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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On February 06 2022 07:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Hiding behind "don't treat conservatives as a monolith" is a classic method of trying to make conservatives accountable for nothing. Conservatives can be criticized for the positions held by their elected officials. Conservatives in states pulling books off shelves can be criticized for that. Conservatives can be criticized for opposition to the Jan6 commission. The slippery "but not all conservatives think that" is a cowardly cop out and a weird way to try to conduct a conversation.
Doc, we have had people try to hide behind that in the past and already dragged them through the dirt over it. Please don't make us repeat all the same exercises. It is tiring and really makes the conversation stale. There are clearly things mainstream conservatism does and does not think right now.
Quite an aggressive response to a reasonable point I made. I'm going to assume you would object if I made an argument that relied as a premise on the notion that liberals are a monolith? It's part of the problem with partisan politics/polarization in America that each side attributes to views of some to the views of all on the other side. It oversimplifies the conversation.
My point really is that there's a discussion to be had on whether cancellation (defined as speech suppression by means of online boycott/pitchfork mobs) is a good thing.
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On February 06 2022 08:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2022 07:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Hiding behind "don't treat conservatives as a monolith" is a classic method of trying to make conservatives accountable for nothing. Conservatives can be criticized for the positions held by their elected officials. Conservatives in states pulling books off shelves can be criticized for that. Conservatives can be criticized for opposition to the Jan6 commission. The slippery "but not all conservatives think that" is a cowardly cop out and a weird way to try to conduct a conversation.
Doc, we have had people try to hide behind that in the past and already dragged them through the dirt over it. Please don't make us repeat all the same exercises. It is tiring and really makes the conversation stale. There are clearly things mainstream conservatism does and does not think right now. Quite an aggressive response to a reasonable point I made. I'm going to assume you would object if I made an argument that relied as a premise on the notion that liberals are a monolith? It's part of the problem with partisan politics/polarization in America that each side attributes to views of some to the views of all on the other side. It oversimplifies the conversation. My point really is that there's a discussion to be had on whether cancellation (defined as speech suppression by means of online boycott/pitchfork mobs) is a good thing.
You're welcome to grasp pearls if you want. I'm pointing out your post being silly and a dumb form of deflection. Feel free to either ignore it or listen to it. I don't care either way, but you should know that prior to you joining this thread, there have been people before you who tried the same stuff and got called out the same way. Don't expect people to take your posts seriously when you try that sort of thing. You seem like you have the potential to be a good source of discussion, so I am encouraging you to do so.
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I disagree that I said anything unreasonable or that the rules have to be that it’s one monolith vs the other. I mean maybe it's inevitable that monolith arguments will sometimes be made, but the specific argument I was responding to actually had the monolith point as a necessary premise.
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On February 06 2022 08:32 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2022 23:57 gobbledydook wrote:
I don't think Trump was competent enough to organize an armed insurrection. The rioters were definitely goaded by Trump but inciting a mob and organizing an insurrection are two different things. Do you not think it is incredibly embarrassing that one of the two American parties leader, and ex president, and likely future leader is so obviously stupid that saying he was not competent enough is a decently realistic article. You would think that would disqualify him from any sort of important position within the party but instead he is the most popular and powerful figure and disagreeing with him and his moronic statements gets you shunned by much of the party. Crazy times.
I'd much rather Trump went away and didn't run again but that's separate from the argument that the Democrats aren't doing this in good faith.
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On February 06 2022 10:59 Doc.Rivers wrote:
I disagree that I said anything unreasonable or that the rules have to be that it’s one monolith vs the other. I mean maybe it's inevitable that monolith arguments will sometimes be made, but the specific argument I was responding to actually had the monolith point as a necessary premise.
If you want to discuss the benefits/drawbacks of cancellation (defined by yourself as speech suppression by means of online boycott/pitchfork mobs), then there is no reason to deflect into #notallconservatives.
You were responding to ChristianS' post, who gave you two examples of cancel culture:
1. Someone getting fired for comments made on twitter.
2. Someone getting fired for promoting CRT.
ChristianS then said that you can't have it both ways, i.e. that it is 'incoherent'.
In the interest of moving the discussion forwards, perhaps you'd like to comment on your views on both of these?
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Northern Ireland26354 Posts
On February 06 2022 06:34 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2022 06:19 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 03:37 farvacola wrote:On February 06 2022 03:23 ChristianS wrote:
@Biff: Harriet Beecher Stowe was “cancelled” in like 1870 for accusing Lord Byron of having an affair with his sister. Obviously the specific dynamics have changed a lot in 150 years - no Notes app apologies in 1870 - but some of this is just dynamics of public discourse and celebrity that have existed basically as long as there’s been public discourse and celebrity.
This is part of the problem with “cancel culture” as a concept: it encompasses way too broad a set of phenomena, some objectionable, some not, some new, some very old. The most obviously objectionable version (some random regular person having their life destroyed over some minor perceived offense by millions of internet users) doesn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly awful. The least objectionable version (famous people, especially politicians, being criticized for their opinions) is by far the most frequent situation in which cancel culture is invoked.
