitter handle (completely separate from their
| professional handle). The number of death threats were also
| an immense psychological toll, and a bit more than just
| "being yelled at" (I am open to the fact there is a fuzzy
| continuum between the two).
|
| Regardless - "some companies won't work with you" is
| effectively a blacklist for those who don't have traditional
| backgrounds. Another point is that the online social circles
| acts as a support network for some disenfranchised folks
| (queers like myself), and when that gets turned against them,
| it gets ugly.
|
| I don't think I'm exaggerating that we're in a satanic panic
| against certain kind of art and works.
|
| (Not providing public links out of real concern for safety,
| but happy to if individuals DM me here.)
| threatofrain wrote:
| If people don't like you, whether justly or unjustly, then
| they don't like you. Try persuading people who have a
| choice to work with people they dislike.
|
| The only way to stop this is enforcement with teeth.
| kradeelav wrote:
| On a practical basis, I would agree as somebody that fits
| a number of protected categories, and have had to work
| around this.
|
| Ethically, this is why we have organizations like the
| ACLU, ADA, and many, many others to be the enforcement
| with teeth. It's an uphill battle. I would disagree in
| the sense that pushing back against censorship -
| particularly of minorities - has many battlegrounds, not
| just enforcement with teeth. Greater social
| awareness/acceptance, education (history of blacklisting
| of sexual minorities for example), grassroots activism of
| simply supporting authors at risk of being deplatformed
| ... no sense in ignoring a tool that's available.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Are you suggesting that blacklists are a new phenomenon?
|
| "cancel culture" has always existed. The only thing that is
| changing is that who is "cancelled" is no longer chosen by
| TV producers and news editors (ie, white men), but
| democratically by self-directed popular discourse.
|
| In 2003 the Dixie Chicks said at a show in london, "We
| don't want this war, we're ashamed the President of the
| United States is from Texas". Immediately their recording
| contracts were cancelled, venues would no longer book their
| shows, radio stations would no longer play them, MTV
| stopped showing their music videos, they lost all of their
| sponsorships, and their colleagues in the genre ostracized
| them and started including segments in their shows about
| how the Dixie Chicks are terrorists.
|
| If that's not cancel culture, what is? Why is it okay and
| normal for white male venue owners, disc jockeys, and
| record label CEOs to destroy somebody's career for a single
| sentence of political speech, but "political correctness
| run amok" when marginalized people on twitter decide that
| they aren't going to buy tickets to a show with a comedian
| who's known for assaulting female stagehands?
| dash2 wrote:
| I don't think anyone claimed that what happened to the
| Dixie Chicks was OK. Also, it sounds as if you think that
| cancellation is better if it's democratic. If so, you
| need to address the 150-year old argument made by Mill,
| that democratic popular opinion can be particularly
| oppressive and dangerous to minority viewpoints:
|
| "Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at
| first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as
| operating through the acts of the public authorities. But
| reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself
| the tyrant -- society collectively, over the separate
| individuals who compose it -- its means of tyrannizing
| are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the
| hands of its political functionaries. Society can and
| does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong
| mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in
| things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a
| social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of
| political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by
| such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape,
| penetrating much more deeply into the details of life,
| and enslaving the soul itself."
| hannasanarion wrote:
| You should maybe continue reading Mill, because _nowhere_
| in his writings, or those of anybody else who used the
| phrase "tyranny of the majority" prior to the modern
| age, believed that the solution was disempowerment of the
| majority and tyranny of the minority.
|
| Surely if you think that majoritarian tyranny is bad, you
| must also believe that minoritarian tyranny is far worse,
| right? Such as when a select few individuals of a
| particular racial, gender, and social class, have
| complete control over popular media, with the sole power
| to decide who is successful and what damaging information
| about powerful people can becomes public knowledge and
| which is kept secret?
|
| Also, quoting Mill while claiming that an individual
| consumer freely choosing to not buy a product is
| "tyranny" is laughable to the highest degree.
| xenophonB wrote:
| Yeah, the old "white" men who run Hollywood, record
| labels and the news media.
|
| Oh wait, is that anti-Semitic to say? Then was it anti-
| white of you to say?
|
| Also being cancelled for opposing a war that was
| engineered by globalist neocons is not proof that the
| interests of white males used to be the basis for
| cancelling people lol.
|
| And there's nothing "democratic" about this lol, the
| cancelling is still done to suit the interests of those
| "white" people who run these organisations. No one cares
| if some people don't want to buy some tickets to a show,
| they care when Mastercard and Visa have secret blacklists
| of anyone to the right of Mitt Romney that they don't
| allow to transact on their monopoly global financial
| network.
| kradeelav wrote:
| To the first line: not at all, we'd both most likely
| point to Hollywood's blacklisting in the McCarthy era as
| one of many examples.
|
| To the second point: I would disagree in the sense that
| (a) it is dangerous to conflate 'people in a position of
| power actively using their established power to censor
| others' and 'mere disagreement'. Censorship becomes
| censorship when there is active harassment. (b) The
| latter example of marginalized people on twitter
| disagreeing isn't such - until the threats are stated.
| And there is a _lot_ of horizontal violence that exists
| on that platform.
|
| The way I'd personally reframe this issue of
| (self)-censorship is that we're in a moral panic wave -
| certain platforms have made it incredibly easy for
| creators to be mobbed if they step out of acceptable
| discourse, regardless of their politics.
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
| jimbokun wrote:
| So...sounds like you are railing against Cancel Culture
| and thinks it's bad?
| [deleted]
| africanboy wrote:
| the post specifically talks about young people self-censoring
| themselves.
|
| I can't recall another era were young authors were afraid of
| being marginalized by other young people for being young and
| having radical (and sometimes plain stupid) ideas.
|
| I remember old, conservative people doing it to youngsters,
| but not to themselves, despite being the ones with bad -
| sometimes very bad - thoughts.
| toomim wrote:
| Blacklisting and excommunication are _exactly_ what is
| happening today, but the difference is that it 's much worse
| in a global world.
|
| In 200 BC, if you were excommunicated from a tribe, it would
| be horrible, but you could walk 20 miles and join another
| tribe that hasn't heard or bought into the ostracization.
|
| In 2021 AD, if you are excommunicated from an industry on the
| internet, there's nowhere else you can physically go. The
| entire intellectual globe is connected online.
| Excommunication is now worse than it used to be -- it's
| global.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > In 2021 AD, if you are excommunicated from an industry on
| the internet, there's nowhere else you can physically go.
| The entire intellectual globe is connected online.
| Excommunication is now worse than it used to be -- it's
| global.
|
| When has this ever happened? There's lots of claims that
| people have been cancelled and can never work in their
| field again, but actual examples never seem to materialize.
| icelancer wrote:
| Try being falsely accused of sexual assault (or similar),
| forced into a plea bargain due to trumped up charges (or
| hell, beat the charge and still be considered guilty
| because "believe women"), and having your name plastered
| all over the Internet - and then getting a job in
| anything remotely public-facing. I know two people
| personally who had their lives ruined as a result of the
| amplification effect of the Internet.
|
| The companies don't have to believe you did anything
| wrong. They just have to fear that the mob might believe
| it and hurt their bottom line.
| lainga wrote:
| Or fired from your job, branded with the scarlet letter, have
| your private information shown to the public by some news
| outlet...
| c06n wrote:
| And fired from your job. And yelled at on the street. And
| prevented from working in your field ever again. And death
| threats.
|
| So, blacklisting: check. Excommunication: check. I'd rather
| not wait till it goes down further.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Half a century ago, in Japan, someone wrote a fictional
| story critical of the Emperor, and someone broke into the
| publishers house and murdered their housekeeper and
| severely injured their wife. [0]
|
| In response to the murder, the writer was pretty much
| universally condemned and the a bill was introduced in the
| legislature to ban writings of that sort.
|
| The fact that so many have convinced themselves that
| somehow we're in some new illiberal age is comical.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimanaka_incident
| lainga wrote:
| Well, peoples' expectations have changed in America since
| we declared independence from Japan.
| slg wrote:
| I am curious what era of US history do you think was free
| of this stuff?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| For right-leaning, racist, sexist White male elites? Most
| of it.
|
| Which is why that's where most of the whining that this
| is a new and dangerous phenomenon is coming from.
|
| Heck, the government hyperfocus on rooting out Communism
| began almost immediately after the suggestion of turning
| the same apparatus against the KKK was rebuffed because
| of that organizations loyalty and patriotism.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I erroneously thought the critic in the article was
| Japanese, although the "sir" should have been an obvious
| giveaway.
|
| In the states, just off the top of my head: the McCarthy
| era, the reaction to the 1968 Olympic raised fist
| incident
| jimbokun wrote:
| > the McCarthy era, the reaction to the 1968 Olympic
| raised fist incident
|
| Aren't those examples of the kinds of things we want to
| stop doing?
|
| So you are agreeing Cancel Culture is bad and we should
| find better ways to peacefully disagree with each other?
| lainga wrote:
| I guessed as much :)
| tstrimple wrote:
| Who (apart from Colin Kaepernick) has been prevented from
| working in their field ever again?
| conception wrote:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuCsAqKWYAkfEIF.jpg
| [deleted]
| throwawaygh wrote:
| All of those things happen to homosexuals and non-
| Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and
| with MUCH greater frequency.
|
| When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take
| the cancel culture bugbear seriously.
| refenestrator wrote:
| And that's really bad! Don't emulate it!
|
| "We're gonna hurt some people ourselves to get even" is
| the devil speaking.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Don 't emulate it!_
|
| Where in this thread do I justify or emulate? Please
| quote something from any of my posts that would give you
| the impression that I approve of "cancel culture".
|
| However, if people are _genuinely_ concerned about
| chilling speech, then why are they spending so much
| effort to call out SJW in a tiny handful of big cities
| instead of raising hell about the overt and often legal
| discrimination that happens in tens of thousands of rural
| communities?
|
| It's hard for me to take the concern about cancel culture
| seriously when the concern is exclusively focused on one
| side of the political/cultural divide even though the
| phenomenon happens far more on the _other_ side of that
| divide. I have zero confidence that such concerns are
| genuine.
| refenestrator wrote:
| If you're going to hold yourself up as the more
| enlightened group, it creates a bit of an obligation to
| act that way. In my book at least.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> If you 're going to hold yourself up as the more
| enlightened group, it creates a bit of an obligation to
| act that way. In my book at least._
|
| I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I'm saying ;-)
| [deleted]
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| That is cancel culture too. No one upthread made this
| about political sides. Why are you?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> No one upthread made this about political sides_
|
| AFAICT every example in the article. I always assume that
| the contents of the article are upthread because I always
| assume people read the article before commenting :)
|
| Aside from the article, my impression is that "cancel
| culture" has a more specific meaning than you seem to
| prescribe. One on hand, we never called it "cancel
| culture" when a teacher is fired for being gay. And on
| the other, CPAC's theme this year is "America
| Uncanceled". My understanding is that, at this point, the
| term _does_ have political content.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Naive.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Perhaps it is a bit naive to assume people read the
| article :).
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Thanks for expanding your original reply, I can see how
| the term itself might come across as politically charged.
| It'd be better if it wasn't used mostly in conjunction
| with the left.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I think "cancel culture" definitely has some left-wing
| connotations, but I think that's because it came into
| existence at a time when the left was doing the majority
| of the canceling. In the aughts, "canceling" was mostly a
| conservative thing (usually criticizing the war effort)
| and it was much less egregious (if only because social
| media barely existed at the time). One prominent,
| egregious example of conservative cancellation from the
| time was the Dixie Chicks.
|
| So yeah, "cancellation" has some left-wing connotations,
| but it's not something that only the left can do.
| Further, there absolutely are hypocrites who criticize
| "cancel culture", but who happily try to cancel people
| they don't like. Hypocrites are bad, but there are still
| lots and lots of principled critics of cancel culture
| (indeed, I'm pretty sure most of the Harper's letter
| signatories are left-of-center). That there are
| hypocrites doesn't validate cancel culture.
|
| Also, if you're upset about the left-wing connotations,
| the proper response is not to try to legitimize cancel
| culture, but rather to persuade your political associates
| to behave better for sake of the brand.
|
| TL;DR: Canceling is bad no matter who does it; recently
| it's mostly been the woke left who have been doing it so
| it does have some political connotations; sometimes
| people are disingenuous in criticizing "cancel culture".
