I'm not sure where you got the impression that the parent was constantly being canceled. The actual problem is that nobody wants to be canceled even once, so they're forced to be perpetually on their tippy toes. The recent cancellations[1] for (arguably) non-hateful behavior creates a chilling effect.
>The actual problem is that nobody wants to be canceled even once, so they're always perpetually on their tippy toes.
This is how professional environments have always been and I don't agree that it's a problem. When a bunch of people with different beliefs get together its important for everyone to invest effort in keeping the peace so the focus can remain on work.
Thankfully there's still plenty of room for sharing personal beliefs with coworkers (even differing opinions) as long as you've put in the work to build a trusting relationship.
I guess it might depend on what sorts of things you're used to saying. I haven't felt chilled at work, and haven't felt any need to adjust my behavior or the things I say in any way.
> One wrong word and you’re cancelled.
I think many of those words have always been wrong, and it's only now that people are correctly catching flack for it, because people are willing to go to HR with their complaints.
The more conventional-minded someone is, the more it seems to them that it's safe for everyone to express their opinions. It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to them that it must be safe for everyone.It used to be _conventional_ to have scantily clad “booth babes” in pretty much every technical conference’s vendor room (worse at things like CES, but I remember going to a mid-2000s VMworld conference where there were some booth babes). At some point—in part because of pushback against the sexism of “booth babes”—it became embarrassing to have them. I remember discussions on various sites (IIRC, including HN) where people lamented “feminism” for the disappearance of booth babes. Ultimately, the people who lamented it couldn’t keep up with the changes in convention.
It used to be _conventional_ to be casually sexist or racist in the office. The convention changed. The people who are supposedly being “canceled” have been unable to keep up with the convention. It could be personal sexism and/or racism, or it could simply be systemic sexism and/or racism and they haven’t _quite_ caught the memo that the convention changed.
Parent comment: I haven't felt censored, therefore there is no problem.
PG essay: This isn't a good argument for the absence of censorship, since some people adopt their opinions wholesale from the dominant orthodoxy of their times, making it logically impossible for them to say anything heterodox. Such people would therefore never feel censored.
Anyway, that's my take. How do you you see them as saying the same thing? I think the PG essay does talk about conventions changing, which you did a very good job of illustrating with your booth babe example...though in the essay, he seems more interested in good opiions that run counter to current conventions rather than bad ones that convention endorses (like booth babes).
I expect that's probably because you happen to be of a similar viewpoint as the majority of the folks you work with.
> I think many of those words have always been wrong
True, but many of them haven't. Over time, it's gotten to the point where expressing a liberal view at a workplace that mostly conservative, or vice versa, is likely to get your fired for being a bad person. The same is true of a lot of specific talking points. Talking politics at work has never been a great idea, but it's gotten to the point where talking about anything that politics talks about is a mine field.
But she’s still worth a stupid amount of money and she still has her publishing contracts. She’s received some pretty disgusting hateful comments _back_ (which is inexcusable), but most objections are specifically because she’s repeating toxic hate speech.
Compare this with the 22 transgender people murdered in America so far this year: 22 transgender people have been killed so far this year — almost the total toll for 2019 (https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclu...).
Being told that one’s words are hurtful is not the equivalent of being purged in the early USSR (such purges were quite often literal with use of bullets).
Her words are resonating with a lot of women, and more than that, there are many more women who are afraid to agree with her publicly. Brenden O'Neil does a great talk about Orthodoxy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWrljX9HRA
I'm not going to say what I think about her statements, but I do think she has a right to say them. Dismissing them outright is dismissing the many people who are genuinely worried about legislation changes that affect what we can and cannot say.
Her critics also have every right to express their disgust with her support for transphobic “thought-leaders”. The complaints about “cancel culture” are _mostly_ that people who have never had their opinions challenged are now being challenged and called out for hurtful statements.
It's also worth noting that trans people are a fraction of a percentage of the population. Most people won't know anyone personally. It's easier to hate a distant figure who you've never met, particularly when they only end up in the news for being near the Kardashians, leaking government secrets, or getting upset at a beloved children's author. Not a lot of people know who e.g. Lynn Conway is, and that's a shame.
All I said is that similarly to the 1930s USSR rules of what is "hate"/"counter-revolution" are changing so quickly and abruptly that even people who had been dedicated to the cause are routinely found guilty. E.g. just a couple months ago Rowling was an inspiration for women, an advocate for LGBT, feminism and other causes. Now she is being told that her words are hurtful. It's as same as some NKVD officer, who busted the counter-revolutionaries for criticizing the great ally of the USSR, Germany, get busted himself for being a German spy. And no, I don't mean that Rowling was busting somebody for criticizing Germany or is a German spy.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2020/07/21/...
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/02/texas-education-agen...
https://stream.org/this-catholic-school-teacher-was-fired-fo...
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/2/20751822/google-employee...
However, the be fair, some people have been fired by conservative companies as well:
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/12/lifelong-conservative-re...
However, you are far more likely to be “cancelled” if you don’t toe the left or far left party line. Especially at tech companies.
To go one step further: For a laser to work requires some kind of pumping, in order to get the atoms in a state where they can emit. By analogy, what "pumps" the hate laser?
Trolls do. Nuff said on that topic; we've all seen it.
Foreign governments do. The point of "agitation propaganda" is to get the population in an agitated state, that is, a state where they are ready to lash out. I think there is sufficient evidence of Russia doing this, and I suspect that both China and Iran are doing so also.
Domestic political parties do. "The other side is not just wrong, they're evil. Here, look how evil they are! Look what horrible things they're doing! Send us money so that we can fight them!"
And the media do. Especially social media, but the regular media as well. Outrage drives clicks, clicks sell ads, ads make money. (Alternately, media could be thought of as turning up the gain on the other forms of pumping.)
It's incredibly dangerous to talk about anything remotely controversial at work right now, if you're in 100% remote/lockdown work. I've heard this from multiple non-work friends. I personally avoid it whenever possible.
Hell, it's not even work friends. I know people who have completely stopped texting each other over narrow political views.
Current modern world and its problems can get to you and rot at work also.
Its very hard „not to” talk about some things.
So I end up speaking more with co-workers from the same country I am from because it becomes easier. This ends up forming bubbles :(. I wish I was able to speak freely and make friends with people from other countries also. But the risk seems much more than the reward.
If you can't be kind or professional enough to have an enjoyable working relationship to have drinks with your coworkers, I don't think it's the corporation or HR department that's to blame.
> or you forget about a sensitive demographic of people when proposing an idea.
Both of those can be true, I imagine. I think the general idea is, though, in America, people who weren't white guys always have had to deal with those same concerns.
My privilege as white dude has included, until relatively recently, _not_ having to worry about those things because my "norm" was the norm society enforced over the norms of people different than myself.