Side note: who actually got disappeared from public spaces? I know individual episodes of some tv shows got taken off streaming platforms, but you can still watch, like, Kevin Spacey movies or Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you want, no one’s stopping you. If anything, the type of cancellation that comes closest to that described by Biff was the kind practiced by the Church with respect to folks like Galileo. In more recent memory I think a lot of Red Scare stuff had similar dynamics. Or even more recent, the Dixie Chicks. I mean, there are clearly some bad social dynamics in some of these cases - scapegoating, herd mentality, etc. It does feel like the typical internet experience promotes a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that makes this sort of thing more common. I could almost imagine finding rare common ground with conservatives about the evils of “cancel culture,” except their ideas about it are so incoherent. Most of the supposed “cancellations” are just someone being criticized, maybe becoming the Twitter main character for a day. When people have faced actual consequences, often they’re either a result of voluntary resignations or their employer following legal avenues to cut ties because they want to avoid bad PR. What exactly do conservatives think should have happened instead? Who are we even supposed to be mad at? The answer usually seems to be “the amorphous mob of people who are criticizing them,” which reduces to a conception of tolerance in which no one is allowed to criticize anyone. Even more incoherent, the same people yelling about “cancel culture” are frequently the ones trying to get principals and school administrators fired for “CRT,” the definition of which is infinitely malleable but frequently means little more than “they gave a public statement in 2020 vaguely endorsing racial equity.” This, too, follows a lot of the same social dynamics. If that principal tweeted a Notes app apology it would not feel out of place. So even if conservatives were just promoting a vague idea of ideological tolerance or “don’t try to get people fired because you’re mad at them,” they either don’t realize the inconsistencies with their other positions, or don’t care. It can be problematic to treat conservatives as a monolith and isolate particular segments saying contradictory things and then say, "conservatives are incoherent and so I dismiss their views on this subject." There are good faith and valid points that are worth considering and potentially finding common ground on. Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure.
If their views are incoherent they’re incoherent.
If I was broadly to divide the Conservative monolith into camps, I mean they do exist. Anyone who complains incessantly about cancel culture but cheers Kaepernick not having an NFL gig would seem
An alternative is a genuine view that freedom of speech is sacrosanct and suppression of that is a bad thing, via whatever mechanism. And that bad, dangerous ideas somehow get filtered out by a meritocratic process. Which is a consistent view, not one I personally agree with, but yes there are absolute differences.
Indeed, the particular flavour of internet mob justice that is oft decried is itself a consequence of the largely unregulated nature of the internet at large.
On a personal level I’m just sick of the buzzword/phrase and it’s application to well, basically everything. I try not to roll my eyes when it’s invoked because there are certainly aspects that are worthy of valid discussion.
There’s just way too much divergent stuff to fit under one banner. Someone in the general public getting slammed by the internet mob for a 10 year old Tweet joking about something they don’t actually believe is just too far removed from criticism of public figures for their actual views
I’ll not deny my vague tribe doesn’t indulge in more of the former, to a degree I think is ridiculous, and ultimately disproportionate and counter-productive.
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As for CRT I'm not too educated on it, but I understand there are some efforts to legislatively ban it in schools. I'm not sure how school curricula are usually determined, but if they are usually mandated by legislation, I can see an argument for government control over what kids are taught. Certainly the government has broader leeway to regulate speech in schools. The whole principle of a free exchange of ideas more so applies to adults.
Maybe the better practice though is to permit CRT but mandate that counterarguments to it be taught whenever CRT is taught.
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On February 06 2022 06:34 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2022 06:19 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 03:37 farvacola wrote:On February 06 2022 03:23 ChristianS wrote:
@Biff: Harriet Beecher Stowe was “cancelled” in like 1870 for accusing Lord Byron of having an affair with his sister. Obviously the specific dynamics have changed a lot in 150 years - no Notes app apologies in 1870 - but some of this is just dynamics of public discourse and celebrity that have existed basically as long as there’s been public discourse and celebrity.
This is part of the problem with “cancel culture” as a concept: it encompasses way too broad a set of phenomena, some objectionable, some not, some new, some very old. The most obviously objectionable version (some random regular person having their life destroyed over some minor perceived offense by millions of internet users) doesn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly awful. The least objectionable version (famous people, especially politicians, being criticized for their opinions) is by far the most frequent situation in which cancel culture is invoked.
Side note: who actually got disappeared from public spaces? I know individual episodes of some tv shows got taken off streaming platforms, but you can still watch, like, Kevin Spacey movies or Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you want, no one’s stopping you. If anything, the type of cancellation that comes closest to that described by Biff was the kind practiced by the Church with respect to folks like Galileo. In more recent memory I think a lot of Red Scare stuff had similar dynamics. Or even more recent, the Dixie Chicks. I mean, there are clearly some bad social dynamics in some of these cases - scapegoating, herd mentality, etc. It does feel like the typical internet experience promotes a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that makes this sort of thing more common. I could almost imagine finding rare common ground with conservatives about the evils of “cancel culture,” except their ideas about it are so incoherent. Most of the supposed “cancellations” are just someone being criticized, maybe becoming the Twitter main character for a day. When people have faced actual consequences, often they’re either a result of voluntary resignations or their employer following legal avenues to cut ties because they want to avoid bad PR. What exactly do conservatives think should have happened instead? Who are we even supposed to be mad at? The answer usually seems to be “the amorphous mob of people who are criticizing them,” which reduces to a conception of tolerance in which no one is allowed to criticize anyone. Even more incoherent, the same people yelling about “cancel culture” are frequently the ones trying to get principals and school administrators fired for “CRT,” the definition of which is infinitely malleable but frequently means little more than “they gave a public statement in 2020 vaguely endorsing racial equity.” This, too, follows a lot of the same social dynamics. If that principal tweeted a Notes app apology it would not feel out of place. So even if conservatives were just promoting a vague idea of ideological tolerance or “don’t try to get people fired because you’re mad at them,” they either don’t realize the inconsistencies with their other positions, or don’t care. It can be problematic to treat conservatives as a monolith and isolate particular segments saying contradictory things and then say, "conservatives are incoherent and so I dismiss their views on this subject." There are good faith and valid points that are worth considering and potentially finding common ground on. Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure.
