Cancel culture IRL

[d4m10n]

You can only be canceled if your behavior is something that is widely seen by the public as being bad.

I really doubt this, given the organizational incentives typically in play. It's easier to throw one Colin Kaepernick or Adria Richards or Ellen Degeneres or Alexander Vindman under the proverbial bus than to conduct a broad social survey as to whether consumers or citizens broadly found their actions objectionable. Even if people did, though, that probably wouldn't tell us much about whether they were good at their jobs.

 

[mumblethrax]

people can do what they like, and i can respond to what they do, as in they're not entitled to my support. i am making a moral judgement of their words and actions, it's how i'm determing which people i do and don't support.

If you are making a moral judgment, then it's terribly misleading to say "People can do what you want." If your friend tells you "I think I'm going to kill my wife tonight", and I ask you "Hey, what do you think about that?" then "People can do what they want" isn't a particularly insightful, useful, or good thing to say. Instead, you should probably say something like "Oh, don't do that." At least, if that's how you feel about it.

You're using the fact that people will ultimately make their own decisions to dodge the question "Why do you express judgment here, but not there?"

people can do what they want to based off of their own moral compasses. if it's not the same values as mine, then i'm not likely to support their actions. i don't find that particularly complicated.

It seems overly complicated to me. Isn't it just equivalent to saying "I don't support actions that arise from values that don't comport to mine." In other words, what work is "People can do what they want" doing, if you're then going to express judgment of what they do? I think it's doing no work at all beyond allowing you to avoid answering the question I put to you. Strategic nihilism.

that you think i'm thoughtless doing random things is another bizarre assumption

I don't think you're doing random things, I think you're legislating your feelings. "keeping pedophiles well employed in my workspace in my neighborhood and spending time with them to persuade them to give it up isn't something i'd take the opportunity to do" I just a fancy way of saying "I don't want that." How do you derive a moral obligation from that, as you claimed to?

anyway i don't have anything more to add to this tangent with you. i appreciate your input, thanks

Sure.

 

[mumblethrax]

I really doubt this, given the organizational incentives typically in play. It's easier to throw one Colin Kaepernick or Adria Richards or Ellen Degeneres or Alexander Vindman under the proverbial bus than to conduct a broad social survey as to whether consumers or citizens broadly found their actions objectionable. Even if people did, though, that probably wouldn't tell us much about whether they were good at their jobs.

Yeah, I think it's clearly not true that you can only be 'canceled' if the public is behind it. Consider something like this case.

In any case, this isn't really democracy in any recognizable form. It's more like a Spartan assembly.

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm not sure that an arch-libertarian would be committed to the view that a mob influencing actors in a marketplace is best understood as the invisible hand working things out,

The whole point is that it's not some mob pushing poor companies into doing what they don't want, but the companies themselves deciding what best suits their bottom line. No mob can just walk into the quarters and fire someone. Someone up the company totem pole has to decide whether they want the negative publicity.

Like, do we want to keep Steve, who thought it would be smart to start the shareholder meeting with a fecal joke about the Islam, or do we want to keep doing a lot of business in the middle east. (Which, again, actually happened way back.) If it's the latter, sorry, Steve, you can pick up your things and don't forget to hand over the RFID card and company car keys at the reception.

All the mob can do is basically

1. pass the information around. Which, as I'll remind you is actually part of the free market theory. It really involves perfectly informed everyone.

and

2. vote with its wallet. And, again, basing your choices on that perfect information is also a part of the free market theory. Plus, isn't that what the right-wingers preach that should be the case, as opposed to government regulation?

But again, it's up to the company to decide whether said wallet is worth it.

Of course that won't stop idiots from arguing that, oh noes, black is white, up is down, north is south, and business decisions are anything but just that, if it's against the kind of bigotry they like.

Or more to the point that, that you

1. don't have a right to free speech, if it cancels theirs. As in, they can spew bigotted crap about you, you're some monster if you even comment on them. And

2. that some company has some weird right to your cash, whether you like them or not. Which isn't even left or right wing, it's just stonking stupid and entitled. Look, we're not against anyone earning money if they can, but the notion that someone must keep giving any particular entity their business, no matter what that entity does, is just plain old entitled.

