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M1 hit the nail on the head.
Also cancel culture has always existed. Except the deciders of who gets canceled were people of great social and economic power. Now, the ability to “cancel” has been democratized.
I’m willing to bet that cancel culture is the real reason millennials left Facebook for Snapchat and Instagram. It’s why people don’t speak up in university classes anymore. It’s why we can’t approach strangers.
We’re constantly monitoring our thoughts so as to not accidentally be shamed in public for miscommunication.
“Check your privilege” is one of the first phrases I can think of from cancel culture.
Rising Star
“Cancel culture” gets tossed around a lot, but I’m curious, what exactly happens when you get cancelled?
Because as far as I can tell, for the most part, what happens is people yell at you on Twitter for like six hours and then you get invited to go on Joe Rogan.
She didn’t get “cancelled.” She said some thing that made her employer look bad and she got fired. That’s been happening since the beginning of time.
Chief
You’ve already missed the point. No one is limiting what people can say or think, quite the opposite actually. The point is that just because we are free to say what we think, the listener is equally free to change their behavior based on that speech.
A TV network is not obligated to run your ad or your TV show. Your employer is not obligated to employ you. I am not obligated to buy your beans. You can say what you want, and if I don’t like it, I’m free to not associate with you. And vice versa.That’s all there is to it.
Rising Star
Freedom of speech does not equate to either the right to a distribution platform provided by another private party, nor consequence free speech. It means that the government can't pass laws to prevent or jail you for your views.
Cancel culture is all about generating consequences for speech based on petitions, boycotts, and pressure on sponsors to end their sponsorships.
Deloitte 1
Chief
Cancel culture is the equivalent of flipping over the Monopoly board when you don’t like the way your own game is going
I didn’t ignore your argument, I just can’t make sense of it, way too convoluted. I’ve stated my case, and you’ve disagreed As far as I can tell. No need for more back and forth, lets move forward and past it 😀
Cancel Culture is the absence of culture. The imposition of morality by those who believe that moral absolutes do not exist. It is the thrashing of a generation that has lost logic and their ability to reason.
consultant 1 - agreed that your thought process is very well laid out, but that there are logical and factual flaws.
the first that leftists were behind the KKK. if you’re bringing up southern democrat/dixiecrat argument, it’s a flawed one that can be summarized to say that those were not “leftists”, but rather, used the party label without aligning with the beliefs.
the other major one is that statues had never been censored or torn down. here are a couple examples: italian censorship of sculptures for “decency” by conservative groups and every revolution tearing down statues of the former regime in recent history (there are several).
and you also bring up fringe groups like antifa as examples of the left, but seem to ignore the alt-right or neo-nazis as fringe examples of the right. you can’t claim one without accepting the other (and for the record, i don’t feel those fringe groups are good examples of either side of the spectrum).
and then about your rape example: in some cultures, at some times, rape was acceptable...even a right. horribly enough, it’s even the case in some extreme conservative middle eastern regions. however, most of the universe would agree its a moral absolute that it’s wrong, and anyone supporting rape would be the target of “canceling.”
so, with that in mind as a parallel, let’s say this: slavery is wrong, as a moral absolute. well, there were people who participated in it, and are being celebrated for it. those historical figures should fall to cancel culture, since, even though what they did aligned with the cultural norm at the time, we’ve realigned to be part of the moral absolute. (to be clear, i also think that it goes to the extreme sometimes, but the point is the same.)
Super excited y'all leftists are all jazzed about free association now. Just to be clear we're all good with the red scare right? Your deep conviction this is all totally fine surely isn't just because you think you are winning.
More seriously, it is and obviously should be legal to not associate with people whose political values you abhor. But can isn't should. The questions with cancel culture are three fold and i find it very alarming.
(1) as a cultural norm in a politically pluralistic society, are we generally trying to live with / persuade people who disagree with us or trying to avoid/punish them?
(2) are ordinary private citizens being confronted with pressure from their friends and neighbors or from large terrifying masses of strangers?
(3) do the values enshrined as OK in prestige employers include common national values or do they represent a small sliver with an effort to impose them through cultural power?
And look, its a spectrum. Obviously. No one wants zero dissent. No one wants to have to argue every stupid conspiracy theorist. But there are better and worse sides of the tradeoff to land on.
As I said, again, if you can’t differentiate American leftism from Stalinism and Maoism you really do NOT understand what the American left is advocating for.
Socialism has been a justification for violent authoritarianism, as has capitalism. What China has done is horrific, but what have capitalist nations done as well? We’re keeping people in cages here just because they tried to immigrate here? We’ve brutalized people for trying to protest police violence. That’s just the past year. Look at the various countries around the world who have built social democracies without resorting to authoritarianism, there’s no shortage.
As for BLM I don’t think they’re speaking figuratively. BLM activists agitating against a system that’s actively killing them and depriving them of equality. So yes, I see why they are serious about dismantling it. It’s not a system worth preserving.