Several years back on this very forum I think I nicknamed this phenomenon the “ambiguous they” - i.e., if you say “they hate cancel culture” and “they love firing people for CRT” there’s potentially a difference in who is saying these things, so you haven’t necessarily caught anyone in a contradiction.
That said, can you honestly say with a straight face you think there’s a schism in the modern right wing between the Cancel Culture folks and the Critical Race Theory folks? Anecdotally I haven’t met a conservative who says “I think cancel culture is bad, and that’s why I can’t support what my fellow Republicans are doing over CRT” or, alternatively, “CRT is destroying our society and that’s why I don’t think cancel culture is actually bad.” I’ve met several who would probably agree with both “cancel culture is proof the left hates free speech” and “CRT is a threat to our children and its promoters must be stopped.” Pick any run-of-the-mill right-wing commentator and I bet you can find, within the last 5 years, demands to punish Kaepernick, an article or two decrying cancel culture, and fearmongering over CRT in that same person’s body of work.
But I’ll consider an interesting argument from anyone. Let’s discuss this:
Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure.
To be clear, this is not incoherent, and I think has (at least some) answers to my questions. Who should we be yelling at? The internet mobs. What do we think should happen differently? They shouldn’t act with the intent of getting somebody banned.
It’s interesting, though, that you jumped to thinking of an internet moderation question. That certainly comes up in “cancel culture” conversations, but of the underserved consequences cancel culture could inflict on you, I have to think “banned from Twitter” is pretty minor. People are getting fired. They’re getting doxxed and spammed with death threats. In some cases people are calling CPS or animal abuse hotlines trying to get someone’s kids or pets taken away. Next to that, who cares they can’t post memes any more?
But okay, let’s talk about banning people. Internet moderation has taken a weird path in the last few years; to me the most straightforward summary is that every major platform had an aggressively lassez-faire policy, motivated by some John Stuart Mill “marketplace of ideas”-type conceptions, and all of them absolutely bent over backwards to defend inaction even as it was clear people like Trump would push that line as far as they could. In fact there was a huge carve out for “public figures.” Then Trump incited a mob to try to overthrow the government most of those tech companies live under, and it was like the rubber band broke. There was a wave of heavier moderation across the internet - right here on TL, Danglars got banned in that same wave!
Like, do you have a particular example of ideas you think are being unfairly banned? I tend to think that snap back was a bit of an over-correction, but at the same time, whenever I hear conservatives yelling about this their examples are the most egregiously banworthy shit, and their “solutions” are truly unhinged (e.g. kill section 230 and put the government in charge of who can and can’t be banned).
This post is already way too long so I’ll shut up now, but I hope you can see: I’m earnestly in favor of finding common ground, building bridges, etc. But I think that process has to start with an honest evaluation of just how wide and deep a chasm we’re bridging.
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On February 07 2022 03:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:
As for CRT I'm not too educated on it, but I understand there are some efforts to legislatively ban it in schools. I'm not sure how school curricula are usually determined, but if they are usually mandated by legislation, I can see an argument for government control over what kids are taught. Certainly the government has broader leeway to regulate speech in schools. The whole principle of a free exchange of ideas more so applies to adults.
Maybe the better practice though is to permit CRT but mandate that counterarguments to it be taught whenever CRT is taught.
CRT is slavery and the effects it has on the united states.
there are no counterarguments to it.
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On February 07 2022 05:43 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2022 03:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:
As for CRT I'm not too educated on it, but I understand there are some efforts to legislatively ban it in schools. I'm not sure how school curricula are usually determined, but if they are usually mandated by legislation, I can see an argument for government control over what kids are taught. Certainly the government has broader leeway to regulate speech in schools. The whole principle of a free exchange of ideas more so applies to adults.
Maybe the better practice though is to permit CRT but mandate that counterarguments to it be taught whenever CRT is taught. CRT is slavery and the effects it has on the united states. there are no counterarguments to it.
I would love to be in the class where that counterargument is attempted though. Probably die from laughing.
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On February 07 2022 04:21 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2022 06:34 Doc.Rivers wrote:On February 06 2022 06:19 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 03:37 farvacola wrote:On February 06 2022 03:23 ChristianS wrote:
@Biff: Harriet Beecher Stowe was “cancelled” in like 1870 for accusing Lord Byron of having an affair with his sister. Obviously the specific dynamics have changed a lot in 150 years - no Notes app apologies in 1870 - but some of this is just dynamics of public discourse and celebrity that have existed basically as long as there’s been public discourse and celebrity.
This is part of the problem with “cancel culture” as a concept: it encompasses way too broad a set of phenomena, some objectionable, some not, some new, some very old. The most obviously objectionable version (some random regular person having their life destroyed over some minor perceived offense by millions of internet users) doesn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly awful. The least objectionable version (famous people, especially politicians, being criticized for their opinions) is by far the most frequent situation in which cancel culture is invoked.
