To think 'cancel culture' is going way too far?

[Okeefe]

I've gone on twitter this morning to see #CancelKimmel trending, the reason.. he sang the N word when rapping a Snoop Dogg song in 1996.

Jenna Marbles being 'cancelled' due to doing blackface in a Nicki Minaj impression is 2011.

I swear every time I go on the internet, someone else is being 'cancelled'

People are digging up ancient tweets belonging to celebrities and normal people alike, searching for racist/problematic key words and contacting their employers, losing them their jobs and more often that not this content that they are 'cancelling' them for is historic

Are people not allowed to grow up? I'm pretty sure when I was in my early teens if I was singing along to a rap song, I would say the word like any other lyric. Would I now? No. Because I understand that it is offensive. Because I'm an adult now. Because times have changed.

I've had to quit twitter, it depresses me so much. You can't disagree with a word this woke generation say, or you too will be 'cancelled'.

It just shows that we have not moved on from the public shaming and isolation as punishment.

YABU people are allowed their opinions, same as you have stated yours here ..find it amazing that the same people who go on about not being 'allowed' to say things anymore silmutaneously don't want others to have an opinion , especially if that opinion is deemed to be ' too politically correct' whatever that means.

Yup. The test is bollocks.

" But “being cancelled” doesn’t actually mean anything. It usually just means people send nasty tweets about you for a bit."

If only. It means contracts not being renewed. It means not being accepted to audition for roles. It means your career can be over. Hence the haste with which Radcliffe, Watson & Grint denounced Rowling, lest they be cancelled by association, their silence read as complicity.

Witchhunts. McCarthyism. Cancel culture. Three names for the same thing.

Many women have lost careers over stating the obvious on Twitter, I saw the vile rape and death threats jk rowling got on twitter it is sadly a dangerous place, especially for women. I have noticed women in particular are victims of this, none of the men harassing JK Rowling have been cancelled or banned from Twatter.

It’s important not to conflate two separate things.

Celebs being subject to nasty tweets (with usually zero repercussions) for being racist is completely separate from women being victim to an orchestrated hate campaign involving rape and death threats and loss of jobs for holding GC views.

Those are two entirely separate things and it’s very dangerous to conflate them.

I’ve seen numerous threads and posts on MN lately trying to align pro-racism (or anti anti-racism) with the GC movement, on the grounds that both racists and GC feminists are attacked by “wokesters” so we’re the same and should be friends. I don’t know if the agenda is to defend racism or to discredit GC feminists, but it’s a highly worrying trend.

And bringing it back to “censorship.” Whenever there are threads on MN about racism people play the censorship card. Numerous posters staked their claim on defending an actual Nazi riots recently, on the grounds of being anti-censorship. (Of course these same posters objected to the peaceful BLM rallies). You cannot play the “censorship” card to defend racism yet also try to deny ordinary people the right to tweet an opinion.

I have a real problem with the n word in popular culture. I fully comprehend the argument of reclaiming it but you can’t ring fence a word for use by only one group of people. That’s just not how language works, it either changes context and meaning or it doesn’t. I feel that people who have used it when repeating lyrics or on quoting someone verbatim are unfairly attacked. I take the stance no one should be using it at all casually.

Saying that a thing has gone too far doesn't offer an analysis of what the thing is, or what happened that was 'too far'.
There have been some interesting discussions of purity spirals recently, and people have explained that they can be started but there is no mechanism to make them stop.
Mobs seems to be choosy about which causes are feted, and who gets piled on or cancelled and who gets ignored - such as Trudeau wearing blackface and still being popular.
Its often down to the fact there are key players who have more influence than the average person. I believe that people who are prone to being influenced by popularity will also be in the group more susceptible to propaganda.

The test is not a load of rubbish. I believe the experts not randomers on the internet.

I suspect the people saying it’s rubbish had troubling results and don’t want to face the level of implicit bias we all have.

WhereYouLeftIt this thread is about people being criticised for racism. No one is losing their career over racism.

One of the primary reasons people get “Twitter cancelled” is for being serial sexual predators towards women. Many male celebs have been “cancelled” for sexually harassing or sexually assaulting young female colleagues and/or fans. Do the posters who are against cancel culture have any comment on that?

Cornetto

I have a real problem with the n word in popular culture. I fully comprehend the argument of reclaiming it but you can’t ring fence a word for use by only one group of people.

Of course you can. I’m Pakistani and sometimes I hear a Pakistani refer to a fellow Pakistani as the ‘p’ word, which is fine.

If you used the ‘p’ word to me I would slap you silly.

you can’t ring fence a word for use by only one group of people.

You absolutely can.

@Ninkanink

Cancel culture has nothing to do with punishment of serious crime, retribution for harm to others, confinement for protection of society or rehabilitation/redemption of those whose circumstances warrant it. There are legislative processes and pathways for that.

Cancelling people because they offended someone is never a good idea, no matter who it is or what they said/did. That doesn’t mean I agree with them, or like them, or like what they said/did.

All the proponents of this current purity spiral should be very wary indeed of supporting it.

One. Hundred. Percent.

It's all getting really chilling.