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Agreed. And to be clear, in the early aughts society
| pushed back on conservatives when they tried to cancel
| people for criticizing the wars at the time. So critics
| of cancel culture aren't being inconsistent or picking on
| left-wing cancellation.
| xenophonB wrote:
| It's not 1960 lol, there are not vast swathes of the
| country where that happens, since the liberal left has
| almost total control via the Federal bureaucracy for
| enforcing their values everywhere, not just in blue
| states
| fallingknife wrote:
| First of all nobody is saying its good when right wingers
| do it. But here is Bernie Sanders invited to make a
| speech at the right wing Liberty University:
| https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9323041/bernie-sanders-
| liberty...
| throwawaygh wrote:
| In the general case, you're not allowed to teach at
| Liberty unless you're a very specific type of
| conservative christian. A statement of faith is a
| required component of the faculty application packet. The
| student code of conduct prohibits homosexual behavior.
|
| Passing off Liberty as a bastion of free expression
| because they invited Sanders to give a speech is beyond
| disingenuous, and a perfect example of the enormous
| double standard in discussions of "cancel culture" right
| now.
| fallingknife wrote:
| First of all I never said or implied that it was a
| "bastion of free speech"
|
| > In the general case, you're not allowed to teach at
| Liberty unless you're a very specific type of
| conservative christian.
|
| Let's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at
| Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very
| specific political leaning. And certain other political
| leanings are not allowed in any department.
|
| > A statement of faith is a required component of the
| faculty application packet.
|
| UC requires a mandatory "diversity statement" for faculty
| job applications:
|
| https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/11/19/mathematic
| ian...
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Let 's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at
| Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very
| specific political leaning. And certain other political
| leanings are not allowed in any department._
|
| I can't speak to all of Harvard's departments, but I know
| it's completely possible to have a wide variety of
| political viewpoints in SEAS. The faculty itself is
| probably to the right of the immediately surrounding
| community (that that this means much in Boston Metro, but
| I think it's probably true in the case of SEAS).
|
| _> UC requires a mandatory "diversity statement" for
| faculty job applications:_
|
| Diversity statements typically focus on a certain type of
| service and teaching activity.
|
| The "how it effects my teaching and advising" part of the
| statement could talk about making special efforts in your
| teaching to help first generation college students, or
| supporting students who aren't neurotypical, or being
| really good at working with the specific circumstances of
| students who come from non-traditional backgrounds (eg
| adult learners).
|
| The outreach/service portion of the statement could
| discuss bringing resources to underserved rural
| communities. Or providing learning opportunities for
| prisoners. Or a million other things.
|
| Source: actually did this. Got job offers.
|
| The fact that you think writing a "diversity statement"
| means you have to fit a certain political mold says a lot
| more about what you think diversity means than about
| diversity statement requirements. The diversity statement
| is about proving that you can at the very least create an
| inclusive learning environment for people from non-
| traditional backgrounds. Why in god's name should this be
| political, or in fact not a requirement for a teacher?
|
| Comparing diversity statements to statements of religious
| faith is absurd. If you can't write a page about eg
| helping autism spectrum students succeed in CS 1, and
| someone else can, then you might not be the best
| candidate for a CS 1 lecturer. Opinions on the
| Westminster Catechism, on the other hand, are not
| relevant to teaching students about linked lists.
| core-questions wrote:
| > but I know it's completely possible to have a wide
| variety of political viewpoints in SEAS
|
| What _you_ and Harvard in general think of as a wide
| variety of political viewpoints, and what _actually_
| constitutes a wide variety, are likely very different
| things.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I grew up in bright red land, the sort of community where
| one is obligated to go to church when visiting home and
| folks notice if you don't. Shooting clay follows the
| Easter egg hunt. Gay marriage is sinful and we all
| learned in Sunday school that Rome fell because of the
| bathhouses.
|
| I know well what a wide variety of political viewpoints
| looks like, because I've lived in at least three
| extremes. Have you?
|
| Harvard's faculty is left of center in aggregate (did I
| ever say otherwise?) but they aren't uniformly radical
| and there are a lot of moderates and conservatives in the
| ranks.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| "Diversity", like what happened with Lawrence H. Summers?
|
| An individual who I thought got a raw deal and was
| completely misunderstood, when he gave his speech.
| core-questions wrote:
| Really? Seems like a typical parenthetical elite, with
| all the connections and intrigue that go with it. His
| history is a standard playbook of actions benefiting
| himself and his people over everyone else.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| His speech elicited a walk-out. It was received very
| badly and it led to his ouster.
|
| As far as I can tell he's done well for himself since
| then, but that's because he already had a network of
| connections.
|
| One misconstrued speech was all it took to ruin a chance
| to lead a premier east coast uni.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| > Let's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at
| Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very
| specific political leaning. And certain other political
| leanings are not allowed in any department.
|
| That's complete nonsense. Harvard's law department is run
| by Mary Ann Glendon, notorious catholic dominionist and
| staple of anti-abortion activism in the US.
|
| The "liberal college professor" meme is a right-wing
| canard, which only holds true as far as people who
| believe in evidence driven investigation and deep
| thought, such as those who serve in science departments,
| are unlikely to form a religious conservative reactionary
| worldview.
| xenophonB wrote:
| one tiny college versus the other 5,000 colleges where
| hyper leftist values predominate!
|
| Could you be any more disingenuous?
|
| And no one has ever suggested that other groups don't
| engage in this sort of activity when they're in power.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> other 5,000 colleges where hyper leftist values
| predominate_
|
| Show me a single college with a policy that explicitly
| discriminates against Christians.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Very little of that is new ("You'll never work in this town
| again" is an old statement).
|
| What has changed is that the Internet and the associated
| record of a person's conduct online can make the town very,
| very big indeed.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I think the point is this had been around for a while, and
| what people are calling "cancel culture" is the same old-
| same old, but with (hopefully) less prison/death.
|
| There's nothing new about receiving negative feedback for
| having and expressing unpopular opinions. That's really
| common in pretty much every single social group I've been
| in, including on HN.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Normal feedback is down votes and replies. Cancel culture
| is messaging dang and asking him to ban you.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Cancel culture is messaging dang and asking him to ban
| you.
|
| And your claim is that this sort of thing just started
| happening in the last decade or two?
| fallingknife wrote:
| I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated
| celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10
| years ago. Hear about them all the time now.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| People are upset now that the current is shifting and you
| get shunned for being racist, rather than being shunned
| for not speaking properly or whatever the heck.
|
| The underlying mechanism has not really changed.
| fallingknife wrote:
| No one is complaining about going after actual racists.
| The problem is that things which aren't racist are now
| defined as racist and vice versa. e.g. saying that
| universities shouldn't admit students by race and only
| use grades and test scores is now "racist"
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't think that's racist, although, personally, I do
| think that people holding those takes often have a myopic
| view of the world.
|
| You're saying that you think that your job would be in
| danger if you said publicly that you thought that
| universities should be race-blind?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Me personally no, but I'm not so sure that I would risk
| saying it. On the other hand, I know I would be in no
| danger whatsoever stating that I favored racial
| admissions policies. I am sure that I would be in danger
| if I criticized my employer's hiring policies on that
| point. You set a high bar, though. The idea of getting
| called racist for advocating directly against racism
| should be no more than a bad joke.
| refenestrator wrote:
| It's specifically about speaking properly.
|
| Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as
| independent contractors to stiff them on benefits, but
| _everybody_ cares about the propriety of master /slave
| replication terminology. We're dealing with police
| violence by capitalizing Black in our style guides. Etc
| etc etc.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers
| as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits,
|
| I think quite a few people gave a shit? I think you're
| attacking a straw man, it is perfectly possible to have
| opinions on small stylistic issues (like master vs main)
| while also thinking that there are fundamental economic
| things that need to change.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Uber's referendum won in California.
|
| I'm sure that people 'care', and I suppose I'm straw-
| manning those people.. I'm not straw-manning the system.
| Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't
| permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged.
| It's an energy outlet.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Uber's referendum won in California.
|
| Their appeal lost in the UK just last week.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't
| permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged.
| It's an energy outlet.
|
| I agree very much with this statement, but somehow have
| reached the opposite conclusion about whether "cancel
| culture" is a big problem that we need to spend a lot of
| time addressing. To me, that seems to be playing into the
| same issue you identified.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Glad we agree on the shape of things :)
|
| I was more being descriptive than prescriptive, I'm just
| posting here.. but it's a problem that all of the energy
| and outrage go into stylistic and cultural bullshit. In a
| perfect world we could channel that energy into community
| organizing, electoralism, or other forms of people
| getting out there and interacting with the groups they
| claim to speak for.
| edbob wrote:
| People are upset that the definition of racist has been
| repurposed to apply to racially neutral positions and
| even anti-racism positions. If one advocates in favor of
| enforcing existing immigration laws, that's a quick way
| to get labeled a racist Nazi even though it's actually a
| very moderate stance. If one supports treating everyone
| equally regardless of race, then that explicitly anti-
| racism position is characterized as racist and attacked
| with baseless accusations of "bad faith".
| ghaff wrote:
| There's also a difference between saying something stupid
| and having some people telling you to knock it off. And
| posting it or having it posted to Twitter with a possible
| consequence like a bunch of people emailing your employer
| demanding you be fired. Which they probably will because
| it's easier that way if you really did say something you
| shouldn't have.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you had a gay character in a sitcom in the 70s-80s you
| would similarly get a bunch of people calling your
| employer.
|
| There's totally a difference, but you honestly think that
| this is a new thing that never used to happen?
| dash2 wrote:
| > If you had a gay character in a sitcom in the 70s-80s
| you would similarly get a bunch of people calling your
| employer.
|
| Apparently not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_com
| edy_television_seri...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think it's pretty obvious how that isn't contrary to
| what I said. [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawatch-UK
| ghaff wrote:
| >you honestly think that this is a new thing that never
| used to happen?
|
| No, but I do think it's a lot easier for someone to tweet
| out an inappropriate joke or get caught on video doing
| something obnoxious today--that have at least the
| potential to blow up to a greater degree than a few
| decades ago.
| futuretaint wrote:
| this is common whataboutism. What about the dark ages ?
| What about burning witches ? If we claim to be a
| compassionate society we should be anti-censorship and
| let ideas succeed or fail through the strength of their
| argument.
| AngryData wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but it wasn't that long ago
| that people were being brought to court in the US just for
| accusations of being socialist or communist. Any there
| wasn't even anything against the law with have different
| economic ideals.
| SignalNotSecure wrote:
| You could post just about anything online and mostly get away
| with it for a brief period of time ending around 2004 unless
| you were wholesale drug trafficking out in the open. Those
| websites were taken down but not very quickly.
|
| Sometimes I miss the lulz of the sheep being taken to
| slaughter by tubgirl and goatse.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| What is keeping you from opening up your own shocksites
| right now? I think it is more cultural zeitgeist - the
| generation involved with it largely grew out of it and the
| younger ones don't have the same sort of "culture" to
| reoccur in the same way.
|
| It isn't something you would want to boast about running
| and would have people thinking ill of you but it doesn't
| really trigger outrage.
| SignalNotSecure wrote:
| Younger generations don't use the web browser as their
| main source of entertainment. Their attention and energy
| has been siloed to the largest media platforms. They
| enjoy being serfs on the FAANG plantation.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| So in otherwords the issue is they don't want your puppet
| show when there is TV. That isn't cancel culture any more
| than nobody showing up to my TEDx talk where I count to
| ten thousand.
| jpxw wrote:
| Try 20 years ago.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Everything rises and falls. Even in the west we've had the
| inquisition, the Stasi in the DDR, McCarthyism in the US.
| Hopefully the modern trend towards censorship and rightthink
| will encourage the future generations to appreciate freedom of
| speech and ideas
| jpxw wrote:
| The worrying thing, to me, is that it's the young who are
| pushing this. Previously it was old conservatives, who were
| on the way out anyway. It's different now.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Cancel culture is mostly millennial-led. Gen Z seems to
| take it as the status quo, and we'll see what they do with
| it when they have power.
| artificial wrote:
| Cancel culture is McCarthyism, just driven by the left.
| Millenials are barely in power. I'd say GenX has more of
| a say.
| artificial wrote:
| I recall the scares about D&D and Satanism back in the day.
| The shoe is on the other foot now, weirdly backed by the
| corporations. Do you think it's organic or inculcated?
| RobLach wrote:
| Hardly so.
|
| There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest
| opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive
| reach without much consequence or effort.
|
| The idea that we're in a dark age of thought is purely
| rhetorical and only serves to frame a narrative that further
| amplifies ideas that would never had a chance to propagate
| before the information era.
|
| Furthermore, we are living in a time of such absurdity that
| there are politicians giving internationally televised press
| conferences about how their speech is being suppressed and they
| have no power.
|
| The only self-restriction is by people that don't have the
| conviction to stand by their ideas, or actually have not
| thought through their perspective to adequate level of
| introspection and evidence that can survive free and open
| discourse. Instead it's much easier to exclaim victimhood and
| censorship and not bother examining ideas beyond a gut feeling.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| For example, if you think people who have a sex of male and a
| gender of female shouldn't play in women's sports then really
| you actually have not thought through your perspective to
| adequate level of introspection and evidence that can survive
| free and open discourse. And so you should have your books
| banned and be subject to abuse and threats. That's just
| reasonable.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Tell that to David Shor, among others -
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-
| cu...
