What is the end game of cancel culture? - The death of celebrity?

[Erich Honecker]

In 2021 public figures can be cancelled for any of the following:

• Being skeptical of lockdowns, vaccine mandates or covid vaccines in general
• Having right-of-centre political beliefs, donating to or voting for right-of-centre candidates
• Being caught saying a no-no word, even just once (Faggot, retard, anything with racial connotations)
• A joke being resurfaced that was perfectly acceptable in 2015 or earlier, but suddenly in 2021 is seen as beyond the pale
• Going against trans ideology in any way
• Ever being accused of any kind of sexual misconduct, no matter how hard the claims are to verify, no matter how vague the accusations are (See the use of terms like "power imbalance", or "predatory age gaps" referring to something like a 30+ year old man with a 21 year old girlfriend)

For us plebs, none of this really matters too much aside from the issues around political censorship. Aside from that, almost none of us have a platform big enough to ever worry about being targeted by social media mobs in the ways listed above. It does, however, pose some interesting questions for celebrity culture, online culture (particularly Youtube/streaming), and the music industry. Basically, what happens when almost every public figure is cancelled? What happens when almost every music artist both old and new has been accused of some kind of sexual crime, abuse, or political wrongthink? What happens when almost every piece of online culture is retroactively deemed "problematic" due to either actions of the creator, or the content itself? Are we expected to completely purge the memory of any art we enjoy that is created by a "problematic" individual, and if so, will that not mean at this rate that we'll end up with maybe about 50% of music artists you're not allowed to listen to anymore? (More like 80% when it comes to 1970s rockstars)

Does this stuff even have an endgame? I feel like a lot of these overreactions stem from people, particularly young people, having shocking realisations that celebrities are not actually saints and that they do wrong things just like any ordinary person does, and they can't handle that. So logically it would seem that the endgame is western society coming to a collective agreement that everyone is flawed, people who committed actual crimes should be punished, but that evidence-less accusations of "problematic" behaviour shouldn't be viewed as a big deal. Alternatively, is it going to continue in perpetuity, with the media continually building up new idols in the music and entertainment business, only to tear them down years later because they did something cancellable?

 

[Drkinferno72]

To shake up hierarchies and replace them with yes men

 

[Ishtar]

To create a terrified conformist society of either sheep or people that know they will be on the streets if they dissent.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Endgame seems to be a miserable cybernetic soy hive of "serfs" who live in pods, eat bugs, the usual meme.

Also because woke keep making up new problems, if they get their way, any enjoyment could be "cancelled".

2020+ has shown that Homo sapiens are a very flawed design. Too many jerks and blind followers.

 

[chiobu]

People have already died because of it, here's a detailed list:

Thread by @SoOppressed on Thread Reader App

@SoOppressed: Thread: Since so many claim that cancel culture doesn't exist, I propose a challenge: For every additional 1,000 followers I get, I will present 10 examples of cancel culture. I'm willing to bet I can...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

[Pissmaster]

To create a terrified conformist society of either sheep or people that know they will be on the streets if they dissent.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The ever-present threat of being cancelled and having your entire life ruined over the smallest thing destroys creativity, which is why pretty much all new entertainment is so safe and boring. Conform or never ever ever work again and eventually get crushed by mountains of debt, with no recourse, and no real way to change your trajectory when degrees are required for anything beyond minimum wage work and they cost a fortune.

 

[Ishtar]

Couldn't have said it better myself. The ever-present threat of being cancelled and having your entire life ruined over the smallest thing destroys creativity, which is why pretty much all new entertainment is so safe and boring. Conform or never ever ever work again and eventually get crushed by mountains of debt, with no recourse, and no real way to change your trajectory when degrees are required for anything beyond minimum wage work and they cost a fortune.

The only way to avoid that would be to create mutual aid societies among the “cancelled”. But what if you are the only dissident in your city? What if your means of contacting supporters is gone?

 

[Erich Honecker]

To shake up hierarchies and replace them with yes men

To create a terrified conformist society of either sheep or people that know they will be on the streets if they dissent.

