
Those People We Tried to Cancel? They’re All Hanging Out Together - anon9001
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/style/what-is-cancel-culture.html
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dannykwells
My favorite quote: “Woke progressives are a pretty miserable bunch,” he said.
“Try joking with that group.”

Too true. And they don't have a clue.

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kbjjkgvg
I'm a leftist and all the leftists I hang out with have some grubby-ass humour
that wouldn't fly anywhere 'civil'. We just don't make racist/transphobic/etc
jokes. It's honestly not that hard and this idea of the oversensitive
progressive is overplayed and not grounded in reality.

~~~
akvadrako
The phrase grubby-ass humor itself sounds like trying too hard to stay on the
safe side of the line.

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jeffdavis
Social exclusion is an overused form of punishment. It eliminates any chance
of education or understanding on either side. Done often enough, and it
polarizes everyone.

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ben509
I think it's a vicious cycle. If you harshly punish people for saying certain
things, you create taboos. That causes people to avoid discussing these taboo
topics. Everyone knows that they're bad things, but there's none of the debate
where you can practice fleshing out exactly what your objections to those
ideas are.

Then when someone says those things, you have trouble articulating why they're
bad, and then you fall back on the threat of social exclusion.

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djohnston
This isn't unexpected at all. This is exactly what critics of cancel culture
said would happen

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shadowgovt
Question is if it's a bad thing or not. I mean, people with questionable
morals or worldview have been hanging out for all of human history. We could
complain that ostracizing people who became members of the Klan makes the Klan
happen, but at least then they're over there being racist at Klan rallies and
not in the middle of the public square.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
The problem is when all of the progressives opponents start banding together,
there might just be more of them than there are progressives and then, whoops,
game over. There are a lot of centrists and liberals that the progressives
have alienated.

(You know you have a problem when even Barack Obama is stepping up and
criticizing "woke" people: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-50239261](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261))

~~~
maxerickson
Your "when even" isn't particularly accurate. Obama was always a relative
centrist. It's just that many consider it radical to think that we should do
simple things like provide most people with access to healthcare.

~~~
finnthehuman
The "even" in "even Barack Obama" isn't about him being super far left, then
"even" is about the fact a former president has to be the one telling people
their tactics aren't working.

And then they go on to ignore his advice because he is insufficiently left.
Which ironically proves how prescient his advice is.

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spodek
Gossip and all its moralizing and social consequences used to happen over the
back yard fence.

Now it's major stories in the paper of record, such as this one.

Another unintended side effect of the internet.

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shadowmore
> Cancellation does present a question about power, and who has it.

Neither side has it. The people with money have it, as always. Follow the
money, and you can predict who gets cancelled and who doesn't.

Though there is an argument to be made for companies vastly overestimating the
short-term negative financial impact of "offending" the various tiny, non-
conformist factions in society due to how loud they are, and underestimating
the long-term loss of faith caused by acting in league with those small
factions against the majority of the population due to the "silent" in "silent
majority".

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neonate
[http://archive.is/Bcblr](http://archive.is/Bcblr)

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marvin
Why was this flagged? I found this an incredibly interesting view into this
'cancel culture' that I've heard referenced vaguely, but never described
explicitly. With an added bonus of getting an up-to-date view on the "things
you can't say" in 2019. I would love to see the smart folks of HN discuss it.

~~~
sudosteph
I didn't flag it, but have you seen the comments on this thread? I don't blame
whoever did flag it.

There are many people in here not discussing this topic in good faith, and one
person in particular who is flooding the comments with intentionally
inflammatory and low-effort comments.

I wish HN could have an adult conversation on this topic too, but it's not
going that way so far. Maybe someone can re-post this on a weekday so we don't
ruin Saturday for one of our mods.

~~~
yabadabadoes
So anything a lobby doesn't want discussed requires nothing more than a few
spam comments?

At a minimum HN should separate blocking comments from delisting posts..

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sudosteph
Unfortunately, yes. This is not the first time I've seen this pattern play out
here.

Any popular article where the main subject is gender typically goes the same
way. If the mods are around, they can sometimes step in early enough to
encourage good dialogue and nip the bad actors early on. But when that doesn't
happen, these threads will usually be dominated early-on with bad content from
ideologues, and end up even worse because those comments end up shaping the
dialogue into a flame war.

So many HN readers just flag the whole post when it's obvious that the
comments have strayed too far outside of the HN guidelines for discourse. I
don't do that myself or condone it, but it's not uncommon.

Sometimes the article will end up being re-posted with greater mod oversight
to prevent both agenda-flagging (when people really do flag on-topic articles
to prevent others from seeing it) and to fix the problem caused by lousy
comments where the good replies need to be de-coupled from low-effort parent
comments. This thread clearly needs moderation for both of those issues, but
it may not happen today.

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dannykwells
Love that this article is flagged now, too. Maybe it's ironic - an article
from NY Times (liberal bastion), "cancelled" for discussing cancellation in a
neutral light?

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grepthisab
Really interesting!

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thrower123
Quillette being a white nationalist publication is either a joke, or the
definition has been stretched so far out of shape that it is unrecognizable.

They will publish anything well-argued.

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Thorrez
>Quillette being a white nationalist publication is either a joke, or the
definition has been stretched so far out of shape that it is unrecognizable.

What are you talking about? Is grepthisab or the article saying Quillette is a
white nationalist publication?

~~~
ThrowawayR2
grepthisab edited all of their original comment out of their post.

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shadowgovt
This is why cancel culture isn't actually real.

[https://youtu.be/szybEhqUmVI](https://youtu.be/szybEhqUmVI)

~~~
thebigspacefuck
I watched and it has me convinced to a certain extent. However, he mostly
looks at well known comedians/actors on TV or in movies. There are other
people on YouTube that have been taken off the platform or demonetized and
that is another issue. To the extent that it ruins someone life, I’m sure most
people can handle being taken down or having to change their career
aspirations, but it led one individual to shoot up YouTube and take their own
life. Looking at several of the better scenarios doesn’t make the worst case
scenario not real.