| tstrimple wrote:
| From your article:
|
| > Shor is still consulting in Democratic politics, but he
| is no longer working for a firm that restricts his freedom
| to publicly opine.
|
| This is why claims of "cancel culture" aren't taken
| seriously. If he was "cancelled", but is still gainfully
| employed in the field of his choice and expertise what does
| "cancelled" really mean?
| eternalban wrote:
| 2017; https://citizentruth.org/nyu-professor-interview-
| propaganda-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Crispin_Miller
|
| 2020: "As of September 2020, Miller is under a behavioral
| review by New York University ...".
|
| An 'educational moment' for NYU students and faculty ..
|
| >> There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest
| opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have
| massive reach without much consequence or effort.
|
| .. and possibly your GP.
| xenophonB wrote:
| People like you are incredibly dishonest.
|
| Yeah, people are just imagining the waves of deplatforming
| and online censorship, being fired from their jobs for
| dissenting from the orthodoxy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And perhaps, in this era of such free and open access to
| information, individuals are being held to a higher standard
| of not speaking from a position of authority without the
| knowledge that can be gleaned from that free and open access
| and not doubling-down on their ignorance when it is brought
| to light for them?
| lostcolony wrote:
| Or being elected and then turned power broker in a major
| political party.
|
| It's definitely an interesting time to be alive.
| farias0 wrote:
| And who is the judge of what is and isn't true? You seem to
| imply social network consensus is a safe ruler for what
| kind of speech should be allowed but to me it sounds
| absurd.
| dash2 wrote:
| "Dark age of thought" would be excessive (and is maybe a
| straw man). But there's plenty of people being cancelled:
|
| https://www.afaf.org.uk/the-banned-list/
| https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/who-cancel/
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There have been people getting cancelled in very large
| number for thousands of years.
|
| Crucially, nowadays, you can still communicate when
| cancelled. Perhaps to a smaller audience, but this is a
| necessity because of how human social interactions work.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There have been people getting cancelled in very large
| number for thousands of years.
|
| Yeah, and while the right loves to use "lynching" as a
| metaphor for the public criticisms they get that they
| also label as "cancel culture", it's worth noting that
| when the cancel culture shoe was on the other foot
| regarding race issues, the lynchings (including of
| Whites) for expressing the wrong views were, frequently,
| not at all metaphorical.
| skrebbel wrote:
| This is just an awful argument. It's basically "things
| used to be worse, so you shouldn't say it's still bad".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is just an awful argument. It's basically "things
| used to be worse, so you shouldn't say it's still bad".
|
| No, the argument is "things used to be more extreme in
| this precise area, so the argument that the present
| situation is a new and unique historical threat is
| false".
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| People choosing to no longer read content from or
| associate with a person who expressed a controversial
| opinion isn't new and it isn't even bad. That's the other
| side of the coin of free thought: people don't have to
| agree with you or listen to you and they're allowed to
| speak out against you if they want to.
|
| Public and professional consequences have always existed
| and they always should. The idea that people should be
| able to do anything and never suffer repercussions for
| their actions would lead to an unhealthy world.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What? That is an awful strawman. The question is whether
| cancel culture is a new phenomenon, or just a
| continuation of human social nature.
|
| I'd suggest you read the entire thread to get context on
| the point of contention.
| undefined1 wrote:
| I'm not sure that is an excessive description anymore.
|
| Jerry Seinfeld, a mainstream comedian, stopped playing at
| college campuses years ago already because he was getting
| picked apart and no longer welcome. at precisely the place
| that is supposed to be the most transgressive and open to
| ideas! a place to expand minds, remember? now it fully
| embraces orthodoxy and censorship.
|
| or take the case of Bret Weinstein. a liberal, progressive
| professor who was exiled from campus for not bending to the
| mob. now he's being called a eugenicist, white supremacist
| and more with little resistance. here's a transcript from
| Clubhouse just a few days ago:
|
| Brett W: "Let me just say, I am an evolutionary biologist.
| I'm very interested in how language actually changes..."
|
| Brooklyn: "A eugenicist."
|
| Brett: "Say again?"
|
| Brooklyn: "A eugenicist. That's what you mean as
| evolution..."
|
| Brett: "No, no, no..."
|
| Brooklyn: "Those are the same thing."
|
| Brett: "No, it's not the same thing."
|
| Brooklyn: "They are the same. They are the same. I've seen
| the research. They are the same. You will not argue that
| here, you're not about to wiggle out of that."
|
| you can hear the whole exchange here:
| https://youtu.be/YyCj5UaG1kI?t=9900
|
| this isn't just a one off thing, it's increasingly
| prevalent. if we're not already in an intellectual dark
| age, we're on the fast track to it. the trend line is
| clear.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Jerry Seinfeld, a mainstream comedian, stopped playing
| at college campuses years ago already because he was
| getting picked apart and no longer welcome. at precisely
| the place that is supposed to be the most transgressive
| and open to ideas! a place to expand minds, remember? now
| it fully embraces orthodoxy and censorship.
|
| Was Jerry Seinfeld _banned_ from any campuses? Or did he
| _elect_ to stop performing at campuses? From everything I
| 've read, it was a choice he personally made.
|
| So, _why_ did he make that choice? Well, because people
| didn 't find his jokes funny. And moreover, they had
| _reasons_ that they didn 't find them funny. He couldn't
| stand the heat, and left the kitchen.
|
| Free speech is not freedom from critical response. This
| isn't some failure of free speech on campus, it's a
| failure of one comedian to keep his material fresh.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think what people need to understand is that there are
| dumb people on all sides of every movement every time in
| history.
|
| Someone calling you a eugenicist is not a "cancellation."
| Moreover, Weinstein was not fired, and has an arguably
| more distinguished career now than before.
| notadev wrote:
| Perhaps he wasn't "canceled", but he was repeatedly
| slandered and bullied by these "dumb people" who have
| outsized power due to the current state of identity
| politics that grants them a certain amount of power in
| modern society.
|
| They slandered him unfairly, then prevented him from
| responding unless he met their demands of sending cash
| via Venmo for some supposed slight against black
| creators.
|
| They did this in a semi-public forum without any concern
| for him or his reputation. They did it with zero fear of
| repercussions because they are emboldened by the fact
| that our current society makes certain people completely
| beyond reproach due to the color of their skin (or other
| identity characteristics).
|
| It was wrong, and the fact that people won't call it out
| when they certainly would if the variables were changed,
| is exactly why these "dumb people" will continue to do
| it. Stop giving them a free pass.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That's a pretty melodramatic way of describing someone
| needing to find a new publisher or self-publish.
|
| Previously, they may not have been able to disseminate
| their ideas at all or may have actually been jailed or
| killed to contain their ideas.
|
| How would even prevent someone from being "cancelled"
| without taking away publishers' freedom of expression?
| [deleted]
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > But there's plenty of people being cancelled:
|
| That second link is telling - they list 9 people; one lost
| a book deal, one had a book withdrawn, one had to switch to
| smaller publisher, and one lost an honorary charity
| position. How is this being cancelled?
| toomim wrote:
| This is very well-put! But how do you reconcile this with
| people losing or being suspended from their jobs, for
| instance, for what they say? [1] [2]
|
| It's hard to say that these people don't have the conviction
| to stand by their ideas. They are losing the right to speak
| in front of others because they _are_ standing by their
| ideas.
|
| [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-
| sus...
|
| [2] https://www.bschools.org/blog/ucla-anderson-professor-
| suspen...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| >https://poetsandquants.com/2020/09/26/usc-marshall-finds-
| stu...
|
| > _The university's Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity
| and Title IX (EEO-TIX) looked into this matter and
| concluded that the concerns expressed by students were
| sincere, but that Professor Patton's actions did not
| violate the university's policy. They have also
| communicated this to the professor and he allowed me to
| share their conclusion with you._
|
| > _To be clear, Professor Patton was never suspended nor
| did his status at Marshall change. He is currently teaching
| in Marshall's EMBA program and he will continue his regular
| teaching schedule next semester._
|
| Seems to me there has been some misinformation in this
| matter. The professor ended up getting paid holiday if
| anything.
| LordFast wrote:
| > The only self-restriction is by people that don't have the
| conviction to stand by their ideas, or actually have not
| thought through their perspective to adequate level of
| introspection and evidence that can survive free and open
| discourse. Instead it's much easier to exclaim victimhood and
| censorship and not bother examining ideas beyond a gut
| feeling.
|
| The whole point of intellectual exchange and growth is from
| the idea of freely sharing ideas regardless of how "thought
| through" they are. How do you ever go about sharpening a
| knife if you aren't encouraged to bring a dull one to the
| grinder?
|
| Have YOU "thought through" your
| theory/argument/belief/ideology here?
| refenestrator wrote:
| What's interesting is that heretical liberals have the most
| to fear in this environment.
|
| MAGA people can't be cancelled, and it's a badge of honor if
| attempted. But well-meaning unorthodox liberals really have
| to watch themselves.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Leftists get canceled all the time (by liberals). Look at
| the censoring/smearing of Bernie Sanders and his supporters
| during the primary. Twitter bans leftist accounts all the
| time as well. Take a look at every VC in our industry and
| they espouse staunchly establishment neo-liberal policies.
| Calling Biden into question (which anyone on the left would
| do) is risking your career.
|
| The focus is often on censoring those on the right (which
| does happen too), but those on the left may be the most
| censored.
| the_only_law wrote:
| In fairness, leftists get cancelled by leftists. _insert
| joke about leftist infighting here_
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| _Gestures vaguely towards the life and works of Orwell_
|
| This guy gets it
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| No they don't. They get canceled by neo-liberals.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Insert joke along the lines of _" every leftist is just a
| radlib except me"_
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Leftist actually does have meaning. Neo-liberalism is a
| right wing ideology built on imperialism and capitalism.
| To conflate the two is dishonest.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I agree with you. But there is a lot of leftist
| infighting, especially between MLs, Anarchists, LibSocs,
| DemSocs, AnComs, etc...
|
| And there is also of neoliberals that pretend to be
| leftist, yes, so called "Radlibs".
|
| Then there are leftists that accuse other leftists that
| aren't of their same brand of being liberals, for example
| MLs calling anarchists liberals because they admit
| markets, or anarchists calling MLs capitalists/liberals
| because of state capitalism and the DotP, and then MLs
| calling DemSocs liberals because they want to operate at
| least partiallty within "bourgeois democracy", etc...
|
| It's a very North America thing, though.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No one (on the Left, obviously the Right does this),
| including people who critique Leninists (who I assume you
| are referring to as MLs) for supporting "state
| capitalism", calls Leninists "liberals".
|
| Or, at least, approximately nobody; you can find examples
| of anything, but it's not like a significant thing.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's a stupid and ridiculous critique, I agree, but yes I
| have seen people call MLs liberals. It is quite wild.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I don't totally disagree with you, but the leftist
| infighting is of a very different nature than left vs.
| the establishment. For one, those on the left don't
| actually have the power to cancel each other. The
| platforms are owned by the neo-liberals, which direct the
| canceling through who they allow to speak their mind and
| who they don't.
|
| > And there is also of neoliberals that pretend to be
| leftist, yes, so called "Radlibs".
|
| These are the people doing the canceling (both to the
| left and the right of them). It's worth nothing the
| distinction as it's this group with the power.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Agreed. Leftists don't actually have the power over the
| media to cancel anyone these days, it's overwhelmingly
| done by radlibs.
| refenestrator wrote:
| I was including Sanders and any Biden skeptic as
| "heretical liberals" -- no disagreement from me there.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I don't think Sanders people would consider themselves
| "liberal". I know I don't.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It's important to understand that while the Right in
| America uses "liberal" to encompass everything to their
| left, the American Left (in line with much of the world
| outside the US, which did so longer) tends to use it
| specifically for a center-to-center-right pro-capitalist
| position roughly coextensive with neoliberalism; the
| (decreasingly, but still) dominant centrist wing of the
| Democratic Party is "liberal", but not, in that view,
| most of the rest of the Party.
| [deleted]
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Indeed. Liberalism is the ideology according to which
| negative rights prime over everything, the rights to
| property are the most important, and freedom of
| association is paramount.
|
| Leftism emerged as sociology critiqued the idealist
| liberal notions for their ignorance of real-word effects
| due to material reality on the actual freedom and
| oppressive social structures that strict classical
| liberalism creates.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| That seems accurate. Also, neo-liberalism emerged from
| economics with an imperialism backdrop. It's the
| philosophy of globalism.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Calling Biden into question (which anyone on the left
| would do) is risking your career.
|
| Who has ever been fired for supporting Sanders over
| Biden?
|
| > Twitter bans leftist accounts all the time as well.
|
| Probably not because they were leftist, but rather
| because they violated some rule (and at that, probably
| only a small fraction of Tweets which violate their
| rules). Twitter is pretty happy to fill my timeline with
| the craziest left-wing stuff including a lot of things
| that violate their own rules.