Well, or at least that would be the implications, if they thought it through. Most often they didn't. They just think that they have some right to be bigots about everyone else, everyone else doesn't have a right to even comment about THEM, and something's wrong with, well, everything, if it doesn't work towards that state of affairs.

 

[dirtywick]

well said

 

[mumblethrax]

1. pass the information around. Which, as I'll remind you is actually part of the free market theory. It really involves perfectly informed everyone.

Well, that's just not true. The mob can also pass around misinformation, and bad information leads to market failure. Free marketeers/libertarians are generally slow to recognize bad information where their dogma assumes perfect information (it's why their predictions about minimum wage increases are reliably wrong--information asymmetries abound in labor markets), but there's nothing stopping them from doing so here. They generally have a distaste for mobs, especially the elected kind.

Well, or at least that would be the implications, if they thought it through.

I don't really see how those are implications of anything; more like just terrible arguments. But yeah, bad faith argument from people more interested in weaponizing this rhetoric than dealing with the fact that people weaponize outrage abounds. That's not so interesting to me, because I generally want to deal with good arguments, rather than bad ones. Unless they're, like, hilariously bad.

 

[HansMustermann]

Yeah, I think it's clearly not true that you can only be 'canceled' if the public is behind it. Consider something like this case.

In any case, this isn't really democracy in any recognizable form. It's more like a Spartan assembly.

But again, I don't think employment in the private sector is supposed to be democratic. Nobody is hired or fired because there was a public vote in the city over whether they should be hired or fired or neither. They get hired or fired because their boss likes or doesn't like what they do or can do for the company. The whole notion that whether your employer keeps you or not should somehow be some kind of democratic process, is just stonking stupid at best and dishonest arguing at worst.


That said, let's look at the timeline for what your link talks about:

May 25, 2020: George Floyd is killed by the police. Just to recap in case anyone missed it, an officer kept his knee on Floyd's neck for just under 9 minutes, pretty much choking him to death. Although he was already handcuffed and presenting no danger to the officers.

May 26, 2020: the George Floyd protests start. Not only about 93% of the protests were actually peaceful over the whole span until late August, but the violence only ramped up later in that time interval. Also actual mayors in some of those cities went on record as saying that most of the actual looting and rioting was basically outsiders just seizing the opportunity, not something that the protesters organized or controlled in any form or shape.

It does however provoke even more police brutality in some places, including instances of violence against journalists, not just protesters, let alone actual rioters.

May 28, 2020: David Shor decides now is the perfect time to comment about how 'violent protests are bad, m'kay?' And get into a pissing contest about it, actually. Never mind that A. at that point any actual rioting was relatively isolated, and B. not something any protest organizers, or even individual actual protesters can control. But even without that, at a point where everyone is already pissed off and the situation is volatile, what he feels a need to do is take a glancing shot at it being the wrong way to go about things.

And it's hard to take it as anything else than a comment on the George Floyd protests, given the timing. He says he's been studying that for 15 years, as quoted even in your link, but NOW when the protests just started and tensions are high is when he decides to publicaly talk about it.


I'm sorry, but that's tone deaf at best, and certainly not the kind of publicity any company wants. At that point it doesn't even matter if you're pro-black, anti-black, or just a smart-ass, or whatever. Just don't divert unwanted attention to your company.

That's not the mob cancelling him, that's him earning a professional Darwin Award, so to speak.

 

[HansMustermann]

I don't really see how those are implications of anything; more like just terrible arguments. But yeah, bad faith argument from people more interested in weaponizing this rhetoric than dealing with the fact that people weaponize outrage abounds. That's not so interesting to me, because I generally want to deal with good arguments, rather than bad ones. Unless they're, like, hilariously bad.

Well, then you can deal with yourself, because you've been posting some hilariously bad nonsense in this thread. Including a ridiculous amount of just redefining reality by just postulates, for someone complaining about "arguing in bad faith". If you don't like it, don't do it. It's that simple. You have the power.

