What it's like to be cancelled

Especially if you can make a tiger by simply clicking a share button.

It would be much harder to build a critical mass using more traditional methods of communication, even e-mail. As a result, people would spare their energy for serious incidents only.

But we have a variant of the tragedy of commons here: societal ostracism, an important but dangerous tool, is no longer used rationally, but milked to exhaustion. It has become too easy to get the ball of outrage rolling. Too many people are treated as if they commanded a genocidal death squad, when their transgression is often verbal only (not the case of this particular artist, I know).

As a result, we have a virtual Salem trial every day. I wonder when the inevitable reaction happens and people start ignoring the social networks altogether. This is not a stable, persistent state of things. Too unhinged.

“””Another great Chinese expression is "calling a deer a horse" (指鹿為馬; zhǐlù-wéimǎ) which is based on the story of Zhao Gao which goes as follows:

Zhao Gao was contemplating treason but was afraid the other officials would not heed his commands, so he decided to test them first. He brought a deer and presented it to the Second Emperor but called it a horse. The Second Emperor laughed and said, "Is the chancellor perhaps mistaken, calling a deer a horse?" Then the emperor questioned those around him. Some remained silent, while some, hoping to ingratiate themselves with Zhao Gao, said it was a horse, and others said it was a deer. Zhao Gao secretly arranged for all those who said it was a deer to be brought before the law and had them executed instantly.”””

Seems even more appropriate - quoted from https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/e1diq2/three_men...

Journalists participate in Twitter at a rate probably 10-100x the overall population. Most people don't ever log into Twitter, most journalists do daily.

I think you can look at it this way:

* For normal people, Twitter is not real life.

* For journalists, Twitter is real life.

Journalists then become the vector by which BS Twitter drama becomes mainstreamed.

An internet mob is the perfect model for what a Direct Democracy would look like.

You also have to blame companies/hr for being so reactive and possibly our governments for not taking action to insulate society against the impacts of internet mobs on peoples’ pursuit of happiness. The fact that 100 people on Twitter can get somebody fired just by calling them a rapist with absolutely no proof is a social/societal failure. I highly suspect ending this person’s contracts cost the companies more money than the PR/threat of loss of 100 Twitter users business. Is nobody at these companies that participate in canceling people mature enough to let the storm blow over? Which leads to the social element, good legal systems require the accusers to bear the burden of proof. I think it’s possible that there’s a legal framework by which we could consider it unconstitutional fire somebody for somebody else’s character opinion, essentially firing someone without evidence that they create a hostile work environment or are not performing their duties. Look at CA, you cant use somebody’s criminal record against them when making a hiring decision. That law exists for exactly this reason: incarceration evidently weighs an undue burden on the incarcerated as they try to integrate back into society. And thats for people who’ve been convicted. We’re talking about mob driven allegations.

That’s what happens now because there are fewer “dissenters” and it’s more work to reply and dissent.

I think if Twitter had an easy way to show displeasure, it would be more common, and thus harder for internet mobs to form around them.

I used to think that no one had time to internet mob strangers so maybe I’m wrong that there’s not enough attention to mob every “meh” and dislike.

I bet if you look specifically at "cancelling" mob type activity, the % is much much more concentrated.

There are disproportionately loud participants on Twitter that push a toxic narrative.

What I meant is denominator of responses.

If I have 10,000 followers and post something with 100 likes, that might mean 100 people saw it and everyone liked it. It might mean 10,000 saw it and 9,900 hated it. It might mean 500 saw it, 100 liked, 100 hated, 300 didn’t care. Etc etc.

This would help understand if it’s just a few loud people or indicative of all the people.

I think he means Twitter, the corporation, knows how many total users they have. Although having worked with analytics groups for a long time, I'm not sure that's necessarily true either.

Twitter as in the company/software platform, not the group of people who respond to a particular tweet.

Twitter's database could show how many people were shown the tweet. It could guess at how many of their users would react in this way. And you could do some surveys to find out what fraction of our cultural spectrum/Overton window Twitter users occupy.

I meant Twitter the company. Twitter has the data for who was shown a tweet.

Twitter doesn’t have a dislike but they have signals like amount of time spent, skipped over, etc. I wish they would add a frown option.

