What does 'cancel culture' mean to you?

[FTMF30]

This stems from a few posts. One about the disgust of Jodie Comer dating a Republican and comments stating that cancel culture is getting out of hand, dictating people's thoughts, opinions, preferences, etc.

There's also a post about Tescos giving funds to Mermaids and people boycotting them.

Personally, I thought cancel culture was more about the rise of people being quick to 'cancel' things via boycotting, not watching a certain TV show, unfollowing, etc.so (to me) is much more descriptive of the Tescos/Mermaids thing rather than Jodie Comer. With Jodie Comer, I just saw people commenting on their huge disapproval with no real intent on taking action (i.e 'cancelling') her.

When I look into definitions online, they are somewhat varied, so I'm just wondering, what does that term actually mean to people?

trixiebeldon77 for me it is more than this. It is not about anger at others disagreeing it's about condemning a person for uttering one thing not agreed with. For eg I could say I don't understand the fuss about BLM and people could shout on Twitter that I am a racist and I should lose my contract/endorsement/job whatever.

@Gingerkittykat

People boycotting Tesco or not reading David Walliams books is not cancel culture, it's individual choice.

Trying to get Tesco shut down or abusing people who shop there is cancel culture. Demanding that all of Walliams books are removed from the shelves and that he never works again is cancel culture.

Refusing to talk to someone because they are friends with the wrong person on Twitter is cancel culture.

Trying to pretend JK Rowling did not write Harry Potter is cancel culture.

I agree with this.

Cancel culture started in universities with "no platforming". It shut down debate because if students didn't agree with someone scheduled to give a presentation or partake in a debate - anyone from Ben Shapiro (right wing American) to Germaine Greer or Jenny Murray and plenty more - they'd petition refuse to allow them a platform to express their views. This could be by attempting to shame University admin for being a kind of "unkind" or disrupting the event itself so the person couldn't speak. The individual would usually be cancelled before the event.

Now these "adults" are out of universities and in the workplace. They can not tolerate individuals with different opinions, because they've never had to. They're on twitter still and on Twitter the idea has exploded.

So boycotting Tesco for supporting an organisation you believe to advocate for the harm of children is more like boycotting Nestle.

Calling for JKR to be dropped by your employer because you don't like her opinions, is like what you got away with/saw happening at university.

Banning an individual from Twitter because you don't like their opinions is in the same vein.

It's all about shaming and shutting up an individual when you could basically just not buy their product, go to their event or block/not look at their tweets.

It's not understanding that you have no right to not be upset, shocked or even insulted by someone's opinion.

It's trial by an intolerant public. A very, very concerning issue, especially when looking at how it is evolving.

I think the characteristics are:

1. directed at single people, not groups or companies
2. large groups of anonymous or pseudonymous people addressing a named person, who may or may not be well known
3. public shaming - a modern day stocks - with the identified wrongs usually of speech and thought instead of crimes like violence or fraud
4. very QUICK public punishment by institutions - no due process, immediate firing, immediate reporting of the action
5. no forgiveness

Sometimes the response seems justified and sometimes it doesn't, but it never seems reasonable, measured, or predictable. It's 'capricious and arbitrary'. The existing power structures in society seem to replicate, so women get cancelled more than men, and for lesser crimes, minorities get cancelled more than majorities, etc. Nobody is ever uncancelled.

The book 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed' by Jon Ronson is quite good.

Cancel culture is very much against individuals. Peer pressure bullying: if you don’t toe our line you are out, and we will make sure everyone knows it.

Extension of no platforming.

People were (as you say) 'quick to cancel' Jodie Comer based on a rumour that she might be dating somebody who voted Republican.

In the case of Mermaids, people are choosing not to shop/use their branded card etc. with a major corporation.

Most of those boycotting have spent years carefully researching and following the actions of Mermaids. It's not simply a 'quick' Google.

Jodie is receiving abuse, sex based derogatory comments and no doubt some not so lovely emails and messages (I've received dick pictures in the past on Twitter for tweeting about child safeguarding).

Ok, so I'm definitely thinking it's when it's directed at a single person and that it can be a trigger happy response with no debate.

The only reaaon I thought the Tescos/Mermaids situation could be seen as cancel culture was that some people didn't seem to stop at exercising their personal choice and acting on their own values, they were influencing others by shaming and getting a bit shouty, lets say. Which I can understand when you are passionate about what is right and wrong. I guess that could be seen as debate to some small extent. Perhaps I'm thinking way too critically about it which is why I'm confused 🤷‍♀️.

But overall, it's almost impossible to 'cancel' a massive company like Tescos isn't it. Even if they had a dip in sales, they could bounce back with little effort.

I guess cancel culture could be seen akin to blackballing (the slang term in the entertainment industry).

I still do think that the term can sometimes be used hypocritically by all of us at times. I.e. when people say cancel culture is getting out of hand but they really mean is, someone is being publically shamed or punished for an opinion you agree with and you don't like it. I think we could all be guilty of that sometimes. We will obviously believe our opinion is right.

What does it mean that she has been ‘cancelled’ (in a world where people scream that to disagree with them is denying their existence)? Has she been booted off twitter and had jobs pulled? Has she been out on a McCarthyist blacklist? Has her local newsagent cancelled her paper and milk deliveries?

Are we not allowed to speak her name so that she will not live in into eternity (like Egyptian Pharos?)

