Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Being canceled isn't even a real thing. It's just a phrase people use because they have to have consequences when they show their true selves. Some group of people don't agree with you? Show me an example of being canceled then


view as:

If you really think it's not a thing, here's an early cancellation. Pretty much everyone involved lost their jobs, and it was all over social media for a cycle.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...


My earliest memory of getting "cancelled" predates twitter where Dixie Chicks were "cancelled" by their own fans because they criticized the Iraq war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy


The show Soap was (literally) canceled for positive representations of homosexuals by people complaining to employers, issuing death threats, and etc.

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/soap/

> Though the show’s ratings were still good in season four, ABC cancelled the series because of continued pressure from the so-called “moral majority.” By the end of the series, Vlasic pickles was the only advertiser interested in advertising on the series. In They’ll Never Put That on the Air, executive producer Paul Junger Witt said, “We weren’t killed by a fearful network. The network had been incredibly supportive. We had been doing this long enough to understand that they were in a business, and they sat down and showed us — dollar for dollar — why they couldn’t afford to do it anymore.”

The people who are part of cancel culture now are literally using the same scare tactics that were used to suppress and oppress homosexuals and other minority groups.


> The people who are part of cancel culture now are literally using the same scare tactics that were used to suppress and oppress homosexuals and other minority groups.

More like people who complain about being victim of the cancel culture are the ones who were oblivious to it until they became the victim. Currently the cancel culture is being associated as some kind of PC culture outcome but it originated way before. The push back or critisim against it seems to be only happening now.


I don’t think so. Abhorrent behavior has always been abhorrent. The people using these tactics even often acknowledge it’s ugly behavior but feel vindicated (and even righteous). Some people are hypocrites. This is all just quite a bit easier and more visible than in the past. If anything has changed beyond scale and politics, it’s that people arguing against it are more easily heard.

You've already made up your mind, so if you're not interested in actually understanding why cancelling both exists and is a problem, you can probably sit this conversation out. You want an example, fine.

In many scenarios canceling is completely arbitrary, based on misquotes, lack of context, or total fabrication simply because someone, somewhere was offended and can get other people to act on their behalf.

In the best case scenario, the person being canceled is actually a shitty human being. I know such a person. He said some really stupid stuff online, was called out on it, doubled down on it, was doxxed and canceled. He's not the type of person who considers the consequences of his actions in any scenario. He's also actually stupid and not a friend of mine. I think he's as close to hot garbage as a human being can get without actually abusing or murdering other people.

However, this person still did not deserve death threats for the words he wrote. This person did not deserve people calling his employer threatening to burn down their building. The employer certainly didn't deserve that. His coworkers didn't deserve it. This person did not deserve his house to be vandalized; nor did the actual owner of the house. His roommates didn't deserve to live in fear and to have to deal with angry people maybe thinking they were him.

These behaviors are not justifiable. They are, in fact, less justifiable than someone saying awful things online. Writing them off as "consequences" is simply twisted.


Legal | privacy