Whither "Cancel Culture"?

[Slap47]

A huge part of the British abolition movement was former slave traders telling their stories. The country was seeing an insane explosion in evangelism and the idea of being reborn was spreading like crazy. Pointing out your own sins and seeking to correct them was a virtue.

The world is different now. People like John Newton (Former slave trader who fought to abolish slavery) would be cancelled and ignored. People are either 100% good party allies or 100% bad villains. There is no redemption, no learning, and obedience is a must. LGBT issues? NO! You cannot tell a story about how you were once homophobic, but learned to overcome it. You were with us from the start or you are cancelled.

 

[WhoBusTank69]

I really hate that they settled on the word "cancel." It's so dehumanizing and dystopian to imagine "cancelling" a human being. It sounds not far removed from blatantly advocating for murder of political dissidents, honestly.

I hear it and I think, "Oh no, they're going to take my TV show off the air!"
Then I remember that I don't have a TV show and go about my business.

It came from TV shows getting cancelled for dumb shit actors/produces/directors/the boom mic guy did. So instead of just sinking a ship they decided to skip shows and go straight to "cancelling" an entire person.

 

[L50LasPak]

I weep bitter tears for the loss of the Optimistic rating since I can't think of any thread more deserving of it.

 

[Kosher Dill]

For every measure there is a countermeasure, and people are endlessly inventive.

I disagree, because of the fundamental asymmetry of the situation here. "Cancelers" are typically cancel-proof because they have little or nothing to lose. What exactly can you do to someone who has no job (and may even be a minor), lives online, never leaves the house, and cares about no other currency besides Twitter asspats? There's really not much left besides tracking them down and personally kicking their ass - and again, you almost certainly have more to lose in this scenario than they do.

There will be no end to cancel culture as long as normal people engage with insane people in the public square that is the internet. One or the other has to leave.

 

[TFT-A9]

I disagree, because of the fundamental asymmetry of the situation here. "Cancelers" are typically cancel-proof because they have little or nothing to lose. What exactly can you do to someone who has no job (and may even be a minor), lives online, never leaves the house, and cares about no other currency besides Twitter asspats? There's really not much left besides tracking them down and personally kicking their ass - and again, you almost certainly have more to lose in this scenario than they do.

There will be no end to cancel culture as long as normal people engage with insane people in the public square that is the internet. One or the other has to leave.

Theoretically, someone could go after the cancelers' connections (if they have any) and any supporters. Whether you think it's a good idea to play the same game as them is another matter, but someone could in theory turn them into utter pariahs. Doubt it would stop them. Better solution is to stop giving a fuck about anything they say, as a society.

 

[Wallace]

Well, it helps to understand their motivations in context. It's much easier to discuss an issue with a person when you acknowledge that they're trying to do good and are confused about their premises than just slapping a dismissive label on them and trying to shame them into compliance.

For instance, I'm helping someone learn to drive at the moment. They think that they're doing the right thing by tarrying in the intersection of a road while they "make sure" that they're safe to go, despite the fact that it's obstructing the intersection and inviting a T-bone crash. Instead of calling them a pussy and questioning their intelligence I sympathize with their impulse towards caution and try to drive home the point that their desired result (safety) isn't being served by their approach (undue caution). This shifts the discussion from "You're doing the wrong thing" to "You're doing the right thing in the wrong way".

The problem with this analogy is that Twitter erodes empathy, because people don't see or feel the consequences of their actions.

Twitter taps into our natural reward-based learning processes: trigger, behavior, reward. We have an idea or think of something funny (trigger), tweet it out (behavior), and receive likes and retweets (reward). This learning process causes a dopamine rush in reward centers of the brain. The more we do this, the more this behavior gets reinforced.

The harmful side of Twitter comes in the same form. We feel angry at someone’s tweet, our brain screams "do something!" and we instantly send a rage-filled tweet @ that person. Same basic learning process, yet the reward comes in two forms: (1) Self-righteous vindication. “Yeah, take that, Nazi!”); and (2) Approval. “Yeah, you got that Nazi!” someone tells us through a like or retweet. Another dopamine rush for your brain’s reward center.

If we have a bunch of followers (who often share our particular view of the world), and we want to target a particular person, we can send out a nasty tweet and gleefully watch as trolls descend, feeding off each other in a frenzy to wipe our intended victim into oblivion. More dopamine rush.

When we’re face to face with someone, we see the results of our actions both in body language and tone of voice. And with all of this feedback, it becomes pretty clear if we’ve hurt someone or not. We are in the moment seeing what we’ve done. This is critical, as ethics experiments have repeatedly shown that we act differently if we feel personally involved vs. doing something “out there” to someone we don’t know or if we can’t see how our actions have affected someone. Put simply, if what we did feels bad, we stop doing it.

With social media, we can’t see the immediate results of our actions, so the feedback we get is only from ourselves (and perhaps from others who may be egging us on). We replay the tweet in our head, justifying or rationalizing our action through an additional, self-reinforcing feel-good hit of dopamine. And through these skewed feedback loops, we learn to associate hurting others with pleasure.

 

[TFT-A9]

The problem with this analogy is that Twitter erodes empathy, because people don't see or feel the consequences of their actions.

Twitter taps into our natural reward-based learning processes: trigger, behavior, reward. We have an idea or think of something funny (trigger), tweet it out (behavior), and receive likes and retweets (reward). This learning process causes a dopamine rush in reward centers of the brain. The more we do this, the more this behavior gets reinforced.

The harmful side of Twitter comes in the same form. We feel angry at someone’s tweet, our brain screams "do something!" and we instantly send a rage-filled tweet @ that person. Same basic learning process, yet the reward comes in two forms: (1) Self-righteous vindication. “Yeah, take that, Nazi!”); and (2) Approval. “Yeah, you got that Nazi!” someone tells us through a like or retweet. Another dopamine rush for your brain’s reward center.

If we have a bunch of followers (who often share our particular view of the world), and we want to target a particular person, we can send out a nasty tweet and gleefully watch as trolls descend, feeding off each other in a frenzy to wipe our intended victim into oblivion. More dopamine rush.

When we’re face to face with someone, we see the results of our actions both in body language and tone of voice. And with all of this feedback, it becomes pretty clear if we’ve hurt someone or not. We are in the moment seeing what we’ve done. This is critical, as ethics experiments have repeatedly shown that we act differently if we feel personally involved vs. doing something “out there” to someone we don’t know or if we can’t see how our actions have affected someone. Put simply, if what we did feels bad, we stop doing it.

With social media, we can’t see the immediate results of our actions, so the feedback we get is only from ourselves (and perhaps from others who may be egging us on). We replay the tweet in our head, justifying or rationalizing our action through an additional, self-reinforcing feel-good hit of dopamine. And through these skewed feedback loops, we learn to associate hurting others with pleasure.

I guess the question is then can things like Twitter actually reroute/pervert existing "connections" in the brain between being a horrid piece of shit to someone and the subsequent shame and guilt felt when you're face to face with a person you hurt? Can social media actually undo proper socialization? Are the insane assholes on social media the kind of people who were never properly socialized to begin with?

 

[Maurice Caine]

There will always be an antifa thug waiting to milkshake you. A tranny wanting to scream at you for something that you said years ago. An sped who will dox you for posting wrongthink.

Why?

Because this is what happens when you move from protecting the downtrodden to protecting anyone who cries the loudest.

Doxxing hurts them more than us, though. This site is a testament to that.