Is this the new home of the staunch free speech proponents, those who feel like SJWs are attacking their way of life?
Basically the new "PC gone mad" safe space?
Basically the new "PC gone mad" safe space?
Cancel Culture
- Thread starter Buchan
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Certainly reads like it.Is this the new home of the staunch free speech proponents, those who feel like SJWs are attacking their way of life?
Basically the new "PC gone mad" safe space?
Does it look like that to you?Is this the new home of the staunch free speech proponents, those who feel like SJWs are attacking their way of life?
Basically the new "PC gone mad" safe space?
Tot up the numbers of the posters with opposing views and it’s pretty much the exact opposite to what you describe.
Last few pages have mainly been a half a dozen people piling on @Revan (with a side row about race as a social construct - again, one vs many)
Yes.... But maybe not so safe a space right now
If you honestly think anywhere on this website is a safe space for SJW bashing/free speech advocates then you’re in for a horrible surprise if you ever spend any time anywhere else online.Yes.... But maybe not so safe a space right now
I’m sure you’re just taking the piss though. Which is fine. There shouldn’t be any safe spaces on here where people can’t take the piss!
Thinking back to how annoying it has been having particular discussions on here recently, I find the crying in threads like these somewhat satisfying and hilarious.... It is what it is.
Moves to cancel certain people is in fact political correctness gone mad.Is this the new home of the staunch free speech proponents, those who feel like SJWs are attacking their way of life?
Basically the new "PC gone mad" safe space?
That letter was just fine. I thought you were being ironic by saying "shit letter signed by a bunch of cnuts". The only cnuts I saw in that fiasco were the ones who backtracked when pressed about their support publically.
@neverdie No it has nothing to do with PC gone mad, it's about not wanting to be associated with someone's words or actions, it's not new and it has nothing to do politcal correctness and it's not specfic to a particular political philosophy.
While most of us benefit from free speech rights we also all benefit from freedom to choose who we want to be associated with. If you say something or act in a way that can be detrimental to someone else that person or organization will most likely take distance from you, it's an old ass phenomenon. There is a consequence to your actions.
While most of us benefit from free speech rights we also all benefit from freedom to choose who we want to be associated with. If you say something or act in a way that can be detrimental to someone else that person or organization will most likely take distance from you, it's an old ass phenomenon. There is a consequence to your actions.
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I don't know what the general theme is that's been developing in this thread but my opinion is this.
Cancel culture isn't really a thing for the most part, it's called consequences. The world is always changing and we are adapting and certain things that used to be acceptable become unacceptable as we learn why they are harmful and grow. I'm sure people would've been up in arms about this kind of thing thousands of times throughout history. It wasn't too long ago on this very forum that the words faggot and spastic were used quite frequently.
Some of these people 100% deserve their careers to be over for what they've done and I can completely understand a company not wanting to be associated with some behaviour. The problem is a lot of people seem to want to double down on their original 'offence' (which may explain the mentality of doing it in the first place) and decrying a cancel culture where you cannot do anything right these days. If half of these people just straight up apologised and said they didn't know enough about the situation/topic and will make an effort to educate themselves in the future I'm sure it would come across a lot better. That guy who abused the Asian family the other day basically just wheeled out an apology template and everyone can see straight through it.
Cancel culture isn't really a thing for the most part, it's called consequences. The world is always changing and we are adapting and certain things that used to be acceptable become unacceptable as we learn why they are harmful and grow. I'm sure people would've been up in arms about this kind of thing thousands of times throughout history. It wasn't too long ago on this very forum that the words faggot and spastic were used quite frequently.
Some of these people 100% deserve their careers to be over for what they've done and I can completely understand a company not wanting to be associated with some behaviour. The problem is a lot of people seem to want to double down on their original 'offence' (which may explain the mentality of doing it in the first place) and decrying a cancel culture where you cannot do anything right these days. If half of these people just straight up apologised and said they didn't know enough about the situation/topic and will make an effort to educate themselves in the future I'm sure it would come across a lot better. That guy who abused the Asian family the other day basically just wheeled out an apology template and everyone can see straight through it.
No I was being jokingly cantankerous. I actually really like some of the people who signed it, however, take off the signatures and it reads as a terribly self-serving, vague, and generally unhelpful pre-emptive strike against criticism (at least much of it does). That it was signed by some awful people who have strongly engaged in the silencing of even reasonable dissent, gives it a flavour of hypocrisy and elitism.
I mean feck your "dire professional consequences" when you yourself contribute to a climate of white supremacy, transphobia or other bigotry. These things have actual dire consequences.
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There are several reasons why cancel culture is a genuine menace:
- Angry internet mobs can get it horribly wrong (see this); mob justice is not social justice
- Cancel culture distracts from real, systemic issues by dumbing down discourse to trivial microaggressions
- It provides ripe fodder for the radical right while causing dissent within the left
- The movement seems to be captured humourless, obnoxious and (mostly) white pricks. They just don't seem to be pleasant humans - perhaps because they believe signalling virtue is more important than being virtuous.
