This is going to be fairly long as there's a lot of different topics in here.
Caley_Red wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:14 amBut who is this amorphous 'society'? Views are a continuum, not binary: there are certainly things that most people would objectively consider beyond the pale and I am pretty sure a group of random people would agree in near unanimity that comments such as 'black people are monkeys' or 'Jews are greedy' are completely unacceptable. However, this can't be used as cover to start bucketing moderate and even majoritively-held views as being unacceptable. I am not defending this Barr (whoever he is), I am making the point more generally as you appear to be supportive of the broader movement.
How has this ever been different? Yes, "society" is amorphous, as are the opinions of those within it. But it's not random.
You've picked out one example there where the chap's career made a recovery- probably aided by the people who enjoy his style of comedy also being broadly unsupportive of cancel culture- however, there is a litany of examples in which people have had their lives or careers ruined for saying things that are not objectionable at all or providing platforms for alternative views e.g. Bennet or Weiss at the NYT in just the last few weeks.
Suggesting Bennet and Weiss have had their careers ruined by cancel culture is wildly off the mark. Weiss has for years made enemies and been deliberately antagonistic; she ended up having pissed off nearly everyone she worked with. That's essentially career suicide. Bennet made a dreadful decision - and not the first he's made in recent years - to run Tom Cotton's op-ed which pissed off so many of their paying readership. Again, career suicide: don't piss off the customers.
Neither of them are "cancelled" in any way that means anything beyond "they're suffering the obvious consequences of their repeated failures".
Perhaps more famously, an attempt on JK Rowling for rejecting the trans orthodoxy- a view in which I would be comfortable in saying is held by the vast majority of people. Thankfully her profile is too high, the same can't be said for others.
The JK Rowling thing I don't think I'll bother to discuss on here. All I will say that I reject the idea that her views are held by the vast majority of people: she parrots the
extreme anti-Trans movements, plays a very cunning game and layers it with a veneer of civility, and has for years worked to diminish and demean trans people. But she's a great example - despite the large amount of criticism, she's still there. She still gets to say whatever she wants, on account of being rich and famous, and still gets to transmit her thoughts to millions of people. Cancel culture apparently isn't very strong.
Not to mention, cancel culture has clear externalities: it chills public discourse as there's a legitimate fear of the mob turning on you; having a conformist view to a doctrine which is constantly evolving and dictated be a small (but loud) clique is the best way to stay safe (or, indeed, not have an opinion at all). This was clearly evidenced in the public letter signed by a number of authors and academics which specifically cited: 'censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.'
That last point is exactly what I interpret you are trying to do by conflating moderate views on a continuum with a views that are demonstrably unacceptable (and for which legal provision most likely exists to deal with anyway).
Funny thing: I don't disagree with the premise here. It can definitely be weaponised, and it certainly will introduce a level of fear of "speaking out" - though in many cases, a certain amount of introspection before speaking out would be a fucking blessing IMO. However the Harper's letter was pretty comical, as has been the fallout - they literally voted to not include certain names (so much for free speech!). Some of the signatories have since tried to distance themselves from it as they didn't know who else would be signing it. It's all quite amusing.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2020/07/1 ... l-culture/
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/arc ... ch/614080/
From your response, I would bet the mortgage that you have a Twitter account and I would further wager you spend quite a bit of time on there (and social media generally); you're clearly trying to conflate Twitter with the general public and- especially when you weight by post count and reach- they could not be more distinct in their views: far more left-leaning, much lower median age, far more urbanized, far more likely to have a tertiary 'education' and far more likely to be Labour voters (or Democrats in the US).
It doesn't take Sherlock to understand that someone who talks about Twitter and how it works / how people react on there has a Twitter account and reads Twitter. It would be really weird if I tried to talk with any kind of authority about Twitter if I didn't read it. I can only assume everyone else commenting with confidence about Twitter is the same. I don't post much/at all on Twitter as I like actual conversations and more long-form chat, so forums work for me.
I agree that Twitter is not exactly the same thing as society. A couple of points here: I am not talking "just" about Twitter. I am talking about all social media - this is a Facebook story, for example - which is literally millions and millions and millions of people. That's a big cross-section of humanity. For all the ranting about how "left wing" twitter is, for example, there's a huge amount of right wingers on there (not to mention Gab, and Parler). Facebook is a cesspit where people have livestreamed right-wing terrorist atrocities.
You're over-egging it about Twitter: I've read the same pew research and it's not "far more left-leaning", it's slightly more left leaning
in the USA with an added bunch of "independents" (who are almost never independent, but that's another topic). That lower age is true, but that's because Facebook is more popular with the 50+ crowd (who lean more to the right in the UK & USA), and Facebook is still part of this conversation. There are definitely things that are different about Twitter compared to "real life", but it's not in a vaccum. There's always a "hot issue of the day", and it can rage across the platform, putting people in the spotlight, then immediately disappear. That's not new - it's a shorter, sharper, more organic version of the way tabloid media works, except it's not just driven by a particular newspaper's bias.
Finally,
This 'society' you allude to is nothing more than a set self-appointed arbitrators who aggressively rail against someone when their view is deemed 'unacceptable', they then whip up confected outrage on mediums like Twitter to pressure institutions, committees, employers etc to drop the supposed offender.
Ah. This is disappointing. The only time it's "confected outrage" is when the right wingers decide to use the left's "tactics" and do some Twitter/Facebook archaeology in order to get someone in trouble. The left wingers actually care about this stuff; the right wingers don't, but are happy to use the same tactics. I will never understand why the right wing refuses to believe that the left actually does care about this, but no, it's always "faux outrage" or similar. It's really strange and one of the reasons why it's near impossible for the two to find common ground on social media.
Anyway: Everyone has the right to hold an opinion. Everyone has the right to criticise. Everyone has the right to complain. Everyone has the right to demand action. It's free speech in action! What people don't seem to like is the ordinary person having a measure of the power normally reserved for the elite, and that's scary for some like the Harper's signatories. I am not dismissing the idea that cancel culture can be toxic - it certainly can be ridiculous, for example I saw people going nuts about Killing Eve star Jodie Comer apparently dating a Republican, which apparently invalidates all the good work she's ever done for LGBTQ people - but at some point cancel culture needs to be signficantly different to ordinary pre-social-media consequences for it to be taken seriously as a real problem. Cancel culture always references people who are still on our screens, still on platforms with a reach that people twenty years ago would literally have killed for, still raking in cash and prestige.
I would like to talk about the times when cancel culture negatively affects people who a) didn't deserve it by any reasonable measure, b) represented consequences way beyond their 'crime', and c) permanently impacted them rather than temporarily inconvenienced them. It would also help if they were not an "elite", but it's not a necessity. Essentially, what happened to Megan Fox thanks to Michael Bay, except as a result of "cancel culture" rather than an arsehole director. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but I'm sure they happen, and I'm fairly sure the people complaining about cancel culture are most concerned about the people whom cancel culture genuinely impacts in this way. I just would like to know who and what and why, rather than the tiresome stuff trotted out by people who've received criticism and don't like it.
There is no doubt nuance is hard to find on places like Twitter, and something about the medium also encourages anger and kneejerk reactions. But I'll be honest, that doesn't seem like an inaccurate reflection of modern society.
