When you’re privileged, consequence feels like oppression.
February 15, 2021 5:21 AM Subscribe

General Unstructured Thoughts On “Being Cancelled” - Scalzi breaks down what it means to be canceled, and why some people can’t handle it.
posted by Monday (127 comments total) 98 users marked this as a favorite

”It’s only cancel culture if it originates in the Cancelle region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling consequences.”
posted by ActionPopulated at 5:59 AM on February 15, 2021 [122 favorites]

" conservative worldview should be aware that their movement has come to its final grifter form..."

Oh, how I wish that I was confident that it won't mutate even further into insanity and violence.
posted by Jacen at 6:12 AM on February 15, 2021 [28 favorites]

Don't you mean Metafilter's own John Scalzi?
posted by Billiken at 6:16 AM on February 15, 2021 [41 favorites]

I'll admit that when it comes to trends, I take the pulse with my thumb, that is, maybe it's my own pulse. I see the cancel culture as being the next war on Christmas, or Sharia law: you have to be pretty damned privileged to be able to invent such whiny crap and sell it in the first place.

It's a nothing burger with extra nothing cheese. Celebrities get cancelled all the time, and within the conservosphere, well after they have proven they only got the gig because they are white, loud, and clueless.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:26 AM on February 15, 2021 [15 favorites]

dances_with_sneetches: "I see the cancel culture as being the next war on Christmas"

Hey, I'm a veteran of the War on Christmas, and will forever be proud of our victory!

We lost a lot of good people in the great Gingerbread Breach of '19…
posted by signal at 6:28 AM on February 15, 2021 [23 favorites]

It's not clear to me, despite reading a fair number of people writing about the subject, how "cancel culture" is substantively different from "boycotting". You don't patronize someone's business or promulgate their words, and you encourage others to do the same, and this at is done for three reasons: (1) on a personal level, to live your convictions; (2) on an interpersonal level, to deny business/power/platform to an opposed entity; (3) on an institutional level, to demonstrate the power of your viewpoint. I suppose historically boycotts have also included (4) the extraction of specific concessions from the target, but this honestly doesn't seem like a massive shift in how boycotts function, or how they're a logical extension of a free market.
posted by jackbishop at 7:02 AM on February 15, 2021 [57 favorites]

Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 7:04 AM on February 15, 2021 [139 favorites]

"Cancelled" is one of those terms that triggers an immediate "Oh that must be the most tedious person in the world to know in-real-life"

Bob: Static-- I've been cancelled, they f'king cancelled me mate!
Me: Huh?
Bob: They invited me to a dinner-party last week, I told a couple of off-colour, but obviously tongue-in-cheek-- (you know me, always edgy eh!) jokes-- a few of the more sensitive ones got offended and they bloody cancelled me!
Me: They.. cancelled.. you?
Bob: They had another dinner party last night-- I didn't even get an invite, and Jane's not returning my messages!
posted by Static Vagabond at 7:08 AM on February 15, 2021 [23 favorites]

I think this is a good article. Here's another insight on the idea of "cancel culture": ;Canceled' = 'disgraced'. Sometimes using an older term can help to make it clear why people insist on using a newer one, i.e. it enables them to pretend it actually is something new and scary. But it's not. The only "new" thing about it is that racist/sexist/homophobic jokes used to be acceptable and now they're less so.
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:20 AM on February 15, 2021 [63 favorites]

I feel like "asking what cancel culture really is" is making an unwarranted presupposition of the existence of such a thing as a coherent phenomenon. Cancel culture is a thing in the way that a hole in the ground is a thing, an absence of what might be expected to be present. It's very understandable to be shocked and dismayed at the absence of something one has always taken for granted, but that doesn't mean that the thing that was taken for granted was deserved or just or appropriate. As Scalzi says, it's the outcry of folks who find themselves suddenly subject to the rules and patterns that were in place all along for everyone else.
posted by NMcCoy at 7:22 AM on February 15, 2021 [15 favorites]

I think the intellectual gap of the piece is that it never actually asks and questions what cancel culture really is, not what it means. And what it is is itself a phenomenon of neoliberal capitalism, that arose when the left is without recourse to better ways of solving social problems in a way that is not purely individualized (capitalist value) and punitive (conservative value), i.e. through solidarity and structural change and public support--those societal capabilities that neoliberal capitalism does not foster.

I have questions about your use of "is" versus "means" - what distinction are you trying to make here? Eg. was your explanation of "cancel culture" supposed to be a definition? Because it is not a definition. (And you'd be hard pressed to make one, since "cancel culture" no more has an actual definition separate from what you are calling it's meaning than does "hipster", or "cooties" or "doodiehead". Though we seem to disagree on this - you seem to think that "cancel culture" actually exists?) Or are you trying to say that you don't think Scalzi sufficiently situated the rise and use of the term "cancel culture" as a cultural/political phenomenon?
posted by eviemath at 7:23 AM on February 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

"Cancel culture" is nothing more than me choosing where to spend my money. I choose not to enrich people who turn around and attack me or my friends with the money I gave them. Funny, huh? People who decry cancel culture are actually arguing they should be able to choose how I spend my money. So, opposing cancel culture is the opposite of free markets and it actually undermines capitalism.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:28 AM on February 15, 2021 [32 favorites]

Scalzi's comments are closed, but...

If you want a John Scalzi story, for example, the best person to give it to you is me, I promise you.

I thought Mary Robinette Kowal had that covered...
posted by cheshyre at 7:32 AM on February 15, 2021 [22 favorites]

It's not clear to me, despite reading a fair number of people writing about the subject, how "cancel culture" is substantively different from "boycotting".

It's used to refer to a few different things that are similar but not quite the same, so it's confusing! At least in the context of Scalzi's piece, "cancel culture" seems like it's being used to refer to pressure campaigns conducted against individuals on social media asking their employers to fire them for their views, and not just individual boycotts.
posted by LSK at 7:35 AM on February 15, 2021 [9 favorites]

At least in the context of Scalzi's piece, "cancel culture" seems like it's being used to refer to pressure campaigns conducted against individuals on social media asking their employers to fire them for their views, and not just individual boycotts.

That's a clear characterization, thanks. But so then is cancel culture essentially reinventing boycotting for an age where people are brands in a way they (arguably) haven't been before?
posted by Alex404 at 7:38 AM on February 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

I think one of the ways Conservative ideology and propaganda work in general is by using vague umbrella terms to imply unlike things are the same.

So a "market" might be a place a farmer takes a cartload of cabbages to sell. Or it might be a online derivatives market where algorithms duel over hypothetical prices of digital concepts at future times. Using the same word makes them sound basically the same. If you're disturbed about the latter you're obviously some kind of weirdo who wants honest cabbage farmers to starve or be collectivised.

Being "cancelled" can mean anything from getting a lot of responses on social media telling you you're being racist, to someone with an actual non-celebrity non-media job being fired from that job, to some degree of consumer boycott of a celebrity or entertainer, to someone cashing in enormously from the right-wing media ecosystem.

So a decent comment on a certain kind of "cancellation", but I think you need definitions to really look at it seriously. Otherwise the right just respond with "You say cancellation isn't so bad but look at this incredibly rare example of something I'm also going to call cancellation which is actually bad, checkmate liberal."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:40 AM on February 15, 2021 [58 favorites]

A boycott is identified as such by those boycotting, and has some degree of organization behind it. The term "cancel culture" seems to mainly be used by people who think they are the target of it, and thus may or may not correspond to an actual boycott, or to anything real. (It seems that "so-and-so is cancelled", where this originated from, was a meme that people used to express displeasure on social media, but didn't rise to the level of being an actual, organized boycott for the most part.)
posted by eviemath at 7:40 AM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's not clear to me, despite reading a fair number of people writing about the subject, how "cancel culture" is substantively different from "boycotting".

I think the same type of person currently whining on the internet about cancel culture, used to be found whining about boycotts. In my younger internet days, I ended up in arguments with some assholes who were against boycotts and I'd always end up super-frustrated because I was like, "It's my money - I'll spend it where I please I thought you shits were all about the free market."

Then I had a lot more experience in the world and now I realize it's all basically about abusers and their minions not thinking other people are allowed not to have boundaries.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 7:41 AM on February 15, 2021 [33 favorites]

I have questions about your use of "is" versus "means" - what distinction are you trying to make here?

