[flagged]
Does removing an icon of cigarette make you less sick and help save millions of lives?
This is definitely new as in the last 10-15 years. In the past more people seemed able to just disregard or shrug at things they didn't approve of.
We've had eras of profound intolerance before. I think this one might be unique in that it seems universal across the entire political and social spectrum.
If those people would get visits from PIDE/DGS, or similar agencies, they would see how real cancelation actually works in practice.
I think that people who haven't been raised in such a society don't realize how chilling it is to be afraid to say something wrong and constantly be aware that you could be punished for your words. It makes you unable to even think clearly, lest a slip-of-tongue gets you sent to jail. It's no way to live.
The same authoritarian impulse but over such small potatoes.
Definitely. First, cancel culture emerged as a response to genuine concerns about social justice and equity, particularly with regards to marginalized communities. Cancel culture initially sought to hold people accountable for their harmful actions and words, and to create a more inclusive and just society.
However, over time, cancel culture has increasingly become a farcical parody of its original intentions - it has devolved into a tool for online mobs to attack individuals for minor or unintentional offenses, resulting in a culture of fear and self-censorship.
Cancel culture has also been weaponized by some to silence dissenting opinions or to settle personal scores, rather than to advance social justice. See: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ for a recent example.
Maybe not by force, but being afraid of being cancelled can be just as powerful.
HN can't even tell the difference with asking and imposing?
The power is there, because it had an effect on reality, whether you admit it or not. The person has indeed asked, but consider what would happen if the person asked for the whole repository to be deleted, for example, because they personally didn't like the RISC-V architecture: the request would probably not be fulfilled. But the request for removing the cigarette emoji was followed - why? What's the difference between the two?
My theory is that the ratio between the learned "threat" and required effort to avoid the "threat" was low enough to warrant the action. Assuming the effort is a constant (editing a single text file and pushing it to GitHub == removing the repository; ~same amount of clicks), that means that the learned "threat" was high enough to warrant the deletion. The threat comes from the cancel culture that glorifies anyone that presents themselves (or others) as victims. In case of the second - hypothetical - request, there is no such threat, so the request itself would be rendered bizarre and selfish.
We can also take the more charitable interpretation: the repo owner saw the post asking for it to be removed, thought "yeah, wow, you're right, cigarettes do suck, and having it there is unnecessary and doesn't actually add anything valuable, so I might as well change it to something else".
Or, hell, we could even go out on a limb: "oh wow, I didn't realize someone might be offended by that, but I'll change it because I have no feelings about it being there whatsoever, and I don't want my project to make someone feel bad". Cuz, y'know, empathy is a thing.
(The cigarette emoji was in front of the "Tell me more..." heading; I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason for it to be there in the first place.)
I do agree with you that cancel culture has gotten out of hand, and some people will make the calculus you describe in some situations, but that seems a bit too much here. I doubt anyone is going to get cancelled over a cigarette emoji in a README, and it seems overblown to assume the repo owner made the change out of fear. (Famous last words, I know, but I stand by that.)
Conversely, I was the author of a project whose namesake and mascot was an animal considered unclean by several world religions. Nobody ever asked me to change it, but I probably would have refused, because in this case, it was tied too much into the identity of the project.
Unlike the previous say 2000 years of history, where societies around the world were very tolerant, especially of different religions, cultures, lifestyles etc /s
No? Then please don't be silly. xiphias2's request might be strange and even mildly annoying but modern society does NOT have a problem of anti-smoker extremists organizing hangings in the town's square.
You are missing the point. The xiphias2's request was not anti-smoking in any way (I doubt they even volunteer in any anti-smoking rallies in their own community) - it was purely masturbatory, using victimhood as a cover for forcing their own will upon a repository that they didn't even have to look at, and which definitely didn't celebrate smoking in any way a reasonable person would recognize.
Victimhood is not supposed to provide you with power (at least not without proper verification), otherwise it provides a perverse incentive [0] for anyone to pretend they're victims in order to gain influence over things that they otherwise wouldn't have.
> anyone to pretend they're victims in order to gain influence over things that they otherwise wouldn't have
You are implying that people have an undue influence over society, which includes you AKA you are painting yourself as the victim of xiphias2 alleged victimhood.
Again, there is no Icon Police around, don't be scared.
And yes, people have been complaining about it on civil libertarian grounds at least as long. Which is fair enough.
But if you want to see some actual __intolerance__, you might look at what's happening in Florida.
Fight Club was recorded in 1999, and it explicitly shows a scene of Tyler Durden smoking a cigarette, so I doubt your claim has any substance to it.
> But if you want to see some actual __intolerance__, you might look at what's happening in Florida.
If you want to actually enlighten anyone, you might want to provide more information than "what's happening in Florida". There's a lot of things happening in Florida in any given moment, so I have no way of knowing what you're referring to.