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Cancel culture IRL

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Personally I think it's revealing when someone argues not that they're right, but that it's rude or improper to say that they're wrong. At that point they're intellectually dishonest because they know they're wrong, they just don't want any of the penalties that come from being wrong. The pearl-clutching is meant to distract.
 
Personally I think it's revealing when someone argues not that they're right, but that it's rude or improper to say that they're wrong. At that point they're intellectually dishonest because they know they're wrong, they just don't want any of the penalties that come from being wrong. The pearl-clutching is meant to distract.

Well that's universal.

Wrong people argue everything except the point. The internet has been running an experiment on that for years that has reached every possible level of scientific rigor in proving that true.

Wrong people don't want to argue the topic. They want to argue about the argument or they want to argue the broader philosophy of the topic.

If someone doesn't want to answer what two plus two equals but insteads wants to either argue about how you are asking the question or only wants to talk about math as a concept, you can be sure they don't think it equals four.

And yes TragicMonkey is 100% correct. The Proudly Wrong have a vested interest in keeping the discussion focused on the idea on being told they are wrong is "mean."
 
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If someone doesn't want to answer what two plus two equals but insteads wants to either argue about how you are asking the question or only wants to talk about math as a concept, you can be sure they don't think it equals four.

Not exactly what I meant. There are people who believe 2 + 2 = 5, and they're wrong, but if they honestly believe they are right they'll argue for 5. It's the ones who say 2 + 2 = 5 then argue that numerical values are philosophical abstractions and we can only experience reality through culturally-defined filters in our flawed consciousnesses informed by unknowable perceptions...those are the people who know damn well it isn't 5, they just don't want to admit it.
 
Not exactly what I meant. There are people who believe 2 + 2 = 5, and they're wrong, but if they honestly believe they are right they'll argue for 5. It's the ones who say 2 + 2 = 5 then argue that numerical values are philosophical abstractions and we can only experience reality through culturally-defined filters in our flawed consciousnesses informed by unknowable perceptions...those are the people who know damn well it isn't 5, they just don't want to admit it.

I think we're saying (roughly) the same thing from different angles.

I've, in the past, described the post-fact world we are in now as being the outcome of an earlier proto-mentality, that of the anti-intellectual performance piece.

Like, as an example, flat earther-ism. I've long opined that most flat earthers don't literally think the Earth is flat in the way you usually talk about someone "holding an opinion or belief."

What flat-earther-ism usually, I think, is backlash against the idea that we focus too much on "being correct" and it's basically nothing but a big showy act of "Lookit me! Lookit me! I'm professing an opinion that is absurdly obvious in its wrongness but I'm still leading a normal life!" with an implied moral of "Now don't you feel silly wasting so much time just having to be right about everything?"

Their thought process is less "I literally think the Earth is flat in the same way I think water is wet or fire is hot" and more "La dee da, it doesn't matter what shape the Earth is in my day to day life so I see some inherent value in showing you that me holding a hilariously over the top wrong opinion doesn't really affect my life that much to prove a point about not being overly obsessed with having to be right about everything."

The problem with this is obvious. Humans are rationalizing creatures and if you put on the persona of someone who is wrong long enough, you'll if not outright start to believe your own hype, at least start to break down the walls between what your persona believes and what you do.
 
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I'm not disagreeing with your general point, but if you watch the recent documentary about flat-Earthers (something like "Behind The Curve") it's obvious that at least the subjects of the documentary are sincere in their beliefs. It's genuinely fascinating, in fact, especially when one of them has conspiracy theories about her going through the community and has a moment of self-reflection about whether she's simply doing the same thing with her beliefs, but can't quite tip herself over the edge into "yes".
 
Is trying to get athletes fired for merely beating up their wife/girlfriend cancel culture or acceptable?
 
I'm not disagreeing with your general point, but if you watch the recent documentary about flat-Earthers (something like "Behind The Curve") it's obvious that at least the subjects of the documentary are sincere in their beliefs. It's genuinely fascinating, in fact, especially when one of them has conspiracy theories about her going through the community and has a moment of self-reflection about whether she's simply doing the same thing with her beliefs, but can't quite tip herself over the edge into "yes".

Oh I could be very well wrong about the particular example to be sure.

I tend to think of it that way because if you listen to Flat Earthers you get a lot of that backhanded "I don't like being told what to think" doubletalk where the focus seems to be more on intellectual freedom then intellectual standards. A sort of "I see my ability/right to be wrong as more important than being right or wrong" thing if that makes any sense.

That's why despite having to ask "Do they really believe X or are they just acting/pretending/performance arting" because we have to factor the reasoning/mentality in a little bit, in the end I don't think it matters or makes it better/worse.

