Cancel Cutlure

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HJCarden
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Cancel Cutlure

Post by HJCarden »

As I'm sure that any of you that frequent the internet know, cancel culture is one of the hottest issues in the political social sphere in the US, and im sure it is present in many other nations. I would be willing to bet that most of us easily can see what the issues with "cancelling" someone and calling in a virtual mob to destroy their reputation. Theres a laundry list of reasons to believe that cancel culture has negative effects, and I am convinced that the cons far outweigh what is gained by cancel culture.

Because of this, I would be very interested in anyone's ideas who

1) genuinely believes that cancel culture does more good than harm

2) Can give a good defense of the positive aspects of cancel culture

3) feels as if they have an interesting take on why cancel culture is bad for our society

Personally I feel as if I create an echo chamber for myself in regards to this issue particularly, as I have been unable to convince myself of any manner in which the benefits can outweigh the negatives. Interested to hear anyones ideas or general discourse and observations.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Dictionary.com wrote:Dictionary.com, in its pop-culture dictionary, defines cancel culture as "withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive."
Having had a quick read about Cancel Culture on the interweb, I can see the negative side: those who do this elect themselves judge, jury and executioner. But on the positive side, this is a way people can democratically express their disapproval of a person/company who has behaved unacceptably. If POTUS Trump was 'cancelled', for example, wouldn't this be a good and sensible thing? Historical figures and companies are universally reviled if their actions were bad enough...? Hitler and Nazis are the obvious example; there are many more.
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Sculptor1
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Sculptor1 »

HJCarden wrote: January 1st, 2021, 1:32 am As I'm sure that any of you that frequent the internet know, cancel culture is one of the hottest issues in the political social sphere in the US, and im sure it is present in many other nations. I would be willing to bet that most of us easily can see what the issues with "cancelling" someone and calling in a virtual mob to destroy their reputation. Theres a laundry list of reasons to believe that cancel culture has negative effects, and I am convinced that the cons far outweigh what is gained by cancel culture.

Because of this, I would be very interested in anyone's ideas who

1) genuinely believes that cancel culture does more good than harm

2) Can give a good defense of the positive aspects of cancel culture

3) feels as if they have an interesting take on why cancel culture is bad for our society

Personally I feel as if I create an echo chamber for myself in regards to this issue particularly, as I have been unable to convince myself of any manner in which the benefits can outweigh the negatives. Interested to hear anyones ideas or general discourse and observations.
It seems that you have offered something I'd not thought of . Trump has attempted to make this an art form. I am sure he thinks that he is the master of this art.


Cancel Culture is wholly undemocratic.
It is counter productive. Whilst you can cancel a man, attempting to cancel the ideas that go with him is is not a good idea.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Terrapin Station »

It's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
baker
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by baker »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 amIt's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
Underestimate them at your own peril.
baker
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by baker »

HJCarden wrote: January 1st, 2021, 1:32 am/.../
Personally I feel as if I create an echo chamber for myself in regards to this issue particularly, as I have been unable to convince myself of any manner in which the benefits can outweigh the negatives. Interested to hear anyones ideas or general discourse and observations.
How about what happened to Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby? Why not say that those were examples of cancel culture?
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Terrapin Station »

baker wrote: January 1st, 2021, 2:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 amIt's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
Underestimate them at your own peril.
It's not an estimation, just a description.
baker
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by baker »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 amIt's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
And this is what you'd call the people who took action against Weinstein or Cosby, for example?
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Count Lucanor »

HJCarden wrote: January 1st, 2021, 1:32 am As I'm sure that any of you that frequent the internet know, cancel culture is one of the hottest issues in the political social sphere in the US, and im sure it is present in many other nations. I would be willing to bet that most of us easily can see what the issues with "cancelling" someone and calling in a virtual mob to destroy their reputation. Theres a laundry list of reasons to believe that cancel culture has negative effects, and I am convinced that the cons far outweigh what is gained by cancel culture.