Side note: who actually got disappeared from public spaces? I know individual episodes of some tv shows got taken off streaming platforms, but you can still watch, like, Kevin Spacey movies or Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you want, no one’s stopping you. If anything, the type of cancellation that comes closest to that described by Biff was the kind practiced by the Church with respect to folks like Galileo. In more recent memory I think a lot of Red Scare stuff had similar dynamics. Or even more recent, the Dixie Chicks. I mean, there are clearly some bad social dynamics in some of these cases - scapegoating, herd mentality, etc. It does feel like the typical internet experience promotes a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that makes this sort of thing more common. I could almost imagine finding rare common ground with conservatives about the evils of “cancel culture,” except their ideas about it are so incoherent. Most of the supposed “cancellations” are just someone being criticized, maybe becoming the Twitter main character for a day. When people have faced actual consequences, often they’re either a result of voluntary resignations or their employer following legal avenues to cut ties because they want to avoid bad PR. What exactly do conservatives think should have happened instead? Who are we even supposed to be mad at? The answer usually seems to be “the amorphous mob of people who are criticizing them,” which reduces to a conception of tolerance in which no one is allowed to criticize anyone. Even more incoherent, the same people yelling about “cancel culture” are frequently the ones trying to get principals and school administrators fired for “CRT,” the definition of which is infinitely malleable but frequently means little more than “they gave a public statement in 2020 vaguely endorsing racial equity.” This, too, follows a lot of the same social dynamics. If that principal tweeted a Notes app apology it would not feel out of place. So even if conservatives were just promoting a vague idea of ideological tolerance or “don’t try to get people fired because you’re mad at them,” they either don’t realize the inconsistencies with their other positions, or don’t care. It can be problematic to treat conservatives as a monolith and isolate particular segments saying contradictory things and then say, "conservatives are incoherent and so I dismiss their views on this subject." There are good faith and valid points that are worth considering and potentially finding common ground on. Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. Several years back on this very forum I think I nicknamed this phenomenon the “ambiguous they” - i.e., if you say “they hate cancel culture” and “they love firing people for CRT” there’s potentially a difference in who is saying these things, so you haven’t necessarily caught anyone in a contradiction. That said, can you honestly say with a straight face you think there’s a schism in the modern right wing between the Cancel Culture folks and the Critical Race Theory folks? Anecdotally I haven’t met a conservative who says “I think cancel culture is bad, and that’s why I can’t support what my fellow Republicans are doing over CRT” or, alternatively, “CRT is destroying our society and that’s why I don’t think cancel culture is actually bad.” I’ve met several who would probably agree with both “cancel culture is proof the left hates free speech” and “CRT is a threat to our children and its promoters must be stopped.” Pick any run-of-the-mill right-wing commentator and I bet you can find, within the last 5 years, demands to punish Kaepernick, an article or two decrying cancel culture, and fearmongering over CRT in that same person’s body of work. But I’ll consider an interesting argument from anyone. Let’s discuss this: Show nested quote + Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. To be clear, this is not incoherent, and I think has (at least some) answers to my questions. Who should we be yelling at? The internet mobs. What do we think should happen differently? They shouldn’t act with the intent of getting somebody banned. It’s interesting, though, that you jumped to thinking of an internet moderation question. That certainly comes up in “cancel culture” conversations, but of the underserved consequences cancel culture could inflict on you, I have to think “banned from Twitter” is pretty minor. People are getting fired. They’re getting doxxed and spammed with death threats. In some cases people are calling CPS or animal abuse hotlines trying to get someone’s kids or pets taken away. Next to that, who cares they can’t post memes any more? But okay, let’s talk about banning people. Internet moderation has taken a weird path in the last few years; to me the most straightforward summary is that every major platform had an aggressively lassez-faire policy, motivated by some John Stuart Mill “marketplace of ideas”-type conceptions, and all of them absolutely bent over backwards to defend inaction even as it was clear people like Trump would push that line as far as they could. In fact there was a huge carve out for “public figures.” Then Trump incited a mob to try to overthrow the government most of those tech companies live under, and it was like the rubber band broke. There was a wave of heavier moderation across the internet - right here on TL, Danglars got banned in that same wave! Like, do you have a particular example of ideas you think are being unfairly banned? I tend to think that snap back was a bit of an over-correction, but at the same time, whenever I hear conservatives yelling about this their examples are the most egregiously banworthy shit, and their “solutions” are truly unhinged (e.g. kill section 230 and put the government in charge of who can and can’t be banned). This post is already way too long so I’ll shut up now, but I hope you can see: I’m earnestly in favor of finding common ground, building bridges, etc. But I think that process has to start with an honest evaluation of just how wide and deep a chasm we’re bridging.
I agree there's significant overlap between the people that decry cancel culture and the people that rant about CRT in school. I don't necessarily agree that this is some kind of hypocrisy. I'm someone that is "against cancel culture" and would defend people like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan. But if Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle were speaking their ideas in front of a classroom of children then I would join in calling for their termination. However, I wouldn't conflate that with "cancel culture." Just like earlier when people tried to call ousting an incumbent politician as "canceling" them, I don't think this is a good example. You've already provided a good example if you want to demonstrate right-wing hypocrisy on cancel culture: The Dixie Chicks.
I also think it's unfair to frame being deplatformed from Twitter/Social Media sites as "being unable to post memes anymore." These sites are the public forum of our times. A sort of digital town square. A small group of people in silicon valley determining who should and shouldn't be silenced from the public forum is not the kind of small potatoes of not being able to post memes anymore.
The ACLU has been around forever and has defended the free speech rights of Nazis/KKK/pedophiles, etc. Just in the last few years they have started to turn woke and now are becoming less inclined to defend the speech of people they don't agree with. The ACLU has probably done more than any other organization to defend free speech in the United States and I think it's very bad if they start to drift towards the idea of "We're going to defend free speech as long it doesn't offend anyone or isn't controversial or doesn't disagree with our values."