It's the same problem I have with "trolling/poe." I don't care if you're being an ass ironically or for effect or just honestly an ass. I also don't care if you're being wrong ironically or for effect either.
 
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Is trying to get athletes fired for merely beating up their wife/girlfriend cancel culture or acceptable?

Neither, since they should be in jail. We should not surrender the legal system to the employers, or the mob. And I wouldn't want morality, or legality, to be set by the NFL, for example. Nor would I want it set by people on Twitter.
 
It's the same problem I have with "trolling/poe." I don't care if you're being an ass ironically or for effect or just honestly an ass. I also don't care if you're being wrong ironically or for effect either.

It's the "the OK symbol means 'white power'" thing. It doesn't matter if it started as a joke, and it doesn't matter if it's being done to troll the libs. It's still taken on a racist meaning and it's still a racist symbol.
 
It's the "the OK symbol means 'white power'" thing. It doesn't matter if it started as a joke, and it doesn't matter if it's being done to troll the libs. It's still taken on a racist meaning and it's still a racist symbol.

Ridiculous. What's next, the thumbs up sign? It will be if you go along with this sort of nonsense.

Don't be so gullible.
 
Neither, since they should be in jail. We should not surrender the legal system to the employers, or the mob. And I wouldn't want morality, or legality, to be set by the NFL, for example. Nor would I want it set by people on Twitter.

Yea but they are not going to prison or anything, so they spend a few months in the off season in jail, why should that hurt their career?
 
The problem is we talk about interpersonal conflict as if it were only one thing.

People who rail against "Cancel Culture" seem to think other people owe them voluntary interactions.

If you have a Twitter Feed, you call all left handers bad people, and all the left handers and people who don't think left handers are bad people voluntarily stop following your page... at what point exactly did that interaction do literally anything but exactly what is supposed to happen?
 
The problem is we talk about interpersonal conflict as if it were only one thing.

People who rail against "Cancel Culture" seem to think other people owe them voluntary interactions.

If you have a Twitter Feed, you call all left handers bad people, and all the left handers and people who don't think left handers are bad people voluntarily stop following your page... at what point exactly did that interaction do literally anything but exactly what is supposed to happen?

most of the disagreement in this thread is about trying to get a co worker fired, but that's a small part of "cancel culture" even though it's the most gray of areas i suppose.

even if you concede that everyone is entitled to the job they want at the company they want, still don't have to be friends with the person, follow them on facebook, subscribe to their youtube channel, buy their books, films, and merchandise, to to their shows, but their dvd box sets, contribute to their go fund me, etc, etc etc.

even if you used to do those things in the past
 
ahhhh, there it is!



https://twitter.com/ACTBrigitte/status/1356751302890557441

There's a legal aphorism that goes: "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

"Cancel culture" is just pounding the table, and it's employed whenever someone has rightly earned the public ire for their bad behavior. When you have someone like Greene saying truly indefensible, dangerous claptrap, there's nothing left to do but try to put critics on their back heels by screeching about "cancel culture".

Our InfoWars congresswoman should be cancelled. She's a dangerous crank spouting lies and pouring gas directly onto the fires of political violence.

The My Pillow guy has been ranting about he and his business being "cancelled"

To be clear, his personal Twitter account was banned because he was posting false claims about the elections, so started he using his business account to make the same claims. Anyone care to guess what Twitter did next?

Anyhow, he got invited onto NewsmaxTV to whinge about cancel culture, but couldn't help himself and started ranting about the election and Dominion voting machines... and they cancelled him!



One of the interviewers took his mic off and left his seat. Yes folks, even NewsmaxTV has a point at which they will tolerate BS no longer.
 
The My Pillow guy has been ranting about he and his business being "cancelled"

To be clear, his personal Twitter account was banned because he was posting false claims about the elections, so started he using his business account to make the same claims. Anyone care to guess what Twitter did next?

Anyhow, he got invited onto NewsmaxTV to whinge about cancel culture, but couldn't help himself and started ranting about the election and Dominion voting machines... and they cancelled him!



One of the interviewers took his mic off and left his seat. Yes folks, even NewsmaxTV has a point at which they will tolerate BS no longer.

I think their point is “be sued for $1.3 billion dollars!” Amazing how there being a consequence changes how they behave.
 
I think that is more because of the success the right in USA politics has in creating a new strawman/boogeyman, “cancel culture” as a replacement for “political correctness” that has lost its effectiveness these days.

I'm sympathetic to this view. Americans share a lot in common with a Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich, but that's socialism! And while Trump & Co. will cast themselves as opponents of cancel culture, they're the same people who try to get everyone from kneeling football players fired to silencing the Dixie Chicks. Nevertheless, despite their efforts, the Right cannot claim a monopoly on hypocrisy, and the main point is simply to illustrate that a canceling does not necessarily have a popular mandate.