Far be it from me to speak for polymodus, but what I took from their comment, which I thought very good, was this:

We ["the left", the good guys, non-rapists, etc etc] don't have the social power to deal with the actual crimes and harms done by the rapists, racists, exploiters, etc., and we don't have the social power to deal with the smaller, unintentional harms done by people who mean well but do or say something ignorantly hurtful. We don't have this power because we don't have unions, strong community organizations, strong women's organizations, politicians who are responsive to the majority, etc etc etc and we do have a lot of cops, the political establishment, the incredibly pervasive and fine-grained ways that capitalism shapes our everyday experiences.

In a better society, we wouldn't just "cancel", eg, Josh Whedon. He would not have the power to do the things he's done, he would not have risen to the type of prominence he has and the people he harmed would not have been as dependent, as workers and women, on his favor. In this society, we can't actually keep him from working or abusing. There are no real consequences that can stick. We can "cancel" him so that he's disgraced in certain circles and maybe loses some work. We can do a little bit to write history against him. But that's about it. "Cancellation" is weak sauce but it's the sauce we have.

Similarly with the abuser in your local activist community - there's no powerful, embedded community justice process that can hear everyone out, make some kind of evaluation of claims and make things stick. You can't keep the abuser from just carrying on, and the abuser is probably popular and charismatic and at worst they'll just move to a new town or a new scene. You can "cancel" them up to a point, but I've seen a lot of activist cancellations and they're just like the regular kind.

And because of the lack of power and structure on the left, there are things about "cancel culture" which rightly give us (or at least me) pause. But it's one of the few tools we have, so it's hard to put down. To explain: I have a friend who was "cancelled" in activist circles because she was being abused by both a friend and a partner. I happened to know that the claims people made were materially false, but she was very isolated and I was one of the few people who knew her well, and unfortunately I had almost no power or currency in that particular scene. It mostly came out in the wash, partly because the real nature of the friend and partner became clearer over time and partly because cancellation is weak sauce, but it was pretty horrible while it lasted.

So I mean, I could be a "cancel culture" skeptic, at least on the local level. It's easy to know when someone has a history of tweeting racist material and it's plausible to believe an accusation when it comes from multiple people, but things get trickier at the edges, especially because "cancelling" is far more serious and far more likely to stick when the canceled person is marginalized in some way, and far less likely to matter and stick when the canceled person is whiter, male-er, cis-er, richer, straighter.

So what I took from polymodus's comment was that cancel culture is what we've got because of the times we live in.
posted by Frowner at 7:44 AM on February 15, 2021 [79 favorites]

"Canceling" is about community consequences for direct actions, not just ignoring or not buying a product that is created by someone who has caused an outrage.

It implies an active engagement with the patrons, employers, clients and explaining to the community the offender interacts with that you don't think continued association is good for them. It means the media-aware patrons, employers and customers of those individuals pro-actively disentangle themselves even before pressure is applied. These are consequences beyond simply embargoing the work of the individual themselves.

It's an application of activist principles to protest bad behaviours, using all avenues or persuasion, not just direct conversations with the central person.

It's surprising in many ways to conservatives unused to pissing people off on the retail level, one offended victim at the time. The internet magnifies things. The nastiness now gets responded to by a network effect that feels like an avalanche, rather than by individuals. And there's no control over their message, little chance to mitigate, explain or manage the original message. So none of the traditional tools work to prevent the damage their actions cause.

If network effects are a new social check on douchebaggery, I'm all for it.
posted by bonehead at 7:46 AM on February 15, 2021 [10 favorites]

That's a clear characterization, thanks. But so then is cancel culture essentially reinventing boycotting for an age where people are brands in a way they (arguably) haven't been before?

I think it's a bit of yes and a bit of no. It's like boycotting in that they both fill a desire to punish ideological opponents for their beliefs, but it's different because boycotts are usually conditional, e.g. "I won't buy products from brand Y until they change their position on X" and cancellations seem like they're often unconditional, e.g. "This person has a history of saying X and that is unforgiveable."

On preview, bonehead is also correct; compared to boycotts, cancellations are a more socially-networked, activist approach and often avoid directly engaging with the person in question. Cancellations don't go to the person first, tap them on their shoulder, and say, "Hey, don't do this."
posted by LSK at 7:49 AM on February 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

(And sorry, I know "desire to punish ideological opponents for their beliefs" is a bit of an overtly-neutral simplification that ignores that a lot of cancellations are for really obviously redolent behavior!)
posted by LSK at 7:51 AM on February 15, 2021

I do think this is a legacy of the Trump times, not just of the man himself, but of the legion of pundits commercial and amateur that have spring up around him.

The past four years have meant society has had to invent new tools to deal with the magnification of abuse and abusers who don't respond to direct social messaging like shame or appeals to their own better nature.
posted by bonehead at 7:52 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: It’s hard to rent seek in chaos!
posted by belarius at 7:53 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Being ‘canceled’ basically means learning that you’re replaceable

One of my favorite exchanges in a movie was in LA Confidential. The corrupt high powered DA snears at the unimportance of the gay murder victim. Who cares if he died, tomorrow there are ten more ready to replace him in on the next bus into town.

He ends up dangled out a window or something by the cop (it's that kind of movie) who makes the point: "I know you think you're the A-number one hotshot. Well, here's the juice: if I take you out, there'll be ten more lawyers to take your place tomorrow. They just won't come on the bus, that's all!"
posted by mark k at 8:02 AM on February 15, 2021 [23 favorites]

To me, the “Disgraced” article linked upthread is the best summation of of the phenomenon. Of course one is going to spread the word about someone who has disgraced themself. That’s how “shunning” works.

People can’t turn their back on someone if they haven’t been informed that that’s the appropriate response.

“Disgrace” has always been about those with the social position and power deciding who is cast out and who in “in the good graces” of Society.

Conservatives are only complaining about “cancel culture” because suddenly the power to declare someone as having “disgraced” themselves and enforce real world consequences because of said disgrace has shifted to people who are now calling the powerful and comfortable on their bullshit.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:07 AM on February 15, 2021 [36 favorites]

I personally am guaranteed six seasons and a movie.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:13 AM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's like boycotting in that they both fill a desire to punish ideological opponents for their beliefs, but it's different because boycotts are usually conditional, e.g. "I won't buy products from brand Y until they change their position on X" and cancellations seem like they're often unconditional, e.g. "This person has a history of saying X and that is unforgiveable."

I personally don't see cancellation as entirely unconditional. I kind of believe people, even seeemingly terrible people can learn and change (within reason, I mean, I think there is a whole world of difference between "this bad tweet" and "I have been abusing people for decades"). I am here for genuine apologies and empathy and attempts at learning and making things right. And it never fails--never fails-- to disappoint me that the vast majority of the cancelled react so badly and just double or triple down on whatever stupid/terrible/criminal shit they did/said to begin with and I feel like a chump for even thinking about giving them a second chance.
posted by thivaia at 8:15 AM on February 15, 2021 [13 favorites]

For me, the key marker of "cancel culture" is that it's using the tools of capitalism more effectively against rich white people, and they don't like it.

For example, instead of complaining to say, a racist presenter or just stopping watching their show, you complain to the show network. If the network are unlikely to listen (Fox etc) then you go to the advertisers and ask if they like having their product associated with said racist z-list celeb. It's asking card processors to act against a porn site for tolerating child porn and rape videos. It's going to the mall to get them to end the lease of a homophobic company.

So it's different from a boycott in that you're not just exerting your own direct economic power not to buy from someone or some company (which is usually extremely limited) but trying to use social pressure on those companies that DO have economic power to take action, who can be quite sensitive to criticism or damage to their brand. Plus the network effect of many people doing the same, as has already been said.

That it has now become a bogeyman of the fascist right shows that it actually works sometimes - as Scalzi says, they're facing consequences for possibly the first time ever.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 8:19 AM on February 15, 2021 [46 favorites]

"Cancels" are also open season attack mobs inflicted on people who don't have publicists.

Many if not most of the people who complain the loudest about being cancelled absolutely have publicists. The current context of Scalzi's article being Gina Carano is a perfect example, and a big reason why anti-cancel culture mavens' shitty defenses of her ring so hollow.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:51 AM on February 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

For me, the key marker of "cancel culture" is that it's using the tools of capitalism more effectively against rich white people, and they don't like it.

