The Real problem with cancel culture

[viper37]

Also just to pick up on the "bully" point. As I say I think there is a generational point on this. Partly that's down to different attitudes to racism - so in the UK there's been polling on attitudes and basically racism especially is something Millenials and Zoomers have zero tolerance for. For them it is never acceptable, while older generations are a bit more forgiving - possibly becase as they grew up it was more common.

But the other point around the culture of this is I think older Millenials are probably the last generation who could say they expect a distinction between their public and private lives as Malthus talk about. If you're born after 1990, you've always had the internet and more or less always had social media. As I say I think Foucault is relevant in this sort of distributed policing of social norms but socially we also created a panopticon and put kids into it where they could be observed at all times for whether they were following norms or not (including anti-racism).

And there's always been a cancel or call out culture on social media, especially during the Tumblr wars a few years back. That existed and, partly in response, to that so did the faux-ironic, racist/homophobic/misogynist trolling. I think both sides of that fight are present it's just Tumblr's in the real world now. It's also probably worth remembering that for all the excitement about the cancel culture side of this - only one side's elected a possibly joking, racist troll to the highest office in the land.

I would say that racism is well tolerated in leftwing circles, so long as it's one of them.The big unions in Quebec are (privately) fairly racist and mysogenist.  Publicly, they all condemn this, of course. 
They collaborate with far left political party that make a point of being feminist and anti-racist.

But they will shut their eyes on what is happening in their backyard.  Just like their allies will.  As long as the unions will supply manpower and money to help their "cause", everything is fine.  A women on a construction site could never dream of being supported by her union in a sexual harrassment case.  They just don't care.  Women are an embarassement to them, just like migrants, they will drive their wages down since there will no longer be a shortage of workers if they're all admitted.

Were something like that to happen in a right wing movement however...

And it a question of age.  I've met younger people just like that, and older men totally fine with the presence of women or immigrants with them.

It's a question of how well your actions are tolerated.  So long as the left will shut their eyes on the reprehensible behaviour of their "gang", there will be racism and sexism. 

Just like the current Republican party, were racists and sexists find a haven, it's a matter of encouragement.  When the top brass don't care, you're given a go.  It's like doing some sillyness in a classroom and all the kids are laughing, you're likely to do it again.  If everyone calls you and idiot however...

I've seen first hand how racists are treated inside in rightwing parties, and if the left was as "tolerant" as we are toward this kind of behaviour, racism would be a thing of the past in our societies.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

the real problem with cancel culture is that it exists.
the real question is how we get rid of it without giving the authoritarian souls engaging in it what they want

[Valmy]

the real problem with cancel culture is that it exists.
the real question is how we get rid of it without giving the authoritarian souls engaging in it what they want

The same way we have delt with these kinds of busybodies throughout history.

[HVC]

the real problem with cancel culture is that it exists.
the real question is how we get rid of it without giving the authoritarian souls engaging in it what they want

The same way we have delt with these kinds of busybodies throughout history.

cultural swing where the other side gets to be busybodies for a  while?

[Valmy]

Yes...well and generally avoid them as much as possible.

[Razgovory]

You really don't get it.  I said you should be okay with it, not that I should be okay with it.  If you want to engage with the rest of the class you are going to need to get up to speed.

Oh, you seem to approve of it just fine.

Do you have some sort of disability?

[Barrister]

So is this the "cancel culture" megathread?  If not, I'll declare it so.


The James Webb Space Telescope is due to be launched quite soon after more than a decade in the making.  It's capabilities put the Hubble to shame and should do some really ground-breaking work.

It's named after James E Webb, former administrator of NASA during the 1960s space race.  I do think that naming things after bureaucrats is kind of lame.

There has been a push to rename the telescope, calling Webb anti-LGBTQ.  It was the 1960s, and being gay was grounds to be fired back then.  There's no evidence Webb himself had anything to do with it, but he was the man in charge.  Activists found at least one NASA employee who was fired on suspicion of being gay during the time Webb was administrator, and it seems likely he would have at least known about the firing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02678-1

NASA has announced they won't rename the telescope, and of course some are now upset.

