Cancel culture IRL

[Mumbles]

Why does it matter that's it's only a handful of tweets?

If I saw a handful of tweets promoting the modern myth that the prefatory language of "well regulated militia" carries no jurisprudential weight, I'd call that an example of "American gun culture" even if only a few people were tweeting on that narrow topic.

If I saw a handful of tweets saying that women must avoid orgasm until their wedding day because [Bible verses] I'd call that an example of "purity culture" even if only a handful of tweeters made that specific claim.

If I saw a handful of tweets demanding that some specific speaker must be deplatformed, I'd call it an example of "cancel culture" even if only a couple people were trying to make it happen.

In each case, the handful of tweets carries memes from a larger cultural context, and in each case they are attempting to shift the overall culture to be more in line with their own subcultural norms.

And if I saw, say, one post saying "Hey guys, Jim Henson's a violence-loving psycho" and a reel of Wilkin's Coffee ads, I'm just as likely looking at a joke as I am "the woke mob attacking Jim Henson!" The Muppets has disclaimers on a few episodes not because of any mob, it's because they're applying a standard that most people seem to be okay with for more brazenly bigoted stuff like Song of the South or the Dukes of Hazzard.

Worry more about the mostly right-wing crusade against "woke courses (or "social Justice" or whatever) in modern universities. Y'know, stuff that shows actual hostility to education, to the point of outlawing particular words and phrases (as Idaho did just the other day, joining Florida because of course Florida would rush into this)

 

[d4m10n]

Worry more about the mostly right-wing crusade against "woke courses (or "social Justice" or whatever) in modern universities.

We should worry more about people with approx. zero influence in the institutions they are trying to change? Um, okay.

 

[Mumbles]

We should worry more about people with approx. zero influence in the institutions they are trying to change? Um, okay.

If by "zero influence" you mean "state legislatures dictating public curricula through funding", which is in fact a very strong influence...

Which is the point. One one hand, you have state laws backed by the full weight of the legal system, on the other hand a handful of out-of-context tweets that hardly anyone reacted to at all. People howling about "cancel culture" are typically far more alarmed by the latter than by the former, which is, for another example, the same people howling about Mr. Potato Head seems to have no interest in the US president colluding with a professional sports league to have Colin Kaepernick blacklisted.

 

[Cain]

It's simple metaphysics. Twenty-year-old Alexi McCammond (never-had-a-real-job, non-college graduate, author of racist tweets) is probably not qualified to oversee Teen Vogue. But they didn't hire that person.

In a way, I'm sympathetic to employee revolts. It's a kind of basic socialism: The people who work in the factory ought to run the factory. Unfortunately, they seem to campaign for things that I think are stupid -- like firing Donald Mcneil, or refusing to publish Woody Allen's memoirs.

 

[Darat]

How familiar are you w/ Teen Vogue and intersectionalism as an ideology?

Teen Vogue is what the name suggests.

Given how incorrectly many terms are banded about I’m not even going to comment on “ intersectionalism” unless you give me the definition you are using.

 

[Stout]

Fair enough. But if cancel culture shifts from an organized effort by a large group of people to effect change to any amount of people having an opinion of something on Twitter I have even less of a problem with it.

It's really not about the wholesale acceptance of condemnation of cancel culture considering this is something that always has, and always will exist. All of this being for or against it, along with demanding precise definitions is just a red herring designed to waste time and energy as "cancel culture" is just a recent buzzword for something that we're all familiar with.

What we really have here is The Social Dilemma set trying to convince us that they've invented something new and it only gets interesting when it runs into the absurd like cancelling an editor for statements that they've already acknowledged and apologized for.

Speaking of absurd.

Sharon Osborn has been cancelled and, to keep this particular train a runnin' now "we" have to take an in depth and historical look at Cyndi Lauper seeing as how she lent her support to Osborn, who lent her support to Morgan, who had the audacity to doubt Megan Markle was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

[Darat]

It's really not about the wholesale acceptance of condemnation of cancel culture considering this is something that always has, and always will exist. All of this being for or against it, along with demanding precise definitions is just a red herring designed to waste time and energy as "cancel culture" is just a recent buzzword for something that we're all familiar with.

What we really have here is The Social Dilemma set trying to convince us that they've invented something new and it only gets interesting when it runs into the absurd like cancelling an editor for statements that they've already acknowledged and apologized for.

Speaking of absurd.

Sharon Osborn has been cancelled and, to keep this particular train a runnin' now "we" have to take an in depth and historical look at Cyndi Lauper seeing as how she lent her support to Osborn, who lent her support to Morgan, who had the audacity to doubt Megan Markle was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I’ve never heard this descriptor for the right-wing of politics, where did it come from?

 

[Stout]

I’ve never heard this descriptor for the right-wing of politics, where did it come from?

That's because it has nothing to do with the right-wing of politics.It's the title of a Netflix documentary in which former social media employees, that is, the people who actually created the platforms lament about how they've destroyed the world with those creations. It's worth a watch, I suppose. There was a lot af buzz around it when it came out a few months ago. All the young folks were glued to it.

It's worth spending a few minutes with Teen Vogue as well, rather than judging a book by it's title.

 

[Darat]

That's because it has nothing to do with the right-wing of politics.It's the title of a Netflix documentary in which former social media employees, that is, the people who actually created the platforms lament about how they've destroyed the world with those creations. It's worth a watch, I suppose. There was a lot af buzz around it when it came out a few months ago. All the young folks were glued to it.

It's worth spending a few minutes with Teen Vogue as well, rather than judging a book by it's title.

Yet as you can see in just this thread that it is the right-wing of politics that have made the claim this is new.