|
| > Take a look at every VC in our industry and they
| espouse staunchly establishment neo-liberal policies.
|
| What? You're surprised that VC support capitalist
| policies? You know what "VC" stands for, right? Anyway,
| "supporting capitalist policies" is not the same thing as
| "canceling leftists".
|
| This is a poorly reasoned post.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| We live in a capitalist system, so yes the capitalists
| have a massive amount of power over our lives. People
| self-censor all the time, it's not just about getting
| fired.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's not "just" about getting fired, but termination is
| the minimum required evidence to support the claim that
| criticizing Biden (for being insufficiently leftist)
| would put one's career in jeopardy.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Did you not read the original article? There's a million
| and one ways your career can suffer without being fired.
| Passed up for promotion, not getting funding, not hired
| in the first place...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You're moving goal posts (and accusing me of not reading
| the article on top of that--that's an impressive feat of
| self-confidence!). You claimed that it would put your
| career at risk. Being passed up for a promotion isn't
| putting your career at risk. You still have a career
| after being passed up for a promotion. There are actually
| people whose careers _are_ at risk--who get _fired_ even
| --because _leftists_ pressure their employers into firing
| them (I 'm less interested in painting leftists in a bad
| light or otherwise risk a flame war; I only mention it
| because it's relevant).
|
| But anyway, accepting the new position of the goal posts,
| can you demonstrate examples of people who were passed up
| for promotion. Of course it's harder to prove these
| things causally, but if it happens often enough to have a
| chilling effect it should surely be trivial to identify
| one-or-two cut and dry cases?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| It's you who's moving the goal posts. Your claim is that
| firing someone is the only thing you can do to damage
| their career, which is highly incorrect.
|
| Regardless, the point I'm making is that leftists must
| self-censor (just like the right wing people in the
| article) because those in power are anti-left neo-
| liberals.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It's you who's moving the goal posts. Your claim is
| that firing someone is the only thing you can do to
| damage their career, which is highly incorrect.
|
| Lol nope.
|
| > Regardless, the point I'm making is that leftists must
| self-censor (just like the right wing people in the
| article) because those in power are anti-left neo-
| liberals.
|
| Ok, I disagree with your point. I don't like conservative
| beliefs, but people with even moderate points of view get
| fired due to Twitter mobs. There are perhaps hundreds of
| videos of people _physically assaulting_ strangers for
| wearing MAGA hats (you know, "Social Consequences" TM).
| I'm not aware of any similar instances of moderate
| liberals attacking progressives or getting them fired or
| even passed up for promotion. I don't think there's any
| comparison at all.
| [deleted]
| jerf wrote:
| Yes, one of the worst and most dangerous places to be is
| _just_ outside the orthodoxy. This is not a comment about
| 2021; it is a historical pattern. Whether or not it 's
| worse than being directly opposed to the orthodoxy is
| something I'd say changes between times and places, but
| there have definitely been times where its more dangerous
| to be just outside then full-on opposed. Those who are
| neither directly opposed, nor just outside, in the vast
| space remaining outside of those two particular points,
| quite often do just fine.
|
| This is also a fractal observation, relative to the
| perspective of "orthodoxy" you are taking at the moment;
| within the directly opposed group, there is another
| dangerous place of _just_ outside the opposed group 's
| orthodoxy.
|
| I'd contrast this with the common intuitive belief that by
| indicating your agreement with the orthodoxy in most other
| ways, you've somehow built up "credit" with which you can
| "afford" a deviation. I would observe that model does not
| match reality very often. There's a few relatively
| idealistic communities where that may work, but in general
| that is not how people work.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| This is so old it's in the bible, or at least 1 Timothy
| 5:8 has been taken out of context to say it. "He has
| denied the faith, and is worse than the unbeliever."
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Also, Socrates.
| _0ffh wrote:
| >>Freud spoke of the narcissism of small differences,
| saying that "it is precisely communities with adjoining
| territories, and related to each other in other ways as
| well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing
| each other".<<
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
| anythin...
| [deleted]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Would love examples of popularly-disapproved-of speech that
| is flourishing online, and not banned and cancelled at every
| juncture.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Fox News.
|
| They regularly have people on expressing minority views
| that directly contest facts accepted by the majority of the
| US and the world.
| wrycoder wrote:
| There is a movement, extending even to Congress, to take
| Fox News off the air, or to have ISPs block it.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| There are lots of batshit ideas that get that far. Let's
| pay attention to help make sure they don't get into law.
| wrycoder wrote:
| It's a clear violation of freedom of the press, but never
| mind.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's an idea that hasn't gained traction. Fox News isn't
| cancelled, and the freedom of the press has not been
| infriged, even if some folks want that to happen. Fox is
| so popular as to be undeniably mainstream, but still
| pushes a persecution narrative that they're on the brink
| of cancellation. It hasn't happened. There's no bill, no
| law, no executive order. Perhaps onesuch could violate
| the freedom of the press, if enforced, but nonesuch
| exists.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| Which will obviously go precisely nowhere. Maybe they are
| a handful of people in Congress saying that, but it will
| never come anywhere near being law and even if it did it
| would be struck down immediately.
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Here's a counterpoint: in the last 150 years we've seen the
| enslavement and legally mandated racial segregation of African-
| Americans, same-sex marriages illegal until recently, enormous
| and largely forgot historical support of Hitler and Franco, a
| mass shooting of a synagogue amid a resurgence in neonazism,
| and are only celebrating 100 years of womens' right to vote.
|
| It's hard, from the outside of the bubble of this generally
| white and male forum, sometimes to appreciate how badly other
| people have it. Some people are effectively cancelled all the
| time and even a small taste of it has people in an uproar here.
| Perhaps a little empathy on all sides would be beneficial.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "generally white and male forum"
|
| Ok, let us look at your examples and see how "white males"
| fared in it, right?
|
| "same-sex marriages illegal" - white male gays had no
| exception.
|
| "Hitler and Franco" - the first one massacred helluva lot of
| white males (Czechs, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians etc.). The
| second one led a civil war against whom? White male Spanish
| republicans.
|
| "mass shooting of a synagogue" - are Jewish people white or
| not in your book? Because they seem to be considered white
| whenever affirmative action applies or Israeli-Palestinian
| conflict is being discussed (ironically so, given that random
| Israelis and Palestinians are hard to tell apart by color of
| their skins).
| edbob wrote:
| This is exactly why we should cherish the standard of
| moderation and equality that has been achieved, because it is
| that rare and precious and is so very easily lost. There are
| significant threats to this both from the left and the right,
| and they must be carefully guarded against. Cancel Culture
| hasn't destroyed it yet, but the people driving cancellations
| most definitely aim to suppress the voices of at least 40% of
| the country, and add insult to injury by falsely claiming
| that "only racists/fascists/etc. are canceled". As if Twitter
| mobs phoning in death threats were composed of good, rational
| people who can be trusted with the power to decide whether a
| person deserves to be seen as a human being or as scum.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Even if it were only white males suffering from cancel
| culture, this wouldn't be an argument that justifies the
| modern environment. That said, it isn't simply white,
| straight, upper class males being targeted:
|
| * The dutch translator for Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem
| quit after backlash due to the fact that they are a white,
| nonbinary individual rather than a "spoken-word artist,
| young, female and unapologetically Black". This despite the
| fact that they were specifically chosen by Gorman, herself a
| black female. [0]
|
| * Back in 2018, a black female student at Smith College
| complained of being discriminated against for "eating while
| black" because she was asked to leave an area that had been
| marked as off-limits to everyone. Subsequent investigations
| revealed the employees involved did nothing wrong and did not
| target the student. Despite this, the New York Times reported
| last week that they continue to receive harassment and
| threats. One woman, a cafeteria worker who suffers from
| chronic health issues, can't find employment because of it.
| The ACLU has continued to insist that the employees wronged
| the student, despite the result of the investigations. [1]
|
| * The YA fiction scene is constantly embroiled in
| controversy, often due to perceived crimes against woke
| culture. In one notable instance, the author Amelie Wen Zhao,
| a Chinese-American immigrant, had her upcoming novel
| cancelled and her career derailed due to the story involving
| a society in which people could be enslaved on a basis not
| involving the color of their skin. [2]
|
| * A highly praised science fiction short story published in
| Clarksworld magazine called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack
| Helicopter", written by a trans author who was repurposing
| the meme, was pulled (along with all of the author's future
| submissions) after intense public backlash towards the author
| by the Twitter woke mob. [3]
|
| * Glenn Greenwald, a gay journalist, has been targeted in
| recent weeks as a "transphobe" for drawing attention to
| recent study defending a book questioning if young people are
| being pressured into transitioning too strongly against an
| ACLU lawyer who was publicly arguing the book should be
| censored, and for drawing attention to recent research
| regarding the skyrocketing rates of those who identify as
| LGBTQ in the youngest generations [4] [5]
|
| Plenty of women, people of color, members of the LGBT
| community, and the poor are being targeted and harmed for not
| toeing the cultural party line. This cultish group think is
| dangerous for individuals, and it's dangerous for our
| society, regardless of who you are.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-
| gorman-...
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-
| race.htm...
|
| [2] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-
| is-...
|
| [3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/17/sci-fi-
| magazin...
|
| [4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-
| free-s...
|
| [5] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1364617687423471621
| vertex-four wrote:
| Gay men and women being transphobic is... actually fairly
| common, actually. Being gay does not mean you automatically
| feel solidarity with trans folk, even if the roots of the
| gay rights movement involve us. The TERF movement in the
| U.K. started as a lesbian movement, and the argument that
| "girls are being forced to be trans" is one of their
| talking points.
|
| Defending the right of someone to write a book about their
| thinly veiled hatred is one thing; commenting that you
| think there's a good point in it and other people should
| read it is another.
| rapind wrote:
| Voicing an unpopular opinion always had a cost, today and
| hundreds of years ago. Either your conviction outweighs the
| consequences or it doesn't.
|
| We shouldn't assume that all or even most unpopular opinions
| will advance our intellectual progress. Like always there's
| plenty of noise.
|
| I'm not keen on the automated (AI) filtering though, or how
| fast opinions can spread in the Information Age. Feels like
| we're headed for disaster by skipping the organic and slow
| human vetting process.
| jpxw wrote:
| The high number of upvotes and low number of comments here says
| something, I think...
| vict00ms wrote:
| This was just posted 38min ago.
| s9w wrote:
| that this is posted on hn is rich indeed :D
| Animats wrote:
| We're approaching Orwell's "Newspeak".
|
| - Idiot -> retarded -> special needs
|
| - Negro -> colored -> Black
|
| - Queer -> gay -> LGBTQ
|
| - Indian -> Amerind -> native american
|
| - Illegal immigrant -> undocumented worker
|
| - fat -> plus size
|
| - He/she -> they (singular)
|
| - bum -> homeless
|
| Using the words in the left column can get you and your writing
| attacked.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Actually "homeless" is not really current -- it's 'unhoused'
| now.
|
| "Undocumented" is also a bit passe, the current trend is to
| drop the "undocumented" part entirely, and just refer to all
| immigrants (legal or illegal) as "immigrants".
| dnrvs wrote:
| I don't think you understand newspeak. The words on the right
| mean the same as the original meaning of the word on the left.
| The meanings of words change over time, languages do that.
| ausbah wrote:
| queer and gay are still identities within the LGBTQ spectrum,
| what do you think the Q and G are for
|
| and they over he / she is just a nicer way, gender-neutral of
| writing when referring to any person
|
| no information or differing perspectives are lost in using
| these "new" words. I don't think you know what "Newspeak" means
| rrose wrote:
| - retarded is a slur, people with special needs don't want to
| be called that. not sure why this is controversial
|
| - this is just normal language change. we use different words
| than we did in the 50s.
|
| - queer and gay are both still used, and in fact are both part
| of LGBTQ, so this doesn't actually fit the pattern youre trying
| to show.
|
| - native american is just a better term? indian is confusing
| given that there is also a country called "india"
|
| - can a person be "illegal"? undocumented worker is just a more
| correct term.
|
| - this and the undocumented worker one are probably the only
| ones in here that actually fit the pattern youre trying to
| show.
|
| - people ask not to be called he/she and we oblige. I don't see
| how this is similar to newspeak.
|
| - bum is clearly a pejorative term, and because many of us
| don't dislike homeless people a priori, we don't use this term.
|
| there's nothing sinister going on here. It's crazy to me that
| people are really clutching their pearls over not being able to
| call people "retards" and "negroes"
| delecti wrote:
| Exactly, fantastic breakdown. Whenever I see people clutching
| their pearls about not being able to say certain things
| anymore, I have to question which specific things they feel
| unable to say. I find that the answer is very often not
| something they'd get sympathy for if they were up-front about
| it.
|
| Worried about the thought police? Maybe you're just a jerk
| and people don't want to hear your crappy opinions.
| wcarss wrote:
| When did you honestly reach for 'Negro' and feel impeded?
|
| In my opinion, trying to use less intentionally hurtful terms
| when identifying other human beings seems a far cry from
| erasing all 'potentially dangerous' concepts from our thoughts,
| even things as mundane as the word 'bad'.
|
| But, uh, interesting list of specific gripes.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am going to channel George Carlin and add the incoming rape
| victim >> unwilling sperm recipient.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Can you really blame authors? Anything that is even mildly
| controversial can easily result in effectively being banned from
| participating on various platforms. More recent example of this
| weird feedback loop is:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Atta...