If I tell a joke to a dinner table and get 6 frowns and 1 laughing person that means the joke isn’t very good. In the Twitter ecosystem, that’s a great joke.

Is it possible that this is a reaction to extremely small groups of coordinated people causing a lot of chaos in everything outside the internet?

https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-top-01-households-h...

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN. This thread is mostly, though not entirely, managing to stay on the substantive side. Jumping straight into the flames is not a good idea and is destructive, if not outright vandalism. HN isn't for this so please don't do it here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

the sample is still limited to logged in Twitter users

sane people dont have Twitter accounts

enjoy polling insane people

It doesn’t give us a reference for who dislikes. Or who is ambivalent. It just lets us know who liked and shared.

The Dan Harmon apology is very good and, as far as I understand (I'm not on Twitter), was generally well received: https://time.com/5100019/dan-harmon-megan-ganz-sexual-harass...

Even presuming that the act was worthy of censure, and an apology sincere, forgiveness can't really be given until some sort of restorative action is taken. Words, even sincere words, can't provide recompense.

Of course, most these internet based outrages and boilerplate apologies are ridiculous anyway. Sincerity is nowhere to be found.

Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo

From Wikipedia:

> Liss said Cuomo called her "sweetheart," touched her on her lower back while they were at a reception, and also once kissed her hand after she stood up from her desk.

There are worse accusations too, but surely this is closer to light flirting than to lewd behavior? Compared to this, a certain recent US ex-president should have been cancelled a dozen times over.

Sometimes people say that kind of thing out of shame, for example if they feel humiliated and are trying to make the humiliation stop by agreeing with the person shaming them. Such statements should not be taken as factual confessions. I don't know anything about this situation, but that language sounds like that to me. Also, the first sentence of the current article makes me think that the author is given to overstatement.

I never groped anyone.

> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now.

Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice.

That's why we have a justice system.

> Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued.

Your argument here is that he's guilty until proven innocent.

In Noah Bradley's case, a lot of people just disliked him because of a reputation that he was a self-important jerk who jumped on every opportunity he could to self-promote and had some annoyingly devoted fanboys (a similar dynamic follows Elon Musk).

When the cancellation was in full swing I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were piling on to settle scores or because they just hated seeing him and his fanboys spamming up his stuff all the time, regardless of whether they actually knew him to be a creep or not.

My brother-in-law is 24 years old, autistic and worked at the local grocery store. He was in the union. One time, he made a stupid joke about “juicy melons” he was physically holding to a female co-worker.

She claimed sexual harassment and he was immediately fired. No investigation, no support from the union.

There was no third party witness, just he said-she said. Don’t think unions are there to protect you.

His mother also works at the same store in a different department. Didn’t matter.

The mob had judged him expeditiously. The poor kid has never even kissed a girl.

> being a jerk in social situations is by itself absolutely grounds for being fired.

That runs contrary to most companies I've worked at.

You might be playing on the word "pressure". I don't think semantic debates are worthwhile.

"pressuring" isn't a word used in legal texts anyway.

It may be before the online mobs grew large enough, but Tim Hardaway dealt with his homophobic comments well enough to convince everyone that he had a change of heart, and was not just trying to manage the fallout (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/02/16/ten...).

Apologizing on social media does not diffuse anything. It attracts attention and those who missed the initial controversy typically try to use the apology to exact more "consequences".

Public apologies should never be done. If you want to apologize, do it in private to the alleged victim - do not do it in public.

His employer tried to coerce an apology from him, and then fired him when he refused?

That sounds like a lawsuit in the making, even if he wasn't a formal employee.

The GP said "public apology", not "apology". You can apologize to the victims in private.

A private apology is different from a public apology. The former helps victims move on, the latter is for third parties to move on.

In either case, a good apology should show some sincere character development on your part.

No, that's why private apologies are for.

Public apologies are just emotional porn for the Twitter masses. They serve no purpose, and are a desperate attempt to satiate the insatiable.

NZ Twitter is nuts. If you think US Twitter leans left you haven't seen anything like NZPol Twitter.

I completely believe that whatever happened to you was totally unreasonable, but try to understand that from another person's point of view, the broad "you must be against freedom of speech" thing is "toxic", just as you have experienced "toxic" behavior from the opposite side of the issue.