 

[HansMustermann]

I really doubt this, given the organizational incentives typically in play. It's easier to throw one Colin Kaepernick or Adria Richards or Ellen Degeneres or Alexander Vindman under the proverbial bus than to conduct a broad social survey as to whether consumers or citizens broadly found their actions objectionable. Even if people did, though, that probably wouldn't tell us much about whether they were good at their jobs.

The problem is that you can impact the company's bottom line in a lot more ways than what your job description technically says. Affecting the company image in a bad way is actually a trivial one.

It's also not that radical new idea. Companies working on their public image has actually been a thing all along. That's why, say, banks have dress codes for the tellers. You'd be surprised how far those go. Or at least I was. E.g., the one bank whose dress code I got to see, included such things as that if you're a woman, either you wear dark stockings or have tanned legs. (Yep, literally, either sweat it out in the summer or risk skin cancer. Those are your choices if you want to stay employed there.)

It doesn't matter how good you are at talking or counting money, if you don't stick to the company image, you're out.

But it goes even farther back than banks. In ancient Rome you might be expected to put on a toga rubbed in chalk if you're doing public speeking, for example, especially as a or for a politician. Because white was associated with purity and honesty, and that's the image they were going for.

It's really not a new idea that the image can count towards the bottom line at least as much as what you actually DO professionally.

The post-scarcity economy just made it even more important. In a scarcity economy you may not have any choice but to take your grain to the only miller in town, just because that's the guy the baron sanctioned, or buying your sword for your militia duty from the only smith in town. Nowadays there's a lot of choice for most things. You don't have to buy your burger from company X, when companies Y and Z also have shops in town and aren't that far off as bang-per-buck goes. So not giving people extra reason to take their business to companies Y and Z instead just became that much more important.

So going "even if people did" (find their actions objectionable) as if it's some kind of completely other thing is kinda missing the point. If enough people did to affect the company's bottom line, or at least the superiors thought it might be the case, then that's that.

 

[mumblethrax]

But again, I don't think employment in the private sector is supposed to be democratic.

I don't get the relevance. Someone said that 'cancel culture' can be seen as widely democratic. It can't be. It isn't. Whether or not employment in the public sector is supposed to be democratic is not germane.

May 28, 2020: David Shor decides now is the perfect time to comment about how 'violent protests are bad, m'kay?'

That's a completely dishonest characterization. He tweeted a summary of a researcher's work because it had just been published. And he summarized it accurately: not 'violent protests are bad, m'kay?' but "Riots get Republicans elected." Given that his job was/is to get Democrats elected, the idea that he shouldn't regard this research as relevant and of interest to his followers (and his employer, and their clients) is crazy, and the idea that he should be fired for boosting the signal even more so. He also didn't "get into a pissing contest"--he cordially disagreed with someone who didn't read the paper.

I'm sorry, but that's tone deaf at best, and certainly not the kind of publicity any company wants. At that point it doesn't even matter if you're pro-black, anti-black, or just a smart-ass, or whatever. Just don't divert unwanted attention to your company.

This is completely backwards. Don't fire people for doing their jobs you hired them to do in the face of ******* crazy accusations.

I just don't see what people get out of defending this stuff. It's such a weird and servile attitude.

 

[mumblethrax]

Well, then you can deal with yourself, because you've been posting some hilariously bad nonsense in this thread. Including a ridiculous amount of just redefining reality by just postulates

Suitably vague. You're not taking on anything I've said.

 

[HansMustermann]

And that's again just your redefining reality by postulate. Because, I guess, screw reality, when you could be arguing your own strawmen instead.

His job at that company was NOT to get either Democrats or Republicans elected, and certainly not to be an influencer. (I.e., tweet and get into pissing contests about it.) It's an analytics company doing surveys and focus groups, not a Democrats' PR think-tank. (And even in a think tank, it's not everyone's job to talk to the public.) They^(*) helped Obama's campaign at one point, and then that was it. It's a client, not swearing fealty for life to an overlord.

