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Comment by z3ugma | Hacker News Reader

Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown. The podcast You're Wrong About did a great episode on this recently about "cancel culture" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800...

In it, they specifically call out The Atlantic's editors for their handwringing

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It really isn't overblown. The foaming outraged extremists that torture any individual or company that deigns to disagree with their current ideals is a huge issue.

I think like most things, none of it is as big as you might think. It makes for an interesting story, so it gets heavily reported, but honestly, it seems over-represented in the media. Do you *personally* know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it? Same question, but about local businesses? People are entitled to their opinions and actions barring actually violating laws. It's the balance of free speech and the free market. Any person, business, organization, etc. can take a stance and hold an opinion publicly, but that may hold consequences due to the perceptions and behavior of others that cannot be controlled. Locally I see unions and protest groups trying to shame businesses all the time. Those businesses are doing fine. I see local politicians raise money on the idea that "the left is trying to cancel them" pretty successfully.

> Do you personally know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it?

That's a loose definition. I know someone who was beaten up very badly and spent weeks in a hospital with a good chance of not making it through. A few years later and they look totally normal. Were there severe long-term consequences? After all, you couldn't even tell just by looking at them.

I don't think the "long-term outcome" should be relevant in judging anything of that nature, and cancelling is similar. Sure, they might not commit suicide, their career might even recover, but they've gone through a lot of shit that was totally unnecessary.

Assaulting someone is a crime, so is criminal harassment in my state and I assume others. It sounds like we need to define what is meant by "canceling" someone.

I would say that you don't have to be cancelled to be affected. When you see the cancelling of others, it mutes all discourse. When you can lose your job for not having the correct opinions, it creates a self-censorship. THis limits discussion and discourse, and eventually limits the range of thought. This is what limiting language was all about in the book 1984, limiting language limited thought. Specifically the diversity of thought, which I will argue is necessary for cultural and human advancement. Without which we enter a new dark age. This affects us all, cancelled and not.

This is true and has been. It's not illegal to hold certain opinions, but you aren't legally protected from subcultures or even large swaths of society deciding not to do business with you. Collectively through some ad hoc process, social groups decide what will and won't be tolerated in discourse within their sphere. In society at large, that tends to mean that for controversial topics, some groups will absolutely back you while others will shun you. If the state is supposed to fix it, the state will have to pick a side. The result tends to be authoritarian toward one side or another. The compromise we seem to have reached is that people taking specific actions to cause you physical harm or to induce some sort of trauma or concern for your own safety are illegal regardless of why. There may have been local fluctuations over time, but this trend has lead to now being one of the safest times in history to have and express a variety of views in many societies.

Yes, I personally know several people who were targeted by these extremists. Some went so far as to call their employers and lie about them to try and have them cancelled.

By cancelled here it sounds like you mean fired. Ideally if those people were lying, it should be possible to hold them accountable in court.

You use a phrase like "any individual or company" yet you probably couldn't name more than a handful who've actually been hindered. And most of them richly deserved it. Half the time it doesn't even work. Some liberals have tried to cancel Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby and it hasn't worked.

And I also think that casual disdain for "current ideals" is pretty callous. We're barely getting our heads above water on centuries of racism, misogyny, ableism and other classic prejudices. The fact that we're only getting around to punishing people now isn't an excuse.

> Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown

This seems like a paraphrase for you just being ok with it.

Overblown? Depends who you ask.

What I've noticed is that it can be highly selective and random in both it's targets and intensity.

See Apple's firing of Antonio García-Martínez while simultaneously employing Dr. Dre and giving him billions of dollars.

Is the scale the issue?

Even if we believe it's overblown, it seems to me cancel culture is THE preeminent gripe against our side that gains traction virtually anywhere it is invoked.

For this reason alone it's essential to fight and fight hard.

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