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Comment by anonunivgrad | Hacker News Reader

Destroying someone’s life for having the wrong opinions is not charitable to their humanity. It is not how America was until very recently. Sure, people have always been vilified for their views, but they’ve most times been able to continue making their private living nonetheless. Deviations from that, like the McCarthy Era, are rightly seen as wrongful failures to live up to this ideal.

As for the “rich and powerful”, do you mean high school kids making inappropriate jokes that become national news stories, blue collar guys being fired for not being up-to-speed on 2020 cosmopolitan sensibilities, or anyone who says a single negative thing about BLM riots?

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"Cancel Culture" is the practice of naming and shaming PUBLIC figures and organisations and so your comment is a wee bit off the mark. You can't cancel a subscription to an individual, a high school kid who makes an off-colour remark is not a product.

By linking the public disapprobation of people who make statements (such as that scooter-driving gentleman in Florida who yelled "White Power" or the angry young schoolboy who decided to stare down a native American who would dare to try to defuse his incipient argument with some agitators) with companies who are being boycotted for actively funding anti-LGBTQ lobbying groups (for instance) is an attempt by politicians, companies and media groups to apply a chilling effect to speech. People should be able to boycott those companies who attempt to impact their lives; celebrities are not owed our respect, nor politicians the money they steal from public coffers.

It is very much NOT limited to public figures and is pervasive in large companies. Individuals get effectively blackballed because of disagreeing with the mob

> It is very much NOT limited to public figures and is pervasive in large companies.

That is not cancel culture. That is something else. Cancel culture, by definition, requires something that can be cancelled. Equivocating the two issues is an attempt to make public figures, organisations, etc less accountable.

Whelp... Go ahead and check your definitions, because it absolutely applies to individuals in a private space

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