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Not sure a 66 year old can truly understand what consequences
| young people can face. You can be completely blacklisted not only
| from your works being stocked, but even all means of promoting
| yourself too and in the most extreme cases get blacklisted from
| payment processors which I'm sure will trickle down and become
| more common over the next few years.
|
| End of the day you have to pay the bills and if you want them
| paid you have to at least make your writing a certain way of
| thinking and ideology.
|
| Until this changes this is terrible advice for young artists.
| Just don't rock the boat, follow right think, don't write
| anything controversial and pray you eventually get enough money
| to write what you actually want to write.
|
| Sure yeah art will suffer as a whole but the decision was already
| made what's more important, art or a few annoyed people on
| twitter and the annoyed people won.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I wonder what "PC" terminology we use today will be a fireable
| offense if uttered in the future.
| keiferski wrote:
| I find it almost funny how the media/culture/etc. seems
| determined to build a group of people that will react negatively
| to so-called "cancel culture." They seem to think that people
| will gladly follow the ever-growing list of arbitrary rules
| indefinitely.
|
| If I were a betting man, I'd predict a resurgence in punk
| attitudes in about 2025 or 2030. At some point, the dam will
| break and people will stop caring. I already get a sense that the
| 13-19 generation is a bit tired of it.
| lainga wrote:
| But then, what are the norms and injunctions that this new
| generation will break...
| keiferski wrote:
| At some point, I think every generation looks at the
| collective "rules" of their parents and thinks, "Huh?" and
| starts to disregard it entirely, if only out of ignorance.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Wow, you bring up a point I had never considered which is;
| we've seen this before. In the 1950's and 1960's, you kind-of
| had to tow the line in what you said, how you dressed, etc...
| The cancelling wasn't quite as broad as it can be now simply
| because it wasn't technically feasible back then. You could,
| however, be in real danger of losing your job if you said you
| supported a registered Communist's right to speak their mind,
| for example. Or if you were openly a Communist yourself for
| that matter.
|
| As you point out, the punk era was in direct opposition of
| those attitudes. Punks wanted the freedom to express themselves
| however they wished, as long as it wasn't harming anyone. Want
| to do make music that is raw and in your face? Go for it. Want
| to do drugs or even NOT do drugs of any kind? (Straight Edge)
| You're cool too. Just don't tell me what I need to do or what I
| can or can't say.
|
| I think you're right that we very well may see a resurgence of
| that. In fact, I hope we do.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| > In the 1950's and 1960's, you kind-of had to tow the line
| in what you said, how you dressed, etc... The cancelling
| wasn't quite as broad as it can be now simply because it
| wasn't technically feasible back then.
|
| If you were not white, it was much more extreme. Up to and
| including being murdered.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| There is no lack of dissenting opinions to be found outside of
| the mainstream (the same place where punk once existed
| exclusively).
|
| Cancel culture is primarily a problem with mainstream/pop
| culture. The "underground" today is more vast and diverse than
| it has ever been.
| c06n wrote:
| What's underground today? Genuinely curious.
| standardUser wrote:
| In the realm of music, I think the mainstream has stayed
| roughly the same size but the rest of music has exploded in
| size and variety via Spotify/Bandcamp/Soundcloud/YouTube.
|
| Instead of zines there's a million or so blogs and forums
| and newsletters.
|
| Podcasts are an entirely new realm and only a tiny sliver
| of it cracks the mainstream.
|
| The number of outlets for "TV shows" has exploded, so
| there's plenty that comes and goes without any significant
| mainstream exposure.
|
| Much of the above is created on an enthusiasts budget for a
| tiny audience.
|
| And I'd argue a lot of the above are exempt from "cancel
| culture" if only because most people don't know they exist.
| c06n wrote:
| Good point, but I am not sure how much weight it carries.
| Safety in numbers? You are fine as long as you don't
| offend anybody?
|
| Have we accepted censorship just like that? What is next,
| coded language to escape the thugs?
| mc32 wrote:
| If they rely on YT, IG, etc for monetization or
| promotion, they risk having monetization revoked or being
| entirely deplatformed.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| People with a Parler account.
| jolmg wrote:
| Isn't that what pen-names are for? They can use a new pen-name if
| they want to write on a topic that might not be received well and
| only reveal themselves after it's well received. Has something
| changed so that this isn't as viable of a strategy anymore?
| mustaflex wrote:
| I think it reached a certain point where even a pen-name is not
| enough. The author might write something completely safe(under
| his own name) and some people will still be able to nitpick and
| led a crusade against him/her.
|
| You can control what you write but not the mob trying to lynch
| you.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, yes, but not having a pen-name that's connected to a
| real world identity does limit the potential consequences to
| a significant degree. It's not perfect, especially if you do
| something illegal, but an online mob probably can't get you
| fired if they don't know your real identity.
| [deleted]
| z9e wrote:
| This is happening in all professions I'd imagine. Everyone is so
| scared that they are violating some social framework - which is
| constantly shifting in what is acceptable or not acceptable.
|
| To me I think it really slows down progress we could be making in
| multiple areas. It's kind of like a mental brake being applied to
| any freedom of thought. Almost like working in an old fashioned
| company where there's weeks worth of meetings and bureaucracy in
| order to get a change deployed to production to make sure
| everyone is okay with it, even those of whom it doesn't even
| impact.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I genuinely wonder what cancel culture is going to look like in
| the next 5-10 years and beyond. Just about everyone I speak to
| about the subject agrees that cancel culture is bad but very few
| people seem willing to confront it. I sense that people hope the
| rest of society will come to its senses and we all stop being so
| judgemental.
|
| But as much as I loathe cancel culture and it's chilling effects
| on the free exchange of ideas, I can't help but admit that it
| _seems to work_. From a detached and objective standpoint, an
| ideology that utilizes cancel culture is really good at stamping
| out opposition. You are free to think and believe whatever you
| want in private and then you self-censor in public out of fear.
| It takes a certain critical mass of people to affect change and
| cancel culture excels at keeping individuals from speaking out
| because the consequences have the potential to ruin your life.
|
| So all that being said, I genuinely wonder if cancel culture is
| here to stay, because the next ideology to come along will also
| realize how powerful of a tool it is.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The concept is not new, see McCarthyism.
|
| What's new is social media's ability to amplify the voices of a
| small number of relatively anonymous people to "cancel"
| someone.
|
| McCarthyism required a Senator to have a serious impact. Now
| people are cancelled, without there being a clear link back to
| who, exactly, did the cancelling.
| cozuya wrote:
| What are some examples of people being cancelled by a small
| amount of anonymous people? I can't think of any.
|
| Lets looks at Gina Carano for example. She was "cancelled"
| (fired from her job) as the direct result of her social media
| posting things a large number of people found offensive and
| inappropriate, not a small amount. 10 anonymous people didn't
| cause it, hundreds of thousands of people thought it was
| wrong.
| cwkoss wrote:
| > the voices of a small number of relatively anonymous people
|
| Has someone been cancelled as a purely grassroots effort
| before? It seems like the seeds of a cancelling may begin
| this way, but quasi-journalists, pundits and other online
| personalities are the engine that does the crucial
| amplification to reach broader public discourse.
|
| I think their is an interesting sort of 'laundering' of
| attribution where social media power brokers can point to the
| seeds and say "Look at this grassroots movement that is
| changing the way society views X", and then the issue is
| broadcast to a much wider audience. However, that small
| grassroots movement may not have been seriously affected X
| except for the effects of the power brokers' pointing
| fingers.
|
| It seems like these social media power brokers may not even
| intend to have this effect in some cases, but they are a
| crucial step in the cancelling lifecycle.
| dandersh wrote:
| The Dixie Chicks.
|
| Country stations stopped playing their songs because
| listeners would call in to complain, threaten boycotts,
| etc.
|
| While I'm struggling to remember exact successes, I know
| the Parents Television Council would use petitions to
| cancel programming that they deemed inappropriate.
| prepend wrote:
| I think it will look like it is now. Long running private
| thread that aren't open to new people.
|
| I stopped using FB years ago, but have messenger groups that
| are super active and have been private for years.
|
| I wonder how new people will "find the others" for how the web
| was so great. But I've met young people who do the same thing
| with their friends.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| I don't think it's limited to just what you say in public.
| Videos and audio recordings have a way of triggering human
| emotions that writing simply does not. To tell you the truth, I
| live in perpetual fear that some acquaintance could secretly
| record me saying some non-PC thing in private, and post it to
| Twitter to get me cancelled. I have deleted all social media to
| try to achieve "out of sight, out of mind" but I still feel
| unsafe.
|
| It's truly dystopian. I do feel as if I will go insane if this
| continues for another 10 years.
|
| I worked hard in school and sacrificed so that I could build
| myself a better life. Now, it seems like the entire thing hangs
| on a knife's edge. Quite frankly, I would not have tried to
| work hard for the last 15 years if I had known we were about to
| go full-blown 1984.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Deep fakes are coming and with it a tsunami of outrageous
| videos that have no connection to reality.
|
| People will learn to distrust video evidence.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| I think this could extend to major public figures, but
| offers no recourse to the average joe who doesn't have 100
| hours of talking footage online. Deepfakes require a lot of
| data to produce. Anyone who doesn't have this much data,
| you could reliably assume the content is real.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Deepfakes require a lot of data to produce."
|
| I wonder if this is going to hold, especially as 4K video
| is becoming the norm.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
|
| Just don't be an ass to people who you have locker room talk
| with and they won't have shit to say later.
|
| Sure, there's always those lizard-brained people who will
| smile then stab you in the back, but they could also just as
| easily poison your dog or cut your brake lines vs. ruin your
| life on social media.
|
| These are the choices we make. Or we can live as a hermits
| Ted Kaczynski-style.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| Well, poisoning my dog or vandalizing my car is illegal.
| Whipping up a twitter mob is legal and highly encouraged by
| an enormous number of people.
|
| I try not to be an ass to anyone, but jealousy and envy
| exists. It's now impossible for me to relax around some
| acquaintances who are unemployed while I pull in a big tech
| salary.
|
| All in all, I really made my mind up on this issue back
| during the BLM protests. This cancel culture is orwellian,
| evil, and directly contrary to what made the US a
| technological powerhouse. And more and more people are
| being radicalized by it, and the alarming number of
| apologists, every day.
| d1zzy wrote:
| I've unfortunately have discovered that the people who I
| thought to be friends (smart, funny, kind) have
| completely changed their attitude once they found out my
| employer. Now I have to watch out everything I say around
| them because it's all assumed to come from a place of
| evil intent and interpreted in the worst case possible.
|
| Lesson learned: do not share your work place with anyone
| you want to keep being friends with, at least not people
| that aren't similarly employed/earn similarly.
| colechristensen wrote:
| We're heading towards fascism. This time on two fronts, one
| horn from each end of the political spectrum. (perhaps a new
| name for it that isn't _fascism_ because of the history of that
| word referring to a kind of right wing movement)
|
| It feels like we're inside the ramp-up of a major social,
| political, and national conflict, all the pieces are falling
| into place.
|
| Read _The World of Yesterday_ by Stefan Zweig to get some ideas
| about how this kind of thing happened in the early 20th century
| in Europe and imagine how it might be happening again.
|
| Ideology is on the rise and the willingness of people to
| support their cause with violence is going right along with it.
| The problem is not a specific ideology, but the practice in
| itself.
| throw10123213 wrote:
| Communism was also like this. People has the public persona,
| the party tasks, things they had to do and say.
|
| Then they went home and listened to Radio Free Europe and
| talked with _select_ people what they _really_ had on their
| mind or used coded language to transmit messages.
|
| What I hope this achieves is a parallel society and when it's
| big enough there will be some public battles.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This. And you only spoke political jokes to really close
| friends.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I was 11 when Communism fell in my country.
|
| By that time, kids knew perfectly well what to say in
| school, what to say among close friends and who of their
| colleagues was a snitch.
| d1zzy wrote:
| It was chilling when before the first day of school may
| parents made it very clear I shouldn't tell anyone
| (especially not teachers) that they were listening to
| Radio Free Europe.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| This is already happening.
|
| In 2016, that silenced group rallied together to elect a
| disruptive bully as retaliation against the establishment.