A friend described cancel culture as 'the larval form of a general strike.'
posted by pseudophile at 9:04 AM on February 15, 2021 [13 favorites]

I've belonged to a private discussion forum for many years and have been a part of a private thread for ~5 years. It's been a great place to vent (about our mutual profession) and while political views run the gamut and there have been some spirited debates, for the most part everyone has gotten along. One member of this thread was a guy I always liked, despite his hard libertarian leanings. But then 2020 happened and he went full Qanon. To him the pandemic was merely a ruse to force universal basic income on society, the expense being shouldered by hardworking people (like him.) The pandemic was nothing more than another flu. Herd immunity, brought on by letting the virus rip through the population, was the solution in his mind. He'd post videos by the now discredited and forgotten Knut Wittkowski or articles about how Sweden had "beaten" the pandemic despite no lockdowns. Etc, etc.

Eventually I reached the point where I simply couldn't engage with him anymore and I blocked him. So did several others. The trouble is that this forum is somewhat archaic so you still end up seeing their posts on your "recent activity" feed or when someone else would quote his posts. To combat this one of the moderators would simply post "bump" to get him off of the feed. This only served to enrage the fellow, leading him to rant on about the "cancel culture". The irony in all of this is that he was always ranting and raving about "snowflakes" and "liberal whiners" and so forth. Those who were taking the pandemic seriously were "scared" and "hiding in their basements." Despite his protests about being "cancelled" the reality is the same moderator who'd bump his posts had the power to kick him off of that thread or to delete/edit his posts, something that didn't happen. He was free to speak his mind but was demanding that we listen to him.
posted by drstrangelove at 9:06 AM on February 15, 2021 [12 favorites]

Funny: it's "cancel culture" when it's targeting conservatives.

When it's, say, Jane Fonda or Colin Kaepernick **OMG WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE TROOPS?!?
posted by MrGuilt at 9:16 AM on February 15, 2021 [57 favorites]

That’s a hallmark of fascists, right? They exploit the tools of an open society when it suits them, pleading for openness and tolerance towards their own speech, but ruthlessly suppressing contrary views whenever they have the power to do so. Calling them hypocrites doesn’t do anything because they never believed in free speech in the first place; whenever they invoke it, it’s just a tactic.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:25 AM on February 15, 2021 [71 favorites]

From the article --
When I hear or read “I have been cancelled” I mostly translate that to “I am facing consequences for something I got away with before and I don’t like it.” When I hear or read “I will not be cancelled,” I mostly translate that to “I refuse to change my behavior, it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem, not me.”

Emphasis mine. ... whooooboy. For me this is the root of right-wing rage at "cancel culture." They absolutely, 100% believe Christian, White Men are the apex of the hierarchy of the Universe and NOTHING they say or do is to be challenged by anyone even a single rung down from them. Their fury at being challenged is that it is coming from people they do not respect, that they do not believe should be allowed to have opinions, much less express them, and they will go to their grave believing they are the injured party.

America, and many other places around the world, are under siege from a Christo-Fascist Oligarchy who are not OK with women, POC and LGBTQ folks having a say, in anything.
posted by pjsky at 9:26 AM on February 15, 2021 [33 favorites]

Phalene: This includes things like people who manage a small time discord server, or the bizarre obsessive behaviour that fueled the cultish obsession with Chrischan.

The Chrischan thing struck me as a case of a group of trolls that effectively stage managed this persons life into one situation after another for “teh lullz”. Was there anything more to that?
posted by dr_dank at 9:31 AM on February 15, 2021

Hey, I've never heard anything bad about Christo. Dude just really liked wrapping things, far as I can tell
posted by Jacen at 9:37 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Like, there's "you're no longer welcome here and you don't get the credit you're used to" and there's "howling mob flooding your DMs, mentions, and replies with death threats," and we keep using the same words for both.

I am not so sure about the "we" there.....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on February 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

Celebrities get cancelled all the time, and within the conservosphere, well after they have proven they only got the gig because they are white, loud, and clueless.

White men get forgiven faster and cancelled less than anyone. I swear to God the only reason people are not doing deals with Harvey Weinstein is because he's inconveniently locked up in Rikers. And the chances that Joss Whedon will actually suffer any repercussions for behavior that should mean he never eats lunch in this town again is approximately zero.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:02 AM on February 15, 2021 [17 favorites]

White men get forgiven faster and cancelled less than anyone.

White men get cancelled less than anyone? The title of this post is When you’re privileged, consequence feels like oppression.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:07 AM on February 15, 2021

Many if not most of the people who complain the loudest about being cancelled absolutely have publicists.

Publicists are amplifiers - even if the vast majority of 'audible' cancellation noise is publicized, there can be more small-potato cancellees going under unheard than publicized big shots. It would be nice to think that the system only amplified responses to big shots, but Frowner’s example suggests that’s not an adequate balance.
posted by clew at 10:09 AM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

The range of situations that have been labeled as cancellation is very wide indeed:

Screening of Kindergarten Cop cancelled after a tweet.

Tulane Canceled a Talk by the Author of an Acclaimed Anti-Racism Book After Students Said the Event Was 'Violent'

A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.

Alex Morse Was Accused, Condemned and Then Vindicated.

USC Professor is on leave after students were offended that a Chinese word he used during a lecture on foreign languages sounded like an English racial slur. (more)

Students Demand Skidmore College Fire an Art Professor for Observing a Pro-Cop Rally
posted by PhineasGage at 10:13 AM on February 15, 2021 [11 favorites]

There's also the phenomenon of prominent voices (mostly comedians) who aren't necessarily conservative, who give bad faith actors cover by framing the issue of "cancel culture" as being the worst problem of our times.

Bill Maher is a prominent example. He'll make brief asides acknowledging that right-wingers have taken up that phrasing for their own ends, and then swing right back into his cancel culture spiel, drowning everything else out. He tries to swing a lot of conversations back into the topic, often when the connection is tenuous.

I'm wondering what is driving these people to stick to this subject so much. Misguided notion of self-preservation? It's not just Maher, to a lesser extent it's people like Neal Brennan, Dave Chappelle, Michelle Wolf, etc.
posted by ishmael at 10:25 AM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I'm wondering what is driving these people to stick to this subject so much. Misguided notion of self-preservation?

I'm guessing it's because harassment/predatory tactics are prevalent among powerful people of all political stripes. Not trying to "both sides" here (oh gosh did I just fall into the trap by typing?) but I'm guessing Louis C.K. and many of the other men in entertainment and media who were outed by #MeToo vote for Democratic candidates if they vote, and generally see themselves as anti-Trump. That becomes an added layer of anger if they're called out -- "Why are you holding ME accountable? I'm WAY better than [that guy over there who everyone in my peer group says is bad]. HE's where you should be putting your anger! This is a witch hunt!"
posted by rogerroger at 10:36 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

rogerroger,

I certainly hope nobody thinks you fell into a "both sides" trap.

You can't undo Democratic megadonor Harvey Weinstein from being a fucking rapist.

He was one of the biggest Democratic party promoters and donors there was.

The idea that predatory tactics are widely used among the powerful should be considered an out there idea is just absurd.

No, it isn't everyone who is powerful, but it certainly is plenty of them.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:41 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

I'm wondering what is driving these people to stick to this subject so much. Misguided notion of self-preservation?

I think it's partly because they see the Cancellation thing as being anti Liberal in general.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:44 AM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I don't think we should be celebrating a world where advertisers and employers are the ultimate arbiters of who is behaving morally and still derservers a platform and who doesn't. They'll always default to the most anondyne, inoffensive, and (in the US) sexless possible view of "moral" because they just don't want to take the risk.

To quote John Stuart Mill, in a world where anyone who falls outside the narrow band of behavior can be shunned, people will "exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct are shunned equally with crimes until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no more nature to follow."

And you better believe it's not just white christian men getting cancelled (though they seem to whine about it more). I think the comment above about gamer gate is spot on.

It's still going on too, every day people take their conflicts, between members of the same community, to the masses and frame the story however they need to get the mob - who don't have the time or attention span to investigate claims of bad behavior fully - to decide. Women and minorities are harassed every day. In the end it's not the truth that prevails but whoever has a bigger social media following.

Personally, there's nothing wrong with anyone saying anything about anyone, and anyone deciding to boycott anyone they like for any reasons. But I think we need stronger workplace protections because getting someone fired on your say-so is not okay. Anyone can use these tools.

(Agreed with Scalzi that this is about the corporations deciding that the money is favoring multicultural, inclusive tolerance and not whatever death cult, cult of personality thing the repubs have going on right now, though.)
posted by subdee at 10:46 AM on February 15, 2021 [20 favorites]

The left is without recourse to better ways of solving social problems in a way that is not purely individualized (capitalist value) and punitive (conservative value).