@Darat
TBH, after reading through the actual poll, I must confess that I find it flawed AF. In fact it could serve as a case study on how to get the result you want to get, rather than actually find anything out.

The problems that polls generally have, and that professional polling companies fight hard to minimize the impact of, are all derived basically from the fact that people have a lifetime of experience with trying to be agreeable. It's something that's almost reflex, rather than something you can just turn on or off, just because someone said it's an anonymous poll. Anyway, the most important ones include:

1. People tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. If your language or use of loaded terms even vaguely suggest that you might agree or disagree with a position, they tend to agree or disagree with it too.

2. People tend to answer "yes" more than "no". Hence radomizing the phrasing of the question so half the people get asked the negative.

3. People tend to pick the top option more than the bottom one. Hence randomizing the choicing.

Added to that, anthropology studies have shown since decades ago that, all else being equal:

4. people will tend to pick whatever choice makes them sound like better people, or more acceptable in their community or culture. This can go to such extremes like one community telling you that yeah, they work the fields together, and build barns together, and all, even if the last time it happened was like before they were born. Or one tribe declaring themselves to be all hunters and warriors, like their culture says a proper man should be, even after generation of just doing agriculture, and only a tiny minority even owning a weapon any more, that could be used for either hunting or warfare.


Well, what's the problem with this one? (Their own source provided: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000173-7326-d36e-abff-7ffe72dc0000 ) Well, mostly that it goes out of its way to trip 1 and 4, by its use of loaded words.

Predictably, your link does not work. But thanks for dropping all this knowledge, maaaaan. Who knew about social desirability bias or that question-wording (and order) matters?

So, anyway, if they actually wanted to phrase it neutrally, why not just do just that: go neutral. Ask something more like, say, "do you think it's ok to withdraw support from a company or person if you find their actions objectionable?" I would bet real money that the results would be quite different, if that were the case.

A couple of problems. This cuts at the distinction made earlier between what one's legally permitted to do and what one ought to do. It also isolates the choice, ignoring the broader social context. In a way, it's similar to Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument (and concomitant vulnerability to the fallacy of composition).
 
A couple of problems. This cuts at the distinction made earlier between what one's legally permitted to do and what one ought to do. It also isolates the choice, ignoring the broader social context. In a way, it's similar to Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument (and concomitant vulnerability to the fallacy of composition).

Unless you ought never to stop supporting an entity because you find their actions objectionable I don’t see why it’s an important distinction. If there are you’re at cancel culture is ok sometimes and should be done on a case by case basis.
 
I think that is more because of the success the right in USA politics has in creating a new strawman/boogeyman, “cancel culture” as a replacement for “political correctness” that has lost its effectiveness these days.

You can see the influence even in this thread, people acting as if “cancel culture” is something new, something that only their opponents use.

Bingo.

If someone is caught on film screaming slurs, while hanging out of a company van with the company's name and phone number prominently displayed, and it's posted on Twitter or wherever, that's likely to end in a fully justified termination of employment.

In the other end, there's stuff like Gamergate, which was started when some guy alleged that his girlfriend slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review (a review which didn't exist). Or the teen girl that wore a Chinese dress to her prom. Those are just harassment campaigns - very different than the former.

Apparently, the first and third are "cancel culture", while the second is not for some reason. The reason being the supposed political alignment of the people involved.
 
Bingo.

If someone is caught on film screaming slurs, while hanging out of a company van with the company's name and phone number prominently displayed, and it's posted on Twitter or wherever, that's likely to end in a fully justified termination of employment.

In the other end, there's stuff like Gamergate, which was started when some guy alleged that his girlfriend slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review (a review which didn't exist). Or the teen girl that wore a Chinese dress to her prom. Those are just harassment campaigns - very different than the former.

Apparently, the first and third are "cancel culture", while the second is not for some reason. The reason being the supposed political alignment of the people involved.

The ironic thing is that the loss of a job is what is most commonly complained about, and this is only possible because this country has no labor power and nearly everyone is on at-will employment.

Something tells me that the "cancel culture" folks would not be supportive of an increase in labor rights that prevent an employer to fire an employee for off-the-job bad behavior. No would they celebrate increasing unionization.

In countries run by woke soyboy cucks that these reactionaries hate so much, it's much more difficult to get someone fired.
 
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Everytime anyone suggests any standards be applied to anyone at anytime, someone will be there to remind us about the possibility of someone somewhere applying the standards badly. I fail to be swayed that this is a valid argument as to why we shouldn't apply standards.
 
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