I came to do this very same joke, but I see you got it covered.
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The progressive blowback against the term “cancel culture”
- Thread starter BAD
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I came to do this very same joke, but I see you got it covered.
You can't deny the behaviour I described exists. It very obviously does, and that's what a lot of people refer to as "cancel culture". I really don't see the point in debating about the term itself when it's the behaviour and attitude that's the problem.
????
You are the one who made a rule and said only white guys are cancelled. What rule am I claiming to make??
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Not sure what the problem is with how Boyega was treated. He made a decent point badly worded, people complained because it was easy to read as a wrongheaded 'don't feed the trolls' admonishment, he clarified. I'd say everyone moved on but here's this thread now bringing it back up because supposedly dude wasn't going to have a career because of some people being angry on the internet. Meh.
What annoys me is the assumption that some online rando is the arbiter of everyone else's decision. Like, you want to go on Twitter and state that you find Michael Jackson's music disgusting now and you will never listen to it again? Cool. Good for you.
But to say "Michael Jackson is cancelled" isn't just making a statement about your own opinion and actions, it's implying that you're making this pronouncement on behalf of the larger culture and everyone else is obligated to agree. It's insufferably self-absorbed. That to me is what makes "cancel culture" distinct from just saying "I don't support X."
But to say "Michael Jackson is cancelled" isn't just making a statement about your own opinion and actions, it's implying that you're making this pronouncement on behalf of the larger culture and everyone else is obligated to agree. It's insufferably self-absorbed. That to me is what makes "cancel culture" distinct from just saying "I don't support X."
Some people complained, some people literally wished his career to end over it. There's a difference.
I'm sorry. I thought this thread was literally about the term. My mistake.
To clarify one element of my hot take - occasionally a person will be canceled (eng. held responsible) with cause - say Al Franken - he got dumped because he made some terrible choices. If he were the boss of a warehouse or an office, he'd have been fired and nobody would blink. But he also helped amplify an important conversation that has done net good in society.
However many of the voices screeching their outrage at him and demanding his firing, were opportunistic and hypocritical political foes, rather than real people harmed by his behaviors, or even real people who disapproved of his antics. Liars, organized liars using a "cancel" moment to destroy an opponent. This happens a lot. Fortunately it tends to happen to people who sort of or completely deserve it, but we'd be wise not to allow bad actors to abuse important conversations for person, financial or political gain when their success actually compounds the underlying problem.
Dumb math: Al Franken being booted from Senate for embarrassing and humiliating actions potentially results in more and more dangerous predators remaining in positions of power as they fill or exploit that vacuum.
I hope that makes sense as it's a pretty fine distinction, but sometimes very visible.
I mean if his career ended in the time between the initial interview statement and his clarification then maybe I'd be more sympathetic to this line of reasoning but I don't really buy it here.
We can say people calling for that makes the discourse needlessly vitriolic if we don't have all the facts. Fine. But this level of discourse has existed for far, far longer than the idea of a "cancel culture" and its ability to actually end careers is effectively nil.
Frankly, I'm less bothered by the argument that his comments were sort of victim-blamey to Tran as initially worded compared to, say, the idea that he was getting a bit too, uh, proud for wanting to not continue to reprise his role as Finn in a future Star Wars series and instead move on to other work. The latter strikes me as rooted in racist thinking and yet that whole discussion was allowed to pass without this level of soul-searching.
I appreciate you.
My issue is that the term is absolutely used and encouraged by the alt-right as part of the normalization of anti-progressivism, so there being people who are in fact over zealous about things is not good enough of an excuse for me to accept the usage of the phrase.
I don't understand the Boyega thing being an example of cancel culture, myself.
Nothing actually happened to him. At all.
Like when people bring up Chappelle or Hart. Yeah, some people called them out on Twitter. Then, nothing happened.
People shit talk all the time, is that cancel culture too? When someone says Madden is the same game every year, is that cancel culture?
If the transgression a person commits isn't considered a big deal, then people will eventually get over it. If this person gets "cancelled" by everyone immediately (or not), then that's the people's choice, and only the duration of this "cancellation" is what matters. Who are you to tell people not to be upset?
Nothing has to actually happen to understand that this mentality of rushing to "cancel" someone based on almost nothing is extremely unhealthy and something society as a whole should strive to be better at. "Cancel culture" is just a term used to describe this mentality of calling someone out and passing negative judgement at the drop of a dime without actually taking the time to assess whether or not your judgement is correct. It's "pass judgement now, find out if I'm right later". It's terrible behaviour, whether or not the person on the receiving end is harmed by it or not.
