Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't think conservative cancel culture adds any nuance to the discussion (as I have already said that it is much worse), I think you are just trying to turn this into something personal. I could not care less about finding examples of conservative cancel culture we both know exists. If you think trotting them out is "balanced", knock yourself out.

So would you say it is fair that you are only interested in talking about "cancel culture" stuff that you post about? And which as far as I can tell is basically the same set of cancel culture topics promoted by Fox News and right wing social media?

You just demanded that *I* post about right wing cancel culture, then ask if I only want to talk about things I post about?

You seem to be the one who wants to talk about right wing cancel culture - knock yourself out.

I think it is fair to say you want to engage in personal attacks and argumentative bullshit.

Yes--you are correct I am engaging in argument, which is the primary purpose of this discussion. If you consider it "bullshit" that I think the same exact things you seem to identify as a cancel culture "problem" exist in both right and left, then I have a strong difference of opinion. But it seems like you are not saying that--you seem to acknowledge the Right does the same thing, so I then speculated on why you only seem to talk about cancel culture as a left wing phenomenon. I then invited you to try and explore maybe some different sources of information that might expose you to other types of cancel culture.

I also think what often gets left out of this discussion--and that I have tried to bring up multiple times, is in virtually every instance I've seen people complain about "woke" or "cancel culture", they are mad about a consequence someone has faced for something they said, so I am trying to sus out if people have a genuine principled beliefe in consequence-free speech, or if it is a narrower thing that really just comes down to "I want to be able to say whatever I want, but I'm fine with other people getting in trouble for saying things I don't care about." The former, while I think still wrongheaded if you spend enough time thinking about it, is at least a consistent position. The latter is literally just hypocrisy where you want one subset of people to be regulated as to what they say and others not to be.

[Berkut]

I think my position is pretty clear, pretty obvious, and rather defensible.

I don't think your characterization of my position has any resemblance to my actual position, as usual.

I think society should endeavor to avoid stifling speech for everyone. I am not "mad", I am concerned that we are creating a society where the answer to speech we don't like is not argument about why the speech is wrong, obtuse, or even racist, but simply that we demand that the speech be shut up.

You are doing a fine job of that here - just implying that my motivations are secret racist right wing, instead of what I clearly stated was my views. You want to avoid arguing the merits of punishing 17 year olds for singing the Word in a song, and instead just attack my motives.

I think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

But that isn't what is happening - what is happening is that if someone says something, the response is to get them fired or punish them for saying the wrong thing. That is stifling to actual free speech, and I think it is important.

You are jumping from finding a particular consequence to particular speech being objectionable to the claim that all speech ought to be consequence free. This is an obvious strawman argument, which of course you know perfectly well.

If they had dragged the kid of out his car and shot him on the side of the road, and *I* found that objectionable as a consequence for singing along to a song, your argument would carry the exact same weight, because it is totally devoid of the context.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

Let us try to distill this to first principles:

Is there anything a person can say that in your mind, justifies them being fired?

[Berkut]

I think society should endeavor to avoid stifling speech for everyone.

So where do we draw the line and who gets to draw it? I'm a Federal employee, is it justifiable for me to be fired if I open a website called "KillAllJews.com", publicly under my real life name and note my association w/the government, and inside I espouse generalized hatred for minorities, racial slurs etc? (in this example imagine that in spite of the evocative name, I make no specific threats to violence or calls to harm in the website i.e., it is offensive but protected speech.)

We draw the line of course. I am not arguing that lines ought not to be drawn, I am arguing that at times we draw them poorly, and when we do so, we should, as a society, say so and endeavor to do better. And not accuse those who want to discuss it of being closet racists or secret right wing bigots.

We used to draw them poorly and allowed things we should not have allowed, and social pressure has changed that. People used to use the n-word in hateful and demeaning ways, and it is good that we have gotten to a place where that is not tolerated. The means of doing so are the exact same means I am engaging in right now - discussion and debate and convincing.

