Cancel Culture- what’s the least you’ve done to deserve it?

[SophoclesTheFox]

I was highly amused by this.

A couple of weeks ago, I put up a tweet on fb that Sarah Ditum had made. My Facebook is very bland, I don’t really do politics on it (I do my politics in the real world, not social media). The tweet had nothing whatsoever to do with sex or gender.

A friend posted under it “shame she’s a T*RF”, to which I replied “I wouldn’t call her that, and anyway I think she’s a really good writer”.

BANG! Defriended and blocked the next day 😂

Option 1- I was Defriended because it’s unacceptable to stay friends with someone who likes a writer who has views you disagree with

Option 2 - she has combed through my profile to search for evidence of wrongthink, and found that I follow FPFW, AWP etc. There is literally nothing else on my fb that outs me as gender crit.

I’m not sure which is more tragic, tbh . I have been waiting for it to happen, to be honest, she’s had massive purges of heretics before so I’m amazed I’ve made it through, and we’re not close.

Has anyone ever cancelled you for less?

Asking about what sexual fetishes you see at Pride.

It's all about diversity and being kind apparently.

Naughty you, asking questions. Cancelled!

My most recent was telling my friend not to be upset at people unfriending him (oh the irony) over him being a Trump supporter. I said they are just disappointed that he supports a president who mocks people with disabilities, sexually assaults women and doesn't pay his bills.
Unfriended.
Bizarre.

It's scary that so many people now think having diverging views is incompatible with friendship.

Isn’t it just?

When did we get so...fragile?

I managed to cause a huge upset when someone posted a thing about the Greta Time magazine, and I said I had doubts about her campaign. I didn't expect many (or any) to agree with me, but the reaction was extreme and kind of weird too.

Not for less, but for another example of guilt by association;
I have asked various angry people to stop shouting 'you are the reason Boris won' at other people, been shouted at (variations of 'don't you even care about), and blocked.

All this online cancel culture leaves me wondering how on earth these people cope with real life divisions.

How would they cope with say, the Orange Order targeting their unusually Catholic community every marching season as we have to live with?

We don't get to cancel Orange marches. We just have to accept that other people hold views that many of us find abhorrent. That some of those people are our neighbours, our colleagues, even our family.

Honestly it's all so childish.

My favourite was when someone told me that women and men are equally likely to rape. I replied, that no, by definition you need a penis to rape and also 98% of sexual violence is committed by men, look, here's a link to prove it, etc. Woke dudebro's fragile ego couldn't take it. Blocked. Oops.

One of my gym buddies just got deleted by an acquaintance of over a decade over a football comment!

I lost count of all the ‘If you voted Tory just delete yourself from my friend list now and save me doing it later’ comments on my post-election newsfeed. I used to think the ‘echo chamber’ accusations levied at social media were overblown, we do, after all, select friends and partners on the basis of having similar interests and opinions...

I no longer think that.

If I followed my social media friends and deleted all the Tory voters, it would largely be people like my Great Uncle Clive*. The only thing Uncle C and I have in common is some genes and living in the same geographical location 20 years ago. Why would I a) expect him to have the same political opinions as me and b) respond to our differing opinions by deleting him off Facebook, where he only has about 30 friends anyway, and largely uses it to keep up with how people’s children are doing?

Bonkers.

Besides, Uncle C isn’t voting Tory because he’s racist or heartless, but because he thinks the Lib Dems (second in his area) are silly, ineffectual and anti democratic 🤷‍♀️

*oh, and my ‘edgelord’ teenage son and his skateboard mates, who mostly voted Tory to rebel against earnest lefty parents (or at least, they would’ve done if they bothered to register to vote properly).

If anything I'd expect the current political divisions to highlight the fact that we can have roughly similar values and objectives and have a very different idea of how to achieve them. My super-woke and uber lefty friends (we've known and loved each other for almost 30yrs) follow what looks to me like a regressive ideology, but they definitely think their politics is left of mine, and I think mine is left of theirs. We only discuss political matters in the broadest terms where we know we can agree.

I spoke to a friend about the decline of polite social discourse and the inability to agree to disagree and he pointed out that when we were young it was considered impolite to discuss politics in social situations. You might have had one-on-one in-depth chats with close friends or at the dinner table, but not at a party.

Now people seem to mainly express themselves largely outside the context of a discussion. They're making personal statements into the gaping maw of social media, and others are interpreting these statements as though they're a manifesto.

Suggested that a discussion regarding the ongoing physical effects of m/c should be a discussion amongst women who have actually had a m/c and that isn’t excluding TW

"My favourite was when someone told me that women and men are equally likely to rape.."
How can anyone with more than one brain cell think that, let alone share it with the world on Facebook.

oh, and my ‘edgelord’ teenage son and his skateboard mates, who mostly voted Tory to rebel against earnest lefty parents (or at least, they would’ve done if they bothered to register to vote properly)

DuMonde That’s really made me laugh!

Now people seem to mainly express themselves largely outside the context of a discussion. They're making personal statements into the gaping maw of social media, and others are interpreting these statements as though they're a manifesto.

This is an acute observation. I've never done social media beyond talkboards like this. I don't like my screen cluttered with images and I'm a very private person who has a always sought to avoid any online presence. To be honest I just don't understand why others wish to put pictures of themselves online and broadcast their names, locations, interests to every Tom. Dick and weirdo.

My point being I haven't experienced online cancel culture, not out of any calculation, but because I'm just not there. I have continued to have the same old face to face discussions with people I always did and for all; our many differences on religion or politics or worse, football, we've managed to not fall out or stop speaking to one another.

There is something qualitatively different about taking these things online and I'm not convinced there is much positive to be said for it.

I was once blocked from an FB group for suggesting that shaming people to try to get them to donate to a particular charity might not be the most effective tactic. Turned out the charity in question was run by a mate of the admin who had put up the shaming post.

I was blocked by a former friend on FB for saying I thought sport should remain segregated on the basis of sex.

To be honest I just don't understand why others wish to put pictures of themselves online and broadcast their names, locations, interests to every Tom. Dick and weirdo.

To be fair, that depends on how you use SM. My FB is pretty tightly locked down so only real friends can see what I post, and I don't have a photo of myself as my profile photo. My friends are scattered all over the globe so it's a brilliant way for us to keep in touch and up to date with each other. There are various gradations between "I don't use social media" and "anyone can see everything I post".

To be fair OnlyTheTit I do know this, intellectually, I do see that there are upsides for people, especially for those with widely scattered families.

I'm just being a bit grumpy about it all right now because my employers want to have us all plastered on social media 'meet the staff' style and I really, really don't want to be part of it. I'm seriously thinking of sending a photo of just my hands doing something.

I have continued to have the same old face to face discussions with people I always did and for all; our many differences on religion or politics or worse, football, we've managed to not fall out or stop speaking to one another.

There is something qualitatively different about taking these things online and I'm not convinced there is much positive to be said for it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that anything one does to address conflict irl (eg addressing an adult directly to express disagreement and/or reach resolution) looks increasingly unhinged when block and delete is the other more convenient option.

I also suspect that, lacking the skills to negotiate difficult matters with other human beings, there is an emerging preference to be mild/bland/unobjectionable in person while simultaneously engaging in some behind-the-scenes machinations (eg talking about people behind their back, communicating only by text, blocking them on sm etc).

Oh hell no Arnold, that's not appropriate at all! Anyone's social media presence should be their own choice, no one else's (and I do include parents who post photos of children too young to understand and consent in that).