I think that’s a fair summary. Although I definitely think people are more likely to get “cancelled” for expressing right wing opinions than left wing opinions. All the really nasty stuff anyone could come up with would always tend to skew right. I actually can’t think of a left wing opinion that would be problematic for an employer. We know how important the “woke dollar” is for big corporations by the way their marketing departments were desperate to show how much they cared about BLM.
It's due to the nature of these right wing opinions, these right wing opinions are generally societal and target specific group of peoples which is a lot more problematic for a business that will generally target these same groups of people as potential clients, controversial left wing opinion are generally economic. People are rarely cancelled because they claimed that taxes should be banned or because they want a small government, they are cancelled because they claimed that black people are sub humans, gays are aberrations or women should focus on the kitchen and bed activities.
Edit: Also I'm pretty sure that there is significantly more right wing and far right commentators that are platformed on large media than there is far left or anarchists. We are so used to the former that we don't even notice it anymore.
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These are the biggest issues as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the emergence of cancel culture, SJWs etc has brought with it a rise in extreme viewpoints in society and even mainstream politics.
Trying to prevent open discussion and debate by simply shouting louder than the other side only serves to entrench people further in their existing views.
Yeah, exactly. That’s basically what I said. Left leaning people don’t have problematic opinions, that would make their employers uncomfortable. Some right leaning people do. Although we both know that people have been cancelled for far less outrageous opinions than the examples you mention there.
Although, thinking about it, left leaning people may not get sacked but they definitely get “cancelled” in the sense of social media crucifixion. A lot of the more vicious twitter pile ons you see involve essentially left leaning people turning on each other. It’s very unusual for anyone to lose their job as a result but I’d say it’s still pretty unpleasant to be the bottom of the pile on.
I don't disagree with this except online mobs are inherently bad for everyone and everything.
The BDS movement. Anything critical of Israel/Saudi in genereal in the US and UK. China, too, as the market is so large.
Interesting. Don’t know much about any of that but will take your word for it.
EDIT: Actually, mentioning China makes me think of Mesut Ozil. He suffered real life consequences for expressing an essentially “left” opinion, didn’t he? So it does happen.
On your second paragraph, they often don't even get cancelled since they are not platformed because their ideas go against media moguls interests. You really see them around elections but they disappear after that.
Yep, also I'll add unionizing to the list in the US.
Kaepernick's career was basically ended too.
Differences always exist. But I very much doubt that what's the ideological accompaniment of an anti-liberal pushback over here is the truth elsewhere.
Anyway, we've reached the limits of what anecdotal evidence can bring to a discussion. I said above why the ideological framework you put your account in makes me mistrust its accuracy and the conclusions drawn from it, little more to say.
That would be this Silicon Valley (six years on)?
Great example! Yeah, I think I’ll take back the idea that only right wing people get cancelled. They’re definitely more likely to but that’s also because they’re more likely to have genuinely problematic opinions.
Online mobs are mainly irrelevant, particularly since people are generally thinking about Facebook and Twitter because when you do you are basically focusing on throwaway comments that are never reasoned and can't be contextualized. Your point would for example not work for Redcafe or thousands of other discussion forums where people will discuss things ad nauseum and try to give as much context and proof to what they are saying and you will also notice that people are rarely "cancelled" based on reasonable opinions shared on these forums.
Personally my observation is that a certain amount of people will go on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and make controversial statements that they didn't bother contextualized. In my opinion when you do that you are in the wrong because you purposely used that format to reach an extremely large amount of people and made a statement that you can't support on that platform even if you added the intellectual capacity to do so, some things require depth while Twitter and Facebook are shallow medias.
Agree. Don't get me wrong I am not in support of people being able to speak freely without consequences. Just that if you want to post publically you need to have thick skin and its not always necesary to engage in a dialogue.Speaking of demanding apologies (coupled with legal threats) and generally threatening others' ability to speak freely, here is a one of the signatories of that shitheaded Harper's letter doing just that:
Put in context: Mcgarry had suggested J.K Rowling "defends abusive misogynist trolls". J.K Rowling had tweeted that an account named "Brian Spanner" was a "good man". "Brian Spanner" has a long history of abusive misogynist tweets.
It's not just woke, liberal-lefty, marxist-millennial, echo-Corbyn-chambers that are trying to stifle this shit. The nasty bigoted fecks with Billions of money, who sign letters demanding to be heard are also doing this shit. In fact everyone is doing this shit - you shout your horrible views and tell others to shut up about their own horrible views. Social media has only ever been a tool of amplification don't mistake it for a logic detector.
But I agree people of every disposition try to shut down and bully. Trump is a classic example and a poster boy for spouting veiled racism and all manner of false and bigoted things and still getting away with it, horrifying and being celebrated in equal measure. But he certainly goes by the mantra that the bigger the lie the easier it is to fool people. He also has so many millions who love his right wing non-PC contrarian standing up to the liberal establisment (all bullshit) tough guy persona.... its essentially neo-facism but many people are too distracted by the culture war crap. He has normalized this nasty stuff.
