'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'

It's a bit dystopic. As much as the old music industry sucks, at least established artists had power.

These videos explain a few of these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn0gmu_m-os

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxj9rogBPi0

Kpop has become popular because it fills a niche that the western music industry doesn't cater to anymore. Some of it is actually better than the American pop scene. Right now there's no male western pop act with this Kpop idol's level of skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEKVyfsYnuM

Comparing similar acts shows why Kpop is becoming popular.

Kpop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkwYeEMpTIM

western pop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe6D899cz3c

Every fan of a Kpop artist has a long list of how they have been mistreated and mismanaged, and sometimes these aren't even justified, the fans are being oversensitive. The fans pay for protest trucks to park outside the music company buildings with screens displaying their demands for better treatment.

Rather, it's a really rough, possibly exploitative gig. They are just like models, but they also sing and dance.

The Music Industry and Hollywood though, they will protect themselves.

We hear more about someone being cancelled for the slightest Tweet than for example Bryan Singer's decades long rapey escapades.

Corey Feldman was literally mocked in public for suggesting that he was abused. By none other than Barbara Walters.

It might be illegal now, but certainly not enforced!

Dr. Dre said he saw one sound tech get beat down by six guys because he rewound the tape back too far.

The amount of intimidation, blackmail and extortion many in the rap game talked about was legit. Even in the DMX documentary, the two founders talked about twice strong arming record labels and their owners to let artists they wanted to sign out of their contracts.

I am French and worked for French, German and US companies (tech) and I never witnessed what was discussed above.

Flights in corporate jets were convenient and everyone was either chatting, or reading, or working. Multiple week travels in great hotels were pleases where people got to know, had dinner and then everyone went to their room.

Parties were parties (including after-parties), some drinking, lots of laughing and that's all.

All this from "general population" parties/travels, to top level ones.

Like I said: I must have been to the wrong parties :)

I was signing contracts or giving GO/NOGO for others (as customers of vendors, very large contracts) and I was getting invitations to dinners, sport events or "company walk-though" in interesting places (that I never took because this the way I work). These were "normal" sales invitations, no hidden agenda.

Wow, that sales guy must be thinking: last time I’m bringing the prude guy.

Okay, here's what happened. I'll never forget it because it was so weird. There was a younger guy and a much older guy. They introduce themselves, the younger one hands us business cards and pamphlets, and then the oldest one... starts telling us names of all the people he sold products to.

It was so weird because neither of them knew much about the product they were selling. Just their customers. And they tried hard to figure out if we knew any of their customers. Given our company's culture, we were all fairly new and thrown off guard by that lol. I think only one of us knew any of the people he was talking about.

We ended up not buying any of their products, because among other things, it was the worst sales pitch I've ever heard of. Like they relied on connections lol.

Published by "Bureau of Public Secrets":

http://www.bopsecrets.org/cat.htm

That isn't true, but the reasons are different for each.

For electrician getting your foot in the door is the hard part, from there on it is about on the job training. Getting the first apprentice position is one of the harder steps to success, and sexual favors can work here. Though I doubt this happens much in practice - the field isn't one that people are so excited to get into that they will drop their morals to do so.

For airline pilot, demand comes and goes. You have to get a license first (though you can probably pay your instructor in bed, that just gets training I doubt any instructor/examiner will let you buy the license before you are qualified - if anything they will be tougher one you so you have to "buy" another lesson). Once you are qualified, you can use favors to get a job when jobs are scare and this will put you ahead in seniority later when the others finally get a job; or you can use favor to keep a job - but again: seniority means they may not even have an option to keep you. Note that the above is or - because of constant management change odds are against your ability to use this more than once at a real airline without getting caught and then their HR will ensure you are out.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/rumour_leading_jap...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/tech/gaming-metoo-twitch/inde...

A good rule of thumb is to look for visible gatekeepers. Where they go the abuses follow, and if caught they only need to burnish their image enough to get their pals to rehire them.

What I saw personally, working on an ill fated unreal licensed property around 1999, wasn't sexual extortion. But it was a boys club that loved trading porn in the official irc channels for unreal engine support. CliffyB was particularly fond of posting pictures of his then girlfriend, as well as essentially rick rolling people with this picture involving a cactus and what appears to be a very uncomfortable sexual act.

It may not have been straight up extortion of sexual interactions, but I am sure that if you pushed back on that, you'd have found yourself fenced out of the very small community of people who have huge influence over whether your game ships. It certainly was not a welcoming environment to anyone other than immature young men, which is a label I'd apply to myself at that time for sure.

Again though, I want to emphasize I also see a positive trend in gaming in general. There's a long walk ahead, but the industry is actually walking the right direction, just slowly.

The idea of possibly being the next Elvis or Madonna if you accept being boinked by a pig with money is hard to turn down for many.

One of the reasons the game dev industry has more abuse (mostly non-sexual) than other software endeavors is because games are seen as more fun or cool to work on, rather than say a sales proposal tracking CRUD system. (I'm happy making sales proposal tracking systems myself, although I admit I have dabbled in the pop music writing industry, and still dabble in neo-renascence tunes.)