Why does this apply to the posters responding to the Boyega interview and not to the words Boyega himself chose in it though? Surely the guy actually being represented in the press should be the one where this level of care is expected first, right?
I don't think we should accept the phrase. Too reuse the civil rights analogy- we shouldn't have slow walked giving African Americans universal rights, not even for one second. For "cancel" I think we should examine each case on its merits and keep an eye out for dishonest amplifiers and to be honest intelligent moral people already do that. Stupid or unethical people abuse it.
I guess always being in liberal places on the internet I've never cared about what the alt right does. I'm black and gay the farthest thing from the alt right, so I never have to question my intentions when it comes to online interactions and if they are dog whistles to a group of people that I would never be allies with. The most toxic interactions online I have to deal with online white liberals. We all know this self-righteous type who think they know everything, and think they're definition of how everything works is the correct one. The internet the internet really sucks for discussion especially on places like Twitter. We just need to stop treating some things as black/white.
Never forget
Never forget
People got mad at Boyega for a very badly-worded comment he gave to the press. Again, this was what he said.
It's...not great! When I read it my interpretation was that this sounds way too close to "just ignore the trolls" comments in online discussions about hate brigades. Ignoring abuse is not actually a good thing!
This is too broad a thing. Going by this, any time someone reacts negatively to something, they are engaging in cancel culture. Was LBJ cancelled when he lifted his dog by the ears? That was in 1964 and before the internet.
Which circles back around to why it's so popular for the alt-right to use.
100%
Hell like half of gaming side is cancel culture by that logic
This thread kind of reads like a bunch of people venting that minorities and other people just looking for accountability are being too uppitity when someone does something racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
The only thing I've gleamed from this thread is to never bother using the term cancel cause it means something so vastly different to different people.
The only thing I've gleamed from this thread is to never bother using the term cancel cause it means something so vastly different to different people.
As we can see in this thread, there are two effectively two different definitions of cancel culture; the effective one and the discursive one.
The effective definition boils down to, if cancel culture is real then why hasn't anyone been effected by it? For this understanding of the concept the phenomenon has to has some kind of measurable effect on the subject. How are they being shamed, punished, or sanctioned? If they aren't being effected in some significant way then cancel culture can't exist because it has no effect.
The discursive definition doesn't care about what the effect is on the subject, but what the effect is on the people participating in judging their actions. How does seeing a clickbait headline about a misquoted celebrity change how the reader views the world? How does it change the way they interact with others? What does it do to them? How does the act of passing judgement and actively voicing your perspective onto platforms of millions driven by unseen algorithms change the fundamental process of understanding the world around us? What matters is the ways in which social media has changed how we observe and pass judgement on others, both online and in person.
Either way it's clear that it means so little of agreed-upon substance that the term itself is effectively worthless at this point.
"Cancel culture" is just another term for people to try to make the perpetrators into victims. As already pointed out, it doesn't exist. Opinions on the internet seem to have no effect on the rich and powerful, so why bother shedding tears for them?
Right, "Not great". Worth enough to lose his career over like some people wanted?
How do you not see the difference between "That's not great" and "I hope your career crashes and burns because of this. Fuck you, you asshole"
No, it's not any time anyone reacts. You're being obtuse if you're saying you can't see the difference between "I don't agree with what Boyega said" and "I hope you lose your entire career over that comment".
Simply criticising someone, even if you turn out to be wrong for doing so, is fine. Calling for their career to end, especially when you turn out to be wrong, is not.
If this is what cancel culture is then it honestly sounds silly that so many people are complaining about it because this sounds like something that rarely effects anybody in any sort of negative way whatsoever.
This honestly all sounds reactionary to me. People don't like when negative buzz surrounds people or subjects they like so when people feel the buzz is unwarranted they call it cancel culture. Similarly when the buzz turns out to be 100% undeniably warranted like someone saying the N word in public it suddenly stops being cancel culture which goes to show how it is generally being used; as a pejorative. Someone is accused of trying to cancel someone until the "target" reveals themselves to be genuinely shitty in which case suddenly the canceler isn't a canceler anymore.
It just needs nuance. Which is hard to do on the internet where mob mentality is amplified.
Everyone is gonna have different degrees of "cancelling" to. Some think there's no room for redemption. Some are ok with acknowledgment or apologies. Some want more action.
What I hate is how people fight with each other over these details. "Wow I can't believe you won't forgive this person" "wow I can't believe you are willing to give them benefit of the doubt" "Wow you're such a shitty person for cancelling/not cancelling this person"
That garbage has to stop.