|
| In 2020, the establishment went full aggression and elected
| someone who seems to be impaired as a way to backdoor in
| someone wildly unpopular like Ms Harris.
|
| Over this same period, far left media has struggled to find
| commercial success, with bombs like Star Wars IX. By
| contrast, films like Joker set records -- showing the problem
| isn't a lack of demand.
|
| In 2021, that same people who elected Trump held a riot at
| the capitol after nine months of violent rioting by the
| Democrats. They targeted a point in the process where
| disruption would force coverage and discussion of their
| issues.
|
| This was called an "insurrection" by the same people who had
| worked to fund and support the violent rioting, such as Ms
| Harris or Ms Waters. The capitol is now being permanently
| fortified and has a permanent military presence.
|
| I would say on the communist scale, it's already to the point
| they're afraid -- and we're approaching civil war.
|
| They're really setting the record on speed runnings.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think that in 50 years, maybe even 20 years cancel culture
| will be looked at a low point in the culture of the US and its
| adherents will try to disassociate themselves with it by saying
| thats how people thought/acted back then(popular sentiment).
| Similar to McCarthyism and its blacklists which ruined
| actors/directors, that moment is taught in history books as a
| backwards time, cancel culture will be similar.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| The fact that a cancellation I undergo now will be seen as
| unjust after I'm elderly does nothing for me.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So all that being said, I genuinely wonder if cancel culture
| is here to stay
|
| Insofar as "cancel culture" describes actual behavior rather
| than the ideology motivating it, it's been a constant part of
| society, from all ideological angles, for, approximately, all
| of human history. Shunning the heterodox is not new.
|
| The only thing new is the right's use of the _term_ "cancel
| culture" to disparage this when it bites them; this replaces
| "political correctness", which served the exact same purpose
| for the right from the 1980s until "cancel culture" became the
| new hotness.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| The only way we'll ever be able to combat cancel culture is
| through online anonymity. I fear that we're drifting in the
| other direction, though - specifically to make cancellation
| easier.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think the real answer is resilience. Enough people,
| especially those in positions of power (who decide whether to
| fire someone), must stop giving a shit.
|
| There will be some evolutionary pressure there. I don't think
| Elon Musk would fire his engineer over a doubtful tweet,
| given that his own Twitter feed is pretty wild. Once some
| places establish themselves as safe, they will attract
| "mouthy talent".
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Jailing anyone who owns a C++ compiler will stop all hackers,
| that would also _seem to work_.
| undefined1 wrote:
| moral panics and the resulting witch-hunting/burning is feature
| of humanity that comes and goes. the mob always thinks it's a
| good idea in the moment, but history never looks fondly upon
| it.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Wasn't McCarthy-ism basically proto-cancel culture?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Moreso super cancel culture. Same for Mao's struggle
| sessions. And so on forever. Cancel Culture is just a new
| name for an eternal phenomenon in every society.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Cancel culture scared the ever living shit out of everyone,
| even everyday people. Whether you like it or not, it got every
| male in the workplace to not even breathe in the direction of
| women you work with. The movement permeated through normal life
| _fast_.
|
| It was extremely efficient in bringing forth the necessary
| changes. I have no problem with using the chainsaw as needed,
| but we need to careful about when we use it. Can't use it for
| everythig.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Cancel culture scared the ever living shit out of everyone,
| even everyday people.
|
| No, I don't think it did, to "everyone". I think the degree
| of effect varies a lot, with the two main driving factors
| being (1) preexisting behavior, and (2) sources of
| information.
|
| > Whether you like it or not, it got every male in the
| workplace to not even breathe in the direction of women you
| work with.
|
| As an employee male, it's had about zero impact on how I
| relate to women, at work or in other contexts. I don't think
| I'm alone.
|
| > The movement permeated through normal life fast.
|
| I don't think this is any more true than when this complaint
| started to be made (with "political correctness" in place of
| "cancel culture") in the 1980s, or when it saw another
| resurgence with "sexual harassment" (often with sneer quotes
| in writing, or just a plain sneer when spoken) in the 1990s.
|
| > It was extremely efficient in bringing forth the necessary
| changes.
|
| I think that very much remains to be seen, just as with the
| previous rounds.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't think the "fear of women" thing is real. At least it
| isn't real in SF where I've worked for the last eight years.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's a real thing among the group of guys who exhibit
| creepy/abusive behavior towards women. They used to be able
| to get away with it, now they realize they may not be able
| to anymore.
|
| They aren't so much afraid of women, as they are afraid of
| consequences for their actions.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| This, this, this a million times.
|
| Anyone you hear complaining about it is the very kind of
| person who needed to be on notice in the first place.
| brrristlecone wrote:
| Quick anecdote under a throwaway, white male for what its
| worth.
|
| New hire, been working a few months at a job out of
| college. I was on a business trip to another state with
| some people not on my immediate team. There were like four
| or five people going in total and I didn't have a hotel
| room yet, so my supervisor asked me to reach out to some of
| the others going and see what they were doing. I picked a
| number from the list at random and called. A woman a good
| bit older than me answered the phone and I explained the
| situation. She told me she had gotten a _four bedroom
| house_ on AirBnB close to the location we were going.
| Assuming that she had booked the house so we could all stay
| together, I asked if there was a room left for me. She
| immediately became very stern and told me that she would
| never "room alone with a younger man" and that my request
| was "extremely inappropriate". Sputtering apologies I told
| her I thought she had gotten the house for everyone from
| the company going on the trip and she said no, it was just
| for her. She nastily asked who my supervisor was and I told
| her the name. Confused as hell I hung up the phone and got
| a room at a hotel nearby. My immediate first thought was oh
| fuck, I'm going to be getting a call from HR about sexual
| harassment, it's all over, fired before I even really
| started.
|
| When we actually got to the client location this woman
| acted very creepy. She made several comments about how if
| she was 'ten years younger' this would be a 'memorable
| trip' while eyeing me up. She asked for my personal cell
| number. She even invited me to dinner, just the two of us.
| After that I stopped responding to her texts, cold
| shouldered her hard in person, and would only send very
| cordial, short emails to her in response. Some months after
| she left the project and I haven't talked to her since.
|
| After she left I told some other male coworkers about what
| happened and everyone agreed I was a hair's width away from
| some sort of sexual harassment case, and also agreed that
| had it come to that, corporate would have sided with her
| and I could have been fired for a simple mistake. I now
| walk on pins and needles around women that I work with,
| unless I know them well.
|
| TL;DR: Accidents happen, women can be creeps, and at least
| where I work young men are definitely worried about being
| accused of sexual harassment. I don't think this is a
| typical case but it does happen.
| mywittyname wrote:
| >I can't help but admit that it seems to work.
|
| Really? I see it as a abject failure.
|
| - It is universally derided by many different groups.
|
| - It is considered a plague on society.
|
| - Being "cancelled" is a badge of honor to some.
|
| I used to see my society as a place where hate speech was
| generally taboo. People would only espouse such attitudes in
| private or, if they did so in public, they'd at least use dog
| whistles or euphemisms for plausible deniability.
|
| Today, Facebook is full of people shouting pretty fucked up
| shit for everyone to hear. The attitude seems to be that you
| can't cancel everyone, so everyone should do it as much as
| possible. I know a _lot_ of people who can 't speak to their
| parents or other close family anymore because the hateful shit
| they shout on facebook all day.
|
| Granted, this is just my person experience. Others might live
| in a place where people are nicer to each other than they used
| to be.
| secondcoming wrote:
| The easiest way to confront cancel culture is to embrace it and
| try to get everything cancelled for the most minor of reasons.
| Hopefully, people will just get fed up and ignore it. The
| hardest part will be to stop companies bowing to the twitter
| mob for fear of bad publicity.
|
| Also, twitter needs to go. Humans can't handle it.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder if cancelling of really big companies start to
| happen. Make one misstep in advertising or messaging even in
| past and then have people attack your partners telling them
| to stop associating with your brand...
|
| I wonder if we ever properly reach that level. And if after a
| few big attempts social media companies would put stop to
| that...
| secondcoming wrote:
| It's starting [0]. Andrew Neil is a guy who DESTROYED Ben
| Shapiro btw [1]
|
| [0] https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-
| radio/1395314/Andrew-Ne...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It happened to Goya.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Did it though. How many people actually changed their
| shopping habits?
|
| Closest thing I've done to "canceling" anyone is
| switching from Autozone to the O'Reily 500yd down the
| street because the former donated to something I really
| don't like and the latter had better people working at
| that particular location anyway.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That has been the status quo for /centuries/ with
| boycotting along with sponsors getting pissed off over
| minute things. It has usually failed against big companies
| because their supporters vastly outweigh their complaints
| and even egregious sins are forgiven for being the cheapest
| or ubiquitous.
| fallingknife wrote:
| These things go in and out of the news cycle so fast that I'm
| surprised companies care anymore. If they just ignored the
| mob, the list of "cancelled" companies would quickly grow so
| long that nobody could even keep track.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| History is written by the winners, if Cancel Culture "wins"
| this will just be seen as a positive embyrotic formation of the
| dominant culture eradicating and stomping out evil in the world
| via a superior tactical formation (cancellation). If they win
| this will be seen as a very primitive form of mob-cancellation
| whereas in the future it will be cancellation via sophisticated
| "fair" social-credit scores.
|
| If the anti-cancel culture people win out culturally this will
| be seen as a historic dark age of self-censorship and a period
| of significantly degraded cultural expression.
|
| All history is relative.
| sushisource wrote:
| Eh, I don't think it's here to stay. The political correctness
| pendulum swings back and forth every 10-20 years it seems to
| me, the last time it was on the watch-what-you-say spectrum
| felt like the mid-90s.
|
| That said, this feels way, way more extreme than it was then.
| I'm maybe less worried that it's here to stay than I am worried
| that the swings are getting more and more extreme
| caseysoftware wrote:
| If you haven't seen it, check out the movie PCU. It's from
| 1994 or so but could be written today.. it couldn't be made
| though.
| jandrese wrote:
| On one hand I worry about this power being abused, but it's
| hard for me to side with the people being cancelled because
| they're so repugnant.
|
| It is hard to stand up for the rights of the bigots, the white
| supremacists, the science deniers, the propagandists, and the
| misogynists. People who spent decades denying other people
| access and are now finding the shoe on the other foot.
|
| Can we find some good examples of people who were "cancelled"
| who were not peddling conspiracy theories or pontificating
| about why the white race is the natural rulers of humanity?
|
| In some ways this may be seen as a return to the media culture
| in the Fairness Doctrine era. It used to be that media
| companies had to seriously consider the viewpoints expressed
| and wouldn't give crackpots a voice very often. The Internet
| changed that, allowing everybody a voice regardless of how
| crazy they might be. Now we're turning back to a more metered
| experience as it seems that unlimited amplifying the wingnuts
| is actually damaging to the country.
|
| Nobody likes the censor, but they're a necessary evil. Without
| them trolls will always take over the conversation once the
| number of participants exceeds a fairly low threshold. Trolls
| can drive out honest participants, but honest participants
| can't drive out trolls. Moderation is necessary. It doesn't
| have to be third party moderation, upvote/downvote systems can
| do the job although they're tricky to get right and can be
| gamed.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Someone being cancelled who shouldn't have been: Monica
| Lewinsky.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| We can. My go-to example is Emmanuel Cafferty
| (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-
| firin...) - a Twitter power-user took a video of him using
| the OK sign, then called up his supervisor and got him fired
| for it, because in the Twittersphere it's considered to be a
| white supremacist gang sign.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Just about everyone I speak to about the subject agrees that
| cancel culture is bad but very few people seem willing to
| confront it. I sense that people hope the rest of society will
| come to its senses and we all stop being so judgemental.
|
| I found this[1] article very interesting. Basically, only 2% of
| American adults generate over 80% of all tweets. "Cancel
| Culture" really is run by a few extremists who have a louder
| voice than everyone else.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-
| tw...
| mc32 wrote:
| That may be so, but you don't want to end up being an
| unwitting victim.
|
| One of the first instances early on on Twitter was that young
| marketing woman going to South Africa making a sarcastic
| anti-racism tweet before boarding only to learn after landing
| a brouhaha was brewing leading to her firing because the mob
| wanted to see it as racist.
| [deleted]
| offtop5 wrote:
| This 2% are the are same folks who will berate you on Reddit
| for saying you prefer partners with jobs.
|
| At the end of the day you can decide to argue with angry
| people or not. Another perk of being social media free
| subsubzero wrote:
| 100% this, there is an extremely small, extremely vocal
| minority which gets amplified by social media and the media
| tends to report on this small group as its views are
| outrageous and generate outrage which in turn generate clicks
| and ad revenue for those outlets. Boring dependable/sensible
| government is not something that generates huge ad revenue.
