Cancel Me: John Cleese to present Channel 4 show on ‘woke’ thought | Hacker News Reader

Cancel Me: John Cleese to present Channel 4 show on ‘woke’ thought

theguardian.com

50 pointsTomte24 comments

> I don’t think we should organise a society around the sensibilities of the most easily upset people because then you have a very neurotic society.

Very well said. This is arguably what social media has done. From what people say and think, to the reaction to current events, everything suddenly is about the most sensitive, risk averse, neurotic interpretation. We need to be better at tuning this out.

The better approach was actually hands off moderation. We are now in danger of governments enforcing ID for social media because some people misbehave.

That is of course counter productive to any civil liberties, so the censors don't even have a cause at all. But you cannot blame politics or individuals here, these are the rules of public relations.

The first error was to ban whole communities because of demands from others. This will now be repeated over and over.

I would extend this and say anti-vaxers and covid-deniers are also a symptom of this. The "freedom of speech" group are clearly just as easily upset, but about different things.

The fact that parts of some governments in some countries support and enable these views suggests we're already quite far down the path to a neurotic society.

They don't call for other to be deplatformed. The prominence is mainly due to their opposition ironically, so no, they are not the same. This isn't a competition about who is the better human in the first place.

I'm overjoyed that finally someone famous has the balls to combat cancel culture.

It is a very prominent topic among artists, but there is also fear. You only need one unemployed guy with a mission to save the world from hate or misinformation and the whole thing can blow up. This is even worse then the eternal september.

"I don’t think we should organise a society around the sensibilities of the most easily upset people because then you have a very neurotic society."

Twitter in a nutshell!

I don't find him funny those days to be honest, a lot of his stuff years ago seems pretty dated.

"Woke" was turned into a pejorative specifically in some of the most historically vile empires because the idea of the masses absorbing, confronting, and exposing unpropagandized history was too much of a risk for the ruling class.

From what I've seen the most anti-woke places are the UK, US and Japan. Anyone that understands their uncomfortable histories understands why.

Most empires are historically vile. I think “woke” became pejorative because woke people refuse to debate and act morally superior to everyone else. It’s a very off-putting attitude

>I think “woke” became pejorative because woke people refuse to debate

Quite the opposite, the anti-woke are in the process of obstructing debate. In the US the response is the ruling class banning the teaching of certain parts of US history in large states like Texas and Florida.

Most of the US "woke" are pro-police reform and reparations. If they are "anti-debate" (this claim doesn't ring true) it should be easy for you to name one prominent "woke" commentator that has refused to debate history.

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