I also believe that sometimes it'd be better if judge's name wasn't known

e.g in cases like Derek's Chauvin (police officer / G. Floyd)

Doesn’t it always feel manufactured?

What you are mentioning regarding the case of Stallman’s cancelling is the same pattern I have seen applied against every other voice that has a dissenting opinion of the current culture that dominates social media.

I agree that what Stallman said was misrepresented, and perhaps the later stages of the "cancelling" were more manufactured, but the initial anger that popped up on various MIT mailing lists felt very organic to me. A bit mob-like, definitely driven moreso by emotion than a good-faith reading of what Stallman said, and probably amplified by people who disagreed feeling afraid to speak out. But I wouldn't describe any of it as manufactured.

There's no detectable difference between manufactured and organic "canceling" because the major component in both cases is a horde of people who are just looking for a hate bandwagon to hop on.

Likewise if you are publishing to Vice or some other moderately popular publication, you're directly motivated to stir up drama both for clickbait and as a form of a personal power trip against those you don't like for whatever reason.

The main issue is that our internet culture is extremely primitive. We're basically animals online, most of us. And it's very easy to spur a stampede and destroy someone, whether intentionally or not.

> from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this and Reddit

In fairness those are both very common features of cancellations. Another that comes to mind is Damore, who never wrote what most people attributed to him. I've had perfectly clear for a long time that even smart people will misunderstand the clearest statement if it's what it's socially expected from them.

Many good points in the discussion below. However, when one of Stallman’s “crimes” was comparing US laws against that of Sudan (as mentioned in the open letter), I could not help but feel that people are looking for an opportunity to take him down for reasons other than his views on Minsky, adolescent sex, etc.

> “I was terrible to women,” Bradley wrote. “I preyed on them. I ceaselessly hit on them. I pressured them into sex. I got too drunk and did all manner of dumb things. Yes, I was one of those shitty, creepy sexual predators you hear about.”

This is literally the first I've heard of Bradley, and I have no knowledge of him outside of this HN post. That's a pretty self-damning quote, though.

I think this quote from the article is a good example:

>I don’t think I can fully describe the heart-wrenching pain of seeing your life & career crumbling around you and feeling utterly powerless to stop it. I thought I was fast approaching my inevitable and permanent end. I don’t cry often, but I cried a lot that night.

The author has harsh words for his previous behavior, but the question I have is about the sentiment at the center of his reflection on the experience: if he had agency in the attacks on him. I certainly believe that he does not think he does.

A lot of this comes down to deeply personal questions about how to address misbehavior and what we expect from other people. I do not know the details of what Noah did or what the people he mistreated want, but in his incomplete account I can certainly think of things that jump out to me.

- He says that no one has accused him of raping them. I personally know people who were raped and never accused their rapists. It was not worth the trouble or they did not have the social capital or they did not want to pursue law enforcement. How much introspection Noah should have depends a lot on the specifics but is it certainly not clearly enough to say that you didn't do something because no one accused you. That's not reflection.

- At the end of the day no one has an obligation to like you. It is not up to the perpetrator to decide what the appropriate restorative process is. We do not need a legal system to give us permission to dislike someone.

- He says, towards the end "If you’ve been cancelled and want someone to talk with who won’t shame or judge you, shoot me a message." I mean...I suppose I get what he means, but it seems hard to simultaneously put forth that your previous behavior was wrong and should be judged harshly and also that you will not judge others for their previous behavior. I am all for a path to restoration, but if I am to believe in reform I would like to see a more complex understanding than I get from this essay. I believe any real path to restoration must include judgement about past misdeeds.

I think about the Dan Harmon apology for the sexual harassment her perpetrated against a coworker[1]. It has its own flaws and, to a degree, I think it overly-centers Harmon, but one thing I think it gets very right is that Harmon made sure to apologize in a way that was accepted by his victims and was detailed about his misbehavior. He is clear-eyed about the way that he took advantage of his power, how selfish and small his motivations were, and how much damage he did to his victims. His apology feels merciless to his past self in a way that I do not see in Noah's account.

Now maybe Noah has fully satisfied his victims and they simply do not want to go public and ofc that changes my understanding of this situation. But I do not get the same unceasingly unsympathetic treatment of Noah's past behavior. He seems like he wants it to go away rather than make it part of his story and, I think, that approach feels less fully-engaged than others that I've seen.

