Cancel culture - they are real people

[Pitterpatterpotter]

AIBU to hate ‘cancel culture’.
The people who social media suddenly decides are cancelled are real people with feelings, often victims of fake news or speculation.

A friend of mine has been ‘cancelled’ recently and it’s been heartbreaking reading and hearing abusive and bullshit comments about someone I know. In my opinion it’s bullying and it’s a part of social media that I hate at the moment.

It's exactly like 'Let's all ignore Dan'. That's about the level. And if you don't ignore Dan too, you're also a racist/transphobe/literal murderer.

I find it scary but also weirdly shrill, as if those demanding 'cancellations' are so detached from normal real life existence that all their human connections are now online, and people can be 'deleted', as if they've never existed. Just block everyone with a hashtag.

Being the intended target of hate speech is so horrible. I wonder if the person fighting for Katie Hopkin’s right to free speech is one of the minorities she regularly hurled venom at. I doubt it.

Can I ask what "cancelling" someone actually involves? Assume it's more than unfollowing /unfriending them?

I think it's quite an immature idea. It comes from the notion that you can just 'switch off' people you don't like, or whose opinions you disagree with, in the same way you can block them online so that you don't have to hear them.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work in real life. You can't just click your fingers and make someone magically disappear.

I wonder if it is more prevalent among younger 'digital natives' whose online life is more merged with their real life? Those of us over 40, who have spent half our lives on the internet and half without it ('digital immigrants') realise you can't just 'cancel' people. Life doesn't work like that.

I think ‘cancelling’ is very prevalent among academic staff at the moment. Average person doesn’t need to have an active ‘online’ profile and doesn’t need to make their views public, but the same can’t be said for academics/writers/journalists/politicians. Get on the wrong side of the ‘offence archaeologists’ and your career is in tatters. People will go through any tweets you’ve liked, people you’ve had dinner with, relatives etc and suddenly you’re in front of the ‘diversity board’ for making people feel ‘uncomfortable’.

Guilty by association is now a thing too. The stepmother of the cop who shot the man in Atlanta recently lost her job. The girlfriend of the ‘white lives matter’ banner flyer lost her job. The husband of the supposed ‘Karen’ who asked the man about painting he BLM sign outside his house also lost his job.

It seems like an extension of what Jon Ronson wrote about in 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed'. And that came out a few years ago!

Yes and it's happening to JK Rowling, because of her views on gender.

Also it is presumed that you have never changed your opinion from any historical comment you may have made.

If you said something objectionable twenty years ago you can't possible have learned, grown or become more aware.

No, you are just condemned without trial (I was going to say 'judged' but that would imply that the actual facts have been considered, rather than a knee jerk woke reaction).

It's shite, but hardly surprising that this is a thing now. Liberal lost its meaning for many people a long time ago. Cancel Culture is the natural progression of SM Culture, it just takes it offline and into RL.

@GinDaddyRedux

I am 100% Left-wing in my political views. Card carrying member of a democratic socialist party.

Yet there are so many times in the last decade when I have found myself angry, cringing, despondent at the way certain shoals of the Left wing online choose to behave.

A fingers-in-ear, vindictive, bullying mentality born out of a moral absolutism.

"We are the humane thinkers and we are in the moral high ground. People who have demonstrated opposition to our views, or actively campaigned on Right wing causes, need to be hunted, exposed, and "silenced" by us. It's the only way to protect vulnerable groups from hate".

This seems to be such a prevailing mentality on Twitter etc that I have found myself sometimes fighting the very people who I should be alongside ideologically.

However I can't sit around and watch horrible, targeted bullying of individuals in the name of the Left.

Silencing individuals in my view turns them into martyrs. It also keeps the individuals doing the silencing, as far from real power as is possible.

Just look at the frothing-at-the-mouth Corbyn supporters, so keen to purge the Party of any moderates, to find an ideological purity. in doing so they switched off voters who actually might have considered them if they weren't so hectoring, morally superior, bludgeoning in their ways.

Great post, that's exactly how I feel.