Although it's probably 'worse' when some Joe Schmoe gets doxxed, I don't think it's any less objectionable when a celebrity gets cancelled just because they have millions of dollars to fall back on. In a way I think it's worse for society because of how much we idolize celebrities, it's likely to cause reverberations onto broader society of people practicing self-censorship because they are scared to speak their mind. I think a good example is what's in the news right now regarding the transgender swimmer from UPENN. It's obvious she has an unfair biological advantage over her teammates from living the vast majority of her life as a male but her teammates refuse to say it publicly. Instead, 16 of them wrote anonymously to the University and the Ivy League about the unfairness of it. It's a really sad state of affairs when they are afraid to publicly say something that is completely reasonable because they don't want to be labeled a bigot. They have to pretend they are so happy to be dominated by someone with an unfair advantage over them while privately they write a letter anonymously to ask the rules to be changed.
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On February 07 2022 04:21 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2022 06:34 Doc.Rivers wrote:On February 06 2022 06:19 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 03:37 farvacola wrote:On February 06 2022 03:23 ChristianS wrote:
@Biff: Harriet Beecher Stowe was “cancelled” in like 1870 for accusing Lord Byron of having an affair with his sister. Obviously the specific dynamics have changed a lot in 150 years - no Notes app apologies in 1870 - but some of this is just dynamics of public discourse and celebrity that have existed basically as long as there’s been public discourse and celebrity.
This is part of the problem with “cancel culture” as a concept: it encompasses way too broad a set of phenomena, some objectionable, some not, some new, some very old. The most obviously objectionable version (some random regular person having their life destroyed over some minor perceived offense by millions of internet users) doesn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly awful. The least objectionable version (famous people, especially politicians, being criticized for their opinions) is by far the most frequent situation in which cancel culture is invoked.
Side note: who actually got disappeared from public spaces? I know individual episodes of some tv shows got taken off streaming platforms, but you can still watch, like, Kevin Spacey movies or Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you want, no one’s stopping you. If anything, the type of cancellation that comes closest to that described by Biff was the kind practiced by the Church with respect to folks like Galileo. In more recent memory I think a lot of Red Scare stuff had similar dynamics. Or even more recent, the Dixie Chicks. I mean, there are clearly some bad social dynamics in some of these cases - scapegoating, herd mentality, etc. It does feel like the typical internet experience promotes a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that makes this sort of thing more common. I could almost imagine finding rare common ground with conservatives about the evils of “cancel culture,” except their ideas about it are so incoherent. Most of the supposed “cancellations” are just someone being criticized, maybe becoming the Twitter main character for a day. When people have faced actual consequences, often they’re either a result of voluntary resignations or their employer following legal avenues to cut ties because they want to avoid bad PR. What exactly do conservatives think should have happened instead? Who are we even supposed to be mad at? The answer usually seems to be “the amorphous mob of people who are criticizing them,” which reduces to a conception of tolerance in which no one is allowed to criticize anyone. Even more incoherent, the same people yelling about “cancel culture” are frequently the ones trying to get principals and school administrators fired for “CRT,” the definition of which is infinitely malleable but frequently means little more than “they gave a public statement in 2020 vaguely endorsing racial equity.” This, too, follows a lot of the same social dynamics. If that principal tweeted a Notes app apology it would not feel out of place. So even if conservatives were just promoting a vague idea of ideological tolerance or “don’t try to get people fired because you’re mad at them,” they either don’t realize the inconsistencies with their other positions, or don’t care. It can be problematic to treat conservatives as a monolith and isolate particular segments saying contradictory things and then say, "conservatives are incoherent and so I dismiss their views on this subject." There are good faith and valid points that are worth considering and potentially finding common ground on. Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. Several years back on this very forum I think I nicknamed this phenomenon the “ambiguous they” - i.e., if you say “they hate cancel culture” and “they love firing people for CRT” there’s potentially a difference in who is saying these things, so you haven’t necessarily caught anyone in a contradiction. That said, can you honestly say with a straight face you think there’s a schism in the modern right wing between the Cancel Culture folks and the Critical Race Theory folks? Anecdotally I haven’t met a conservative who says “I think cancel culture is bad, and that’s why I can’t support what my fellow Republicans are doing over CRT” or, alternatively, “CRT is destroying our society and that’s why I don’t think cancel culture is actually bad.” I’ve met several who would probably agree with both “cancel culture is proof the left hates free speech” and “CRT is a threat to our children and its promoters must be stopped.” Pick any run-of-the-mill right-wing commentator and I bet you can find, within the last 5 years, demands to punish Kaepernick, an article or two decrying cancel culture, and fearmongering over CRT in that same person’s body of work. But I’ll consider an interesting argument from anyone. Let’s discuss this: Show nested quote + Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. To be clear, this is not incoherent, and I think has (at least some) answers to my questions. Who should we be yelling at? The internet mobs. What do we think should happen differently? They shouldn’t act with the intent of getting somebody banned. It’s interesting, though, that you jumped to thinking of an internet moderation question. That certainly comes up in “cancel culture” conversations, but of the underserved consequences cancel culture could inflict on you, I have to think “banned from Twitter” is pretty minor. People are getting fired. They’re getting doxxed and spammed with death threats. In some cases people are calling CPS or animal abuse hotlines trying to get someone’s kids or pets taken away. Next to that, who cares they can’t post memes any more? But okay, let’s talk about banning people. Internet moderation has taken a weird path in the last few years; to me the most straightforward summary is that every major platform had an aggressively lassez-faire policy, motivated by some John Stuart Mill “marketplace of ideas”-type conceptions, and all of them absolutely bent over backwards to defend inaction even as it was clear people like Trump would push that line as far as they could. In fact there was a huge carve out for “public figures.” Then Trump incited a mob to try to overthrow the government most of those tech companies live under, and it was like the rubber band broke. There was a wave of heavier moderation across the internet - right here on TL, Danglars got banned in that same wave! Like, do you have a particular example of ideas you think are being unfairly banned? I tend to think that snap back was a bit of an over-correction, but at the same time, whenever I hear conservatives yelling about this their examples are the most egregiously banworthy shit, and their “solutions” are truly unhinged (e.g. kill section 230 and put the government in charge of who can and can’t be banned). This post is already way too long so I’ll shut up now, but I hope you can see: I’m earnestly in favor of finding common ground, building bridges, etc. But I think that process has to start with an honest evaluation of just how wide and deep a chasm we’re bridging.
