I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.
Want to see real cancel culture? Live in any of America's many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month. Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.
None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian nation" instead of "cancel culture".
Cancel culture also affects everyday people who belong to friend groups, workplaces, schools, and families. We just don't hear about it because the cases aren't newsworthy. People get suddenly ignored, ostracized, and bullied for being many things whether its LGBT, religious, atheist, or conservative.
For examples of people getting cut off or ignored by their families and friends purely based on politics, look up the "WalkAway" group, there are hundreds of emotional video monologues by regular people. Fair warning - it is a partisan FB group, but a majority of the uploads specifically name the cancel culture they experienced as a contributing factor to why they changed their political beliefs.
Cancel culture affects ordinary people's social lives and career just as much, perhaps more so than media figures who can rely on the sympathy of like-minded crowds to bounce back.
Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown.
That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend there's some insidious new threat to free speech while the real threats go perpetually unchallenged.
I think cancel culture is much worse for people who are close to the community tgat cancels them than people far removed. This is sorta obvious if you consider how much effect a community can have on someone by cancelling them.
Sometimes cancel culture affects people outside the community. And then everyone is on the barricades. But I think the real damage is being done inside these communities. Essentially the communities lose the ability to be self critical. A lot of these communities are trying to improve the rights of certain people. But this lack of self criticism makes them much less effective at convincing outsiders.
This is especially bad for reaching the people who disagree quite strongly. I think this is part of why the American political centre seems to be empty.
It is undoubtedly cancel culture. But some people will deny it because they benefit from it and/or agree with it. It is a trend that must be stopped before we irreparably damage the free movement of ideas that has enabled America and the rest of the world to flourish. If you cannot speak against the orthodoxy without fear of being forced into poverty, then the orthodoxy will grow unchallenged into a monster that eats even the people who helped create it.
I guess I'm so far to the left that I have a hard time believing in "cancel culture" as anything meaningful.
Take the example of Steven Pinker, given in article.
Those students explicitly said that they were not trying to cancel Pinker, and the goal was not to expel him from the association, but only to have the association withdraw special privileges that Picker was granted.
How is that "cancel"?
Now compare it to the calls to get Cheney out of office in WY. How is that not cancel culture? Or when Milo Yiannopoulos was de-platformed from the Republican convention - again, why isn't that called "cancel culture"?
My conclusion is that "cancel culture" is a made-up term used to minimize the negative influence of criticism from the left, even when valid.
> In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic.
and of MLK's grave disappointment with white moderates.
What I find fascinating about the current debates about cancel culture is that it ignores, on both sides, the fact that it isn't new. The only thing that has changed is the balance of power.
From a US perspective - In the past, social shunning and ostracizing was used as a way to norm the culture for the predominately white, christian culture. Cancel culture was literally being run out of your town, and/or excluded from social and religious events. This had a huge chilling effect.
Now, the power belongs to a previously marginalized group (lgbtq/minority individuals) to 'cancel' people.
It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways.
Where in this thread do I justify or emulate? Please quote something from any of my posts that would give you the impression that I approve of "cancel culture".
However, if people are genuinely concerned about chilling speech, then why are they spending so much effort to call out SJW in a tiny handful of big cities instead of raising hell about the overt and often legal discrimination that happens in tens of thousands of rural communities?
It's hard for me to take the concern about cancel culture seriously when the concern is exclusively focused on one side of the political/cultural divide even though the phenomenon happens far more on the other side of that divide. I have zero confidence that such concerns are genuine.
While you might not be calling for ostracizing the cancellers, plenty of people out there are calling for exactly that.
There's a number of terms being used ('SJW', 'woke', 'cancel culture', 'cultural Marxism', etc.) to denigrate and quell any kind of discourse that goes against conservative talking points. I'd suggest you go and watch any of the self-described 'conservative comedians' to understand the level of otherization and systematic invalidation of any views that don't match theirs. Then come back here and tell me their behavior isn't as much of a moral panic as the supposed 'cancel culture'.
The fact that it is majorly powerful self-described Christian conservatives politicians that are constantly pushing the 'cancel culture' narrative should be a hint, don't you think?
If that direction is "herein-" as the Deutscher would put it (literally "from outside, inwards"), then that holds.
This reminds me of the image some conservative posted of sticking a crosshair on their forehead and saying "this is what it's like to be conservative today". The irony is that yes, it is, because they put that sticker there themselves.
If cancel culture actually existed, there would be many examples we could point to. But there aren't. Louis CK was lauded by his colleagues and was nominated for a Grammy. Joe Rogan still has a very lucrative deal. Ditto Milo. Ditto anyone, really.
Cancel culture isn't random individuals telling you to shut up, or drowning out inanity. That's just free speech.
If you are a fan of cancel culture, you're free to express that opinion.
But what you seem to be saying is "cancel culture exists, but is not a problem IMO", given that you quoted several instances of it existing, and literally said "People from these last two generations are more vocal about their beliefs" (and thus, in their own words, cancel people).
I'm not sure what you are imagining as the strawman of "cancel culture" which you are asserting doesn't exist?
True. And "cancel culture" has always been the way things are. It's nothing new. It's just we used to "cancel" people for things like being gay or socialist. No one likes to be on the unpopular side of the social spectrum, but then again, no one is guaranteed a platform or an audience, only the right to speak to those who will listen willingly.
The quotation "cancel culture" may be associated with a particular tribe, just as the words "liberal", "conservative" are, but in all such cases the idea expressed is broader.
Just as the Republican party is big on personal liberty and the Democrat party is (I think?) trying to conserve the environment, today there are some people trying to "cancel" anyone who is pro-trans and others trying to cancel anyone who is anti-trans. I see stuff like this pop up in all sorts of surprising contexts, including someone who was convinced that "epileptics are all faking it", a parter's mother who thought I had to be lying when I said I was vegetarian, and some weirdo who began campaigning against all apps made in the Xojo programming language because he didn't like the company's decision to change the design of its IDE's user interface.
I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.
Want to see real cancel culture? Live in any of America's many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month. Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.
None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian nation" instead of "cancel culture".
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