Ultimately accounts like this, where we are all judging behavior of strangers we haven't meet in past events we did not experience, are always questionable. I don't feel certain at all about Noah. I also think it is easy to read this account of his experience and be uncertain about how he has changed. He mentions, at the start, that cancelling "those who are attempting to grow is such a counterproductive and potentially dangerous trend" - but I do not understand from this article how he is attempting to grow. Instead, I see a disagreement about how to deal with his past behavior.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/674/transcript

this is typical of people self-labeling as, and seeking pity for, being 'cancelled' in my experience...

What happened is quickly glossed over in vague terms with a half hearted apology and treated as a mere unimportant sideshow to the real problem: I faced consequences. Ignoring the pushback or saying 'well I could have provided more detail about what I learned as a person' isn't actually explaining what you did wrong. There is a big gap between 'acting like an asshole' (to use your language) and 'being a sexual predator' (to use another headline). Those details matter - because they frame the rest of the description of what happened. It's the head nod to 'I'm sorry if anyone was offended' so we can get to the real topic...

The real topic is claiming victimhood when the consequences of one's behavior come out. No challenge of facts, of what others are saying, simply an acclimation that you are put upon based on your evaluation of the consequences. By bypassing all of that, you are starting from the idea that you (and your wife) are really the victim here and building that narrative very intentionally. These types of articles are basically an argument by assertion that accountability is not important.

Cancel culture is not real - the term 'cancel culture' is an attempt to recuperate[0] the language of equal rights and justice to protect people from the consequences of their actions. You're sitting here writing a blog post about this. It's on the front page of HN, you posted about it on your twitter. Please...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

I admire your willingness to write that article, although I doubt your wisdom in doing so.

So far anything I have seen that directly or indirectly argues against cancelling invites a vortex of political bullshit to descend upon the writer, and you are already tainted so you are seen as a legitimate target for more abuse.

I can easily see how I could be falsely accused, and how difficult I would find to recover from that, so I can empathise with your decision to open the wound again.

I don't understand. If they are capable of changing over time, surely they are capable of looking back on their past selves and acknowledging what was wrong with them?

I’m not even sure what “pressure women into sex” is supposed to mean. Clearly some people categorize flirting as this, which is crazy to me.

Honestly, you don't have to.

bingo - this; add to that higher stakes conversations, like political grouping, and you have started down the path of why anonymity is irreplaceable in public discourse.

The irony is that taken out of context, this one sentiment sums up everything that is wrong with the internet and, more specifically, social media.

When removed from consequences to our actions, we’re free to say pretty much anything we want.

If everyone actually cared about the impact our words had on others, we wouldn’t have to resort to the using the same response that caused the problem in the first place.

As a woman who has been posting anonymously for years to avoid uninteresting personal attacks, I've come to enjoy and rely on it. Maybe the entire Real Names idiocy started by Google+ can be forgotten about and we can move on? Nothing wrong with an anonymous handle.

The opinion of a person with some credibility, like name is N, lives in a city M, occupation is X is valued more than some of anonymous.

Because nowadays there are too many fake accounts, even paid trolls, and talking to them (or even listening to them) is just waste of time, not a meaningful conversation.

My twitter account is anonymous and I sometimes get replies like why would I want to talk to nobody. And they are right, they probably shouldn't.

Do you think Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, or Kevin Spacey should have been cancelled?

I agree that it's overboard on a lot of things, especially in the past couple years, but I think it's important to remember the "cancel culture" started as a way to hold certain people to account who were exhibiting socially unacceptable behavior, but were not being socially punished.

All societies have social norms, and all societies have informal (i.e. not through the legal system) means of enforcing those norms. There was a pretty significant gap in U.S. society's ability to enforce social norms against certain types of people, and social media filled that gap.

Now some people have taken that tool farther than can reasonably be justified, but the best way to fight back against that excess is not to say "cancel culture is oppression!" because it DID fill a need in our society, it DID punish people who deserved to be punished, and I don't think we can get the cat back in the bag. So, don't fight the tool, fight the people using it where it isn't justified.