Everyone is gonna have different degrees of "cancelling" to. Some think there's no room for redemption. Some are ok with acknowledgment or apologies. Some want more action.
What I hate is how people fight with each other over these details. "Wow I can't believe you won't forgive this person" "wow I can't believe you are willing to give them benefit of the doubt" "Wow you're such a shitty person for cancelling/not cancelling this person"
That garbage has to stop.
I'm not saying there's no difference. I'm saying that distinction here isn't being born by Boyega, nor is it the worst manifestation of that vitriol I've seen in the past week or so. I agree that this sort of discussion can and regularly does pollute discourse, but framing it around "cancel culture" is unhelpful.
I think just like everything, the proliferation of activism and ideas due to the superficial nature of social media spread too quickly and for most people there's not that much depth or understanding about a subject.
"Oh, celebrity X said this in 1999? - cancel X"
"Everyone else is cancelling X, so am I! It's the thing to do!"
This is problematic. It's the same as something like the tide pod challenge. And aside form a small percentage of people, there does not seem to be meaningful discourse and "what did we learn?" scenarios, any discussion becomes, "If you aren't on board, you are a garbage person." (which is another thing bugging me immensely., if you slightly disagree, you are trash. I am a Xillennial, but I have never felt more out of touch)
"Oh, celebrity X said this in 1999? - cancel X"
"Everyone else is cancelling X, so am I! It's the thing to do!"
This is problematic. It's the same as something like the tide pod challenge. And aside form a small percentage of people, there does not seem to be meaningful discourse and "what did we learn?" scenarios, any discussion becomes, "If you aren't on board, you are a garbage person." (which is another thing bugging me immensely., if you slightly disagree, you are trash. I am a Xillennial, but I have never felt more out of touch)
The people who were banned in that thread were being sexist. Stating that women prefer to date men taller than them is not ban worthy. I have said this before. I have been in threads where that has been echoed. People in that thread said it and were not banned. Like do we need to go to the thread and post the exact messages that got people in trouble so people can see that you're bullshitting the situation?
I feel like I'm reading some people suggest that vitriol and harassment driven on the internet, particularly by people who themselves use the word cancel, is ok or unimportant as long as the target recovers from said harassment.
and with some saying that cancelling has no meaning and isn't real, I wonder what in the world your mind assigns to the term when you see it online and on Twitter from people who are using it in good faith contexts.
and with some saying that cancelling has no meaning and isn't real, I wonder what in the world your mind assigns to the term when you see it online and on Twitter from people who are using it in good faith contexts.
Cancel culture is one thing. And while I've equated the two in the past, the actual problem is internet shaming.
Celebrities can absorb this. Boyega will probably be fine, and the excessive bullshit that permeated that thread in the beginning is more embarrassing for the people saying it and this forum than it is for Boyega himself.
Internet shaming can be a part of cancel culture, but "cancel culture" can really only apply to public figures. Its human cost is when these same tactics are leveled against everyday people. You see this in stuff like the woman who sued her nephew over an injury and became an internet pariah despite that "suit" simply being a formality due to an injury. Then there's the time that the Steven Universe fandom nearly drove a young girl to suicide because she drew problematic fan art. This was a CHILD, who maybe had done something worth talking to them about, being dragged publicly over this sort of thing like she was a monster. You see all sorts of stuff like this in internet culture, and fandom spaces, where people constantly try to eat their own. Turning minor offenses, misunderstandings, or things that are ancient history into a public spectacle.
I said earlier in this post that celebrities can absorb this stuff, but even then there are exceptions when the fandom menace drove her off of social media. But even for non-celebs, who don't learn to distance themselves from this, when non-trolls and people posting under the banner of morality snap to judgement and use similar methods and get similar results, how can you not say that we don't at least need to step back and re-examine how these things are communicated?
Celebrities can absorb this. Boyega will probably be fine, and the excessive bullshit that permeated that thread in the beginning is more embarrassing for the people saying it and this forum than it is for Boyega himself.
Internet shaming can be a part of cancel culture, but "cancel culture" can really only apply to public figures. Its human cost is when these same tactics are leveled against everyday people. You see this in stuff like the woman who sued her nephew over an injury and became an internet pariah despite that "suit" simply being a formality due to an injury. Then there's the time that the Steven Universe fandom nearly drove a young girl to suicide because she drew problematic fan art. This was a CHILD, who maybe had done something worth talking to them about, being dragged publicly over this sort of thing like she was a monster. You see all sorts of stuff like this in internet culture, and fandom spaces, where people constantly try to eat their own. Turning minor offenses, misunderstandings, or things that are ancient history into a public spectacle.
