Scott Cawson, the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, was doxxed, harassed, and had death threats issued against himself and his pregnant wife.
His crime against society? Being outed as a Republican political donor. Not a crime, just exercising his right to participate in democracy. His ability to do so was subsequently attacked and stripped from him by brave keyboard warriors.
Death threats are an actual crime. They are not free speech. Nobody's been held accountable for that though.
This is the problem with modern "equality" movements. They don't want parity at all. They just want to tilt things enough in their favor so they can be the ones doing the bullying.
There are laws about this. If they're difficult to enforce then somebody needs to make a decision about how much anonymity to allow on the internet, and other such difficult subjects. That's kind of the world we live in.
You realize that marginalized people get doxxed and have death threats made against them every single day, often multiple times per day, and nobody seems to hear about it? Because again, they're not famous or notable in any way, they have nobody to call up to write that op-ed or have their signal boosted. It doesn't make the threats to their lives less serious. They can't afford the "private security" that people often say they're getting in order to make their death threats seem more serious.
Are you interested in stopping such death threats in general on the internet? It's doable, but you'd have to make some sacrifices.
Almost like how you have to sacrifice being free from criticism if you really want free speech.
What exactly is your point here? I know what you're getting at but dare not invoke their name. Sure, "marginalized people" getting threatened is a problem. They're not exactly without a platform-- they're perfectly capable of coordinating on Twitter and elsewhere to attack and deplatform anybody that dares oppose them. One of the more contentious ones literally uses the exact term "signal boosting" to issue calls to arms. So they're not exactly powerless either. America's "marginalized people" are apparently more effective than the Ku Klux Klan, since they get to intimidate opposition while masquerading as victims who cannot be challenged, lest they stalk and attack everyone associated with you and cost you your livelihood. We won't kill you, we'll just isolate you from your entire support network to ensure you and your family starve to death. Such magnanimous treatment from the uwu innocent widdle victim peopurrs! Better think twice before you speak out!
This isn't equality, nor is it a matter of free speech or criticism-- advancing a political cause through intimidation, violence and fear is literally the textbook definition of Terrorism. I expect nothing less though; every red flag of fraud has been repurposed by a certain demographic as central to their "identity," so why not normalize terrorism as a means of discourse while we're at it? Biden insists it's inbred gun hoarders we need to be worried about-- because we meet so many of those on a daily basis. Meanwhile, I have to play wordsmith with every fucking character I post online or my wife and children face death/rape threats and I get bricks thrown through my windows. You know, all the fun stuff the KKK used to do to blacks in the 60s. Remember: the people throwing the bricks are the real victims, and don't you dare suggest otherwise or you're next. That's just criticism coming through the window, and nobody deserves protection from that.
Your idea of marginalized people is a lie-- misdirection at best. Anytime white men (always white men) start wearing dresses and seeking political power, they form a child-sex cult, a hate group, or both. I once bought into their bullshit, but there's no fooling me twice.
It's anybody who criticizes anybody. Women journalists in particular, BLM activists, climate change scientists. You realize there's been a wave of scientists who have left Twitter recently?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/14/climate-...
I guess you're invoking something about trans people? I mean them too but honestly it's everybody.
That seems like an odd claim to make. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrested+for+making+death+threats&...
Nah.
The issue with cancel culture is that those doing the canceling don't necessarily represent a majority of people. In fact, what they represent by necessity is a group of people who have the time on their hands to respond in force. Further, the main emotion driving cancel culture is outrage, an emotion carefully cultivated by media outlets because it's a great way to make money.
Those ingredients combined don't create "accountability", they create a mob. If you need to be convinced that mobs are a bad thing, look up Emmett Till.
>Boomers?
Every generation has its issues. Don't fall into the trap of thinking yours (ours) doesn't.
You compared things like BLM calling out systemic racism to the lynching of Emmett Till.
Congratulations, you have written the worst comment I have ever seen on HN.
> There has never been a right to say what you want without being shamed or shunned
So... when the marginalized groups start getting cancelled, do I get to say "well they don't have a right not to be shunned"?
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
We're living in a new McCarthyism.
After all the things that have happened to marginalized groups throughout history, mean tweets are worse?
We're all living by the sword and dying by the sword called free speech. Conservatives are boycotting Bud Light. That's their right.
The backwardness of all of this is that people keep going on cable news and writing op-eds about various subjects and when they get criticized, they call up their friends at the NYT and get their opinion blasted to millions of subscribers complaining about a nobody in the middle of Ohio who called them a jerk on Twitter and got 10k likes.
Is nobody else seeing how this is lopsided?
Boomers?
Also I'm not sure cancel culture is a bad thing. It's just negative branding for what is essentially the first time marginalized groups could have their voices heard. People who are used to writing op-eds and never hearing any criticism of their ideas are finally getting some negative feedback and they're super mad about it. You get absolutely unreal outrage about that, like this NYT opinion:
> For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.
That is the first sentence in the piece. Unreal. There has never been a right to say what you want without being shamed or shunned. Shaming and shunning is part of free speech. Boycotts are part of free speech.
That's how backwards this whole "cancel culture" outrage is. Better to call it accountability culture, or response culture, or feedback culture.