I don't think the lines should, generally, be drawn by the mob. I don't think it should be drawn by any mob, right wing, left wing, or no wing. Mobs are shitty arbiters of social conscience much of the time. I think there have been many examples where the left, who I think should be the champions of MORE free speech, not less, have instead chosen to stifle speech in ways that are both wrong, and empower our enemies narrative that the left is a bunch of kooks who are against people being able to say what they want. I think that is broadly untrue, but narrowly true at times - and when those times come up, it is reasonable to point that out.

As a federal employee it is perfectly justifiable to fire you for having such a website, IMO. More importantly, I would be happy to accept that there is some employment agreement between you and the government that handles just such a situation, and that there is some authority to judge when those lines are crossed.

As I said before, and you pointedly ignored, I actually think the University of Florida has and should have broad discretion when it comes to who they give scholarships to, and think they are perfectly within their powers as an institution to yank his scholarship. That doesn't mean that because they have the power to do so, them doing so is justifiable under any and all circumstances. 

They are open to criticism as well, for the choices they make, and more to my own point, *WE* are open to criticism for having a social norm that demands that the University of Florida take such action to begin with - I don't think we should care at all that some 17 year old kid said the bad word while reciting the words of a song, because it is logically and clearly not defensible to argue that singing along to a song is indicative of, well, anything at all when it comes to his views on race.

[Berkut]

I think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

Let us try to distill this to first principles:

Is there anything a person can say that in your mind, justifies them being fired?

Of course.

Singing along to a song, in my mind, is clearly not even close to that line, unless the song itself is intended to be offensive, I suppose. 

Just like saying the n-word while reading a book is not reason to be fired. If Random House books fired the guy who narrated the Stand to me for using the n-word while reading the book, would you find that justified?

[Jacob]

If the current Chinese protests gather further momentum it may be an interesting test for Musk given how Twitter may be useful to protestors, and given Musk's exposure to China in other endeavours.

[DGuller]

Yeah the thing with that cancel culture thing is that it seems like small isolated cases. Perhaps there's an unpleasant trend but nothing that is a systemic risk to the political system.

We go through this routine every single time.  Someone says it's small isolated cases, and then I remind people that the main damage is through the chilling effect on speech. For every person publicly being canceled there are a million people who become a little more fearful.

Many people most definitely feel like they are not free to speak frankly about woke issues.  They either have to say some politically correct inanity that in no way reflects the complexity of the issue, or just avoid saying anything altogether outside of safe environments.  Unfortunately such a chilling effect extends to politics and policymaking on the left, which leads to endless own goals due to groupthink.  Ultimately this leads to things such as New York City electing Adams as its mayor, or New York state tipping the Congress to GOP.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah the thing with that cancel culture thing is that it seems like small isolated cases. Perhaps there's an unpleasant trend but nothing that is a systemic risk to the political system.

We go through this routine every single time.  Someone says it's small isolated cases, and then I remind people that the main damage is through the chilling effect on speech. For every person publicly being canceled there are a million people who become a little more fearful.

Many people most definitely feel like they are not free to speak frankly about woke issues.  They either have to say some politically correct inanity that in no way reflects the complexity of the issue, or just avoid saying anything altogether outside of safe environments.  Unfortunately such a chilling effect extends to politics and policymaking on the left, which leads to endless own goals due to groupthink.  Ultimately this leads to things such as New York City electing Adams as its mayor, or New York state tipping the Congress to GOP.

My father spent much of his life using the terms "Gook" and "Jap", in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.

If you accept the premise at all that people should face consequences for some types of inappropriate speech, you are already on board with the broad idea. After that the question is really just where do you draw the lines? That isn't something with an objectively correct answer, but it isn't the end of the republic or the end of society that some speech suffers "chilling effects." That's really something that can only be determined by society at large. Angry people mad about it probably aren't going to be the ones shaping the discourse.

[viper37]

because I just have no interest in using twitter to get in culture war battles.

So, what are you using to get in culture war battles?  