 

[Stout]

Yet as you can see in just this thread that it is the right-wing of politics that have made the claim this is new.

The only thing "new" about it is the use of social media which is in itself, relatively new. Cancel Culture is a term that is rapidly evolving and will probably fade into obscurity.

 

[Mumbles]

Yet as you can see in just this thread that it is the right-wing of politics that have made the claim this is new.

Well, you have to understand, this is really just used to rile up/grift rightwing reactionaries, much like "caravans" or Toupee' Fiasco's promise that Cory Booker would move "inner-city" people to the suburbs to destroy them.

It's also an excuse for ethnonationalists to fearmonger, of course - but that's more bigots finding reactionary nonsense useful than anything else.

 

[d4m10n]

Well, you have to understand, this is really just used to rile up/grift rightwing reactionaries...

This hardly fits with how the phrase originated.

 

[dirtywick]

This hardly fits with how the phrase originated.

something scary from black people absolutely fits right wing reactionaries

 

[dirtywick]

It's really not about the wholesale acceptance of condemnation of cancel culture considering this is something that always has, and always will exist. All of this being for or against it, along with demanding precise definitions is just a red herring designed to waste time and energy as "cancel culture" is just a recent buzzword for something that we're all familiar with.

What we really have here is The Social Dilemma set trying to convince us that they've invented something new and it only gets interesting when it runs into the absurd like cancelling an editor for statements that they've already acknowledged and apologized for.

Speaking of absurd.

Sharon Osborn has been cancelled and, to keep this particular train a runnin' now "we" have to take an in depth and historical look at Cyndi Lauper seeing as how she lent her support to Osborn, who lent her support to Morgan, who had the audacity to doubt Megan Markle was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

To be fair this thread was, at one point, about cancel culture is a new thing we should reject wholesale. Celebs losing hosting gigs for TMZ style gossip shows is little more than more TMZ style gossip.

 

[Mumbles]

something scary from black people absolutely fits right wing reactionaries

We've covered "how 'canceling' started" quite enough that, yeah, this appears to be it, so I'm moving to "why the people who whine the most about cancel culture love to 'cancel' people and ideas", like Colin Kaepernick or (what they almost always incorrectly think is) Critical Race Theory - as well as why people are so up in arms by the term "cancel culture", which they're using in a blatantly hypocritical manner.

I won't argue that the 1619 project is perfect (first off, the word "project" suggests an ongoing effort) for example, but the actual, clear classroom problems tend to swing in the direction of "My kid's teacher sold the three black kids as slaves to their classmates and had them act as such for a week to their 'masters', who they had to address as such at all times." or, yes, "my second grade child was told to denounce their own whiteness." The idea that the "founding Fathers" set up something that really was badly flawed in many respects is not really horrible, and frankly it hypernationalist nonsense to suggest otherwise. Putting aside the brazen bigotries, the entire thing was made for a rural, horse and buggy based society with no political parties, yet is used in a highly urban, easy transportation world and mathematically will lead to a stable solution of exactly two major political parties.

Remember way back in...two years ago maybe, when we were hearing all about how students are "snowflakes" who need "safe spaces" to hide from "controversial topics" - and it turned out they were mostly just mad at outright white nationalists being allowed to run around threatening specific students? Stories like this one seem to show right-wingers as self-described "snowflakes", to the point of using government authority to ban particular forms of speech.

(I'll also note that "safe spaces" can be very valuable, but they're supposed to be actual spaces to unwind or speak freely about potentially damaging topics - think of black churches on one hand, addiction recovery meetings on the other. But that's another topic)

 

[pgwenthold]

Because the firing is the harm.

If people got fired every time there were any kind of interpersonal conflict, there would be no more jobs. It doesn't justify the firing, so it's neither here nor there.

People aren't fired for interpersonal conflict?

In what universe are you living?

 

[mumblethrax]

People aren't fired for interpersonal conflict?

In what universe are you living?

Poor reading comprehension.

"If people were fired for every interpersonal conflict..."

Obviously some conflicts will escalate to the point where there is specific wrongdoing and someone gets fired, but given that she has zero days on the job, this is very unlikely to be the case here.

Which is to say, the speculative existence of interpersonal conflicts is not sufficient to justify the firing in general, and in this case, the idea doesn't particularly make sense.

 

[The Atheist]

We must cancel pirates.

We have pirate-themed lids' parties, and kids dress up as pirates for fun.

This is totally unacceptable - pirates were vile, murdering, raping scum. All books glorifying pirates must be removed from libraries and bookshops, and pirate-themed parties and sales of pirate fancy-dress costumes must cease immediately.

We must leave no sacred cows untouched in our search for an equal society.

 

[Stout]

To be fair this thread was, at one point, about cancel culture is a new thing we should reject wholesale. Celebs losing hosting gigs for TMZ style gossip shows is little more than more TMZ style gossip.

Probably. This thread like so many others headed off in several weird directions including an insistence that cancel culture didn't really exist. Maybe if we'd properly renamed it Punishment Culture, those weird directions might have been avoided.

Osborn's cancellation went well beyond TMZ level reporting and is a pretty good example of wokeness running around wearing it's underwear on it's head.

 

[Stout]

We must cancel pirates.

We have pirate-themed lids' parties, and kids dress up as pirates for fun.

This is totally unacceptable - pirates were vile, murdering, raping scum. All books glorifying pirates must be removed from libraries and bookshops, and pirate-themed parties and sales of pirate fancy-dress costumes must cease immediately.

We must leave no sacred cows untouched in our search for an equal society.

Good point. I suggest we use pictures of modern day pirates and attack with those "We're a culture, not a costume" memes followed up with a hard sell that dressing up as a pirate is yet another example of white privilege and copious amounts of racism accusations.