My daughter found the clothing fashion industry is similar: high pressure because many want the job of designer and scrape and claw to get it. She changed careers after some nasty office skirmishes among competitors.

> [capitalist states] consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.

is true, and not particularly controversial. Too little unemployment is assumed (true or not) to lead to inflation and inefficiency.

(Although, I'm not sure the second claim follows. If unemployment is reduced by, say, drastically lowering the minimum wage, I don't see why things would look any different. Unemployment isn't the problem, here anyway.)

If you think I can help you get the initial exposure, I have a lot of power.

In any event censoring the word "balls" (even when used euphemistically) is a bit weird.

Given that the parent comment mentioned that 20 years after the porn storage story happened they ended up working at Tumblr, I assume the original story took place during a time before high-speed internet and porn streaming were a thing.

I thought everyone working in tech knew this happened. If you doubt it, a simple check of the Tumblr jobs page should make their policy clear:

https://www.tumblr.com/jobs

"Now, billions of posts later, we continue to build out Tumblr as a platform for diverse communities to express their points of view. And we’re committed to hiring a workforce that represents the same diversity."

A company committed to hiring a workforce that represents "diversity" will have a lot of "diversity hires", as it's literally their stated policy.

Diversity hiring has the same vibe as nepotism. Sometimes you look at someone's output (or even job description) and can't help but think that this guy wouldn't have a job here if he wasn't someone's nephew. Unless this is something that can be said about you (with "gay" replacing "nephew") you have nothing to fear.

One of the Unix admins was allergic to dogs if that counts towards diversity.

Many social groups who help each other with resources without keeping tabs still can recognize when someone is leaching off the group, especially when they recognize the person has the ability to contribute to the group but chooses not to. People who support someone without expecting them to be paid back often have an expectation of the relationship being two sided with sentiments such as "I know if the roles were reversed, you would do the same for me." In cases where the roles do reverse but they don't do the same, you see people quite broken. It wasn't ever a strict tally, but it does hurt the person that their relationship wasn't as too sided as they expected.

We even describe people as being enablers when they give to someone without receiving back what we think is due (with that last part being defined in highly situations terms).

"You can't have it both ways; You can't enjoy listening to somebody singing sad songs about the blues and heartbreak and then not expect them to be truly heartbroken."

A lot of artists already struggle with mental health and addiction issues and that is why their music is powerful and propels their success.

Amy Winehouse is one of my favorite artists. Watch Amy for an amazing, sad, portrait that shows her existing struggles which were amplified to the extreme by our treatment and ridicule of her.

Mac Miller is another example that comes to mind, his last few albums in particular are lyrically intense and personal and candid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddRN5lYMTJY

Now, one could come up with alternate motivations. "So, let's see just how dedicated you are to your career" ... Oh lord, I can't finish that with a straight face. I mean, if someone does think sex is at least mildly sacred, then being willing to do it for career purposes would show dedication (or desperation), but there are probably lots of other ways to measure that, not to mention that you might end up selecting less for dedication and more for sexual blaséness.

On the other hand, presenting a burger and cola as some kind of innate need for a child also seems off - enjoying a birthday cake, a lemonade or a lasagna are already damning enough...

And yet... given her level of fame even early on, I think she was far more valuable to keep on the books. But... I doubt she (or those around her) were able to think that strategically in the moment.

Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. Not at all.

Imagine a clearer example. Imagine that somebody is on a life sentence convicted of a murder that they have commited. Do you think that this person has the right to write a book? Can this book be sent for participation at a literary contest? Can it win? Does the jury that gives the prize condone the killing perpetrated by the winner? Are they vile?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of...

As an asexual person, not only are we not respected whatsoever here, but in my experienced, also personally attacked.

That your comment about erasure is getting this many down votes is unfortunately absolutely common for HN, and I'm incredibly disappointed in that.

Before people jump in who might not be asexual to try to defend this - it's such a problem I have actually shared emails with an admin who actually seem genuinely concerned about the problem. Just the truth.

I'm not sure why HN has it in for asexuals, but God damn guys, can't you ease up on us?

However sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

On the upside some very rich people got way richer than they would have under a traditional regulated utility situation.

I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civil rights bus boycotts wanted a specific policy to change and once that policy changed, they stopped their boycotts. Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual and there doesn't seem to be much that the individual can do to seek redemption—but I may be wrong on this.

Would love to hear your thoughts in response.

This cancel culture stuff is about not just "not reading the article and not going to the site", its an active attack against someone that you don't like.

A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.

Or comments taken out of context or missing nuance.

Or punishment out of proportion to the offense.

In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals.

Suing for defamation can be expensive and risky, and doesn't necessarily restore reputational damage even if you win.

Obviously, some people clearly guilty of the accusations against them and deserve the consequences being meted out against them.

But there is also a long history of "witch hunts" and people being punished in ways that don't deserve. Social media is enabling a new form of that, which is what we call "cancel culture".

for me, personally, it's when your average joe gets the other end of internet mob justice and they suddenly seek to ruin everything about your life above and beyond what you would normally face.

Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit.

- The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized problem and response can now turn into a localized problem, but global response.

- The ability to go back-in-time is all too easy. That dumb comment you made as a teenager can come back years and years later to haunt you (or people close to you). Maybe you had a massive turn-around already or you were recorded without consent. Often that doesn't matter.

- It is fostering an insidious call-out culture. The focus is no longer on prevention and remediation, but on scoring points and repositioning power towards "the vanguard". Legitimate victims aren't helped to heal and offenders aren't led to improve.

- No room is given to defend yourself, particularly when mobbed upon. Even if the record is set straight later it doesn't matter, as your reputation (possibly friendships, career, and family life) is in tatters.

What I do feel worth asserting is this: no matter what the current norm is, always remember you will be judged according to later standards, right or wrong. The greater the disparity in power the more important this is regardless of role (e.g. boss, parent, etc).

Cancel culture is wanting to punish a person (or virtue signal) for something in the past. Maybe they deserve it - I get it more when there's a history of credible charges of sexual assault or something (but then, I'd prefer they be tried in court and punished via the legal system). But the bar seems to have lowered and now you get fired for a tweet people don't like. And maybe people have the right to do it, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. If we're not careful it takes over the role of rule of law in our society and will do a worse job of it.

In the recent case of Gina Carano specifically, I don't think her tweet is remotely offensive to the level of being fired, and the effect will be that she's given a voice and seen as a martyr by people who have far more extreme opinions than what she's voiced previously.

People have gotten kicked out of colleges for using racist words in text messages. People have been fired for their jobs for messages taken out of context. Non-public individuals start getting death threats online and they get called out in the streets, for small mistakes or things taen out of context.

A separate issue is that people sometimes get cancelled for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes even when they were still young. The issue here is that people change. It would be like boycotting a company because 20 years ago they exploited workers, regardless of whatever they're doing today. It's a really grey area.

Cancel culture usually targets an individual. The objective is typically not change in policy, but the ostracism of the target.

E.g. refusing to buy from Nike until they pay better wages to their manufacturing labor is a boycott. Pressuring a company to fire a certain employee because a group doesn't like the political views of said employee is cancel culture.

Now your career can end because “You encouraged too much forgiveness for a girl who attended the wrong kind of party at 18.”

With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved.

But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future.

Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill.

It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of.

In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.

The use of feedback and machine learning (even simple mechanisms) in social media to selectively show the most engaging content has, in my opinion, been a fundamental cause of cancel culture. Cancel culture requires "moral outrage", and enragement is engagement, so Twitter (esp) is a factory for moral outrage.

This is fundamentally different from boycotts in the sense that boycotts were "organised", "led", or "stirred up" (according to your pov) by people. For example, anti-Nestle campaigners collecting petition signatures. There's a real world cost, a responsibility to be taken, a time lapse.

In contrast, moral outrages are manufactured almost autonomously by curation algorithms that are constantly searching for engagement. Outrage happens to be one really good strategy for that. The barrier to participation is extremely low - just click here, type an optional tweet dunking further on the target if you wish - and the speed they can spread is fast.

Compounding this is the propensity to be outraged has increased, I think, partly because "engagement-rich" modes of thinking have been spread. I'll resist giving concrete examples to leave the discussion politically neutral.

I really think there's an awful lot of responsibility for this problem on the social media companies and their leaders.

Boycotts are conducted by people with an existing relationship with the target.

Boycotts are usually seeking to inflict financial damage, rather than primarily reputational.

Boycotts are addressing an issue directly, cancel culture is addressing systematic issues with selective enforcement.

Boycotts are trying to change the behaviour of their target, rather than make an example out of them or as punishment.

Boycotts are typically temporary, not permanent.

More targeted and more often aimed at specific individuals.

As a side effect of the above, it is much easier to devolve into harassment and worse crimes than when it was a business that was being boycott.

More access to data to cancel on. Much easier to take information out of context now that social media exists.

Cancels also take on characteristics of a meme. A given behavior may lead to a cancel attempt while far worse behavior by others is ignored. There is a lack of rhyme or reason that pairs up with how some things become a meme and other similar things do not.

What is considered worthy of being canceled has increased to include many actions that the majority does not feel comfortable cancelling over, but given the previous changes a smaller group is needed to convince HR that someone should be fired.

“Cancel culture” is what, after about four decades of nonstop use, the Right has done a search and replace in their canned narratives to replace “political correctness” with. With exactly the same complaints and descriptions of the nature and effects, including the continuous argument that it is new.

The request for a textbook, or similar caliber academic content on the question was serious and not intended to be inflammatory.

Particularly, on something new, the ratio of words spent versus insight is perhaps lower up front as the issue unfolds until learnings crystallize. IMHO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler

Thank you for speaking out. I understand that it can be very difficult to talk about, but it does help other people notice issues that don't directly effect them. And bringing attention to those issues is the only way to solve them.

https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/delhi-court-acqu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priya_Ramani

It is a lucrative recurring revenue model after all...favours or not ;)