This is true for political type cancellations, eg. what's currently happening with Nicki Minaj being de-platformed because she stepped out of line with the progressive mob on one (1) singular issue (covid vax).

But what about the less topical cancellations? For instance, the seemingly never ending conveyor belt of "misconduct" allegations thrown at online-famous people like Mega64 and Vinesauce, completely harmless nerds who never did anything major to trigger the anger of the mob, yet have been hit with nebulous claims of "they abused me" from literal whos on Twitter that seek to destroy their careers.

What's also interesting is that it no longer seems to be that cancel culture solely targets privileged right-leaning white males. For instance the music industry is full of conforming lefty types but this very rarely, if ever, saves them from a cancellation attempt. Nicki Minaj is a mainstream black female popstar with a mostly progressive female and LGBT fanbase, but this isn't saving her from attacks over her vax stance. I've also seen attempts on Lil Nas X, literally the gayest possible rap artist who many think is being used to push a sexual "agenda", yet there are some mobs on social media who tried to cancel him over allegedly "Islamophobic" tweets he made before he was famous.

Then there's the case of someone like Marilyn Manson, who actually wrote a book in the late 90s about all the fucked up shit he did backstage, yet it was a best seller and no one cared other than the Christian conservative types who were already enraged at him. Two decades later, suddenly all his sins come back to haunt him at once and he's cancelled in uncompromising fashion, but this time by lefties, liberals and feminists. Who for whatever reason didn't care 20 years ago despite his alleged crimes being public knowledge.

 

[ReturnedHermit]

Shows get cancelled for not making money or pushing the right agenda. People are now held to a similar standard.
Corporations are people, have been for a while. Now they are interested in maximizing their market share of humanity by corporatizing people.
With mathematical precision we will find everything a person *wants* to, period. Everything a person could possibly want to do, maybe even just real-time brain scanning to detect self expression, maybe it can be done with passive biorhythmic data. You will automatically be charged every time you take and action or think a thought with potential for monetization. Going on a 15 minute walk might only be a dollar, but on a particularly nice, sunny, breezy day- its five.

 

[Comfy Gondola]

Then there's the case of someone like Marilyn Manson, who actually wrote a book in the late 90s about all the fucked up shit he did backstage, yet it was a best seller and no one cared other than the Christian conservative types who were already enraged at him. Two decades later, suddenly all his sins come back to haunt him at once and he's cancelled in uncompromising fashion, but this time by lefties, liberals and feminists. Who for whatever reason didn't care 20 years ago despite his alleged crimes being public knowledge.

Same type of person, different coat of paint. Self-obsessed busybodies that wish to lord over people for no other motivation than power.

Even during the height of the Satanic Panic you still had Christians that didn't give a fuck about what others did and subscribed to the idea of live and let live, so long as you don't step on their toes. Now that culture has changed and Woke shit replaced the Christian conservatives, the same type of person that would scream at you for being a Satanist a few decades ago, is now cancelling you for not being progressive.

The woke cancel mob is fundamentally different from the liberals of the past. They are just the Fundies of our time. You could probably get a punk from the late 80's early 90's and crack nigger jokes with him as long as you both know it's just messing around. Nowadays you have "liberals" cancel fucking comedians over edgy jokes.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

If I were to write a nonfiction description of the dystopia that is the 21st century so far, call it "2020", and send it back in time to the late 20th century, people would likely think it's a dystopian science fiction novel. One that's rather far-fetched.

 

[HarryHowler]

If I were to write a nonfiction description of the dystopia that is the 21st century so far, call it "2020", and send it back in time to the late 20th century, people would likely think it's a dystopian science fiction novel. One that's rather far-fetched.

If you sent it back to the McCarthy era, they'd probably think it was just some low-effort "mirror universe" story where people had their careers and social lives ruined for not being communists.

 

[draggs]

Fuck you think the point is, dominating and/or controlling people sends a frisson of atavistic pleasure through yuh brains.

 

[celebrityskin]

The woke cancel mob is fundamentally different from the liberals of the past. They are just the Fundies of our time.