Because of this, I would be very interested in anyone's ideas who

1) genuinely believes that cancel culture does more good than harm

2) Can give a good defense of the positive aspects of cancel culture

3) feels as if they have an interesting take on why cancel culture is bad for our society

Personally I feel as if I create an echo chamber for myself in regards to this issue particularly, as I have been unable to convince myself of any manner in which the benefits can outweigh the negatives. Interested to hear anyones ideas or general discourse and observations.
I can't find much positive aspects of cancel culture, although one might suppose there might be instances where it could be considered appropriate, given the context, as a way of introducing social accountability in our actions. For me, these context-oriented scenarios would have to do with concrete, direct, harmful actions against specific subjects, not dependent of the victim's subjective feelings. Let's say one is subject of a criminal act, then one might expect the perpetrator is somehow outcast as a way of social punishment. There are no blurred lines here.

But if one reverses the coin, many acts that are not deemed as criminal per se, actually harm people's lives, and that is the case of cancel culture, which is nurtured by the objective of carrying out the social assassination of other people for their apparent cultural transgressions. Then one wonders if such people are not to be cancelled themselves, since ironically, those who actively engage in cancelling other people are the ones actually harming others. But this is precisely the toxic cycle in which cancel culture reproduces itself, where emotions take control and one is ready to punish the transgressors. Anger gives us the justification, but where's the difference? Blurred lines now divide what is morally justified from what is not. I think the difference in social accountability lies in both the type of punishment and the type of offense being punished. Let's use as an example the latest case of cancel culture in the news, the cancelling of Mimi Groves:

A Vindictive Teen Destroys a Classmate

As we can see here, the vindictive teen is the one actually harming a person's life on purpose, "to teach someone a lesson". Let's add to the culprits the administrators of the University of Tennessee. Mimi Groves is clearly the victim here, so why wouldn't be justified in pointing our cultural guns against Galligan or the university administrators "to teach them a lesson"? And wouldn't we be guilty of engaging in cancel culture practices against other people? My best guess is "an eye for an eye": the punishment should be proportional to the damage inflicted, and in this case, Galligan and the university administrators deserve to be publicly shamed, even if the social consequences go beyond their damaged reputation, because it was OK for them to publicly shame and to achieve administrative punishment against their target. Both actively and passively, they sought to harm someone for one thing that at most could be considered a minor transgression (I personally don't think it even reaches that level, she didn't actually harm anyone, didn't commit a crime, and didn't have any intention to do it), so the punishment was way out of proportion. I also think they should be allowed to find social redemption if they sincerely regret and apologize for their actions.

About cancel culture in general, I may add: there's a misguiding trend that portrays it as something new and as a particular feature of the "regressive left". The truth is cancel cultural has been around for quite a while and has been used widely in both ends of the political spectrum. McCarthyism was a classic case of cancel culture from the right. And there are some particularly interesting cases of cancel culture documented by Norman Finkelstein in his work about Israel lobbyists seeking economic reparations for the holocaust of WWII.

That cancel culture has become a trend in our days seems to go along with the process of becoming a "global village" and the return to social practices that were typical of the mode of living in agrarian societies. In small villages and towns where every one knew each other, gossip and public shaming were common social tools for managing power relations. With the rise of urban life and increased anonymity in social relations, these tools were not very effective, but with the technological advances in communications, they have found new effectiveness again.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Terrapin Station »

baker wrote: January 1st, 2021, 3:08 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 amIt's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
And this is what you'd call the people who took action against Weinstein or Cosby, for example?
It's how I'd describe a lot of the sexual harassment accusations that have been made. I never explored the details on Weinstein or Cosby in any depth. I normally don't spend a lot of time learning about details re daily politics or news in general, partially because it just tends to annoy me, because of the stuff that people care about versus don't care about, because of conventional opinions and attitudes about a lot of stuff, etc. I focus my attention elsewhere, on work and leisure stuff that interests me.
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Zarathustra66
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Zarathustra66 »