@CathyComesHome

It’s important not to conflate two separate things.

Celebs being subject to nasty tweets (with usually zero repercussions) for being racist is completely separate from women being victim to an orchestrated hate campaign involving rape and death threats and loss of jobs for holding GC views.

Those are two entirely separate things and it’s very dangerous to conflate them.

I’ve seen numerous threads and posts on MN lately trying to align pro-racism (or anti anti-racism) with the GC movement, on the grounds that both racists and GC feminists are attacked by “wokesters” so we’re the same and should be friends. I don’t know if the agenda is to defend racism or to discredit GC feminists, but it’s a highly worrying trend.

And bringing it back to “censorship.” Whenever there are threads on MN about racism people play the censorship card. Numerous posters staked their claim on defending an actual Nazi riots recently, on the grounds of being anti-censorship. (Of course these same posters objected to the peaceful BLM rallies). You cannot play the “censorship” card to defend racism yet also try to deny ordinary people the right to tweet an opinion.

Thank you, this is such a good summary. People who decry 'cancel culture' in relation to racism often just want a free pass to be racist. The consequences for rich and influential people who are 'cancelled' for racist behaviours are minimal, so I wouldn't worry too much about them.

On the other hand, cancelling from violent misogynists is something we should all be very concerned about.

@CathyComesHome

Cancel culture is always wrong, and always too far.

Even when it's a serial rapist?

Even when it results in a serial rapist losing their job?

Yes. We have the law to address these things, we don't need "cancel culture".

I'm actually a lot sadder about the whole Jenna Marbles "cancelling" than I honestly should be. I've watched her videos every Thursday practically since she started out. We're close in age, and she's been part of my growing up.

I shall honestly miss her a lot.

Sunshinerice

The OP said that people's past history is being forensically examined, to see if they have done something or said something which would now be deemed unacceptable.
That is wrong and perhaps more importantly, are the "cancellers" really that sure about their own past?
As WhereYouLeftIt said, "Cancel culture" is no differrent to McCarthyism.

Yes, I also think a lot of the 'cancelled' moments have been in response to sexual assaults and harassment, it really began with all the Me Too revelations.

Are you saying that women aren't allowed to object to men who have raped or harassed other women? Do you feel bad for men who have lost their careers because they abused someone? Or are some kinds of cancelled okay?

It’s the difference in objecting to a persons action and deliberately trying to influence others to destroy someone life. Often the person involved in cancel culture doesn’t even engage with the person they want to cancel. It’s like most things now it’s so polarised that any discussion is meaningless. What’s the point of freedom of speech when any mistake can be weaponised. The blackface and the N was wrong but so was society at the time for accepting it. It was not done in a vacuum.

Why wasn’t any complaining when BBC4 stopped showing old episodes of Top Of The Pops presented by Jimmy Saville? Is it because he was abusing white girls?

The hypocrisy on this thread is amazing.

@dreamingbohemian

Yes, I also think a lot of the 'cancelled' moments have been in response to sexual assaults and harassment, it really began with all the Me Too revelations.

Are you saying that women aren't allowed to object to men who have raped or harassed other women? Do you feel bad for men who have lost their careers because they abused someone? Or are some kinds of cancelled okay?

How do you even begin to make a coherent argument out of that?

dreamingbohemian

People who complain about 'cancel culture' don't seem to really get what 'cancelled' means in practice... very few people are ever permanently 'cancelled'

What would 'permanently cancelled' mean in practice?

QuimReaper Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and numerous other serial rapists were exposed and brought down by cancel culture. The entire MeToo movement was started by cancel culture, ie women going to the press and the Internet after the current legal system had failed them.

I find it very shocking that posters on a supposedly women-centric, fairly feminist website are telling sexual abuse/assault survivors to shut up and that the criminal justice system is completely adequate to deal with things.

It’s very, very evident that the current criminal justice system is NOT adequate in dealing with sexual offences, especially when it involves extremely powerful and wealthy male celebrities.

@Thelnebriati

Saying that a thing has gone too far doesn't offer an analysis of what the thing is, or what happened that was 'too far'. There have been some interesting discussions of purity spirals recently, and people have explained that they can be started but there is no mechanism to make them stop. Mobs seems to be choosy about which causes are feted, and who gets piled on or cancelled and who gets ignored - such as Trudeau wearing blackface and still being popular. Its often down to the fact there are key players who have more influence than the average person. I believe that people who are prone to being influenced by popularity will also be in the group more susceptible to propaganda.

The Purity Spiral is a concept that I am seeing everywhere now since I heard this, in relation to knitting - who knew it would end like this!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70h

unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/

It is worth taking some time to understand the concept, as it is an easy trap to fall into.

A purity spiral occurs when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.

But while a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is not about morality. It’s about purity — a very different concept. Morality doesn’t need to exist with reference to anything other than itself. Purity, on the other hand, is an inherently relative value — the game is always one of purer-than-thou.

YANBU.

Purity spirals are going off all over the place, soon, all the cancelled people, famous and not famous, will outnumber the finger pointers. Then things may return to being somewhat normal again.

Can we speed up the process by cancelling ourselves?