To be sure there is a definitional problem with cancel culture, in that the term has probably been overused to refer to too many things, including simple criticism. If anyone is calling for people to be fired for teaching CRT, they are in the wrong.
As far as banning people from websites/apps, I'm in favor of the previous model of complete freedom. Even if trump is promoting the idea of election fraud - you're not going to succeed in convincing people there was no fraud when you ban those saying it.
I used to lurk this thread off and on and I seem to remember the name Danglars. Honestly, I'd be surprised if his posts were worse than the "Republicans are terrorists and fascists" dialogue that is common in this thread. I mean if they were actually worse, then I'm wrong.
I agree that killing section 230 is not a coherent way of stopping internet bans. 230 concerns a separate issue.
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Although I recently criticized the NYT for misinformation on the RNC censure of Kinzinger & Cheney, some credit should be given for an apparent effort by the NYT to be more balanced and pursue the truth regardless of the political party it makes look bad. Of course it could just be a business decision during this period where there is no Republican president to resist. Still, credit where it's due.
I assume many would disagree with Greenwald but I couldn't find the NYT link elsewhere on Twitter:
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On February 07 2022 04:08 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2022 03:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:
As for CRT I'm not too educated on it, but I understand there are some efforts to legislatively ban it in schools. I'm not sure how school curricula are usually determined, but if they are usually mandated by legislation, I can see an argument for government control over what kids are taught. Certainly the government has broader leeway to regulate speech in schools. The whole principle of a free exchange of ideas more so applies to adults.
Maybe the better practice though is to permit CRT but mandate that counterarguments to it be taught whenever CRT is taught. You fit with most in not knowing what CRT is. The whole complaining about it and wanting to ban it crowd also have no clue what it is. It is a university class not taught in schools where people are complaining about it and wanting it to be banned.
The problem, fundamentally, isn't that people don't understand or aren't knowledgeable about CRT. When people try to discuss or criticize CRT one of two things usually happen: either the CRT crowd hides in the ivory tower of cultural theory and claim that you simply can't understand anyway so there is no reason to engage in dialogue. Or, they claim that the people who criticize them don't have the right skin color/gender/disability to understand anyway so there is no point in engaging in dialogue.
Ironically, if you set out to defend their worldview you can literally get anything through their "rigorous" peer review systems (as has been showed by the Sokal squared hoax). So while you're never knowledgeable enough to criticize, on the one hand, you're never too dumb to participate, on the other.
Wanting to ban CRT from schools is, in my view at least, as logical as banning creationism. It has nothing to do with cancelling. You just don't want to teach CRT instead of proper social science in the same way that you don't want to teach traditional Chinese medicine instead of biology.
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On February 07 2022 07:42 Elroi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2022 04:08 JimmiC wrote:On February 07 2022 03:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:
As for CRT I'm not too educated on it, but I understand there are some efforts to legislatively ban it in schools. I'm not sure how school curricula are usually determined, but if they are usually mandated by legislation, I can see an argument for government control over what kids are taught. Certainly the government has broader leeway to regulate speech in schools. The whole principle of a free exchange of ideas more so applies to adults.
Maybe the better practice though is to permit CRT but mandate that counterarguments to it be taught whenever CRT is taught. You fit with most in not knowing what CRT is. The whole complaining about it and wanting to ban it crowd also have no clue what it is. It is a university class not taught in schools where people are complaining about it and wanting it to be banned. The problem, fundamentally, isn't that people don't understand or aren't knowledgeable about CRT. When people try to discuss or criticize CRT one of two things usually happen: either the CRT crowd hides in the ivory tower of cultural theory and claim that you simply can't understand anyway so there is no reason to engage in dialogue. Or, they claim that the people who criticize them don't have the right skin color/gender/disability to understand anyway so there is no point in engaging in dialogue.
I'm having trouble following your argument, but perhaps I am simply misunderstanding you. Could you outline in a few sentences what you understand CRT to be?
Ironically, if you set out to defend their worldview you can literally get anything through their "rigorous" peer review systems (as has been showed by the Sokal squared hoax). So while you're never knowledgeable enough to criticize, on the one hand, you're never too dumb to participate, on the other.
Sure? What has that got to do with CRT?
Wanting to ban CRT from schools is, in my view at least, as logical as banning creationism. It has nothing to do with cancelling. You just don't want to teach CRT instead of proper social science in the same way that you don't want to teach traditional Chinese medicine instead of biology.
You can't really ban what isn't being taught in the first place.
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On February 07 2022 07:12 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2022 04:21 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 06:34 Doc.Rivers wrote:On February 06 2022 06:19 ChristianS wrote:On February 06 2022 03:37 farvacola wrote:On February 06 2022 03:23 ChristianS wrote:
@Biff: Harriet Beecher Stowe was “cancelled” in like 1870 for accusing Lord Byron of having an affair with his sister. Obviously the specific dynamics have changed a lot in 150 years - no Notes app apologies in 1870 - but some of this is just dynamics of public discourse and celebrity that have existed basically as long as there’s been public discourse and celebrity.