(Who gets to decide when it's "justified" you ask? Well, we do. As a society. Together, online. We're going to have to figure it out. But if we go into a discussion about cancel culture assuming the other side is only interested in opression, repression, and censorship, it's not going to go well.)

I find myself self-censoring more and more here on HN. I never had a problem until someone on here accused me of being a racist because my company consisted of primarily white people. It really messed with my head for a little bit. I mostly try and shy away from any contentious topic online now. I haven’t felt this pressure IRL (yet?) because people that know me know that I’m a very reasonable person who doesn’t hate anyone or any group.

I agree with you on the overton window part, and that's why i'm not against "cancel culture" even though i won't participate in an obvious bourgeois plot (/s).

The social liberals are the 3rd political group who used it, i'd say at least as efficiently as the far right (first group that used internet to shift the Overton window) and more efficiently than the libertarian/fiscal liberals (second group).

But as social liberals are far more numerous than the far right, the impact is magnified. I find it hypocrite that members of the first two group trying to open the overton window are calling them out on this.

"Irrational mob" also known as "social media".

We've just scaled up and weaponised people's bad behavior and worst instincts. People have always been this way but now they have a tool to find other like minded people and act in unison.

Before the Web 2.0 internet made people’s real names so public, it was in fact quite difficult for things many people did to affect their employment. Your employer simply wouldn’t have been aware of how you were acting somewhere else outside their direct purview. Now, however, if an opponent knows that you are employed at X, they can bring pressure on X to fire you in an extremely public way, such that your employer will buckle to the social pressure lest it affect their bottom line. That simply would not have happened so often prior to about 2007 at least.

It's a continuation of earlier enforcement of social norms, but what's new is that it's so much more accessible and effective now.

He absolutely disputes the allegations of, rape which are at the crux of the his larger cancellation.

> So I wrote up a statement saying I had slept with women at events and sometimes I was a dick. The statement was heavily (and perhaps hastily) worded in an effort to convey my understanding of the gravity of hurting people and my desire to set a good example. The internet, though, misinterpreted some of what I had said and began accusing me of rape. No one has ever accused me of raping them. But twitter latched onto that narrative and couldn’t let it go.

I think this fits:

> My womanizing at events predates ever meeting my wife. But people went so far as to call her a rapist, a sex trafficker, or at best a rape apologist.

C’mon. It’s in the 2nd paragraph!

have you actually READ the article?

He loses work due to false accusations of rape. Wait, you say, they just misinterpreted his words! Well, they also accused his wife.

> The internet, though, misinterpreted some of what I had said and began accusing me of rape. No one has ever accused me of raping them. But twitter latched onto that narrative and couldn’t let it go.

> My womanizing at events predates ever meeting my wife. But people went so far as to call her a rapist, a sex trafficker, or at best a rape apologist. The online world expected her to divorce me and when she didn’t many more people who claimed they would support her, shunned her.

And, depending on what the media actually said:

> I think my low point happened when the story was picked up by some bigger online blogs. Not because they made things worse or that I have any delusions about their journalistic integrity (I was never asked for a comment by any media outlet or blog that shared this story).

People should take note of the parent post's behavior. It is exactly this careless misinterpretation and willful ignorance, amplified through a community, which causes toxic dogpiling.

That's a very powerful film, everyone should watch it. English title is "The hunt".

> Netflix really did him dirty throwing him under the bus like they did as have many companies/schools/organizations simply on hearsay alone.

Ehm... https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/media/house-of-cards-kevin-.... There were eight people working on the "House of Cards" who alleged/confirmed he was predatory. There is of course still a chance that it's one big witch hunt, but this is definitely not a case of 100 Twitter random users making a lot of noise.

It's based in the US in California and is dominated by an English speaking crowd from the US who reflect the values where they come from.

Nice, so that excuses lack of any regulation of this monstrocity?

The problem absolutely is the platform and the medium, because it makes nuanced impossible by design.

It's a good hunch. The intellectual among us often treat their imaginations as if the imagination is reality, thus neglecting natural--as in nature--limits and boundaries to the human condition. Not everything we can imagine is right, possible, or desirable. Twitter and social media in general are manifestations of this.