Does seem to be an anglophone phenomena and seemingly absent in most European countries. Wondering whether it be another example of what Huntington referred to as the 'excess of democracy' and the US's penchant for litigation, where spurious arguments are made so the legions of lawyers can make some work for themselves?
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Papus79
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Papus79 »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 am It's just a contemporary version of close-minded/conformist mobs armed with pitchforks and torches.
I'd agree with this - ie. that it's nothing remotely new, rather it's old human habits armed with new technology and paved the way for by a sort of 20th century silliness where it was believed that any notion that human beings weren't filled with anything but untapped good was some form of old-fashion barbarism of the sort that was for people too benighted to have television - it shows that we engage in enough escapism to need to keep repeating our mistakes.

There are also just all sorts of miserable people who don't feel alive unless they're chasing after what they perceive as other people's problems (as a way of trying to outrun their own minds).
Terrapin Station wrote: January 1st, 2021, 11:30 amAnd this is what you'd call the people who took action against Weinstein or Cosby, for example?
Clearly not an unabated good, and where this tends to go - anything that has power without accountability fills up with grifters and psychopaths fast even if it started with good intent or found its public acceptability by slaying a few legitimate dragons. Suppose one has to crack a few eggs to make an omelet though, particularly in the world of reactionary politics.
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Papus79
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Papus79 »

Papus79 wrote: January 1st, 2021, 10:46 pm by a sort of 20th century silliness where it was believed that any notion that human beings weren't filled with anything but untapped good was some form of old-fashion barbarism of the sort that was for people too benighted to have television
* meant to say were, not weren't.

I've coined something of a phrase for that 1980's / 1990's silliness 'Millentology'.
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LuckyR
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by LuckyR »

HJCarden wrote: January 1st, 2021, 1:32 am As I'm sure that any of you that frequent the internet know, cancel culture is one of the hottest issues in the political social sphere in the US, and im sure it is present in many other nations. I would be willing to bet that most of us easily can see what the issues with "cancelling" someone and calling in a virtual mob to destroy their reputation. Theres a laundry list of reasons to believe that cancel culture has negative effects, and I am convinced that the cons far outweigh what is gained by cancel culture.

Because of this, I would be very interested in anyone's ideas who

1) genuinely believes that cancel culture does more good than harm

2) Can give a good defense of the positive aspects of cancel culture

3) feels as if they have an interesting take on why cancel culture is bad for our society

Personally I feel as if I create an echo chamber for myself in regards to this issue particularly, as I have been unable to convince myself of any manner in which the benefits can outweigh the negatives. Interested to hear anyones ideas or general discourse and observations.
Sorry, but to me this is much ado about not much. Folks who profit from social media do something that their audience doesn't like so the gravy train gets cut off. Who cares? It's poetic justice. No one has a "right" to social media popularity and compensation.
"As usual... it depends."
Gertie
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Re: Cancel Cutlure

Post by Gertie »

Lucanor
That cancel culture has become a trend in our days seems to go along with the process of becoming a "global village" and the return to social practices that were typical of the mode of living in agrarian societies. In small villages and towns where every one knew each other, gossip and public shaming were common social tools for managing power relations. With the rise of urban life and increased anonymity in social relations, these tools were not very effective, but with the technological advances in communications, they have found new effectiveness again.
I think that's right, being gossipy and judgy is part of us. And the anonynimity of the internet can turn it into a blood sport.

We all have our own lines of acceptability, and what ought or ought not be 'allowed' or consequence free. And we have different cultural and generational influences on that too. The ability to indulge it is now just an anonymous mouse click away, it's so easy. Just like judging people for their looks or class or education or anything else. Judging people for their actions can sometimes have merit. Deciding to boycott a company or person because of some moral position isn't bad per se. But the mob mentality and triviality of the 'infractions', with no interest in understanding or moving forward constructively, can be vicious. Being a public figure requires a thick skin and an ability to play the games which keep you out of the cross hairs, but do we really only want thick skinned, inauthentic people to be in politics, for example?
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