978
Being Mean to Scabs Is Working
(www.motherjones.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
978 points (100.0% liked)
News
23177 readers
2922 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Cancel culture is fucking terrible in most cases. Let’s not excuse it because of some rare cases where it achieved something good.
Do you have any specific examples? I assume you must, since according to you, most of the cases are fucking terrible.
Well there were the Dixie Chicks getting canceled by conservatives for opposing the war. Probably not an example the fella you're replying to wants to admit to, tho.
You could call it cancel culture or your could just call it pissing off your fanbase. This has always existed and will always exist. I don't agree with the old dixie chicks fanbase but if they thought they could be antiwar and keep playing on country radio they were very misled.
Thanks for the assumption, saying that getting people to support a strike is a good thing is something most right-wing people do I guess.
Wanna add Sinead O’Connor to people harmed by right-wing cancel culture, for example? The list doesn’t even stop there.
Jenna Marbles? Kentaro Kobayashi? Pretty much anyone who got “cancelled” for stuff they said or did 10 years before?
People should be held accountable for what they’re currently doing, ruining a career for something that happened ages ago which no one at the time found wrong is just stupid.
EDIT: Meanwhile, can you tell me some other examples of cancel culture actually doing something good? Because looking at common examples it seems pretty much every time it targeted someone who actually deserved it nothing came out of that (JK Rowling, Chris Brown… even people like Hulk Hogan or Kanye West are still around and doing sold-outs)
Sounds like you're complaining about the free market. People don't like something that was unearthed about someone, so they don't support them.
It’s not a matter of “not supporting”. Marbles was harassed into closing her channel and Kobayashi lost probably the most important job of his life. Those have nothing to do with the “free market”.
Who are these people? They sound like virtual nobodies. I doubt they were 'cancelled' by anyone. They probably said something very stupid and got kicked off some social media app or other. Or, worse, *gasp* demonetized! Better get selling more Soylent.
“I don’t know them so they must be nobodies”, ok.
Did you even look them up for a second? I can remotely imagine you think that about Jenna Marbles (and I don’t think a “virtual nobody” can get a wax statue at Madame Tussauds honestly), but Kobayashi was supposed to be the Director of the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony. So not really a nobody either, much less virtual since he barely did anything online.
Did you just google the first name and skimmed through the results page without even opening them?
I really don't care.
So you just wanted to chip into an argument without any knowledge whatsoever, mock people you don’t know anything about and then dip out. Peak internet discussion I guess?
I think you need to calm down.
And I think you shouldn’t be a condescending ass online, but I guess your ego doesn’t care about what others think.
I care what plenty of others think, but not someone throwing a hissy fit over me not knowing who some marble lady is.
I’m “throwing a hissy fit” over people chiming into discussions and giving their opinions on stuff they know zero about. If people are talking about something I don’t know, I either look it up or ignore the discussion.
Your comment had the same depth as a 7-years old commenting on YouTube “I don’t know who this Ukraine guy is, but if people are angry at them I guess they did something bad”. And it’s a shame because I see you usually do your research in other comments.
You're one insult away from a block. Just FYI.
I only insulted you once but whatever, do what you want, for some reason it doesn’t seem like you want to discuss in a civil manner with me specifically anyway.
"Cancel culture" is a bit of a loaded term and so the replies to you have been somewhat charged. Most people view the situations public figures find them in as just the necessary consequences of their actions. And like you, I agree that each situation should warrant a measured response from individuals based on the severity of the issue. It's okay to not want to support people you don't agree with, especially when the reason is agregious or harmful to others. The issue then is that everyone uses the same cudgel in the same manner for every crime regardless of severity.
But sure, if you don't want to support someone for even the smallest of infractions, that's your right. No one can take that from you. I may not agree but I support your right to do so. My only wish is that we at least give pause to think about the high bar for acceptable behavior we're putting on public figures. I am as much for accountability as the next person, but I also think we're humans capable of mistakes and capable of change. And right now, I don't think a culture of grace is necessarily present online. We don't have to tolerate hate or harm, but we can leave room for redemption. Maybe I'm being naive, I don't know. But that's my take.
I never understood this view. What's so terrible about not supporting people or things you don't agree with? That's what people should be doing.
It’s not about not supporting, it’s generating outrage online about stuff nobody cared about until the day before.
I’m all for not supporting people who don’t deserve it, I regularly do it too. But one thing is ignoring and another is actively harassing people for stuff they probably already forgot about.
Boycotting and harassing are two very different things, and "cancel culture" is a right-wing buzzword that conflates them.
Cancel culture is just a boycott that's so effective, it's disastrous to not at least compromise.
Most of the times I see the term in regards to people, not products/brands/companies, so I think the boycotting part is way less prevalent and rightfully called just “boycotting”.
I’ll admit I haven’t researched the origin of the term (and it’s probably on the same level as “woke” in number of different definitions), but to me it’s mostly about people saying or doing something “controversial” and getting harassed/ostracized for that.