 

Honestly--I troll more far right conservative family members in family emails, several of whom have "canceled" me, which is funny considering I thought only the left did that, and I engage in healthy levels of trolling on various message boards. Us Gen X-ers who got into the early internet unfortunately got adept at forms of communication (email, message boards etc) that are less popular with the younger generations.

My usage of Twitter is really more like an old RSS reader than what I think Twitter is "intended" to be. I think a lot of the "wars" on Twitter take place in the Tweet-replies, and frankly for most people I follow on Twitter, I literally never read replies--I read the Tweets from the actual person I follow and then move on to the next Tweet.

I find Twitter to be very difficult to follow as a form of communication.  I much prefer a board like this one.

I have an account because it was required for something that I can not remember now.  I do not think I have ever posted anything on Twitter, ever replied to anyone.  I mostly read it when it's link as part of a news article.

[viper37]

Here is an example of problematic woke culture:

https://www.ktvh.com/news/national/high-school-football-player-loses-scholarship-offer-after-singing-rap-song-with-racial-slur

High school QB says The Most Forbidden Word, and has his scholarship offer revoked.

Context of him saying said word? He recorded himself singing along to a rap song where The Word That Must Not Be Uttered Under Any Circumstances By White People was in the lyrics.

Now he has responded appropriately - he has apologized for such gross insensitivity and agreed that he definitely deserved to have his scholarship pulled, so I imagine he will get another scholarship offer somewhere else and will be just fine.

But this is just more grist for the "OMG TEH CANCEL CULTURE IS OUT OF CONTROL!" mill.

The University of Florida has withdrawn its scholarship offer for high school football player Marcus Stokes after he posted a video of him rapping a song that featured a racial slur.

Wait, wait, wait... Florida... Wasn't wokeness vainquished by the Forces of Good under the most supremely good Governor and future President of the US of A Ron DeSantis?  I thought these things could not happen anymore in such an enlighten state, now that they don't teach kids about gayness and transsexualism and racism and such horrors like that?

[viper37]

I guess my question would be--football scholarships have a very strong discretionary element, and people frequently lose them for doing things the coaches or athletic administrators decide is not to the best interests of the school. They are a special perk or benefit, not an entitlement. Is it your assertion that people who pay for these special perks and ordinarily apportion them out should have formal limits on how they deploy their resources? Imposed by whom? And to what degree?

Mind what you're asserting here isn't a right to free speech, but a negative right to receive financial benefits from someone else and for that someone else to be required to endorse or support your speech even if they strongly disagree with it.

I am with Berkut on this one.  The kid had his scholarship, it was granted to him.  He did nothing wrong, he sang a song that contained the word.

There was a recent case of a Boston hockey player drafted by the Bruins who, it was revealed, used that word.  But it wasn't in a song, and it was in a bullying case that lasted for years.  Among other things, he gave a black retarded kid a candy that was soaked in a urinal before hand and regularly hit him with his friends while they were in the bus.

See both cases are the same to some people: a white man used the n* word.  It stops right there.  There's zero difference between that (hopefully future) college football player and that scumbag who almost made it to the American Hockey League and possibly the NHL.

And I not so respectfully disagree with that line of thinking.  The context in which words are spoken are always very, very important.

[viper37]

While it sucks personally for the kid it's not not the rule changed overnight and the kid got caught out. It's been what, at least 30 years since it became a true liability for white people  to say that word in public. Then this dunce goes and records himself doing it, that's a double strike of idiocy.

The problem is a white kid who sings rap songs then.  It's not like there's one rap song with the word and he picked that one.  And it's not like it's the only offensive word in this kind of music either.  Derogatory terms about female abound too.

[The Brain]

My father spent much of his life using the terms [racial slurs], in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.

Why are you still using them?

[Tamas]

If the current Chinese protests gather further momentum it may be an interesting test for Musk given how Twitter may be useful to protestors, and given Musk's exposure to China in other endeavours.

True, but to be fair Twitter won't be the first tech company to lay down for China. Plus if it comes to it China can just block Twitter on the Great Firewall.

[Berkut]

My father spent much of his life using the terms [racial slurs], in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.

Why are you still using them?