This is part of the problem with “cancel culture” as a concept: it encompasses way too broad a set of phenomena, some objectionable, some not, some new, some very old. The most obviously objectionable version (some random regular person having their life destroyed over some minor perceived offense by millions of internet users) doesn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly awful. The least objectionable version (famous people, especially politicians, being criticized for their opinions) is by far the most frequent situation in which cancel culture is invoked.
Side note: who actually got disappeared from public spaces? I know individual episodes of some tv shows got taken off streaming platforms, but you can still watch, like, Kevin Spacey movies or Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you want, no one’s stopping you. If anything, the type of cancellation that comes closest to that described by Biff was the kind practiced by the Church with respect to folks like Galileo. In more recent memory I think a lot of Red Scare stuff had similar dynamics. Or even more recent, the Dixie Chicks. I mean, there are clearly some bad social dynamics in some of these cases - scapegoating, herd mentality, etc. It does feel like the typical internet experience promotes a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that makes this sort of thing more common. I could almost imagine finding rare common ground with conservatives about the evils of “cancel culture,” except their ideas about it are so incoherent. Most of the supposed “cancellations” are just someone being criticized, maybe becoming the Twitter main character for a day. When people have faced actual consequences, often they’re either a result of voluntary resignations or their employer following legal avenues to cut ties because they want to avoid bad PR. What exactly do conservatives think should have happened instead? Who are we even supposed to be mad at? The answer usually seems to be “the amorphous mob of people who are criticizing them,” which reduces to a conception of tolerance in which no one is allowed to criticize anyone. Even more incoherent, the same people yelling about “cancel culture” are frequently the ones trying to get principals and school administrators fired for “CRT,” the definition of which is infinitely malleable but frequently means little more than “they gave a public statement in 2020 vaguely endorsing racial equity.” This, too, follows a lot of the same social dynamics. If that principal tweeted a Notes app apology it would not feel out of place. So even if conservatives were just promoting a vague idea of ideological tolerance or “don’t try to get people fired because you’re mad at them,” they either don’t realize the inconsistencies with their other positions, or don’t care. It can be problematic to treat conservatives as a monolith and isolate particular segments saying contradictory things and then say, "conservatives are incoherent and so I dismiss their views on this subject." There are good faith and valid points that are worth considering and potentially finding common ground on. Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. Several years back on this very forum I think I nicknamed this phenomenon the “ambiguous they” - i.e., if you say “they hate cancel culture” and “they love firing people for CRT” there’s potentially a difference in who is saying these things, so you haven’t necessarily caught anyone in a contradiction. That said, can you honestly say with a straight face you think there’s a schism in the modern right wing between the Cancel Culture folks and the Critical Race Theory folks? Anecdotally I haven’t met a conservative who says “I think cancel culture is bad, and that’s why I can’t support what my fellow Republicans are doing over CRT” or, alternatively, “CRT is destroying our society and that’s why I don’t think cancel culture is actually bad.” I’ve met several who would probably agree with both “cancel culture is proof the left hates free speech” and “CRT is a threat to our children and its promoters must be stopped.” Pick any run-of-the-mill right-wing commentator and I bet you can find, within the last 5 years, demands to punish Kaepernick, an article or two decrying cancel culture, and fearmongering over CRT in that same person’s body of work. But I’ll consider an interesting argument from anyone. Let’s discuss this: Personally I don't think that online mobs should act with the intent of suppressing particular ideas by removing the speaker from digital platforms, even when the speaker is a public figure. To be clear, this is not incoherent, and I think has (at least some) answers to my questions. Who should we be yelling at? The internet mobs. What do we think should happen differently? They shouldn’t act with the intent of getting somebody banned. It’s interesting, though, that you jumped to thinking of an internet moderation question. That certainly comes up in “cancel culture” conversations, but of the underserved consequences cancel culture could inflict on you, I have to think “banned from Twitter” is pretty minor. People are getting fired. They’re getting doxxed and spammed with death threats. In some cases people are calling CPS or animal abuse hotlines trying to get someone’s kids or pets taken away. Next to that, who cares they can’t post memes any more? But okay, let’s talk about banning people. Internet moderation has taken a weird path in the last few years; to me the most straightforward summary is that every major platform had an aggressively lassez-faire policy, motivated by some John Stuart Mill “marketplace of ideas”-type conceptions, and all of them absolutely bent over backwards to defend inaction even as it was clear people like Trump would push that line as far as they could. In fact there was a huge carve out for “public figures.” Then Trump incited a mob to try to overthrow the government most of those tech companies live under, and it was like the rubber band broke. There was a wave of heavier moderation across the internet - right here on TL, Danglars got banned in that same wave! Like, do you have a particular example of ideas you think are being unfairly banned? I tend to think that snap back was a bit of an over-correction, but at the same time, whenever I hear conservatives yelling about this their examples are the most egregiously banworthy shit, and their “solutions” are truly unhinged (e.g. kill section 230 and put the government in charge of who can and can’t be banned). This post is already way too long so I’ll shut up now, but I hope you can see: I’m earnestly in favor of finding common ground, building bridges, etc. But I think that process has to start with an honest evaluation of just how wide and deep a chasm we’re bridging. I agree there's significant overlap between the people that decry cancel culture and the people that rant about CRT in school. I don't necessarily agree that this is some kind of hypocrisy. I'm someone that is "against cancel culture" and would defend people like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan. But if Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle were speaking their ideas in front of a classroom of children then I would join in calling for their termination. However, I wouldn't conflate that with "cancel culture." Just like earlier when people tried