Isn't that kind of a ridiculous example? Most people in this forum would never have the desire to steal from poor old people. So if someone does, it's a really disturbing sign that goes beyond the crime itself. Of course you'd think twice about meeting that person for lunch.

But sexual relationships are scarce (in the economic sense of the word "scarce") even among the well-to-do. Especially young adults, who have the greatest desire. So there's a lot more temptation. Furthermore, it's much harder to draw clear boundaries because of the complexities of flirting. Add in alcohol and poor communication, and there is a real risk that otherwise good people do some things that look pretty bad after the fact.

Yes, people should behave. We should quickly put a stop to these transgressions before they escalate. And we should acknowledge that they may cause real harm to others and that some punishment may be warranted.

I'm just saying that the friend you have that is accused of some bad stuff -- it's OK to not take sides. You don't have to defend them or anything, but it's OK to treat them like a normal human being. Because they probably are.

But the software engineer that steals from poor old people is not a normal human, and it's totally reasonable to ghost them.

His full apology on twitter:

> I’m sorry.

> l was terrible to women.

> I preyed on them. I ceaselessly hit on them. I pressured them into sex. I got too drunk and did all manner of dumb things. Yes, I was one of those shitty, creepy sexual predators you hear about.

> I was fucking awful.

> I am deeply sorry for everything I did. I apologize for the selfish, cruel, insensitive way I acted. It's no way for anyone to act. I'm so sorry.

> Women deserve better than selfish assholes like I was at those industry events. Everyone there deserves respect. They should be professional environments. They should be safe environments. I violated that. time and time again.

> I'm sorry, I'm sorry to everyone I hurt. I'm sorry to everyone I let down, I'm sorry to everyone.

> I want to thank the peers and friends who called me out for my bad behavior. Without people doing what you do, this sort of behavior would never even be acknowledged, much less changed. We need more people like you who are brave enough to stand up for what's right.

> I was selfish and scared and delayed a public apology for far too long. Private apologies are not enough in a situation like this. So here we are. finally. I wish that I could educate my younger self and snap him out of his self-centered hot-shot ego-trip.

> I want you to know that lacknowledge what happened, I am ashamed, and I want to find ways to repair as much damage as is possible. I will keep putting in the work I will not run. and I will sit with my shame and not turn away from it.

> I’m sorry,

> Noah

See this article reporting on it at the time with a screenshot:

https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...

It's literally from Noah Bradley's public apology/announcement; he tried to get in front of the growing rumor network by publicly admitting things.

Moving forward doesn't mean moving on.

An apology that admits the wrong lets the victim stop doubting or blaming themselves. So the anger comes after it is acknowledged that what was done to you is wrong. In that way, anger after an apology actually means it may have worked.

So, if you have done harm to someone, are you going to prioritize helping those you have hurt move forward, or are you going to prioritize your reputation?

I don't think the mob mentality of destroying someone who has hurt others with no way out is helpful or appropriate.

But if we want to be good people who treat people right, then we realize we have hurt someone severely, we try to make it right -- even if there will be a cost to our reputations, deserved or undeserved. Even undeserved. If it's the cost of making it up to someone you have hurt severely, that's how it goes, even undeserved.

Valuing only our reputation against the mob and not the well-being of the people who we have hurt and want to try to make it up to -- is sociopathic behavior. Refusing to ever admit, even (or especially) to ourselves that we have hurt someone is sociopathic behavior.

My point still stands, though for any amount of figurative-ness. That's the point. The author had an experience which amounted to a terrible year, after admitting some terrible misdoings. Almost everyone had a terrible 2020 regardless of their past, and employers fire people from jobs for much more tenuous reasons than what the author admitted to.

Homosexuals, African Americans, other minorites, etc. have their lives taken from them literally and figuratively just for being who they are, along with jobs and future prospects, so we can be spared the pity party here.

That's the perspective that those banging on about cancel culture here are lacking.

I appreciate you taking the time to write something so thoughtful and sincere, and I really hope OP takes it to heart.

Love and empathy is the only way to healing in my book.

There are different levels of "opsec" required against different types of adversaries and different types of costs of being compromised. Edward Snowden's opsec looks a lot different than someone just wanting to post Trump slogans on Twitter.

Fair. I'm on the fence myself. But it is certainly a better discussion point than "Cancel culture is bad"; a lot of these people being "cancelled" definitely should be.

