More prominent people need to speak out against this shit, preferably before they get canceled themselves.
There was that public letter last year where numerous famous people spoke out against it. You might remember they were all immediately dismissed as alt-right monsters, and because JK Rowling was one of the signatories everyone else on the list was labeled a massive transphobe as well.
I think for now the best we're getting are people from non-English speaking countries who don't give a fuck and ignore or bait those REEEEEEEEEing. Ignoring them doesn't work because it lets their narrative take over. Trying to be reasonable is a very difficult long-term strategy, since these are not reasonable people and it's incredibly tempting to just go off on them even once, which they use as proof of your monstrousness - but the payoff can be quite good in convincing observers just how idiotic and crazy these people are.
But mocking them, dismissing their concerns, and getting on with your life seems to have the highest satisfaction/success ratio. They
hate being laughed at, they
hate being told no, and they
hate people who ignore them. The recent incident with one of the main guys behind Factorio is a decent example; he engaged too much, but he's basically told the assholes coming for him that he doesn't care, and they hate it - but in trying to review-bomb him on Steam and come after him online, they've also shown not only how much bullshit they spew (he magically became a transphobe as well, despite never mentioning troons, just because everyone these people disagree with is a transphobe) but just how few of them they are.
The part about companies being too scared of being canceled is the real worry, because as long as that's true all it takes is one person determined to lie and with even a tiny, tiny platform, and all of a sudden your livelihood is ruined. Until something is done about that, people are still going to lose jobs and careers because of this bullshit. But that requires corporations to act opposite to their nature and also ignore any dangerhairs in HR, so that's going to be one of the real struggles, I think.
At the end of the day, though, I'm always glad for people who stand up to these kind of lies. Unfortunately, as things like Weeb Wars and Johnny Depp show, no matter how good a case you have you can still lose, and have to hope for the appeals process to work.
unicourt.com
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