"Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a mob of knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of a fruit fly.

"Being held to account" is only meaningful if the ones holding you to account are doing so in good faith, and via a semblance of rationality.

>"Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a mob of knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of a fruit fly.

canceling is a label applied to play the victim when people are being held accountable for things they don't want to be or by people they don't consider equal.

It's hilarious to me when cancellation defenders call it "being held accountable", as if the she\her anime-profile-picture pronouns-in-the-bio low-IQ types doing the cancelling are some sort of neutral indifferent court that persecutes all equally and without regards to wealth or power. As if the result of all that impotent rage is actually more order and justice and not random lone heretics being burned at the stake and more and more silent mass of people hating the inquisition ever more.

Courts and law are patriarchy, oppression dur dur something something letter salad+

Remember when a scientist was cancelled over a shirt? On a day of greatest achievement of his professional life? We remember.

> as if the she\her anime-profile-picture pronouns-in-the-bio low-IQ types

Man you're just coming out swinging.

It’s always nice when the counterpoint speaks for itself

> canceling is a label applied to play the victim

What word should we use instead then?

What word is suitable to describe low-context, online-mob-driven pile-ons / denunciations?

(Perhaps you’ve never seen that happen?—that would be remarkable.)

You just described it?

The problem, as usual, being that you are trying to describe something with a term where the common usage is just plain bad faith.

Unfairly attacked?

Harassed?

There’s lots of words…the common usage of cancelling is none of them nor what you described. The common usage is what no one in this thread seems to want to admit. And it’s why the same people who cry about cancel culture want to use it’s supposed existence as a reason to actually restrict others free speech.

I think a new word or phrase is in order because a new dynamic exists (a sufficiently quantitative difference equals a qualitative one) where this sort of thing doesn't just happen but is characteristic of today's web.

But I think I see your point. It's a phrase that can be used lazily and in bad faith and itself contribute to degraded discourse.

Appreciate that this can be a reasonable conversation.

It’s important to note that there is a significant portion of the people employing this term in bad faith who are doing now intentionally and to cause confusion. The problem with a new term is that it will, almost inherently, be co-opted by these same groups.

The attempts to mislabel are intentional and coordinated. I think you are coming from a good hearted place, and it’s nice to be able to have this convo, but a new label won’t fix it because the label isn’t the problem the use is.

> canceling is a label applied to play the victim when people are being held accountable for things they don't want to be or by people they don't consider equal.

Justine Sacco was definitely canceled, in exactly the way you are denying happens. There is a legitimate discussion to be had on the phenomenon, and it can't be hand-waved away by claiming it's completely legitimate. Clearly it's not.

Part of that legitimate discussion would necessarily include whether people are using abusing the term.

The fact that real things happen doesn’t make using the same term to describe not real things happening acceptable.

I can’t call out of work because there was a blizzard if there wasn’t a blizzard recently where I actually live

I agree that misuse of the term is a concern, but it's of far lesser concern than of people's lives being ruined (often without justification) by mobs.

Cancel culture is a real thing. It's a new thing enabled by the structure of the systems we've only just created. I think a label is justified (even if this one kind of sucks). And of course concept creep will find this label weaponized almost as soon as it's been created.

That's kind of the era we live in: bad faith abuse of language by the extremists on all sides.

There's a middle ground here, but the argument you're making is essentially the same for the rule of elites as arbiters on what constitutes good faith and rationality on a society. These are emergent properties that come from free speech, and it's frustrating to me that free speech advocates aren't making this argument. I'm cognizant of Twitter occupying this mindshare as a "public forum" while being private, but even then, "canceling" is an emergent seizure of power, and while damaging, all the arguments decrying it seem off the mark to me.

Certainly there is room for some form of group response to bad behaviour. The Will Smith slap is a good example of something that was fairly roundly condemned, and I think we had sufficient evidence from which to form an opinion. Interesting to note the lack of 'accountability' forced on him in this case however.

Not sure where your 'rule of elites' angle into play here, good faith and rationality are things that are debated and roughly agreed upon within societies and institutions (perhaps I do agree with your statement "These are emergent properties that come from free speech"). My point(s) were explicitly that: - Cancellation often happens with ill intent from bad actors: partisan, one sided policies that don't apply to 'their side'. You'll see little in the way of due process, benefit of the doubt / chairitable intepretation. - That combined with reactionism and little desire to combat base stereotypes, makes an easily weaponizable army.

I found Jonathan Haidt's description of cancel culture to be on the mark. It's all about intimidation: Not just for the one being cancelled, but of everyone else who's watching. It's a prelude to a wave of self-censorship.

> Interesting to note the lack of 'accountability' forced on him in this case however.

He got banned from all Academy events for 10 years

Exactly, that's barely a slap on the wrist for an assault filmed in front of millions of people.

> "Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a mob of knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of a fruit fly.

Why not? How much time and effort have to go in to recognizing shitty behavior (cat calling, brown face, jerking off in front of someone without consent, etc)?

Besides, if they have such a short attention span, they can't cancel anyone -- canceling only works if you keep shunning them for a long period of time.

As a great example - the Covington kid video.

If you watch the full, unedited video it's actually very easy to see the situation was far more complex than the media portrayed it to be: A crowd of young kids wearing Trump hats (distateful to say the least, and a powderkeg of a situation), some _actual_ black supremacists (the Black Israelites) spouting off some real hate, and a smaller group of indigenous protesters. This was a recipe for bad interactions, but in reality the kid (Nicholas Sandmann) that got all the online hate appeared to be trying to keep the peace (getting his friend to stop doing the tomahawk chop), and was confronted somewhat aggressively by a grown adult (Nathan Phillips).

There's more nuance to be had of course (and those kids should not have been there, wow!), but the media got it completely backwards based on some very creative editing apparently to support a given narrative.

Cancel culture in this case turned the mob against that kid. With little to no understanding of the actual situation, and based only on the most superficial stereotypes (red trump hat, conservative, probably doesn't like indigenous people, etc). I'll admit even I fell for that trap before I watched the whole video. It is simply unfair and inappropriate to target a CHILD who happened to get caught up in this crazyness. We have a young offenders act in my country for exactly this reason. And the amount of hate he got was incredible.

So yes, cancel culture has, does, and will continue to make mistakes. "How much time and effort" should you go to to not ruin an innocent person's life?

I don't know, but you should at the very least make an effort to get informed on the situation via multiple sources before you break out the daggers. And be aware that you're being fed a diet of what is often corporate misinformation.

I think problem is that 10 million people take 15 seconds to repeat something without verifying, the target can lose their job and housing, only to be proven innocent months later.

Arguably, the root cause lies with the employer that fires them or landlord that evicts them, but it take a lot of integrity to stand up to a large angry mob filled with ignorant and self-righteous anger.

No, cancelling is a bad thing. It represents a barabaric and ignorant Hobbesian paradigm of "justice" by the mob. The people who praise cancelling only do so out of ideological agreement with the dominant cancelling mobs and will be the first to cry if a mob of opposite ideological polarity did the same to them.

Anything legal should be allowed, this already excludes 95% of cancel targets. For the rare illegal 5%, only the courts and public authorities should be allowed to investigate and administer punishment.

>Mob lynching is a good thing. People should be held to account for their actions. Further, people should be willing to take responsibility for their actions.

Let’s be honest, cancelling is a good thing as long as you are in power and doing the cancelling.