No I don't think every single mistake should follow you forever. And it's not fair to judge a person by their worst action.

But a sincere apology is humble and expects nothing in return. There is nothing in this piece to indicate that his apologies stemmed from anything other than damage control for his social and professional standing.

From the article:

> Because of my sometimes-controversial online image (mostly due to my let’s-be-arrogant-to-hide-my-insecurity bravado of my younger years that got me into this mess in the first place)

Please.

Originally, the Internet (including, but not limited to, the World Wide Web) was a place where nobody was interested in who you were as a person. It was and is geared towards structuring and disseminating knowledge.

In that sense, the entire somesphere is a tumor to the Internet.

What would you suggest you do when you have been behaving incorrectly? You can’t change the past.

Alternatively, stop labeling everything and everyone sexual predator.

Should everyone who has ever behaved inappropriately in that area lose their employment when their behavior comes to light? Does it matter if they've since stopped behaving like that? Where do you draw the line? Should they be excluded from productive society altogether if one instance of misbehavior can be found, at any time in the past? Is that best?

Whats the difference between having sex and being a sexual predator?

Do you just make things up as you go?

The frightening thing about "cancel culture" isnt that its new or eye-opening. Its has always existed, sandboxed, in places called school playgrounds. The world have adults has this annoying thing called due process. Filing cases, going to court, giving evidence etc etc.

Now that the playground rules are stating to proliferate into adult spaces, companies - surprisingly - have started to use playground platforms to make -what used to be - adult decisions about who to fire, who to buy from, whose services to use...from a 240 character platform. No due process, no due diligence, nothing. Just tweets.

God bless us all.

A YouTube personality I follow got cancelled not long ago. They responded by exiting Twitter, but there were complications. One of the things they mentioned that had never occurred to me is that as a published author, they had a contractual agreement with their publisher to maintain an online personality.

They had to come to special terms with their publisher to modify contract because the nature of cancellation is such that at the time, there was basically nothing they could say that would improve their "brand," so the purpose of the contract stipulation had become counterproductive. But as parent notes, this is a real problem some people have, depending on their profession.

If your job requires you to put on a public performance on social media -- do exactly that.

He was cancelled because he wrote a public apology on Twitter and that's how people found out about him. Twitter is completely to blame here - maybe along with being so naive to think that writing an apology on Twitter is a good idea.

I find it a little odd that in the original apology he refers to himself as a sexual predator but in this blog post he was a “womaniz[er]”.

The term womanizer generally refers to people that have lots of sexual encounters with different women, and has a strong connotation of “I’m very attractive to the opposite sex and am sometimes careless about which sexual advances I accept”

“Sexual predator” on the other hand indicates the use of force or coercion in order to initiate sexual contact, the use of professional or financial pressure to obtain sex, unwanted sexual behavior directed at folks that don’t want it, etc.

The wording in this article kind of seems like he got canceled for being too cool and getting laid too much, which is what he meant to say but accidentally wrote “shitty, creepy sexual predator”(0) in his apology instead. What a typo!

0 https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...

Plus if you apologize they just take it as evidence of wrong doing and that’s the worst you could do.

If you apologize to a person you hurt it needs to be done privately, without any way for them to produce evidence that you apologized.

But it's mostly a American internet phenomenon.

Maybe the part of the Internet that's in English. I don't see it elsewhere.

Getting a large shitstorm on the internet out of something is a global phenomenon, however, getting fired and blacklisted from future jobs because of an internet shitstorm (which to me is the key part that distinguishes 'cancel culture' from perfectly reasonable outrage or criticism) is not universal, companies reacting like that is much more pronounced in USA than elsewhere. In many parts of the world the exact same actions of an artist and internet reactions to them would not result in anywhere close to the consequences described in this article.

> Or you know, just don't be a creep and treat women like human beings and you'll be fine?

You don't understand.

When I interact with people, I don't see race/color/age/sex. I'm just focused on the problem at hand. I also have a deep compassion for people in general.

What I'm worried about is saying or doing the wrong thing due to a lapse in judgement in the moment.