And if you want to help a certain client do something, you do just that: tell it to that client. AGAIN: it's an analytics company, not a PR agency. NOTHING in their company profile includes rattling the cage on twitter, nor makes it their permanent job to help the Democrats win elections.

So basically you just do that arguing in bad faith that you accuse OTHERS of doing. You just flat out MAKE UP some BS about what that guy's job was or what he was hired to do, if reality doesn't help your case. Or, lemme guess, you never actually checked what reality is, when you could just imagine your own fantasy instead?

So yeah, hope this time it's not too vague for your reality distortion field


^(*) ... and I'm only saying "they" in the broadest sense, because the company didn't exist at that time yet. It was only founded in 2013. Both the guy in the article and the company founder had worked for the Obama campaign in 2012, which is why I'm conceding a tentative "they", as in, some of the same people, but that's not even the company itself. The company itself never had Obama or the Democrats as its clients at all, much less as some job they hired this guy for. In fact, contrary to your reality redefinition attempts, at NO point during his employment at that company was his job to get Obama or the Democrats re-elected at all. I repeat: not only it wasn't his job at that company in May 2020, but it never had been. At all.

 

[mumblethrax]

And that's again just your redefining reality by postulate. Because, I guess, screw reality, when you could be arguing your own strawmen instead.

If you want to accuse me of creating a strawman, just accuse me of creating a strawman. I know you're reaching for the stars, but "redefining reality by postulate" doesn't mean anything.

But if you accuse me of creating a strawman, you'll have to show me where I did so.

His job at that company was NOT to get either Democrats or Republicans elected, and certainly not to be an influencer. (I.e., tweet and get into pissing contests about it.) It's an analytics company doing surveys and focus groups, not a Democrats' PR think-tank.

It was in fact his job. It still is in fact his job. It's right in his twitter bio. Not everyone who works for an analytics company has the same job.

And if you want to help a certain client do something, you do just that: tell it to that client.

It's well within the purview of any professional in a field to talk to people other than his clients about his job and his findings, as well as other people's findings. Maybe you've heard of these things called conferences. It's also well within the purview of such professionals to communicate with the public. He wasn't attempting to "be an influencer". More dishonesty.

So yeah, hope this time it's not too vague for your reality distortion field

No, not vague. Just wrong and dishonest. And I still don't see where I've "redefined reality by postulate".

 

[HansMustermann]

So, again, just to make sure: you're saying that a company which didn't exist yet, hired him to work on Obama's campaign?

And that it was his job to post that kinda stuff on twitter, never mind that even his actual linked-in profile doesn't actually say anything about being employed there as PR influencer at any point? https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-shor-96548620

Yeah, no, you ARE just making up BS. Clean up your own act before accusing others of being dishonest, silly.

It's well within the purview of any professional in a field to talk to people other than his clients about his job and his findings, as well as other people's findings. Maybe you've heard of these things called conferences. It's also well within the purview of such professionals to communicate with the public. He wasn't attempting to "be an influencer". More dishonesty.

So #### posting and getting into pissing contests on Twitter is the same thing as a conference now? REALLY?

Plus, you still haven't showed that it was part of his job, or what he was hired to do. Because THAT was your claim: that he was fired for doing what he was hired to do. Just that people ALSO do conferences, doesn't mean it's what they're hired to do.

Just that people also do X, doesn't mean X is what they were hired to do. Trivial example: people also sleep, but it doesn't mean that's what they were hired to do. If someone gets fired for sleeping while on the clock, it doesn't mean they were fired for doing what they were hired to do.

Yeah, more BS and dishonesty, but on your part.

 

[mumblethrax]

So, again, just to make sure: you're saying that a company which didn't exist yet, hired him to work on Obama's campaign?

No. What? I'm saying they hired him to work on Democratic campaigns. You realize that Obama is not the only Democrat who has ever needed analytics, right?

And that it was his job to post that kinda stuff on twitter, never mind that even his actual linked-in profile doesn't actually say anything about being employed there as PR influencer at any point?

