Here's the thing: I don't think cancel culture exists, at least not in the form that is popularly disseminated. I think that cancel culture is one of two things, both of which are lumped together as an evil phenomenon.

Branch one is people rightfully getting called out and shut down for their goddamn idiocy. Justine Sacco is a great example, because she posted a dumb racist joke and then got fired. Why'd she get fired? Well, would you, if you were a person of color, want to work with a stupid person who makes racist joke? Maybe, maybe not. It's a liability for the company. See ya, dipshit. This is not a left thing, though. This tends to be led on Twitter by progressives, liberals, and unaffiliated decent people who are outraged by bigotry.

Branch two is weaponized discourse by the right. They plumb the depths of someone's social media and find shit someone said from years ago, remove context, sometimes even fake stuff, and they try to get people fired. Usually they target public media figures. You rarely see them going after a day-to-day person like a Justine Sacco. You see them go after James Gunn.

There are other, unaffiliated things that aren't part of cancel culture that also happen and they're their own boxes of rocks.

One example would be deplatforming, which the left definitely has done for idiots like Milo Yiannopoulis (as he tweeted here ). Ultimately they weren't even the ones who canceled him--see branch two. But leftists protested him and his tour where he threatened to out trans and undocumented students like a real piece of shit.

Another unrelated example would be targeted harassment. It's lumped in with cancel culture but it seems to be mostly about terrorizing marginalized people in public forums. JK Rowling bitched about being shouted at by trans people when she said horrible stuff, and a small sliver of unaffiliated people took that moment to say fucked up stuff to her about sexual assaulting her, but it would be extremely, extremely disingenuous to say that's representative of the majority of responses she got, let alone members of the trans community.

In short no one can tell me what the fuck cancel culture is, what its consequences are, or anything but it's pretty clear it's just a tired revival of so-called PC culture hysteria to paint reasonably asking neoliberal goons like Bari Weiss to fuck off as some sort of witch hunt.

  • DonCheadleInTheWH [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I've had a drunken screaming match with one of my friends on a midnight subway ride who couldn't comprehend why Black Lives Matter. It honestly took some time, but they're a smart, cogent person (just not very academic), but with enough prodding and massaging, she finally came around to understand and even attended some protests.

    Contrast that with one of my Facebook college mates who baits people online, screenshots their "All lives matter!", digs into their history to find their employer, and makes a public post encouraging others to brigade and demand blood. (He's brown and gay, so I get where his anger and righteousness stems from... but also your classic lib with a six-figure software engineering income who's invested in a gentrified neighborhood). To some, that's praxis. From a utilitarian perspective, it's just empowering the fascists waiting on the sidelines to lovebomb and further inculcate them into their ideology.

    So yeah, cancel culture exists. I just think given how many testimonials from converted chapos I've read over the years who were blinded into the fasc pipeline means we should hold out and not lump the misguided in with the misguiding.