This is it. Victims turn to the court of public opinion because they cannot find justice through the official courts. When you deny people justice, one way or another they will look for it. The courts have failed so many actual victims, is it any surprise that they are demanding justice through other means, however ineffective it might be?

Cancel culture is indeed a product of neoliberal capitalism. It is conservatives’ own creation.
posted by ichomp at 10:52 AM on February 15, 2021 [23 favorites]

Ishmael: ...and then swing right back into his cancel culture spiel, drowning everything else out.

I think this observation really nails it. There’s some truth to the criticisms of cancel culture. There is a whiff of the Cultural Revolution’s zealous enforcement of ideological purity in the most extreme examples. But the way it’s framed on the right demonstrates this utterly bizarre obsession that first paints all cancellations as equally bad (“cancelling Harvey Weinstein is invalid because look these maniacs cancelled Kindergarten Cop”), and second fixates on cancel culture to the exclusion of everything else, blowing the magnitude absurdly out of proportion: “Cops murdering people? Children in cages? So what, have you heard some students cancelled a professor?”
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:53 AM on February 15, 2021 [17 favorites]

This is it. Victims turn to the court of public opinion because they cannot find justice through the official courts.

Yes, history has shown time and time again that when a "justice system" fails and people no longer have faith that it metes out "justice," the people will take "justice" into their own hands. Mob and social justice will rule, because governance cannot be counted on to produce justice.

Which is basically the centerpiece of nearly every problem in the USA right now, a completely broken "justice" system. The "Just Us" system.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:01 AM on February 15, 2021 [9 favorites]

A friend of mine, otherwise liberal, was for a while teetering on the edge of falling into the sphere of the “intellectual” right wingers. He had become a bit obsessed with cancel culture and the excesses of the woke brigade. Of all things, what pulled him back from the brink was a post by Linus Torvalds. To paraphrase Linus: “I’m not really on board with extreme woke politics, but the other side are literal Nazis, and you do. not. side. with. Nazis.”
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:03 AM on February 15, 2021 [58 favorites]

I know other people have made this point, but I think it's becoming very clear that "cancel culture" is a protean term that's manipulated by the Right as a cudgel against the Left. It's a rhetorical mess.

Also, the elements of "cancellation" that impinge on job and healthcare security are best addressed by a strong union movement and universal heath care. Employers should not have absolute control over their employees' ability to pay the rent and put food on the table. And they certainly shouldn't be in charge of their right to access health care.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:12 AM on February 15, 2021 [24 favorites]

I refuse to acknowledge any slogan uttered from the right. "Cancel culture" is simply a "free market" doing something they don't like.
posted by pee tape at 11:16 AM on February 15, 2021 [23 favorites]

I simply substitute "Consequence"; this is "Consequence Culture" and I'm 100% on board with it.
posted by ChrisR at 11:17 AM on February 15, 2021 [21 favorites]

I'm wondering what is driving these people to stick to this subject so much. Misguided notion of self-preservation?

I think with at least some comedians it has to do with the idea of 'cancellation' being perceived as threatening their craft (moreso than others). Chappelle, for example, has talked about his conception that the job of a comedian is to find the line and step past it. I'm sure he's not the only comedian who's made that observation.

Now, one can take issue with the idea that there's no way to be a comedian without exploring the violation of norms (I think there absolutely can), but it certainly makes it harder to workshop material if you can't feel free to just throw anything out there, because now you have to worry about backlash. I think this is an inherently conservative mindset ("I've found a way to do comedy and would rather not have to find another"), but I think it's certainly out there.
posted by axiom at 11:49 AM on February 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

Bill Maher is a prominent example.

The guy who used to have a TV show named after the previous (then-contemporary) iteration of his side in this fight?
posted by atoxyl at 11:59 AM on February 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

Yes, history has shown time and time again that when a "justice system" fails and people no longer have faith that it metes out "justice," the people will take "justice" into their own hands. Mob and social justice will rule, because governance cannot be counted on to produce justice.

Which is basically the centerpiece of nearly every problem in the USA right now, a completely broken "justice" system. The "Just Us" system.

Was there ever a time or place when justice systems weren't completely broken? When they ever did anything except enforce the priorities of the biggest gang in town, while throwing sufficient red meat (frequently pork) to enough members of relatively privileged social groups to convince them to maintain the pretence? The law isn't justice. The law is what the government can make you do because it has prisons and guns and the power to use them on you. There really is no "justice". There is just us.

Every system by which we enforce obligations whether social, legal or moral, is, ultimately, a way of making the implicit threat of violence tolerable. That doesn't mean we have to accept mob rule or anarchy. It means we have to accept that there's no way of doing this cleanly, and accept the responsibility that goes along with that. Ethics is a dirty, bloody game, and there's no system of justice, institutional or social, sanitised enough to wash that off. All we can do is decide what matters to us, accept that absolutely every moral and social good comes at a high price, and be as honest as possible with ourselves and others about what the price is and who we expect to pay it.
posted by howfar at 1:52 PM on February 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

The venn diagram of a conservative and a capitalist is a perfect circle!

Euler diagram.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 1:53 PM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

If it's a single circle it's unknowable whether it's a Venn or Euler diagram.
posted by howfar at 1:56 PM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

The guy who used to have a TV show named after the previous (then-contemporary) iteration of his side in this fight?

There's also a kind of performative aspect, in this and in the previous iteration, where Bill et al are also aping right-wing mannerisms to prove their manliness. He's a straight-talker because he goes after "SJWs" and "snowflakes", much like he went after "liberals" in a previous incarnation.

I've never seen the Walking Dead, but imagine that it's like that group who put on the zombie skins in order to hide among the zombies in order to keep from being eaten themselves.
posted by ishmael at 3:00 PM on February 15, 2021 [5 favorites]

Cancel culture is indeed a product of neoliberal capitalism. It is conservatives’ own creation.

"Cancel culture" in its essential form is mob justice. Mob justice has been around since time immemorial. It is not a product of neoliberal capitalism, it is a product of human nature. Sometimes the "mob" has a point and represents the voices of the marginalized. Sometimes the mob has been spun up by darker forces (GamerGate, anyone?) and it is a tool of the powerful to bring down the already vulnerable. Sometimes both of those things are going on at once! But it's not something that magically popped up in the 1980s.
posted by Anonymous at 4:46 PM on February 15, 2021

Yes, a couple of thousand years ago an angry mob prompted a nice Jewish boy to say, "Let someone who is without sin cast the first stone."
posted by PhineasGage at 5:02 PM on February 15, 2021 [11 favorites]

I have questions about your use of "is" versus "means" - what distinction are you trying to make here?

Sure, I was typing on my phone making it harder to be clear, but I'd say the problem (to emphasize, very small problem) I have with Scalzi's thought style is focusing on what something "means" rather than what something is: in that just as a fish is an animal, cancel culture is a specific manifestation/dynamic of capitalist realist modernity. His essay doesn't address that. But we can apply Mark Fisher:

In 2009, Fisher edited The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of critical essays on the career and death of Michael Jackson, and published Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, an analysis of the ideological effects of neoliberalism on contemporary culture. He was an early critic of call-out culture and in 2013 published a controversial essay titled "Exiting the Vampire Castle".[13][14] Fisher argued that call-out culture created a space "where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent". Fisher also argues that call-out culture reduces every political issue to criticizing the behaviour of individuals, instead of dealing with such political issues through collective action.

I agree with Fisher here, and though I haven't even read his work, I did skim his wiki page a long time ago, so maybe this morning seeing the overall structure of Scalzi's argument prompted an unconscious echoing of Fisher's position which is generally accepted by many leftists (for reasons going further back than Fisher and of course not without controversy).
posted by polymodus at 9:32 PM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

What the extreme right wants is to slide its jargon into everyday speech, so that ordinary people start repeating it without even realising.

Thank you to everyone in this thread who has enclosed the offending term in quote marks.

The rest of you, think, please.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:31 PM on February 15, 2021 [11 favorites]

Agreed, a neutral example would be The cultural history of "Stem Bolts".
posted by clavdivs at 10:42 PM on February 15, 2021

Sure, I was typing on my phone making it harder to be clear, but I'd say the problem (to emphasize, very small problem) I have with Scalzi's thought style is focusing on what something "means" rather than what something is: in that just as a fish is an animal, cancel culture is a specific manifestation/dynamic of capitalist realist modernity.