to call ousting an incumbent politician as "canceling" them, I don't think this is a good example. You've already provided a good example if you want to demonstrate right-wing hypocrisy on cancel culture: The Dixie Chicks. I also think it's unfair to frame being deplatformed from Twitter/Social Media sites as "being unable to post memes anymore." These sites are the public forum of our times. A sort of digital town square. A small group of people in silicon valley determining who should and shouldn't be silenced from the public forum is not the kind of small potatoes of not being able to post memes anymore. The ACLU has been around forever and has defended the free speech rights of Nazis/KKK/pedophiles, etc. Just in the last few years they have started to turn woke and now are becoming less inclined to defend the speech of people they don't agree with. The ACLU has probably done more than any other organization to defend free speech in the United States and I think it's very bad if they start to drift towards the idea of "We're going to defend free speech as long it doesn't offend anyone or isn't controversial or doesn't disagree with our values." Although it's probably 'worse' when some Joe Schmoe gets doxxed, I don't think it's any less objectionable when a celebrity gets cancelled just because they have millions of dollars to fall back on. In a way I think it's worse for society because of how much we idolize celebrities, it's likely to cause reverberations onto broader society of people practicing self-censorship because they are scared to speak their mind. I think a good example is what's in the news right now regarding the transgender swimmer from UPENN. It's obvious she has an unfair biological advantage over her teammates from living the vast majority of her life as a male but her teammates refuse to say it publicly. Instead, 16 of them wrote anonymously to the University and the Ivy League about the unfairness of it. It's a really sad state of affairs when they are afraid to publicly say something that is completely reasonable because they don't want to be labeled a bigot. They have to pretend they are so happy to be dominated by someone with an unfair advantage over them while privately they write a letter anonymously to ask the rules to be changed.
Big quote chains on this forum have a tendency to devolve into multiple parallel disagreements rather than focusing on the larger point. For instance, I have a temptation to split up this reply in a section arguing CRT frequently does resemble cancel culture, a section arguing "free speech" as the ACLU has historically defended it has very little to do with questions of internet moderation, etc. I'll mostly skip those conversations because I think this chain will rapidly become unreadable – I will, at least, say that I think a case like James Whitfield's firing in Texas has all the characteristics a typical "cancel culture" case has, and if you have time to research it, I'd be very interested to hear if you feel differently and why. (The link is to a This American Life story on it, feel free to find alternate sources if you hate Ira Glass or something)
Instead I'll argue something I think is frequently missed (especially by conservatives, but often liberals, too), which is that I think fundamentally, "cancel culture" is a systemic issue. Since "systemic" is a word used very differently in a lot of different contexts without much explanation, I'll try to clarify my usage: some societal problems are individual problems, meaning that there is an individual or group of individuals who are misbehaving. If you imagine a "contract" + Show Spoiler [diction] +using that word makes me sound like some free market economist who thinks of society as a collection of contracts between homines economici, but I don't have a better word to use
Systemic problems occur when an individual person is meeting the terms of their contract, but they're not getting the benefits they're entitled to. That is, if we consider the contract between, on the one side, the individual person and, on the other, a theoretical entity or "system" representing the mental aggregation of all the people on the other side of that contract, the "system" isn't treating them fairly. The hard part, though, is that if you change your focus to any of the individuals that make up that "system," they're all more or less meeting their contracts, too. The fault doesn't exist in the people, it exists, somehow, in the spaces between them.
Consider one component of "cancel culture," online harassment (we can leave out actions from authorities, like being banned from Twitter, fired from their job, etc. for now). An individual says or does something that at least minorly offends "the internet." They become the main character on Twitter or something. That individual will now find that any time they open Twitter, they're bombarded with (at least) thousands of notifications of various strangers on the internet dragging them in various ways. That's already a miserable experience, sometimes traumatizing. Suddenly millions of strangers know their name, and are competing with each other to curse it in varyingly clever ways. And in all likelihood, if we examine the individual's "offense" for which they're receiving this "punishment" we'll think it's extremely minor, if it's an offense at all. They'll probably feel like they've been dealt with pretty unfairly.
But whose fault is it? All those millions of strangers aren't really doing anything wrong, per se. Some of them are probably being at least uncivil, and in a real world case a few might be sending mean DMs, doxxing, sending death threats, etc., which are malicious acts. But even if nobody crossed a line like that (and since this is my hypothetical, I can just say nobody did), the individual will still (reasonably, I think) say this isn't fair. And if some people do start doing obviously malicious things, I don't think it's sufficient to say "this is an individual problem of a few bad actors sending mean DMs, etc., and the solution is just for nobody to do that." The system has offered up this individual's actions to the drive-by judgment of millions of people, and handed every one of those millions of people a button they can push to do a malicious act in response; even if only .001% of them choose to push that button, it will still be thousands of people's malicious acts piled on that one individual.
That the problem is systemic should not diminish any of your sense of injustice about it. But it does help to understand why it's so difficult to solve. I think conservatives tend to attribute "cancel culture" as a problem caused by "the left's censorious attitudes" or some such, which is a sufficiently diffuse culprit that they can feel righteously indignant without having to offer much in the way of solutions besides, I don't know, winning the culture war and forcing all the leftists to hide in holes. But if their concerns about "cancel culture" were sincere they would find, even if they won the culture war, that the problem hadn't been solved, or even really ameliorated, because the problem was never localized to those leftists in the first place; it's an emergent property of the sorts of associations people are forming with each other, and the rules by which those associations proceed.
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