Saying the wrong thing in a private setting and getting fired has been a thing before computers existed.
Cancel culture is just a new name for an ancient practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning
Cancel culture is just a new name for an ancient practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning
Social consequences are both necessary and cause problems. It's really a very complicated thing. People should be free to explore ideas that turn out to be bad without losing their livelihoods. We need to hold people accountable for their actions, but we also need to allow people to make mistakes and learn.
If I think about what happened with Lindsay Ellis, that seems like a gross overreaction. If I think about how people on Twitter sharply criticize Chris Pratt because of the church he attends (which is also attended by other Hollywood stars) then that seems like an overreaction, too. On the other hand, the response to Kevin Spacey seems like it might be more appropriate.
The real issue is that "being cancelled" is only a problem for people who are famous and not powerful. If you're powerful, being cancelled really doesn't do anything at all. Indeed, if you're powerful, being cancelled can just get people to agree with you more even if you have actually done the awful things you are cancelled for.
Nevertheless, there is so much pearl clutching, clout chasing, outrage Olympics, victim identity politics, and manufactured wedge issues on social media that it's just one big rat's nest. Worse, it all overshadows the real problems like actual political issues and misinformation being spread to manipulate opinion.
The problem is incentive based, cancelling others gains one social power. So the solution is simple, use the same weapon, and we are getting at step 1 already.
1) Being "woke" about how cruel cancelling other is, collectively.
2) Cancel the cancellors by naming and shaming every single participant, instead of the cancellee, for reason 1). Script it if necessary.
3) The balance of power is restored, just as Jesus intended, armchair judges get judged. (Doesn't it sound like the beginining of just any other cultural shift?)
4) ...
5) profit!
> Brown soon found himself embroiled in the coming revolution. On 2 August 1775 a crowd of 130 Sons of Liberty confronted him at his house and demanded he pledge himself to the Patriot cause. Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. The crowd seized him and struck him with the butt of a musket, fracturing his skull. Taken prisoner, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire and scalped before being tarred and feathered. Brown was then carted through a number of nearby settlements and forced to verbally pledge himself to the Patriot cause before being released. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches.
Cancel culture has been with us since the beginning. Hell, other primates kick bad actors out of the social group; it's been a thing before language existed.
Today’s supposed “cancel culture” is substantially gentler than any time in history. We enjoy rights to free speech broader and stronger than ever.
Socrates would be jealous.
> Socrates would be jealous.
I doubt that very much. Your examples are bad enough to be considered trolling.
We know who Alex Jones is. Louis CK is out there getting awards. If “we know who he was and the things he said” means you’re not canceled, we’re in very good shape.
> Athens may have executed him, but they didn't deplatform him.
You get what a hilariously scary and silly statement this is, right?
That’s what I think of when I hear “cancel culture.” When you present an example from the 18th century, that’s not a very useful rebuttal. It seems like you either don’t understand, are deflecting, or using a “but all lives matter” argument.
The method is “people tell others you’re an asshole”.
The rate is “quickly”. For most people in the 1700s, the news only has to go a few miles to spread to basically everyone you know.
Ask Aaron Burr. Not just canceled in short order, but remembered for it in a hit musical centuries later.
Aaron Burr wasn’t cancelled over a single message within twelve hours.
(Thousands of similar stories)
People have irreparably ruined their reputations in less time than a plane flight. Burr did it in a single instant.
>Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!
It is not hard to see why a company would fire a VP of communications who tweeted this. In general, you have to be careful about what you do and say in public when you have a senior position within a company. This is nothing new.
In the bad old days, people used to get fired when their employer found out that they were having a gay affair, or had a mixed race child. Now people are more likely to get fired for saying or doing racist or homophobic things. To me this seems like progress.
It appears as if this is your way of saying “cancel culture” is different than it was before in terms of “cancelling” happening?
If so, then your examples would make sense as parroting the weak concept of “cancel culture” being anything but another moral panic and made up culture war in the long line of things to keep the status quo going.
Why do any of these cancel trends matter? Even if they do exist. Why not eliminate the possibility of the worst fears of cancel culture so that becomes moot and society is improved? That would require people not being able to go homeless if they suddenly lose their job and/or can’t work for some time. It doesn’t come across that being able to be homeless because of work and income issues is a horrible outcome no matter what. Not only when it is because of “cancel” culture.
Indeed why not? It’s glaring to me that when I read these arguments, the solution to cancel culture never seems to be to limit the ability of employers to fire at will.
The only reason cancelling works at all is that you can be fired for any reason or no reason at the drop of a hat, with little to no recourse, and at great financial loss to yourself with the potential of losing your food, shelter, and medical care in an instant. People have been begging to change this system for a long time for this very reason.
But why does this system continue to exist if it has the potential to be so destructive? As far as I can tell it serves wealthy elites like large corporations very well. They enjoy having this ability to ruin your life by firing you. It’s the best leverage they have!
This is why the whole cancel culture debate is so fascinating to me. Generally speaking the people who are so upset about cancel culture are the very people who are standing in the way of eliminating the worst consequences of it. Instead they ground their position in the idea of free speech, but paradoxically the principles of free speech preclude any solution to cancel culture, because such a solution would restrict free speech!
I’m really waiting for the day that cancel culture warriors recognize the root problem here: that we built our society in a way, on purpose, to give people (business owners) this great power over others (employees) as a means to control them. If I can be fired tomorrow and still have food, housing, and healthcare then getting fired isn’t going to ruin my life. The flip side of that is employers won’t be able to fire their employees for any reason or no reason, and that seems to be a bridge too far for some of even the most ardent anti cancel culture warriors (see if Musk would ever advocate to curb his own ability to fire his employees).
Technology has enabled us to have artificially wide reach and memory. And then they digitised it, made it searchable and opened it all up to the masses.
Don't like a person and they have Twitter? Guess I'll dig through their Twitter feed and find something objectionable they posted when they were 16. While I'm here I'd better make sure all my like-minded online "friends" from all over the globe pile on and try and coerce their employer to fire them. For good measure, let's find their address and make it easily accessible online.
Technology has a transformative effect on the things we apply it to. Let's not pretend that trying to shame people in the 21st century using freely accessible communication networks that span the globe is the same as monkeys shaming other monkeys.
If you piss off your monkey tribe, you’re done for. Good chance you’re dead soon without your social group. The news of your being kicked out spread to everyone who matters in life.
Piss off your town in the 1700s and the same is probably true. People didn’t move far from family and relied heavily on local communities. Again, news spread to everyone who mattered rapidly.
I’d rather today’s flash in the pan outrage over a community shunning - or worse, tarring/feathering or lynching - a couple hundred years ago. It’s a lot more survivable; ask notable cancelee Louis CK about his recent Grammy win.
Now some dumb kid can post to Twitter or Facebook and that can be used against them 10 years later by some random person. You could even be saying things that aligns with your communities values (say you have conservative religious views) and then a bunch of strangers who you don’t know will come after you because they disagree with you.
I can literally reach back in time and hold people accountable for things they no longer believe in.
Comparing this to not getting lynched is a really low bar. I would certainly hope in this day and age that we’re at least civil enough not to become pitch fork wielding mobs. That’s the bare minimum.
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
But spread of information today is definitely an issue. Back then you could be more comfortable saying stuff in private. Now with a lot of communications online, proof* of private conversations can affect you in public.
* There's also the issue of people framing things out of context but that's a separate topic.