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.