[Berkut]

This is another example of a tempest in a teapot.

This is why as  society we have to be better at actually quantifying the actual number of people the twitter mob represents, and for the most part....fucking ignore them.

There aren't as many as companies think, and they have radically less influence then companies imagine, and the right response most of the time is to ignore them.

This is definitely one of those times.

[DGuller]

I do think that many companies make the mistake of getting caught up in the moment of Twitter mobbing, and don't realize that they generally don't have staying power.  Tomorrow ruining some other person's life will become the fad that all the cool kids are into.

[The Brain]

It was a different time.

(possibly NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8

[garbon]

So is this the "cancel culture" megathread?  If not, I'll declare it so.


The James Webb Space Telescope is due to be launched quite soon after more than a decade in the making.  It's capabilities put the Hubble to shame and should do some really ground-breaking work.

It's named after James E Webb, former administrator of NASA during the 1960s space race.  I do think that naming things after bureaucrats is kind of lame.

There has been a push to rename the telescope, calling Webb anti-LGBTQ.  It was the 1960s, and being gay was grounds to be fired back then.  There's no evidence Webb himself had anything to do with it, but he was the man in charge.  Activists found at least one NASA employee who was fired on suspicion of being gay during the time Webb was administrator, and it seems likely he would have at least known about the firing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02678-1

NASA has announced they won't rename the telescope, and of course some are now upset.

Who is being 'cancelled'?

[Barrister]

Who is being 'cancelled'?

James Webb.  Similar to taking down a statue or renaming a building.

[grumbler]

NASA employees had to have security clearances, and federal regulations said that being lesbian or gay disqualified one from holding a clearance.  That had nothing to do with James Webb. 

Webb was known for his efforts to recruit more blacks into the space program (though that may not have been entirely his own idea, given who he worked for).  Against that, it should be noted that he didn't pay enough attention to ensuring that the blacks who were recruited had equal promotion opportunities.

[Gups]

This is another example of a tempest in a teapot.

This is why as  society we have to be better at actually quantifying the actual number of people the twitter mob represents, and for the most part....fucking ignore them.

There aren't as many as companies think, and they have radically less influence then companies imagine, and the right response most of the time is to ignore them.

This is definitely one of those times.

Nailed it.

[Berkut]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest-campus-cancellation-different/620352/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1aBPV2tVCBdG6NfpQxWUf0EuCZaVXTw83dKPm7oyWQrDB-p-hr10M7OAA

The latest in the ongoing embarassment of cancel culture in higher education.

Summary: Well known climate scientist is invited to give a lecture at MIT about his research, which he accepts.

Twitter mob finds out that he contribute to a Newsweek article in the past arguing against the utility and advisability of affirmative action in admissions and hiring of faculty:

Back in August, Abbot and a colleague criticized affirmative action and other ways to give candidates for admission or employment a leg up on the basis of their ethnic or racial identity in Newsweek. In their place, Abbot advocated what he calls a Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) framework in which applicants would be "treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone." This, Abbot emphasized, would also entail "an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants."

Meanwhile, Abbot's beliefs about affirmative action, right or wrong, are similar to those held by the majority of the American population. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for example, 74 percent of Americans believe that, in making hiring decisions, companies and organizations should "only take qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity"; just 24 percent agreed that they should "also take race and ethnicity into account in order to increase diversity." Similarly, in a 2020 referendum on affirmative action, 57 percent of voters in California—a very liberal state that also happens to be majority minority—voted to uphold a ban on the practice.

So, a professor and noted scholar on climate change was dis-invited to speak because the twitter mob demanded it. Because of course he must be some kind of racist is if is against affirmative action.

The kicker here however is that he wasn't invited to even talk about affirmative action! Climate change has nothing to do with his views on the subject at all, and he was not planning on even bringing the Newsweek article up...because he would be talking about climate change, not affirmative action.

Not that there is any such thing as cancel culture of course.