This does not at all clarify the definitions of "means" versus "is" that you are using, nor what the distinction is between the two.
posted by eviemath at 10:42 PM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

A purely logic based thought experiment:

On the grounds that I'm highly unlikely to find myself invited to an interview on TV, say, have I been cancelled?

I mean, this is perhaps more about having privileges revoked than 'being cancelled'. We're basically talking about returning whoever to the rank and file where the rest of us live.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 10:52 PM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

We've already got an honest term: call-out culture. While preserving the argument about whether the reaction of the community is proportionate or not, it reminds us that the person being called out is considered to have done something unacceptable - something which the extreme-right term deliberately ignores.

Nobody on social media ever blurted 'Eeuuhh! I've been called out!'
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:06 PM on February 15, 2021 [5 favorites]

This does not at all clarify the definitions of "means" versus "is" that you are using, nor what the distinction is between the two.

Yes, it does. The reason I cite Fisher in my clarification is because his approach is also what Zizek explains what Judith Butler and other critical theorists are good at doing: are good at offering critique against hegemonic thought by asking what something is. (Zizek in particular goes on to criticize Butler for being merely descriptive, that that isn't enough for social justice).

In contrast, what Scalzi's intellectual mode in the piece is not describing, or inquiry into understanding something. By Scalzi's use of "means", he is talking about the ramifications of something. It is like teleological reasoning in evolutionary debates. So when someone does that, my reaction is that is a form of oppressive discourse. It is powerful people who keep telling us what things mean. That's the source of my objection, from both a social justice power dynamic view, as well a standard academic view of understanding a thing before assessing a thing, i.e. treating cancelling as a real sociological phenomenon. The rhetoric of Scalzi is instructive in that it doesn't do either of these, at least not very strongly, and that it is due to its rhetorical structure which we can read closely.

And finally what's important about this, which I emphasized in my first comment, is that by putting the cart before the horse in this rhetorical way, Scalzi never closes the gap and explains the relation of this phenomenon to neoliberalism.
posted by polymodus at 11:28 PM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Why would that matter?
posted by ChrisR at 12:13 AM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

When I try to put together a coherent definition of “cancel culture” with the basic premise that it has to be something that is actually a recent trend - and ideally something that is, uh, cultural in nature, rather than just the baseline reality of at-will employment - really the only conclusion I can come to is it’s an Internet thing. Boycotts aren’t new, disgraced celebrities aren’t new, whisper networks aren’t new, malicious rumors aren’t new - but there is something to the idea that the Internet (and “social media” in particular) increases the velocity and amplification factor of all these things

There is another new aspect to all this. Unlike the traditional at-will paradigm, "cancel culture" is also "empowerment culture." Once upon a time, Bob could've easily privately coerced Tina into accepting his advances by threatening her with termination. But now, it turns out Bob's been recorded, his entire conversation put on blast on the internet. He doesn't just not get his way; he gets fired. The tables have turned. Tina was defenseless before but now she's powerful.

Arguably, Tina's empowerment is what bothers Bob, more than his cancellation. To Bob, it's not shameful to have his fate in the hands of another white man. If he had got fired because his boss George took a disliking to him, he would've taken his lumps. That's just the natural order of things. Law of the jungle. But suddenly, having your fate in the hands of women, of minorities, it feels like a humiliation. Lions taking orders from gazelles? It ain't human!

And because of the internet amplification you spoke of, every Bob feels personally emasculated every single time they read about another Tina being empowered. And that's why January 6th happened. Because Trump was both the avatar of and an atavism of white male power. They saw him and still see him as a throwback to the time when they could proudly assert unfettered power, speaking and acting without guilt or consequence. Contrary to what Scalzi wrote, they weren't just a "mob in chaos." They had a unified goal, they just cocked up the execution of it because their privilege made them think it would be a cakewalk.
posted by xigxag at 1:31 AM on February 16, 2021 [25 favorites]

Fisher argued that call-out culture created a space "where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent".

This only makes sense to me if it is looking from the perspective of the abuser or perpetrator of behavior that is being called out. Like, “solidarity with the abuser is impossible, and guilt and fear are omnipresent for the abusers, while the victims have been empowered.”
posted by snofoam at 3:54 AM on February 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

I was reading the NYT's piece on the Donald McNeil brouhaha and this quote from one of the kids on the Peru trip stood out:

“I’m very used to people — my grandparents or people’s parents — saying things they don’t mean that are insensitive,” another student, who was then 17 and is now attending an Ivy League college, told me. “You correct them, you tell them, ‘You’re not supposed to talk like that,’ and usually people are pretty apologetic and responsive to being corrected. And he was not.”
posted by mr_stru at 4:14 AM on February 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Oh, of course. Silly me not realizing that I actually understood what you meant all along. Clearly I already knew that Zizek had something to do with it, because how was that not an obvious assumption for me to make? I mean, how neoliberal of me would it be not to have read any Zizek! Not sure why I didn't realize that I knew that and was not actually confused about your meaning before. I totally know who Fisher is too, and fully understand the teleological or anti-teleological implications of name-dropping him/her/them too, of course! It's all clear now! Well, to be fair, it was always all clear, because I just don't know how to tell when I understand versus don't understand something until someone on the internet tells me that their explanation is perfectly clear. But you know what I mean. (Better than I know what I mean, even!)
posted by eviemath at 4:55 AM on February 16, 2021 [10 favorites]

So what I'm taking away here, as someone who has read a pretty good chunk of Fisher*
and felt that "Exiting the Vampire Castle" was kind of motivated reasoning is that Scalzi goes straight to "here's cancel culture, it's good actually" rather than saying "what constitutes cancel culture, what brought us to this point, why do we have cancel culture and not something else, what assumptions do we make when we engage with cancel culture". I mean, I assume that Butler and Zizek would ask those questions in an abstruse way that's rather above my paygrade - I can't get on with Zizek and I find it hard to read Butler unless I'm in a class or a study group so haven't read very much.

But I think that's a really good point! When we engage with cancel culture, we're already accepting and engaging with the logic of social media, the logic of "racism happens because a person is racist" or maybe the logic of "you can solve structural problems by dealing with individuals" (which is where I feel we're going as more and more people get the idea that these are structural problems - all those corporate statements often acknowledge this but they do so in order to avoid changing the structures.) And I assume deeper stuff about how a person is constituted, what we assume about what an individual is, what we assume an "individual" is on the internet, etc etc.

You could say that cancel culture is like going to sea in a sieve and then creating an elaborate system for bailing, when what you need is either not to be at sea or an actual boat or a raft or a friendly whale, etc etc. You can make the system fairer so that everyone takes their turn bailing and you can make it more efficient so that you're bailing with a bucket and not a teacup, but your big problem is that you think being at sea in a sieve is an effective way to be at sea.

But then that raises a bunch of questions - are you going to be able to get a boat? Is the sieve better than sinking into a sharky sea? What if some people really want to keep the sieve because they benefit from it in some way? What if challenging the idea that we can be at sea in a sieve causes terrible, fatal conflict that's worse than bailing?

I grew up in the eighties and nineties when there was still more of an outside to mainstream culture. Of course it was never a real outside, but I've noticed a definite difference - people on the left, activists, radicals, people who go to protests, people who do recognizably left volunteer work, etc - are often super engaged with pop culture and its delivery mechanisms**. This is obviously because of social media and [various changing economic conditions] more than anything else, but it's really different from when I was growing up - when I was growing up, if you were radical or of the left, you only minimally engaged with that stuff. Also, everything moves much faster.

As a result, we're all enmeshed in fast-moving pop culture assumptions much more than we were in the nineties. On one hand, this is great and has enabled all kinds of mass movements that could never have happened given the social arrangements and communication methods of the nineties. On the other, we're far more enmeshed with a far more elaborate and intrusive mainstream culture and its assumptions. This is the connection between cancel-culture-canceling-racist-stars and cancel-culture-canceling-activists. They're different but they're not separate.

In a crude basic way, I think it's good to ask "what are we assuming when we accept that cancel culture is a thing that exists and makes change".

*Speaking of cancel culture, word on hip left grad student twitter is that normies have discovered him and so he's bad now. There's been a little ripple of "ha ha you're talking about capitalist realism how boring and cliche" going around and it's been sort of depressing since it's obviously not coming from any actual engagement with his work. Entirely predictable - that's what happens, there's a boom when someone dies and then there's a turn, it happened to Carlyle, but still you'd hope we'd rise above.