I still do think that the term can sometimes be used hypocritically by all of us at times. I.e. when people say cancel culture is getting out of hand but they really mean is, someone is being publically shamed or punished for an opinion you agree with and you don't like it. I think we could all be guilty of that sometimes. We will obviously believe our opinion is right.

I disagree with this. I personally don't have a problem with people disagreeing or thinking differently about something. Maybe it's too different for us to find any common ground and we won't be friends, for example. But I wouldn't call for that person to be cancelled. I would reject their "cancelling" as much as someone I agreed with.

However, if people find themselves only agreeing when it's one-sides, then yes, they are hypocrites and it's probably a good moment for a bit of introspection and critical thinking.

The big problem here is that if you think like me, then when you make your voice heard (or try to) at the moment, there is always one side that will attack you for it. Because there's this "if you're not with us you're against us" mentality. It's not very nice experience however the actual problem is that your voice is simply not heard. This mentality frames the whole debate because a third opinion is wrong unless it's 100% in agreement.

The question is, how do we get the people who won't listen, and have never had to listen, to disagreement, to listen? How can we get them to understand that not agreeing 100% with something is not any kind of verbal violence against them. It's simply a different opinion.

Of course there is a line too. If someone is whipping people up to physically attack or physically endanger another group, then that's different. I've rarely seen that happen - although I certainly have noticed that if it's anything about attacking women it's "not serious". People who are not used to hearing opposing opinions and have not been taught how to tolerate them, appear to believe that an opinion that does not 100% support their own is a form of "literal violence". This is where cancel culture also comes into play and why it's so very important that children learn how to think critically as well as hear other opinions - and learn that they have no right not to be offended, therefore how to deal with taking offence and the people who elicit that in them.

It's all a bit '1984' for me. There is a strong authoritarian stance amongst many in the population at the moment. Too much aggression and too many competing demands and entitlement.

You don't change minds by beating everyone down and bullying others. People seem to have the emotional maturity of an average 14 year old now. All gob and dodgy opinions.

Rosie
Orwell is trending on Twitter. Some are recommending we 'cancel' him.

Cancel Orwell? No I think 1984 should be compulsory reading.

HandsOffMyRights wtf, not that he would notice since he been dead for about 70yrs. Cancelling/censoring an author who wrote about censorship is insidious imo. In a sense it just proves his fictional but somewhat predictive points. Awful to destroy something that is more relevant today than it was when it was created and allowed people to think more deeply/critically.

1984 is a better read the 2nd or third time.
Hopefully that suggestion falls flat.

I suspect those saying that haven't read it.

There's an awful lot of nonsense on twitter. I saw a tweet yesterday promoting an piece on 18C literature (the 'potentially trans figures' of Pope, Byron and Swift) and the concept of 'gender density'.

The best reply I saw was "Byron? Are you having a laugh? He was hung like a horse according to Lady Caroline Lamb".

Blue tick Ben Norton tweets: 'In addition to being a gov snitch, fraud George Orwell spent WWII demonizing the USSR as it defeated Nazism

As the Red Army sacrificed millions fighting Hitler, and as the Nazi regime shoved Jews into gas chambers, Orwell was writing Animal Farm.'

We're back to book burning, I fear.

The Russian army during WW2 - well that’s a whole can of worms. It written in 1949 (so duh after WW2) and he died in 1950. And he fought I the Spanish civil war (shit in arm and throat).

What is Bens knowledge in the subject?

Oh and he didn’t fight in WW2 because his lungs were shot to shit.

This is cancel culture. I am always interested in threads discussing it because i think it's important to know the thought processes behind those who agree with it, there's a couple on this thread. I always wonder if they genuinely can't see the end point of such a culture and how they can be so sure they won't be personally affected.

Apparently Ben is a 'journalist who hates the media'. I gave up after that...

I am sure that many people such as Bernard Manning and other comedians from the 70s and 80s would have been subject to 'cancel culture' by people who objected to their views if they had been around today as popular mainstream comedians.

Bernard Manning himself was cancelled by some venues back in the early 2000s.

There have been controversial people who have been cancelled on TV, in newspapers etc - and probably because of their views being seen as controversial etc.

Twitter just makes it easier.

I wonder how many people are concerned about it now - because the people being cancelled / boycotted are simply saying things they agree with - but weren't at all bothered in the past when people who were saying things they disagreed with - or had an issue with racism / sexism - were cancelled and they were more than happy to see them cancelled.

First they came for the racists...and I didn't speak out
Then they came for the sexists...and I didn't speak out

But now they are coming for people whose views I agree with and now I speak out..

To me the biggest proponents of cancel culture fail to see the irony in what they are doing. We don’t agree with your opinion, therefore it’s a wrong opinion and we will destroy you and everyone who agrees with you.....

Christ Ygritte that's it!!

I'm also recalling the time Rose McGowan appeared in a video repenting her sins against gender ideology. It was disturbing, reminiscent of a 'hostage' style plea.

Even if you profusely apologise, promise to be a good girl, educate yourself or be sent to the Gulag ( the latter is part if a genuine tweet from Goldsmiths) no amount of repentance or bargaining is ever enough.

To me It's another fad term that will be dead in 6 months

Cancel culture cancelled?

It's another bullshit phrase used to whinge about the fact they don't like people disagreeing with their wholly unpalatable views.