Church of Liberalism. They have the exact same concepts too (blasphemy being the most obvious one, having saints and sinners, self-flagellation, the practice of besmirching others and demanding repentance etc.)

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

Cancel culture isn't even something new. Its always been. And there have been periods of time where society gets extra witch-hunty for heretics/non-comformists, like now. Its the inquisition for modern moral puritanism: wokeness.

Its not really part of some well-thought-out master plan. Some people use it and weaponize it, of course. But its just mob mentality, zealotry, and bloodlust. Very human and basic and primitive, really. People used to attribute this behaviour to religion, but even without a conventional religion people will get this way over taking the current societal moralities to extremes.

 

[Miss Chance]

There are parallels with McCarthy, in that if no reason can be found to cancel a particular individual, the mob will make one up. J.K. Rowling is a case in point, but the mob failed in her case. Hopefully that will continue to happen.
The issue is, I think, that cancel culture has always been about the individual rather than the 'crime'.

 

[Aqua Panda]

It'll probably take another, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

The parallels to McCarthyism are obvious. Eventually the more woke element is either going to go after and destroy someone truly innocent or someone is going to publicly denounce them in such a way the rest of the world won't be able to ignore it.

IMO it'll really start popping off when we really start getting into guilt by association. (And we're surprisingly close with how bad the current college system has become.)

 

[AMHOLIO]

No endgame. Humans can act somewhat like a hivemind somedays, but there is no endgame. Those who start it either think they're doing the right thing , do it as a power high, as a political move to take someone down, to feel better about conforming, or a combination there of.

Turns out if enough people use a tool that could theoretically do good it can turn on it's head for manipulators to use. The endgame is different for each user, but there are certain mobs of people trying to use it for one reason or another. If there was an endgame, hollywood and record executives would be able to make it much easier to use for themselves. Instead other celebrities and online people have a chance of shitting things up for the people they want instead.

 

[Lemmingwise]

In short, everyone controlled by social credit score. Social credit is measured electronically by your internet device and smart home.

Economically you can not own anything, only rent.

Agriculurally, everything is large monsanto like production.

Politically you can not express dissent without losing ability to pay anything.

Environmentally everything is measured to be CO2 neutral; you can not travel if you exceed it and net result is that you'll barely ever be able to travel.

Biologically you must accept whatever this month's vaccine is.

And you will be happy

 

[Erich Honecker]

It'll probably take another, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

The parallels to McCarthyism are obvious. Eventually the more woke element is either going to go after and destroy someone truly innocent or someone is going to publicly denounce them in such a way the rest of the world won't be able to ignore it.

IMO it'll really start popping off when we really start getting into guilt by association. (And we're surprisingly close with how bad the current college system has become.)

I think it will start crumbling at some point because it’s so indiscriminate in who it targets. In many cases it’s a “left eating itself” thing too. No one is safe. In fact, if you’re a dedicated leftie in progressive social circles, you’re going to find yourself at MORE risk of being cancelled, because you’re spending so much time around people with impossibly high standards. If you say something mildly insensitive on a racial matter or make a clunky joke? Cancelled. If you piss off the wrong crazy person who decides to dig into your background and find edgy material you posted in 2013? Cancelled.

Basically, if it was a straight left vs right thing and only right wingers were getting cancelled, it would probably go on indefinitely because it would just become a political tactic used by each side against the other. But instead we have a lot of cases of lefties cancelling lefties, or cancelling people of no political affiliation at all. There’s going to be more and more cases like Nicki Minaj and JK Rowling where the individual in question says, “hang the fuck on, why are they coming for me now? I thought I was on their side?” Or cases where people who run in extremely progressive circles get burned out trying to keep up with all the subtle social rules and say “this is bullshit”.

Almost everyone has at least one opinion which would be cancellable, or at least one skeleton in their closet which could be an accusation against them. And the more extreme and all-encompassing the cancel culture movement becomes, the more people this becomes true for. People who never previously found themselves on the wrong side of the mob, will suddenly be under attack when the standards change further. And as sad as it is, most people only start to care when it directly affects them.