Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

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>Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture".

No, it isn't. The defining characteristic of cancel culture has always been using collective online action to have someone ostracized from social or political circles, removed from their job or professional relationships, etc.

>This is generally a precursor to a bandwagon/snowball to de-platform the individual. This happens when a portion of individuals begin picking a side by taking action, sometimes out of caution.

Correct. that is cancel culture, and that part never happened in any of these cases. Simply calling someone names isn't cancel culture. If it were, every opponent of cancel culture referring to "witch hunts", "pearl-clutching mobs" or "Marxist SJWs" would be engaging in the very activity they denounce by denouncing it.

>The defining characteristic of cancel culture has always been using collective online action to have someone ostracized from social or political circles, removed from their job or professional relationships, etc.

That's because the whole thing is a moral panic imagined by liberals in the media who were mad that people could reply to them without the filter of the NYT letter pages editor (it was then embraced by conservatives as well for similar reasons and because "you can't even say X anymore" is convenient way to push the buttons of older conservatives). Most of the supposedly dire results of being 'cancelled' are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people because most of them are various forms of 'not getting as many media gigs'. Ordinary people can't get 'cancelled' because we don't make a living going on CNN or giving talks at universities.

Sure you can cherry pick examples of people saying something stupid on social media and their workplace massively overreacting (similarly you could find real examples behind the moral panics of the 80s and 90s - well ok, maybe not actual demonic possession but most of the rest of it was based on at least a few semi-real cases). That's not what any of the people crying about cancel culture care about. If it was they'd be advocating for stronger protection for employees.

The desired solution is of course always to regulate social media so that the nasty mob can no longer reply to opinion columnists and they can go back to splitting their time between writing poorly researched rants and trying to get academics who disagree with them fired.

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