And I say it’s terrible because when it affects fragile people, or generally people with a conscience, it works and ruins careers. When it’s towards ones like J.K. Rowling or Kanye West they just don’t care and keep working, making money like crazy while still being openly transphobic/racist.
Oh you mean like Critical Race Theory, Drag Shows, and getting vaccinated?
Uhh… yes? Are you trying to frame me as some sort of right-wing nutjob? People who complain online about Drag Shows and Vaccines are not okay in the head, but what does that have to do with the discussion?
What do examples of cancel culture being used for bad things have to do with cancel culture being bad?
Oh you meant people who get harassed because they complain about those things. I thought you were saying the opposite.
Well then no, it’s the opposite of what I was saying. Arguably everyone was on board with the fact that vaccines were good before covid, and then it became “controversial”. No one is getting “cancelled” because of a 10-year old tweet against vaccines, because if they tweeted that 10 years ago people would’ve already been angry at that time.
I’m talking specifically about the times a satirical thing from ages ago that no one cared about at the time gets dug up and ruins careers because if it was said now it would be problematic.
Ah, so nothing at all to do with what the article is about. You can see why people might have misunderstood right?
The person I replied to brought up the thematic of "cancel culture" as a whole, and I said what happened in the article was good. I get why people misunderstood but I think I was clear enough in my first comment in saying this is a (rare) instance where it achieved a good thing and I wasn't talking about that.
Why do I have to support shitty people?
Again, as I said in other comments, I’m not talking about boycotting. You obviously shouldn’t support people you don’t like. But you also shouldn’t create online campaigns against them, unless they’re currently doing something bad and you want it to stop, which is not the case most of the time.
"Boycotts" are large scale campaign. Nobody cares if a few odd people don't buy a product; it's en-mass or it's just belly aching. You're making a distinction that does not exist.
That’s the difference.
You want to stop buying Nestlé products because they are currently exploiting child labor? Nothing wrong with that, I’m on board. They need to stop.
You want to “cancel” a musician because of comedy videos on a Youtube he already stopped posting 3 years earlier? That’s just stupid.
So for example Harvey Weinstein gets a pass on all his shitty rapey behavior? How long in the past does it need to be? What is the ‘statute of limitations’ on shitty activities?
The Marbles woman did some shitty stuff. She agreed what she did was shit but issued the standard non-apology apology that she didn’t intend to hurt anyone with her shitty awful shit. Also she just quit. Apparently she made so much money it didn’t matter.
I have no idea who kobayashi is other than a guy who quit the hot dog eating competition.
If this is all you’ve got, it’s pretty thin sauce.
Weinstein did slightly worse than a blackface on youtube. The stuff he did would’ve been clearly seen as wrong even when he did them, it’s just that people didn’t know.
No one cared about a random youtuber painting their face for a satirical video in 2011. But suddenly when it got dug up 10 years later she was the most horrible person on earth. That’s just hypocrisy.
Kobayashi is a Japanese comedian that was chosen to direct the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony. Suddenly a guy online posts one sketch from 20 years earlier where he mentioned the holocaust and poof, job gone. Because you wanted to be a little edgy on a comedy sketch about “stuff you can’t say on tv” on Japanese TV in 1998. Is that okay to you?
I think you are getting confused about the definition of cancel culture.
Definition one: Not supporting celebrities when their problematic actions come to light. This is the one that was made to prevent people from banding against or facing consequences for their actions.
Definition two: A harassment campaign where people bring up actions from years ago even when they changed, taking things wildly out of context, and calling out in bad faith to bully small-scale content creators.
The commentor is talking about definition one here, and it seems that you are talking about definition two.
Exactly. But there’s not really a distinction in the term.
I said it’s terrible as a whole, because actions taken in case one rarely have any considerable effect, while I can list a few for case two. If they were two separate terms I would’ve obviously been against the second definition only, but they’re all under the same umbrella.
Not to mention people can make bad faith arguments for both (“yeah we just found out that guy raped 27 girls last year, but after that we don’t know anything so he’s changed!” / “ok, the only racist remarks that person did were 40 years ago, but have they really changed or are they just hiding it?”) so the line gets blurry.
Overall, the number of “campaigns” that actually worked at “cancelling” a bad person is way too small to justify the harassment to all the other people. That’s why I think it’s not worth it, just support who you want, let people live their life and only harass them if they’re currently doing something bad (or if the bad thing they did in the past was straight-up illegal like the aforementioned Weinstein).
CANCELLED!
“Cancel culture” is a catch-all slur. You can tell it’s effective because of how you phrased your post instead of considering who is being “canceled” and the reason for it. Bad guys are trying to catch a free pass by highlighting less serious offenses and calling it the same thing.
I don’t really see it like that, unless it’s something mainly done on right-wing circles.
If people don’t want to stay on Twitter or Facebook because of all the stuff their owners are doing, that’s not Cancel Culture, that’s just having a brain. To me, a response to serious offenses is definitely not cancel culture, you can’t “cancel” billionaires.
If not “cancel culture” though, what would you call what happens to those “less serious” offenders? Just “large-scale harassment”?