Look, if you earnestly are drawing equivalence between American socialists and Stalinists, and you think that real leftists control the media then you do not get it. Socialists don’t control the media. If you live in the US and you think that’s who’s moving the levers of power then you really, truly do not understand where power lies in this country. You’re parroting some worn out talking points about the leftist media, the leftist universities, and the similarities between things where the overlap lays in name only.
You’re even acknowledging authoritarian power of NSA could oppress me for being a socialist, which kind of undermines the notion of socialist control, no? Which, to my earlier point, highlights that no ideology has a monopoly on oppression. It’s almost like you shouldn’t singularly associate violent oppression with one ideology as a means of discrediting it because that singular association doesn’t stand up to an ounce of scrutiny. Maybe trying to ascribe oppressive violence as exclusive to socialism shows you probably don’t have a nuanced view on this or you aren’t capable of analyzing this in meaningful way? Maybe equating things because of overlap in name only is fucking dumb?
Please, tell me more about some shallow parallels. We get it, you hate socialism. Go look at the other side of the coin and see why people hate capitalism. Like really if you can’t see the difference between what the DSA advocates for and the Bolsheviks then what’s the point of having this conversation? You’re not going to look deeper, so what’s the point of listening to what you have to say.
Rising Star
Cancel culture is the name given to the act of "being held accountable for being an assh#le" by people who want to be assh#les but not face consequences.
Visual Storyteller
Or:
Conversation Starter
If you have no issue with people speaking their mind, you can't really mind people saying "that's dumb, and I'd rather take my business elsewhere."
Also, why do people pretend that only liberals do this when the president has advocated boycotts several times
Visual Storyteller
Very true. From a couple days ago:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/z3eyge/trump-called-cancel-culture-the-definition-of-totalitarianism-but-hes-tried-to-cancel-all-these-people-and-businesses
I’m curious to know how many people in the comments advocating for cancel culture are willing to have their entire past texts/phone calls/posts/pics/etc. exposed to the world.
there’s a difference between putting actions of the past into context and then canceling current celebration of those actions. if someone made a remark 15 years ago and has a different outlook now, they shouldn’t be canceled. but if they still celebrate that perspective, it’s fair game (ex: slave-owner statues).
you’re entitled to say what you want, but you’re not entitled to others’ platform to say it. and if those who control that platform don’t like what you’re saying, they can stop you from using it.
as far as if goes for statues, etc: the statue is a form of speech, in what it represents. people had the freedom to erect them, just as people have the freedom to tear them down.
While I don’t agree with everything happening in cancel culture, I think there are good reasons it’s happening and as a ‘culture’ simply cannot be controlled in a manner to only do what is reasonable and not overstep.
The big driver imho is that for decades, probably centuries the ruling groups in western culture - middle aged and old white men - were able to get away with many, many despicable and discriminating acts. In many instances those were even elevated into pop culture (like the “did she put up a fight” piece in Grease). This spans sexual, racial and other types of discrimination and abuse.
I don’t think that it is either surprising nor unreasonable that the counter-movement is over correcting this behavior. It would be desirable that it balances out but quite frankly that is equally “white privilege” given that the balance was never fair for minorities or women before...
Btw - I’m a middle aged, privileged white male.
I think your third graph sums makes a good observation. I don’t agree with the point that it’s an over correction. However, I think social media has given people who were blocked out by white cultural hegemony in the past a platform for calling out the bullshit and legitimate grievances. They’re trying to break into the conversation and establish balance. The notion of “cancel culture” is usually just perpetuated by people who once flourished in the cultural hegemony and now find themselves on uneasy ground since the new voices in the room are questioning their ideas and value.
It’s a new kind of discourse and it can be rowdy. And for folks just getting a platform there’s a lot more at stake than just the abstract “marketplace of ideas.” Which is a point I think a lot of folks miss.
Look folks here's the bottom line. Set aside the legal issue, we all agree political discrimination is allowed. On here and in real life your right of center colleagues say they think their views put their jobs at risk.
Are we lying?
Are we wrong? Should we feel professionally safe airing normal common right of center views?
Or are we right but it's OK and we should be in professional peril?
If there's a fourth option i'd love to hear it.
If you think right wing people are being persecuted in the United States of America - a nation run by a racist with laws and voting that ensures white minorities have disproportional political and financial power - you’re too far inside a bubble to be convinced.
“I don’t feel safe being conservative.” Good lord man, take about 800 steps back and think about how absurd that sounds in 2020.
Rising Star
freedom of speech goes both ways. It’s really that simple.
Cancel culture: no one actually wants people to have an opinion...they want people to have the *same* opinion
Watch Jordan Peterson’s videos on unearned moral superiority and class-based guilt. Summarizes it up well.
I’ve gotten warning and suspensions right here on FB because people do not agree with some of my ideas, which are based on factual data. That’s cancel culture. I went from being a frequent poster to just a bystander ‘cause of it. And then the claim is that my posts were “toxic”.
Chief
That is the absolute farthest thing from cancel culture