I said earlier in this post that celebrities can absorb this stuff, but even then there are exceptions when the fandom menace drove her off of social media. But even for non-celebs, who don't learn to distance themselves from this, when non-trolls and people posting under the banner of morality snap to judgement and use similar methods and get similar results, how can you not say that we don't at least need to step back and re-examine how these things are communicated?
I think what Boyega faced is different from what Tran faced is different from what, say, Sarkeesian faced. It's also fundamentally not comparable to what, say, Chapelle, Louis CK, Joe Rogan, etc. face. Trying to lump this also into a single descriptor is not useful and only expresses, at best, the existence of a surface-level emotion and not the history and culture underlying it and motivating it.
People being angry on the internet is not new; flame wars are not new; racist bullshit is definitely not new. The biggest shift is how many people are actively communicating on the internet, but we need to be able to discuss that with analysis less broad than "here comes the mob again".
How is this correct when one of the examples discussed heavily on this thread is regarding a black actor being victim to "cancel culture"?
It's just a colloquialism for all kinds of performative, public judgmental behavior, especially those that not only target an alleged transgressor but anyone who doesn't immediately or sufficiently condemn them.
And in my observations those who practice it the most get the most crossed-up about the term.
And in my observations those who practice it the most get the most crossed-up about the term.
Keyword being "one"
This is honestly equivalent to "my best friend is black".
And even then, it's the issue of a man telling a woman she's emotionally fragile.
The comment you responded to was "This thread reads like people complaining about minorities speaking up"
How in the world is that correct when the main example and conversation point IN THIS THREAD is about defending a black actor?
Makes perfect sense to me. Because this is a much more common issue daily than someone suffering this supposed extreme case of cancellation that leads to firing, ostracization on some large scale and eventual forced seclusion.
This particular definition describes something extremely common, so hearing about it more seems completely reasonable to me.
"Cancel culture" is just a way to encapsulate the act of looking at someone negatively for something they did, as something new and recent and point it against what you don't like. Someone you like get blowback for something they said? Start complaining about Cancel Culture. Doesn't natter how big or small the infraction is, it's literally only used to describe when people you like get blowback of any kind, whatsoever. There's no set in stone definition, it's a made-up word people started to use to try and generalize the act of calling people out. When you generalize, you have a much easier time making it out to be some kind of movement or cult, when there's absolutely fucking nothing going on. It's all a matter of manipulating perspective, nothing has actually changed. The term has been co-opted by alt-right mouthpieces because it's a quick 2-word statement that puts the blame on "the sensitive millennials" and puts all the burden of unpacking all the criticism on the people who are calling out the person in question.
The term originated, at least as I saw it, in black twitter circles as slang for just meaning you weren't supporting an artist/actor/whatever anymore. Nothing to do with harassing or even communicating with them. Just not supporting them. Apparently it can mean anything now up to and including reacting poorly to a headline on an entirely unrelated message board, but that is how I came to understood it.
Yeah it's something I've been seeing a lot from our so-called "allies". They say they support you and such but as soon as it affects something they like and enjoy, like say their favorite comedian making a transphobic joke, suddenly they're like "Well actually...."
Janet Jackson being cancelled because Justin Timberlake screwed up and exposed her boob on live television?
*crickets*
Powerful white men being cancelled for being sexist creeps or racist asshats?
*crickets*
Powerful white men being cancelled for being sexist creeps or racist asshats?
Yeah. I was under the impression that it came from the gay community, but black Twitter sounds plausible too.
I can sympathize with the sentiment. It's the reaction to the Apu documentary that tends to stick to me, and at that moment it had me wondering if all white allies are just the wrong cartoon away from betrayal. No one was saying that it was wrong to watch The Simpsons or that it had to be cancelled because of Apu, but you still had a flood of people talking about how this documentary made by an Indian guy about Indian representation is just virtue signalling, or how racism is obviously okay when The Simpsons is doing it.
Trans people definitely have it way worse on that front, though. I had someone at work advise me of a co-worker's preferred pronouns, and prefaced it with "I know, it's the 21st century" like it was some ridiculous and arduous task to just not misgender this person. She was in the room, too, just out of earshot. Yet that isn't enough to stop from belittling her.
There's a lot of bigotry that flows through casual interactions, and half of this cancel culture backlash is resistance to efforts to deal with it.