I'll give you an example. I love fashion. At a previous company it was all guys. When a guy came to work and was wearing new shoes, I'd notice, and compliment the shoes. Or if they were wearing a new shirt I might say that it "brings out your X". I'm straight so there's nothing sexual here. I just think fashion is cool. It's a hobby of mine.

Making any comments about female coworker fashion terrifies me. What if I say something that's perceived as a sexual advance? Don't forget that men often disguise sexual advances as seemingly innocent compliments. It's a big gray area.

> If you're giving negative feedback because they did something wrong/substandard work, you document it and move on. If there are questions later, you refer back. I've literally never had this be a problem.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my post, but my point is that I have an irrational fear.

I'd much rather sacrifice a little bit of professional perception of skill to not mess around in an area I'm very paranoid about.

> I'm not sure why talking about your personal life would be grounds for issues unless you decided to talk about your bedroom, politics, or religion. "I went hiking on X trail this weekend, it was pretty cool" isn't going to get you called into HR.

Irrationally, I worry that I'll get to comfortable and mention something that, to me, is obviously not "-ist" but comes off that way.

BTW, if you're wondering "how did this person get into this mindset in the first place?" then that would be a good question.

I've never been personally accused of anything like this.

But... I've looked at past incidents both in the public light and privately among friends and worried that I might have inadvertently screwed up.

For example, the whole PyCon dongle joke incident. This is a case where a couple of guys were being immature and made some sexual joke about dongles. A woman in front of them overheard it, snapped their picture, posted it on Twitter, and they got fired (at least one posted an apology IIRC). Could I have made a dongle joke at a social event in my early 20s? You bet I could have! Esp. because, as an introvert programmer, these kind of events were a great place for me to socialize (vs bars, clubs, etc).

I've witnessed people get called out for much much less. I just don't ever want to be on that side of the table.

"Or you know, just don't be a creep and treat women like human beings and you'll be fine?"

Tell that to Alex Reid.

> don't be a creep and treat women like human beings and you'll be fine?

You may have your best intentions about women and still slip. Like accidentally calling people "guys" which is considered offensive now.

Everyone does tons of "mistakes" like that. Sometimes it is forgiven, sometimes it is now.

Whether it is forgiven or not often depends not on the exact words or tone of your voice, but on the perception of you. If you are handsome, the reaction will be a giggle. If you not so good, exactly the same words can be considered offensive. https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1663485-hello-human-resource...

The problem is that people gets offended too easily nowadays.

And you advice can be translated as "just be successful young and handsome".

Whether or not the author is "redeemable" is irrelevant. At its core sexual misconduct is prioritizing one's own needs/desires and using someone else as an object to achieve them. It's one of the highest acts of self centeredness and it happens at someone else's expense.

I don't see how writing an article about how the author's sexual misconduct has impacted him isn't a continuation of the same problem mentality.

It would seem that if he had a breakthrough then letting the victims have the stage is the way to go. I believe he has to accept that...

1. No one is obligated to forgive him.

2. No one asked for him to do what he did.

3. No one has to let by gones be by gones.

4. He doesn't necessarily get to make art anymore. At least not the same way he used to.

I don't think that is what the author wants to hear, but its the only honorable path forward.

>The term misconduct is used usually in the work environment when one party is in a position of power, like a boss of another. This is not the case here.

Says the author

>Don't decide for women what's best for them. They are grown up adults and engage in these relationships voluntarily.

I'm not deciding what is best for anyone. I'm saying the author doesn't get to choose.

> Victims are those who were assaulted against their will. My understanding that there was no violations like that in this story.

Says the author.

I encountered a situation similar to this a few years back. Large group of friends 20-30. Lots of partying. 5 different women report experiences with the same guy. Waking up with him in their beds. Sometimes more overt behaviors.

His recollection is quite different. He remembers it as a much more innocent affair. A mistake. Something embarrassing.

I don't believe him.

I agree, I'm not saying you should have your entire life uprooted because you said something stupid on Twitter when you were like 13. The situation in this case is a little different. Again, don't be a dick or try to avoid it when possible and I don't think you will have to worry about being canceled.

The bartender. But seriously, different places have different rules - hang out in a club that welcomes you !

Fair point. I guess it just depends on what groups you are in and the norms that are present in said groups.

You don't have to go into politics to be cancelled. You just need any kind of notoriety.

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

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

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