| qqn wrote:
| New slogan: "We are the 98%"
| jfengel wrote:
| It's not even clear that those extremists have a louder voice
| in and of themselves. Nobody really listens to them except
| their opponents, who amplify them because they think it makes
| the entire progressive culture look bad.
| jbob2000 wrote:
| The problem with cancel culture is much the same as the problem
| I'm having with my QA department:
|
| We have a very small, rock solid front end. Most of our work is
| simply updating content. It's very straightforward work and you
| have to try _very_ hard to introduce bugs. But when you staff a
| team of 6 people and tell them "it's your job to find
| something wrong with this website", they WILL find something
| wrong. I have a meeting this afternoon to explain to my Product
| manager why the content looks different on a mobile screen than
| it does on desktop because the QA team thinks line breaks are a
| bug ("the content document didn't break the line here, but the
| mobile view did, it's a bug").
|
| When you empower people to take others down via subjective
| rules, then it's always a moving target. You can never reach a
| point where people are safe and happy. Check out the shuffles
| deck subreddit for some egregious examples of cancel culture
| gone wrong, https://www.reddit.com/r/Shuffles_Deck/.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| r/Shuffles_Deck more like r/thathappened and everyone clapped
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >So all that being said, I genuinely wonder if cancel culture
| is here to stay, because the next ideology to come along will
| also realize how powerful of a tool it is.
|
| Here to stay for sure. There's an active group of people behind
| it. They are the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left and
| they still exist today. The problem is that in 1989 when
| socialism died. They started their rebranding effort. They
| became Politically Correct, "democratic socialists", culutural
| marxists, globalists, internationalists. etc.
|
| The reason Justin Trudeau can do black face on multiple
| occasions and still win an election is because he's part of the
| new-left. Cancel culture is a tool of political silencing
| opponents. Those in the fold like Trudeau, he'll get away with
| literally anything.
|
| The problem or reason why it has become so much more obvious.
| Increasingly desperate. What has Biden done for BLM? Absolutely
| nothing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem is that in 1989 when socialism died.
|
| Socialism didn't die in 1989. What is that even supposed to
| mean?
|
| > They started their rebranding effort. They became
| Politically Correct
|
| "Politically Correct" was never part of a rebranding effort
| on the left, it was originally a pejorative used between
| different groups in the left, and adopted heavily as a
| pejorative by the right against the left in about the early
| 1980s, serving the same purpose as "cancel culture" does
| today (like, literally, anything the right says about "cancel
| culture" today can pretty much have that term swapped out for
| "political correctness" and be a quote from the right in the
| 1980s-1990s.)
|
| > "democratic socialists",
|
| "Democratic Socialist" isn't part of a post-1989 rebranding.
| The DSA itself was founded in 1982, and the "democratic
| socialist" label is older (one of the DSAs predecessor
| organizations was the Democratic Socialist Organizing
| Committee.)
|
| > culutural marxists,
|
| "Cultural Marxism" isn't a post-1989 left-wing rebranding,
| it's a right-wing conspiracy theory. No one on the left
| identifies or brands themselves or any movement they are part
| of as "cultural marxism".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_.
| ..
|
| > globalists
|
| Again, not a left-wing rebranding; pretty much no one
| identifies/brands with globalism, and globalism is a term
| used both on the left- and far-right to refer to and critique
| an aspect of neoliberal capitalism (a center-right ideology).
|
| > internationalists
|
| Again, not a post-1989 left rebranding. Leftist
| "internationalism" historically has referred to association
| with one of the Communist Internationals (though it pretty
| much fell out of useful use with the overlapping, competing,
| Stalinist Third and Trotskyite Fourth Internationals before
| WWII, and the subsequent schism within the Fourth
| International. More recently, the left has been more prone to
| use "internationalism" as part of a term of critique with
| regard to liberal (centrist to center-right)
| internationalism, though even that negative use has largely
| been replaced with criticism of neoliberal "globalism".
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| I don't understand how someone can write this much without
| knowing the difference between neoliberalism and leftism.
| [deleted]
| waserwill wrote:
| I understand the source of people's fears here, though I'm not
| sure whether they are justified. In attempting to clearly
| articulate ideas, writers too often fall into cliches--the sort
| of pitfall that might be widely understood at the expense of
| predictability. Those, coupled with topics related to current
| events and sensitive topics, can be a dangerous brew.
|
| Yet in a world where media are not centrally controlled (cf. N
| Korea), ideas can propagate without being direct. Philosophers
| and heretics have written indirectly for millennia to avoid being
| read by the authorities or by the public; even the Soviets were
| accompanied by a thriving culture of satirical literature (and
| more importantly, jokes/anecdotes) that were allegorical yet far-
| reaching. If there are meaningful truths that must be said, there
| is a way to say them without being blunt about it.
| dogman144 wrote:
| They are pretty justified, publishing is going through a heavy,
| but very internal, reckoning. That's likely what Ishiguro is
| speaking too, although it's missed given how the concerns are
| mainstream concerns now.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| Isn't censorship a badge of honor among artists?
|
| Lots of writers throughout history had their works censored or
| banned. This is not a new phenomenon nor did it every really
| stop. In fact, most great works were, or still are, considered
| controversial and the controversy is often more discussed than
| the actual work.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| We live in an era in the western world which feels like pilgrim
| censorship with a new set of taboos, as opposed to an extremely
| tolerant love filled utopia we were promised.
|
| I want my love filled utopia dammit!
| aparsons wrote:
| And you know what's the cherry on the sundae?
|
| A certain sect of people who signal/preach love and equity the
| loudest - almost always preach it in a 'for thou, not for me'
| sense. I had coworkers who would live in the whitest
| neighborhoods, fighting against lower-income housing near their
| homes, voting for the tallest of fences, and then they come
| into work and scoff at how X is a Trumpie because of one thing
| they said, and Y's team isn't hiring enough diverse candidates.
|
| I chose to separate myself from having any stake in the
| outcomes (I am retired, with enough of nest egg to live
| comfortably regardless of political zeitgeist) and this game
| that is being played is extremely entertaining to watch.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I vacillate between hopeful at change on the horizon, and sad
| that I see eye to eye with my fellow people less now than
| ever before. It sure is an entertaining ride!
|
| Now that you mention it... I want my sundae dammit!
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Does anyone have a link to the original interview with the BBC?
| I'd be interested to see more of the context of his comments.
| pnathan wrote:
| There's a whole nuance here that often gets lost.
|
| A lot of people are straight up _raging jackasses_ - or worse
| and/or their work is repulsive - and at a certain point, wind up
| getting to be the target of an Internet Hate Mob. Note that in a
| perfectly just world, these people might be in prison or have
| otherwise major life consequences applied by the designated
| authorities - yet they have not had consequences.
|
| And there are, of course, people who simply say something that
| flips the bit of the online mob and becomes the target of an
| Internet Hate Mob. Someone ran their mouth and said something
| dumb. Oops.
|
| It is critical to consider that both of these cases are true, and
| the outcome, in the moment, doesn't per se look different without
| a careful attention to the ground facts. Much of the social media
| system has been unintentionally engineered to be an outrage
| machine. Shockingly, outrage results. I suggest not having
| outrage before reading facts.
|
| It is, of course, the case that immature activists are immature,
| that is tautological. I share the national eyerolling when it
| makes the news. Thank you for reading my TED talk transcript.
|
| I have very little fear of young literary authors self censoring.
| Self censoring is a conventional part of basic society and
| something we teach children from a very early age. Understanding
| the difference between a thought useful to express and something
| vomited out of the id takes time and some level of maturity.
|
| Having to have a basic understanding of what you're talking about
| and taking on as a topic shouldn't be controversial, yet it seems
| to be.
|
| edit: minor clarification.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If you're not willing to stand by your opinion and face the
| consequences of sharing it, how important is your opinion really?
|
| Intellectual progress demands that ideas distasteful to the
| status quo must be openly discussable, but some stakes are
| necessary to keep those who have carefully thought out their
| positions and thus hold them with conviction from being drowned
| out by those who merely parrot ridiculous talking points they
| never took the time to digest themselves.
|
| If you are ashamed to be associated with an idea, that is not an
| idea you should be advocating - if it has any merit, others will
| advocate it better than you, if not then what purpose does your
| advocacy serve?
|
| There is nothing wrong with picking which hills are worth dying
| on, and it's okay to acknowledge that some of your opinions are
| kinda dumb. The fact is most of us are experts on only a narrow
| range of human knowledge, and our opinions on the rest are coming
| from a place of ignorance. If you don't have something valuable
| to add to a conversation, it is not only reasonable but
| preferable to remain silent and listen to what others have to
| say.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Ah yes Thomas Paine published nothing of worth because nobody
| took "Common Sense" seriously since they were anonymous
| leaflets....
|
| Anominity has nothing to do with how well considered something
| is - there was an improved lower bound on 4Chan as a source and
| many publishing absolute nonsense under their real name as a
| lucrative careers.
|
| There is no neccessity - only the whinging of those upset they
| arr no longer able to argue ad bacculum.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I'm not arguing against anonymity. I published that comment
| under a pseudonym myself. I am criticizing people who will
| disavow what they wrote if they are called out on it.
|
| That said, documents with the ol' John Hancock have most
| certainly carried more weight historically.
| kragen wrote:
| https://archive.fo/dTtYb
| temp-dude-87844 wrote:
| All of these risks existed in the past, but it was more difficult
| for opposition to organize into a sustained movement, because
| asynchronous communication was limited by the physics of time and
| space and the processes of gatekeepers.
|
| The Web brought ease of publishing to anyone, and search engines
| and social networks brought fast keyword-based and topic-based
| discovery (sometimes automatically), so like-minded individuals
| can find themselves quicker than they could before. Your fans can
| organize fast, but so can your critics.
|
| Having loud critics (or even detractors) isn't a problem in
| itself. But organized opposition can boycott businesses and make
| demands involving you that endanger your current livelihood and
| make it risky for others to work with you in the future. There is
| an unequal relationship between unproven authors and their
| publishers, promoters, and others who work with them. An author
| has a few publishers, but a publisher works with many authors.
| Given sustained publicity and economic pressure, most publishers
| will drop an author if keeping them results in harm to the
| publisher.
|
| This lays bare the fact that authors were never truly free to say
| what they want to say, because they were frequently dependent on
| the goodwill, social support, and business support of others. It
| may appear that in the past, publishers were more principled and
| didn't cave to sustained loud demands, but it was more difficult
| to organized sustained loud demands, and various factors made
| such movements more vulnerable to be dismissed as fringe protests
| of an upset few instead of the legitimate will of the people.
|
| What changed is the globalization of culture, aided by TV and the
| web, which made faraway events relevant and remote social
| movements compatible; the globalization of news enabled by the
| globalization of culture and aided by the 24/7 news cycle
| perpetuated by commercial TV news and commercial internet news
| organizations; and the willingness to people to take direct
| (in-)action against corporations (i.e. boycotts) that are easy to
| avoid, in pursuit of a cause framed by like-minded thought
| leaders as moral.
|
| There is a lot to unpack in all of this. This is why boycotting
| your electricity company is much harder and significantly more
| rare than boycotting a publisher or an entertainment studio or
| some random company that worked with someone you don't like. This
| is why it seems like things were different in the past.
|
| The fact is, in order to succeed in this changed world, authors
| must adapt too. Partition writing on different topics and
| different works by pen names. Self-publish. Market directly.
| Network with other authors in loose confederations; publish your
| future works under a new pen name in the same circles. Insulate
| your personal life from your professional life, and your
| professional authorships from each other. Reduce your risk that
| one upset about one thing in one work will wipe your entire
| life's work.
| DC1350 wrote:
| I can see why. Some people think it's wrong not to include
| diverse characters, and others think it's wrong to speak for
| other races (ex. colour matching voice actors to their
| characters). If you're a white person who wants to write a book
| then I think you just need to accept that a handful of crazy
| people are going to get angry no matter what you do.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's especially ironic because the anger over this stuff is
| mostly performative outrage by white people claiming to be
| acting on behalf of minorities.
| [deleted]
| hertzrat wrote:
| > The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established
| authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain
| viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate
| experiences.
|
| Speaking as an occasional author, this is a true statement...
| ausbah wrote:
| honestly, if you aren't able to write an accurate perspective
| on something - I would rather see someone not try and write on
| something they don't know then make a half-assed attempt from
| info off the top of their head. at best they just write
| something inaccurate, at worse the perpetuate harmful
| preconceptions
|
| not saying don't write about things only you have experience
| with, just do some research before
| sgift wrote:
| People always self-censored. Far worse, people were censored.
| Really censored, not "oh, I cannot write on my platform of
| choice, so I have to use another one which can reach the whole
| world" censored. You wrote something the people in charge didn't
| like? No distribution for you, cause all printing was censored.
| You wrote against your king? Prison for you. You were politically
| inconvenient for your patron? Hope you have fun on the streets.