Essentially if you know your audience and have the power of numbers its rocknroll time. Just be careful to pick the right side if you want or need to make you position heard. If you are just a small fish with a bit of a wishy washy position you might be slaughtered.
I personally steer clear of all this public personal branding. There are real issues crucial to the world.... Trump for instance is persuing a strategy of collapsing a burning house (the American Dream) for personal power. Le Pen also came within inches of winning the election in France. This is terrifying and real. The sociopathy of social media clouds this reality for many people. Whilst Rowling is battling with shrill SJWs she risks missing the wood from the trees. Thats what is the most frustrating thing about all this.
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Good points but the comparison to BLM protests was unnecessary.
Here's the Times memoralising all those we have lost to "Cancel Culture":
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Rest In PC.
I wouldn't want to die on the R Kelly hill, too many chances of being pissed on.
Anyway to get a look at the whole article without subscribing? I do agree that the references to the BLM protests were somewhat unecssary.
How remarkable that I managed to spend four years at university without ever meeting a Marxist academic. I didn't even know any students who identified as Marxists. There is a strange myth that universities are extreme left-wing institutions full of socialist professors indoctrinating students with the poison of Marx, Engels, Lenin and co. Universities, like pretty much all major institutions, are most certainly not left-wing.
I had one and he wasn't liked by his peers.
What a load of absolute hogwash. Another sad victim of the culture war mirage.
I would reckon populist far right and neo-facist leaders around globe represents a very real and present danger. This is the existential threat.
I wonder if we will see Mr Lawrence doing a Jordan Perterson - sobbing on stage with Victor Orban talking about young men struggling with PC culture.
These guys need to wake up quickly and pick a side.
Here's your problem. What you put in quotes is literally a question that, to me, is referencing implicit bias.
Then you go off the rails and insist it's "literally calling them racist" when it's literally not as you describe. There is no attempt to "cancel" anyone, nothing remotely like "ruining someone's career" or anything like whatever you seem so outraged about.
Whether or not someone agrees it's a fair OP because there has been a history of discrediting and white washing particularly women and people of color accomplishments in science from Rosalind Franklin to many more hidden examples.
It's fair to suggest you might be gaslighting because
1) you keep misrepresenting the actual post
2) you keep prescribing motives you can't know but just feel
3) you aren't allowing for any opinion to be possible other than your own (that the OP was on implicit bias not specific calls of racism)
4) you really sound angry that Google AI head liked a post which comes off as pretty and rather weak on your part
"Publish and be dammed"...seems to be appropriate here!
When people commit their thoughts or actions to spoken words or for them to be published in newspapers, the media generally and increasingly social media, then its almost certain someone somewhere will get upset and disagree, 'call them out' or 'cancel them', or call 'for their head'.
The concept of 'Free speech' is great, but it never really existed and even if it did, it is now in danger of being totally regaled. Nowadays with mobile phones that can make videos, everyone must be very careful in what they say, and if they do use language which others will see as racist, or homophobic, or other sorts of hatred, then they must expect that it will be recorded and exposed, somehow, somewhere.
If Henry II's ( apparently) unguarded remark about "will no one rid me of this turbulent/troublesome priest.." which History attributes as the motivation for Thomas Becketts death, was an outcome of not thinking before engaging your brain in 1170, then what chance someone these days losing their head, job, income, reputation, good name, etc., for similar actions.
Perhaps David Starkey has a view on this?
'Silence is golden', 'mum's the word' 'keep your trap shut', is a world we can look forward to!
When people commit their thoughts or actions to spoken words or for them to be published in newspapers, the media generally and increasingly social media, then its almost certain someone somewhere will get upset and disagree, 'call them out' or 'cancel them', or call 'for their head'.
The concept of 'Free speech' is great, but it never really existed and even if it did, it is now in danger of being totally regaled. Nowadays with mobile phones that can make videos, everyone must be very careful in what they say, and if they do use language which others will see as racist, or homophobic, or other sorts of hatred, then they must expect that it will be recorded and exposed, somehow, somewhere.
If Henry II's ( apparently) unguarded remark about "will no one rid me of this turbulent/troublesome priest.." which History attributes as the motivation for Thomas Becketts death, was an outcome of not thinking before engaging your brain in 1170, then what chance someone these days losing their head, job, income, reputation, good name, etc., for similar actions.
Perhaps David Starkey has a view on this?
'Silence is golden', 'mum's the word' 'keep your trap shut', is a world we can look forward to!
I've seen it both ways. A lot of academics are left-wing and I think that goes with the territory, especially in humanities. Those who run universities aren't particularly left wing, although I don't know if I'd place them politically as the ones I met, including the Vice Chancellor, were mostly pragmatic.
At the end of the day, I believe cancel culture is all about ensuring good branding and nobody wants bad branding. It tends to ruin the brand.
There's a huge distinction between identifying as left-wing and a Marxist though. Most people on here who claim to identify as left-wing always seem appalled by the mere thought of actual socialism. Take the Labour party, for instance, which seems as disgusted at the idea of Marxism as it does about any other ideology. And as you say, the people who actually wield power in these institutions are most certainly not Marxists.
You're right - big distinction that.