**Further, I think that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an inflection point in this process, where big media started figuring out how to monetize certain aspects of women's experiences, feminism, etc while still basically keeping everything the same. Adbusters was sort of the other side of the process - out there trying to keep back the tide of the media while still keeping misogyny and racism the same.
posted by Frowner at 6:03 AM on February 16, 2021 [11 favorites]

Admittedly my favorite Fisher is The Weird and the Eerie which is probably more basic than a lot of his stuff, but you should totally read it if you like science fiction or horror.
posted by Frowner at 6:06 AM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ah, see, and I'm stuck at the "what is cancel culture?" step - different people are actually-clearly-to-me using the term in very different ways. It's a nebulous term, like "hipster", that seems to be always an identifier applied to other people rather than something people use to describe their own behavior. Which is inherently problematic when it comes to definitions. In particular, that makes it hard to say anything about how cancel culture relates to eg. boycotts or neoliberalism with any sort of accuracy or definitiveness - doing so requires that cancel culture have one agreed upon definition, or is one specific thing, or that we have the terminology to describe which sub-definition of cancel culture we're talking about at the moment. So in that sense, the only thing we can discuss with any semblance of accuracy regarding cancel culture is it's role as an accusation in political/cultural discourse.

Eg. dragons don't actually exist/there are widely varying descriptions of what a dragon is from different cultures and literary sources. So it doesn't make sense to talk about what a dragon is, overall. We can talk about Chinese dragons (though likely still need to specify time period or individual author to be sure of having a well-defined idea in common), or McCaffrey's dragons in the fictional world of Per, to some extent, but more broadly we'll end up with contradicting definitions. We most definitely can talk about the cultural significance of dragons in different cultures and time periods, though.
posted by eviemath at 6:35 AM on February 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

Both parts of the term cancel culture are misnomers. Call-out is more accurate for the first part, and it just isn’t an actual culture. It also isn’t an alternative or substitute for institutional, legislative, etc change. If anything, it is just the personal component of pursuing a better society. No one is choosing individual call outs of a racist person instead of laws that promote racial equality.

Also, it is a BS right-wing term like political correctness. Evoking the plight of the innocent, powerless victims of cancel culture is to miss the point or fall into a trap. When it happens to innocent, powerless people it is called bullying. That’s been going on forever. So-called cancel culture is just an attempt to denigrate people who are willing to speak up when something is wrong.
posted by snofoam at 6:57 AM on February 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

And "what is cancel culture", that's also such an important question. Why do we group all these things together as cancel culture? (That's not a rhetorical question; I think there are reasons.)

And why don't we call right-wing cancel culture attempts "cancel culture"? I haven't seen anyone do this, not even a centrist type who abhors both. I'd say that "cancel culture" defined as "trying to make real material/economic consequences for people using social media and often because of their social media" is usefully understood as the spirit of the age, not a right/left thing.

~~
Drawbacks to cancel culture:
1. Literally innocent people getting threatened and harassed, losing jobs, losing housing, losing reputation and thus ability to be hired. This is similar to posting revenge porn, deepfake porn, etc and lends itself to totally phony attacks, although so far most of the totally phony cancel culture attacks I've seen have fallen apart.
2. Proportionality: In insular subcultures, people get "canceled" over misunderstandings, mistakes, obviously trivial things that they said when they were fifteen, etc. And if someone does get "canceled", there is no mechanism for saying "you made an ignorant remark in a small forum, the consequence is limited embarrassment and an apology, you will not get hateful and threatening emails or lose your job".
3. Proportionality II: People who have power in their milieu do genuinely awful things and are "canceled" for fifteen minutes by 10% of their audience/community.

And yet, there's not a lot else on the table. What else is there? At best, you're talking about cops and prisons, which aren't proportional either, and at worst you're talking about "the cops don't recognize internet threats as a problem". Or else on the left you're talking about accountability processes, which I have honestly almost never seen work.

In theory, we reject all that there is, have the revolution and come up with processes that are not perfect but better. And yet if you spend your life working toward the revolution you're still going to have no real current-world recourse, so who can blame someone for trying to use the mechanisms that exist?

~~
The unity between cancel culture, call-outs and whatever the right wing calls its processes is the logic of social media and media consumption.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on February 16, 2021 [18 favorites]

So-called cancel culture is just an attempt to denigrate people who are willing to speak up when something is wrong.

Just to clarify, I was trying to say: the term “cancel culture” is just an attempt to denigrate the act of speak up when something is wrong.
posted by snofoam at 7:15 AM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

And why don't we call right-wing cancel culture attempts "cancel culture"? I haven't seen anyone do this, not even a centrist type who abhors both.

Good question - my suspicion is part of it is that at this point in time it's easier to Twitter-dunk on conservatives' hypocrisy on the topic (like the thing where Rep. Kinzinger (Illinois - R) got a handwritten nasty letter "cancelling" him from members of his extended family after his vote to impeach) or their emphasis on "cancel culture" as a real societal problem (like Fox News devoting a big section of Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio - R) complaining about "cancel culture" while giving the Senate trial minimal coverage.)
posted by soundguy99 at 7:19 AM on February 16, 2021

I like the term "patriotic correctness" as a corollary to political correctness, it shows that you can be shunned on the right for deviating from the group norm just as easily.
posted by subdee at 7:24 AM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I feel like we need a different word to describe when the Twitter mobs go bonkers on people, or when a comparatively minor offense gets not just the person "cancelled" but also all their friends and associates get pulled in by floods of demands to "denounce" the "cancelled" person.

Like, there's "you're no longer welcome here and you don't get the credit you're used to" and there's "howling mob flooding your DMs, mentions, and replies with death threats," and we keep using the same words for both.
posted by Scattercat

I don't know if you were thinking of the same case, but my main (vicarious) experience of "cancelling" is hearing Natalie Wynn (aka Contrapoints) talk about cancelling (transcript), and her own experience with it. But that's a really different phenomenon from the boycotting or deplatforming of controversial/criminal celebrities. For her, it was about being ostracized by large sections of her own communities (YouTubers, other trans people) - and also about her friends and colleagues being required to either denounce her or face harassment and boycotts as well. It wasn't just about not listening to her videos or not giving her money; there was a concerted effort to try to isolate her away from the community.

This is such a different phenomenon than what conservatives complain about - the two things really do need different names, like ostracization or shunning.

It's also struck me that the far worse treatment has been directed at non-powerful people on the left, like Wynn - because it only works when people are vulnerable and need online community. Weadon doesn't care if people on Twitter don't like him; his friends are not easily reached through social media. They are all much more isolated by money and power. He might get "cancelled", but he won't get harassed, and if he is, he has staff to deal with it.
posted by jb at 8:06 AM on February 16, 2021 [13 favorites]

Ironically, it seems like Wynn's "shunning" has made her videos, and that cancellation video in particular, extremely popular amongst mostly-cis centrists and liberals to use to silence trans voices (among others) in favor of platforming bigots, or deplatforming those that oppose bigots. That actually gives Wynn a lot of power and a large community, whether or not they know it or have ever acknowledged it.

As a result, there are a lot of activists, not just trans and not just on the left, who feel like Contrapoints and/or their followers have made it less of a resource for marginalised people and more of a cudgel to shun and ostracize certain voices (WOC especially) in favor of vanilla, safer-for-primetime-TV voices that won't upset the squares.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:53 AM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

That actually gives Wynn a lot of power and a large community, whether or not they know it or have ever acknowledged it.

Yeah, it's lovely when your friends are harassed and asked to denounce you. She talks about the mental health impact of it all - and it wasn't punishment for Wynn being a bigot or platforming bigots or deplatforming anyone. It was all in reaction for her loose association with someone else that had been declared persona non grata - an association which did not promote those person's views at all.

Wynn isn't safer for prime-time, she's just smarter, a better writer and a better film producer most other YouTubers. She's more challenging because she will pull apart an issue and reveal multiple sides.

I'm not sure what "it" you are referring to when you say "less of a resource" - do you mean the platforms (Twitter, YouTube)? Or you do you mean that "cancelling" has been wielded not as a defense against hurtful activity and more of a way to shun and ostracize marginalised voices?