| Your book wasn't like by the book publishers? Sucks to be you.
| Probably ended up as an unread manuscript in an attic. Oh, and to
| mirror the words of the article: There were (and are, though less
| common) real lynch mobs when someone wrote something people
| didn't like. I have a feeling they are a bit more scary than
| getting screamed at on Twitter.
|
| Fact: It was never as easy as it is today to reach an audience.
| All the people who have been "cancelled" or whatever the word of
| the week is, they still have reach people in ages ago would have
| killed for. Some even got bigger audiences because they were
| "cancelled". If you self-censor that is a decision. Maybe it is a
| wise decision. But is it not something people never had to deal
| with before.
| Marazan wrote:
| Be right back, a bit busy at the moment, am booked up all morning
| to do interviews on major news networks about how I'm cancelled
| and no longer have free speech.
| tziki wrote:
| I've been wondering how much cancel culture is affecting
| journalism right now. The way it affects won't be clear since it
| seems stating that you're self censoring due to cancel culture
| makes you a target of said culture. Also, I imagine for
| journalists it's not easy to admit to self censoring. Confronting
| cancel culture is a big risk to take.
|
| But how would you measure the effects of it? As a (mainly)
| reader, I have no clue if the writer omitted something due to
| their fear. Hell, the writer might not realize it.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I am quite interested that people worry cancel culture is
| preventing intellectual progress more than copyright.
|
| Copyright, patents, and other forms of intellectual property have
| an absolute legal stranglehold on whatever you're trying to do.
| "Cancel culture", which honestly I've never felt like has limited
| me, just puts peer pressure on people.
|
| Why is the outrage towards IP not as strong as it is towards
| cancel culture?
| vimy wrote:
| Cancel culture isn't simply peer pressure. It's a mob harassing
| employers and schools to fire or expel wrongthinkers. Cancel
| culture literally ruins lives.
| aaomidi wrote:
| That's called peer pressure through capital control. It's a
| feature of Capitalism to ruin people's lives through their
| jobs because of the opinions they hold. This is happened time
| and time again in US/World history:
|
| - Civil rights activists being fired from their jobs
|
| - Red scare and people getting fired from their jobs
|
| - etc
|
| If we want this problem to go away we need to stop connecting
| your ability to live to your ability to hold a job.
| Everything else is just treating various symptoms of the
| problem.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| One is a legal framework with rules that govern how it is
| applied, even if you don't like that framework you can
| understand it. Cancel culture on the other hand does not have a
| specific set of rules. It is constantly changing and unevenly
| enforced by random people. When things are wildly unpredictable
| there is fear.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Being a legal framework makes it a lot scarier and a lot more
| dangerous.
|
| Cancel culture doesn't have the ability to throw you into a
| cage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lundgren
| dnrvs wrote:
| > "I think there are very valid parts of this argument about
| appropriation of voice," he added, saying he believes "we do have
| the obligation to teach ourselves and to do research and to treat
| people with respect if we're going to have them feature in our
| work".
|
| > He said there must be "decency towards people outside of one's
| own immediate experience".
|
| This is the key point. If you are not doing your research,
| misrepresenting people or not showing the respect people deserve
| you should to be called out. From my point of view it looks like
| the people complaining about self-censorship are just being told
| to show common decency and they don't like that
| dogman144 wrote:
| If you talk to someone who works/worked in publishing or the
| creative arts scenes (MFA programs, etc.), you'll see that KI is
| likely _specifically_ addressing that crowd - his industry.
|
| I think a lot of the general populace is aware of the dynamics
| that he's talking about, but in publishing it's another
| world/level.
|
| Interesting example that's the norm in the space: the story "I
| Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall. Bear
| with me as I likely butcher the pronouns/terms etc, but my intent
| is earnest and well meaning here...
|
| Isabel is a trans woman author. She/they weren't out when that
| story was published in a scifi mag. The story makes some pretty
| obvious references to sexual/gender identity, and the writing has
| very specific commentary and sometimes mockery.
|
| Isabel, not known to be trans at the time, faced a torrent of
| online abuse for ~appropriating/joking about/exploring concepts
| about gender identity. The motivation was pretty clear: Isabel
| wasn't trans (as far as the public knew).
|
| The story had passed some "sensitivity readings" too (yes,
| sensitivity readers are another interesting area to explore), but
| the online reception was still awful. There's also a difference
| between criticism vs. outright internet abuse. Isabel's
| experiences were pretty firmly in the latter.
|
| The author took down the story, I believe came out or the news
| outed her/they, and the details go on (finger pointing, revisions
| of criticism about the story given light of the author's gender,
| etc.).
|
| The point of all this is that's an insane dynamic to create in,
| and that's the tip of the iceberg really with what Publishing is
| going through. Young Adult fiction is apparently one of the
| ground zeros for this dynamic.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _that 's an insane dynamic to create in_
|
| What do you think Twitter would have looked like in 1956 when
| James Baldwin published _Giovanni 's Room_?
|
| Is the problem "cancel culture" (a nebulous term which means
| little) or simply the result of giving everyone on earth a
| place to complain?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Cancel culture is a direct result of giving everyone on earth
| a place to complain.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| I for one use a pseudonymous Twitter profile to be myself
| bachmeier wrote:
| Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days _as if
| it 's a new thing_ or _as if it 's a new thing being pushed on
| society by the left_. We've always had cancel culture. Some might
| remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that
| Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf?
| Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of
| cancel culture. When I lived in North Carolina, one of the things
| that was repeated all the time was that a newspaper editor would
| lose his job for publishing a story with a positive spin on free
| trade. You can go back further to McCarthyism, Turing being
| prosecuted for being gay, and on and on.
|
| Cancel culture remains a thing. Apparently now that folks aren't
| just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free
| exchange of ideas is suddenly important. The outright hypocrisy
| of so many on this issue is the biggest story.
|
| Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture:
|
| https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-...
|
| A professor was cancelled because she wore a hijab. There was no
| outrage at all from the usual suspects.
| echelon wrote:
| Before Twitter, I never saw headlines like "X actor under fire
| for previously dating Y actor". Clicking on such trends, you
| find the Twitterverse raging and debating totally invented
| controversies.
|
| People are becoming offended by _everything_ now.
|
| They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem
| to adopt that stance.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by
| robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors.
| falcolas wrote:
| Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that
| even matter?
|
| It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young
| authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum
| up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the
| victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with.
|
| Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian
| attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right
| to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form
| of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract.
| Yet certain politicians want to interfere in private websites
| or publishers by limiting their ability to exercise editorial
| control.
|
| I don't know the situation across the pond. I'm writing from
| an American perspective, where the term "cancel culture" has
| been entirely co-opted by cynical politicians.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the
| mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them _to this
| day_ and probably don 't even really remember what they said.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Well, the "Dixie Chicks" have been cancelled again, and now
| are just "The Chicks".
| uxp100 wrote:
| I feel like this discussion is sort of a self fulfilling
| prophecy. Ishiguro has a new book out and the article doesn't
| mention it til half way through, as if his mildly presented,
| fairly specific remarks about "Cancel Culture" are even notable.
| He mentions young writers with precarious careers, and the author
| of the article brings JK Rowling into it, which is about as far
| from what Ishiguro was talking about as can be.
|
| Either way, I've only read The Remains of the Day, and I'm
| interested in reading more, but I can't say this article drew me
| in to Klara at all. Any suggestions for next books of his to
| read?
| pedrolins wrote:
| It's an interesting phenomenom the one described in the story.
|
| I myself a great number of times have experienced situations
| where I held back on writing down certain thoughts even in places
| like my journal where the whole point is to write down every
| single thought crossing through my mind anyway.
| lom888 wrote:
| I know this experience. For me the fear was that if I put the
| thought onto paper that somehow it would be more real, but the
| result was that the thoughts ended up burning away at me and
| taking up more headspace than if I just put them on the page.
| The realization that I am an emotional being full of
| contradictions and not a logic machine helped me stop
| suppressing.
| sosuke wrote:
| I thought this was the reason authors often use pen names.
| Creating an entirely anonymous identity isn't easy but it is nice
| to screw up safely.
| A12-B wrote:
| It's pretty easy, actually. You make a website with whoisguard
| enabled, you sign your writing with a fake name, and you
| decline interview requests. Bonus points if you pretend to be a
| different gender, like JK Rowling did.
|
| Often times the allure of being a pseudonymous person actually
| makes your work even more attractive.
| lexapro wrote:
| How do you protect your intellectual property? As soon as
| there is any kind of legal battle your pseudonymity will be
| gone.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Banksy has managed to preserve his pseudonymity through a
| corporate structure.
| icelancer wrote:
| Kinda. Like SSC, if you want to know his identity, you
| can find it out with a bit of effort.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you're bestselling enough for it to matter, probably a
| publisher would protect their property. Being pseudonymous
| doesn't necessarily mean that _no one_ knows but that just
| a few people know who generally won 't go blabbing to the
| newspapers. But if authorship of something becomes a
| widespread puzzle to solves, e.g. _Primary Colors_ , it
| does tend to get out sooner or later.
| ghaff wrote:
| Presumably there's some point at which fame makes it hard to
| conceal an identity that many are intensely curious about.
| But for the vast bulk of authors, pretty much no one is going
| to do even casual sleuthing to try to find you out.
|
| Of course, that may limit some of your promotional
| opportunities but I don't know why it would be hard in
| general.
| modzu wrote:
| until the NYT outs you, see for example what happened with the
| slate star codex:
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
| techer wrote:
| He was known before
| missedthecue wrote:
| It took effort to find him, and it was possible. But he
| wasn't public about his identity prior to this, and in fact
| was making a deliberate effort to mask it.
|
| just because someone with a lot of time on their hands
| could technically have found his real name does not
| conflict with the parent's point.
| techer wrote:
| Well. I said he was known. Not publicly known.
|
| From his hand: "To stay anonymous, I wrote it under my
| first and middle names - Scott Alexander - while leaving
| out my last name."
|
| This is hardly a major attempt at anonymity.
|
| Not that it matters but I'm very much in favour of
| remaining anonymous. I also am a fan of his writing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is hardly a major attempt at anonymity.
|
| Well, it's an attempt at pseudonymity, not anonymity.
|
| And it's a pretty weak attempt at that, too.
| DanBC wrote:
| > But he wasn't public about his identity prior to this,
|
| I don't understand how people make this claim when had
| given out most of his real name, his profession, his
| state, and the kind of work he did.
|
| Finding SSC from his real name was easy, and finding his
| real name from SSC was easy.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Just need a bit of NLP to figure out identity from writing
| style, similar to how JK Rowling's pseudonymous identity was
| uncovered.
| carlio wrote:
| That's true if you're an established author and create a new
| itentity. If you've never published fiction though, there'd
| be no corpus to train on. What the article is saying is is
| that it's difficult for new artists to establish themselves,
| but in this case, I think psuedoanonymity is a good idea if
| you have any topics or ideas that you worry would cause a
| backlash.
| DanBC wrote:
| Rowling's identity was uncovered when a family friend of her
| solicitors tweeted it out.
|
| > The Harry Potter author released her first Robert Galbraith
| novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, in April 2013 under the guise of
| a very British sounding man who was said to have previously
| served in the army. But her nom-de-plume was uncovered three
| months later after an indiscreet tweet divulging the true
| identity of Galbraith was sent by "@JudeCallegari", a family
| friend of Christopher Gossage, a partner at Rowling's
| solicitors.
|
| Some people would suggest that the book was doing poorly, and
| needed a sales bump.
| langitbiru wrote:
| Perhaps we should use NLP to change the writing style but
| maintain the core idea. :)
| dogman144 wrote:
| What's interesting here is that the use of pen names is heavily
| policed in the publishing culture/industry. Some can use one,
| some can't, you will/will not get published if you follow the
| policy, and so on.
| redteddy23 wrote:
| Putting aside the fact the worst examples of "Cancel Culture" are
| an amplified, tiny number of edge cases, given fuel by those who
| wish to attack fairly reasonable requests to marginalise hate
| speech. Ishiguro makes a good point a skilled writer can write
| from the perspective of someone very different from them. Not
| that many people are actually arguing against that. What was of
| concern is the perspectives of marginalised people being written
| in a cliched and harmful way by people who have no understanding
| of their lives. Or because they have an agenda of portraying
| those people in a negative way. Understanding built on accurate
| and intelligent writing is great but I'm not going to read stuff
| that has an agenda to caricature and attack.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Very interesting. He credits his perspective to the fact that he
| grew up in a Japanese's family without the western influence
| limiting his creative output.
| aiba356ca2 wrote:
| The Internet is a Dark Forest.
|
| Keep your True Name hidden.
|
| > "And in fact AI could come up with the next big idea, an idea
| like communism or Nazism or capitalism... and what troubles me
| about that is that it is very difficult for humans to keep
| control of that situation."
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-01 23:01 UTC)