What the ****? I didn't say he was hired to post on twitter. I said it's perfectly reasonable for a data scientist to talk about his work on twitter. Just as it's perfectly reasonable for a software engineer to talk about her work on twitter, or a journalist to talk about his work on twitter, etc.

Yeah, no, you ARE just making up BS. Clean up your own act before accusing others of being dishonest, silly.

I don't need to. I'm capable of reading for comprehension.

 

[HansMustermann]

Also, let's look at another important aspect: do we know if he was fired for his opinions? Even according to the link, he didn't actually say it, nor did the company.

But let's look at the tweets themselves. May 28 2020 was on a Thursday, and May 29 was on a Friday.

The tweets shown in your link are at 3:29 PM and 2:52 PM. Clicking on those tweets actually shows a whole flurry of tweets by him even in just those threads, in the following hours.

So... hmm... can it be that he just got fired for tweeting for hours in a row at work? I.e., for NOT doing his job, unless he actually was paid to be an influencer?

Also how about: the things you're allowed to do while on the clock reflect more on the company than what you do in your free time? Just an idea.

 

[HansMustermann]

What the ****? I didn't say he was hired to post on twitter. I said it's perfectly reasonable for a data scientist to talk about his work on twitter. Just as it's perfectly reasonable for a software engineer to talk about her work on twitter, or a journalist to talk about his work on twitter, etc.

Not while on the clock, and not for hours in a row. His account on Twitter in fact shows him hardly having any time to do anything else while awake, judging by the amount of posts. So, yes, he would have to be hired as an influencer or such, for that to count as just doing what he was hired to do.

Not saying it's not also what people do, even software engineers, but it IS a firing offense. If you spend your day #### posting instead of writing software, frankly you're taking your chances. If someone wants to find an excuse to fire you, whether personally or just to reduce personnel in general, that Twitter account complete with timestamps is just what they need. In fact, it's like Santa came early. In his pants.

I don't need to. I'm capable of reading for comprehension.

But not of refraining from just making stuff up anyway, apparently.

 

[mumblethrax]

Also, let's look at another important aspect: do we know if he was fired for his opinions? Even according to the link, he didn't actually say it, nor did the company.

His NDA prevents him from talking about it. His employer won't talk about it. We don't know it, but it's the most plausible reason, given how his fellow employees and some clients talked about his "racist tweet" "threatened their safety".

So... hmm... can it be that he just got fired for tweeting for hours in a row at work? I.e., for NOT doing his job, unless he actually was paid to be an influencer?

I still don't get why you're carrying all this water for free.

 

[HansMustermann]

His NDA prevents him from talking about it. His employer won't talk about it. We don't know it, but it's the most plausible reason, given how his fellow employees and some clients talked about his "racist tweet" "threatened their safety".

And that's exactly the point: you don't actually know it, but it doesn't stop you from just making up your own story and making up your mind that that's the one true gospel of those events. To the point of even balking at even exploring any other possibility.

Here's an idea: if you want to present something as an example of X, do stick to stuff where you actually KNOW it was X. Not just stuff where you think it's plausible.

X being plausible doesn't mean it's actually true. E.g., it's plausible enough that I'm either British or American, depending on who you ask, and people have actually expressed disbelief in the past that a non-native speaker would use obscure colloquialisms so fluently. But it's false. So X being just plausible doesn't really do much as an example of anything.

What you're doing there is nothing more than the argument from personal incredulity fallacy. It must be true, because you just find that more plausible, or conversely the alternative to be less plausible. It's a fallacy for a reason.

 

[mumblethrax]

And that's exactly the point: you don't actually know it, but it doesn't stop you from just making up your own story and making up your mind that that's the one true gospel of those events. To the point of even balking at even exploring any other possibility.

There are lots of things I don't know that I can nevertheless regard as provisionally true. All of science, for example.

Do I think a superstar Democratic data scientist who was no doubt regarded as a high value employee got fired without warning for posting on twitter too much? No.

Here's an idea: if you want to present something as an example of X, do stick to stuff where you actually KNOW it was X. Not just stuff where you think it's plausible. Maybe. Talking out the ass does not a sound argument make.

Reach for the stars, Hans.