Because if you mean the latter, that was the POINT of her video. Like I said, Weadon isn't going to be suicidal from being cancelled - but some vulnerable person who is being ostracized because they used the wrong words and are cut off from supports and community that was a lifeline for them - those are the people who are actually hurt by cancel culture. It can be - and has been - used as a form of online bullying. Wynn points out that she has protections because she's built up a private community of friends and supports - she worries most about people without those personal resources (like a trans teen who may or may not be out yet) who have been treated as she has been.

Also, Wynn uses she/her pronouns. Please respect that.
posted by jb at 9:09 AM on February 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

Remember that "I identify as an attack helicopter" short story that was published before the pandemic? It's a pretty good story, actually, and it's by a trans woman who was attacked and vilified on the internet in ways that seem to have really hurt her. People responded to that story as if it were literally a trans woman who had become an attack helicopter in the service of the US military. It was a wee mite excessive, you could say, and yet it was almost impossible to stop. That's the down side of "cancel culture" and I do think it's a bit what happened to Wynn.

~~

If you find your work being used by awful people, yes, that's a sign that you need to look closely and honestly at your work and how it's distributed. However, that's not actual proof that your work itself is bad. Your work might be bad, but it also might be substantially and willfully misread. Consider all the people who willfully misread Martin Luther King, for pete's sake!
posted by Frowner at 9:17 AM on February 16, 2021 [12 favorites]

Ok, enough.

At the time of writing, the offending term has now been used 182 times in this thread, 114 of them without quote marks.

If someone were to join in a discussion of, for example, white privilege, and replaced the word "white" with "Aryan" whenever they spoke, they would not last long here, and rightly so. This is where this is going.

I'm out.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:38 AM on February 16, 2021

I'm still waiting to see a list of people who lost their livelihood because of "cancel culture" that didn't absolutely deserve it. I think even the number of people who have been fired or lost out in any permanent way even if they did deserve it is very small.

The other day a friend said isn't it a shame that JK Rowling has been cancelled for stating her beliefs on trans issues, and it's like, are you kidding me? Rowling is raking in astronomical sums of money and has an audience of millions. I am still waiting to find someone who was cancelled by the internet unjustly or mistakenly and lost a career or any substantial earnings.
posted by chaz at 12:19 PM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

David Shor.
posted by PhineasGage at 12:39 PM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm still waiting to see a list of people who lost their livelihood because of "cancel culture" that didn't absolutely deserve it

Colin Kaepernick?
posted by mikelieman at 12:41 PM on February 16, 2021 [15 favorites]

David Shor.

Interviewer: To play insurrectionist’s advocate: The protests weren’t entirely nonviolent. And one could argue that, had there not been rioting in Minneapolis, there would have been less media attention and thus, fewer nonviolent protests.

I find the use of the word "insurrectionist" in this piece used to describe events of this past summer to be, in the fuller historical context, not the correct word at all.
posted by mikelieman at 12:46 PM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

@mikelieman

Nah, they should call them what they were: a symbolic lynch mob.
posted by subdee at 12:51 PM on February 16, 2021

David Shor works at OpenLabs. He did get fired for what seems like an unjust cancellation, but he's still employed, still speaking, still active on Twitter etc.
posted by chaz at 1:01 PM on February 16, 2021

I find it reprehensible to say about a human being, "well, they were able to find another job," as an excuse or a balancing out of unwarranted, unjust treatment.
posted by PhineasGage at 1:04 PM on February 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

I'm still waiting to see a list of people who lost their livelihood because of "cancel culture" that didn't absolutely deserve it.

I can immediately think of two people I know personally (one marginally famous, the other not) who were more or less cancelled out of their livelihoods not because they didn't do anything wrong (they both did and admitted it), but the penalties meted out were absurdly heavy handed given their relatively minor transgressions.

It does annoy me to see folks trying to argue that "cancel culture" (certainly from the so-called left) is no big deal. It is. It's an effective tactic and thus prone to being weaponized. The war in question being Marshall McLuhan's World War Three, the guerrilla information war where no distinction is made between military and civilian targets. We're all in it whether we want to be or not. Aren't we?
posted by philip-random at 1:07 PM on February 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

And why don't we call right-wing cancel culture attempts "cancel culture"?

Because it is a term made up by conservatives and it only exists when non-conservatives call out or boycott a person/company for actual bad behavior. I don’t know why this is apparently so hard for people to understand. It is not a new social phenomenon that has evolved due to changes in society and technology. It is a slur used by right wing assholes to defend their behavior when they are being called out.

One could argue that there are broader modes of action enabled by technology and other trends, and I think there are, but “cancel culture” is very specific. Pretending that it also includes bullying, etc misses the point entirely.
posted by snofoam at 1:17 PM on February 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

What gets me about the arguments about so-called 'cancel culture', is what do the arguers expect to happen? No legislation supports or enables it. No technology specifically enables it on its own.
It's an emerging behavior of social networks and of people communicating with each other, in general.
If we, as a society, decided: "this 'cancel' culture thing is bad, m'okay?", then what?
Do we pass a law making it unlawful to not like somebody? To point out that we don't like something they did?
Do we make it illegal for corporations to stop hiring or doing business with people who have are negatively perceived by large segments of the population?
Like the War on Christmas (which we fought and won), there's no there there, even if we took the 'cancel culture' alarmists' arguments at face value.
posted by signal at 1:18 PM on February 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I find it reprehensible to say about a human being, "well, they were able to find another job," as an excuse or a balancing out of unwarranted, unjust treatment.

I'm sorry you find it reprehensible, but I am examining the consequences of these discussions, not making excuses. It's not that I don't feel sympathy for someone who has been unjustly hounded by an internet mob (it's happened to me, so trust me I empathize!), but I'm trying to understand what the actual results of these incidents have been. We hear about so-and-so was cancelled, but I've still yet to see verifiable examples of someone who unjustly lost it all.

By all accounts what Shor went through was awful, but he seems to be thriving now. He's not a pariah, he has not been run out of town on a rail.
posted by chaz at 1:26 PM on February 16, 2021

I'm still waiting to see a list of people who lost their livelihood because of "cancel culture" that didn't absolutely deserve it.

Colin Kaepernick, absolutely! Of course, he did nothing wrong - rather, the right thing (and even consulted with a veteran about what action would be best).

But other people have been caught up in internet storms for saying things that were hurtful or tone-deaf, but also who were themselves not powerful or important, like Justine Sacco. We're talking about one-off tweets, not people who systematically abused their power. And the response was disproportionate. (Yeah, I know she worked in PR, but she wasn't speaking for a client). I think also of August Ames - this was a more complicated story (she committed suicide, rather than being fired), but also involved serious harassment of someone for a one-off statement.

I don't know how I feel about someone like Milo Yiannopoulos - after all, he is a flat-out white supremacist who wasn't fired from his need job, but denied riches and book deals. But then again, that wasn't because he was a bigot - that was just fine with his conservative backers - but because of comments that were taken out of context and which he has taken back. I'd feel much happier if he'd been cancelled and de-platformed because he was a Nazi.

There really are different situations here - criticizing public and powerful figures, de-platforming people, cancelling book deals - that's very different from harassment or getting people excluded from their livelihoods. It's about proportionality: what did the person say/do? what is the impact of the "canceling"? Is it in reaction to serious abuse and crimes (e.g. Harvey Weinstein), or did they say something inappropriate (or interpretable as inappropriate, in the case of the professor who was quoting a Chinese word that sounded like a bad word), and then apologized? Is it about a millionaire not receiving more rewards, or about someone not being able to pay their rent?
posted by jb at 1:27 PM on February 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Justine Sacco got caught up in an insanely intense internet storm and got fired. She then took some time off, and was back in a similar position 6 months later. She's now CCO at Match Group, which at the time of her hiring was owned by IAC, the company that fired her for that tweet about not getting AIDS in Africa because she's white.
posted by chaz at 1:38 PM on February 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I was reading the NYT's piece on the Donald McNeil brouhaha and this quote from one of the kids on the Peru trip stood out

I'm a tad amused at a high school teenager on a $5,000 two-week excursion to Peru lecturing a Times reporter on privilege.
posted by JackFlash at 1:39 PM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

We hear about so-and-so was cancelled, but I've still yet to see verifiable examples of someone who unjustly lost it all.

And we're all very unlikely to know about them, since those most at risk of having "lost it all" are those most likely not to be famous or powerful. They will be the people who have been ostracized within small communities. It will be truck drivers who were trolled into making supposedly racist gestures (the whole OK sign = white power is itself a troll) (previously).

I also blame the excessive rights of employers to fire workers without cause. There are too many people fired for having the wrong bumper sticker (or not having the right one). But even a year off work can seriously disrupt someone's life.
posted by jb at 1:39 PM on February 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

I'm a tad amused at a high school teenager on a $5,000 two-week excursion to Peru lecturing a Times reporter on privilege.

Would you prefer that privileged young people who are not Black look the other way and/or laugh when an established media figure (he's been working for the NYT since before I was born) says things they believe to be racist? What's the cutoff at which class solidarity trumps equity?
posted by praemunire at 2:11 PM on February 16, 2021 [13 favorites]

Well, to be fair, it was always all clear, because I just don't know how to tell when I understand versus don't understand something until someone on the internet tells me that their explanation is perfectly clear. But you know what I mean. (Better than I know what I mean, even!)

Eviemath, you were being quite mean at me, and it was you who declared that something I said was not clear when you could have said it wasn't clear to you, then doubling down using absolutist speech ("this does not at all clarify"). I'm a nobody on here, I'm not a famous author like Scalzi with a platform to the creative classes, I'm just a real person of color, gay, queer, and leftist (and a few other minoritizing aspects) and so I am not obliged to thoroughly unpack my expressed thoughts for anyone when treated
disrespectfully and passive aggressively. Just because I didn't unpack them doesn't make them absolutely unclear. Just unclear to some people, and that's fine.

And I know you as a commenter on here, I've never seen you like this. I want to reassure you that I was not secretly calling you a neoliberal or anything of the sort. At strongest I was calling (or, worried that) Scalzi's argument exploitable by neoliberal interests.
posted by polymodus at 5:37 PM on February 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

"Cancellation" is just evolution so it's no wonder creationists are scared of it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:49 PM on February 16, 2021

Seconding praemunire.

"I'm a tad amused at a high school teenager on a $5,000 two-week excursion to Peru lecturing a Times reporter on privilege."

To be fair, additionally, the teenager may have invested 5K (or their parents or whatever), but they may very well have spent a chunk to arrive, and possibly could've been volunteering at an NGO in a rustic setting, or some other such programme. Many of these exist. They may have very constructive insight regarding privilege.

..also, top comment is simply amazing. c'est magnifique, le metafilter.
posted by firstdaffodils at 8:06 PM on February 16, 2021

they may very well have spent a chunk to arrive, and possibly could've been volunteering at an NGO in a rustic setting, or some other such programme.

Oh, bullshit. These NYT trips weren't volunteer programs. They were two week tours. This is rich parents paying for a little international travel to polish their kid's resume for their application to the Ivy League. Checks, story. Oh, he's now in Harvard. Yay, mission accomplished.
posted by JackFlash at 8:52 PM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh, he's now in Harvard. Yay, mission accomplished.

OK, fine. I ask you again: are you saying that this means that they should just go with being white and rich and accept that "among ourselves" people are going to say racist things?
posted by praemunire at 12:51 AM on February 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

I think Mark Fisher is right that there's a class element to call-out culture. This was an interesting article I read recently:

https://blog.pmpress.org/2020/08/13/break-out-of-your-class-bubble-get-training-and-win/

Working class people who haven’t been to college rarely confront each other by calling each other out. They banter, they joke, they express anger in that egalitarian style that implies they’re ready for an argument. Generally, they don’t correct, because they don’t like bosses and don’t want to be one.

Middle class people, however, are trained to respect bossing and bossiness, so the result is a version of anti-oppression work that reinforces class roles. That version doesn’t question the effectiveness of “calling out”; it comes from being socialized to play the economic role of the middle class: managing, correcting, sorting people into acceptable and unacceptable.

I get the argument from, especially, POC that calls for "more solidarity" can just mean ignoring their own wants and needs while the wants and needs of the (white) majority take precedence. That focusing on "class" ignores the needs of e.g. women. Call-out culture really does correct for that imbalance in a lot of ways and on the whole I like the culture more now (but I am a suburban educated professional so of course I do).

But man I really do see so much of this obsession with sorting people, and (often) over signifiers that don't really matter, like which TV shows you watch or which words you use (not talking about the ones everyone knows are slurs here). So many people are bullied and ostracized out of their own small communities over basically nothing. Should we call that cancel culture, call-out culture, or something else? I don't know but it happens all the time.
posted by subdee at 1:26 AM on February 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

The Hollywood Blacklist was the brainchild of the studios.

Pendulums swing.
posted by BWA at 4:33 AM on February 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

"Oh, bullshit. These NYT trips weren't volunteer programs. They were two week tours." Haha, shot that plane down pretty fast.

Expressed, have to agree with praemunire. ..soo, what do you expect the person to say/feel?

prae.. "among ourselves" people are going to say racist things?" And unfortunately, this is probably exactly the case. There isn't enough incentive for people to say anything to upset the order (well, there certainly is, but it's culturally clashing and people often aren't given the skills to create a route to get there, so nothing is done)
posted by firstdaffodils at 5:49 AM on February 17, 2021

Working class people who haven’t been to college rarely confront each other by calling each other out. They banter, they joke, they express anger in that egalitarian style that implies they’re ready for an argument. Generally, they don’t correct, because they don’t like bosses and don’t want to be one.

Don't know what class has to do with it, but through circumstances I would not have chosen, I've spent the past two years living in proximity with someone* who simultaneously HATES being corrected and can't help correcting others, and the kicker, seems to have no consciousness of how infuriating this dish-it-out-but-refuse-to-take-it hypocrisy can be.

It's been maddening but also a hell of an education. I've really had to learn to bite my tongue. In fact, it's sore right now. But in the end, I figure I'm a better person for it, less prone to needing to be correct about things, more conscious of which hills are really worth dying on -- peace usually being more important than victory and all that.

* they're not a terrible person at all by the way, just terribly frustrating in this regard.
posted by philip-random at 10:23 AM on February 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'll humbly suggest Amber Heard as someone who's currently suffering from a social media smear campaign (by Depp? By MRA pressure groups?) disguised as a call-out.

Not that I can prove this, but she filed for divorce, the courts ruled in her favor finding there was evidence that Depp had abused her, and suddenly there's a campaign on social media to call her out as the real abuser all along.

New accounts are created that immediately start posted about this, a lot of the rhetoric and talking points used is the same. Journalists who push back are harassed in turn. It seems coordinated and malicious to me, from where I'm standing on the outside having only the publicly available facts at my command.

This is what I mean by call outs are a tool that anyone can use. Even if the audience only wants to denounce wicked things and we all agree which things are wicked, the raptors have learned how to unlock the bunker doors. Anyone can use the language of the progressive left in a call-out and if there's no mechanism to correct distortions they can do a lot of damage.
posted by subdee at 10:53 AM on February 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

"Journalists who push back are harassed in turn. It seems coordinated and malicious to me, from where I'm standing on the outside having only the publicly available facts at my command.

This is what I mean by call outs are a tool that anyone can use."
..just wow.
posted by firstdaffodils at 11:29 AM on February 17, 2021

it's there from the get-go in the history of warfare. One side comes up with a new weapon which either leads to a genocide or the other side eventually gets it. And so on, extrapolating all the way up to nuclear arms race of the latter half of the 20th century.

Bullets just aren't ideological.
posted by philip-random at 11:37 AM on February 17, 2021

OK, fine. I ask you again: are you saying that this means that they should just go with being white and rich and accept that "among ourselves" people are going to say racist things?

I mean, I don’t think it’s hard to argue that rich white people taking it upon themselves to act as the arbiters of racism presents some potential problems. Of course being silent also presents problems.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 AM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Like "fake news", "cancel culture" described a real thing when the phrase was coined by left-wing people and then lost all meaning after conservatives glommed onto it.

I'm still waiting to see a list of people who lost their livelihood because of "cancel culture" that didn't absolutely deserve it

It was called "trashing" then, but I'd submit Shulasmith Firestone.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:09 PM on February 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

A couple deleted.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 4:47 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thanks Eyebrows McGee, I rethought that after posting. Let it die in darkness.
posted by subdee at 7:00 PM on February 18, 2021

The definitions of "cancel culture" are spiraling ever wider: "GOP's Thune says Trump allies engaging in 'cancel culture'."
posted by PhineasGage at 9:13 PM on February 18, 2021

A new essay on this topic, "My Year of Grief and Cancellation," by the creator of Your Fave Is Problematic.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:40 AM on February 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

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