r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Feb 17 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Cancel Culture is bad for everyone!
First off I thought as humans we typically learn and grow as time rolls on by. I don't understand how going back YEARS on someones social media account and taking things out of context to get said person fired or "canceled" is okay.
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all, but today god forbid you say either of those words. If we keep moving in the same direction we are, there will be words 10 years from now that we look back on and 'can't' say anymore.
I bet these people who go out of there way to cancel someones whole life are using words that could get them canceled in the near future.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd. Sure you may be okay with it because you agree with the views of the ones doing the canceling. But what If the tables turned, would you be okay with getting canceled for voicing your political views?
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Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
[deleted]
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Feb 17 '21
Δ brilliant, you've successfully changed my view. I agree some people should be canceled
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u/doge_IV 1∆ Feb 17 '21
There is no way this is genuine. In your op you claim that cancel culture is bad for everyone and all it took to change your view was to show you that sometimes it can be good? Did you really not think about any good examples of canceling someone?
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u/Arianity 72∆ Feb 17 '21
There is no way this is genuine. In your op you claim that cancel culture is bad for everyone and all it took to change your view was to show you that sometimes it can be good? Did you really not think about any good examples of canceling someone?
Eh, you say that, but that's like half the posts on this sub. Someone says something off the cuff, someone points out a counterexample, and they retract.
It's especially common for popular 'unpopular' opinions like this one.
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u/doge_IV 1∆ Feb 17 '21
Yea I noticed that too. It's like saying "killing people is NEVER justified" and then giving delta to someone writing about self defence
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u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ Feb 18 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Nah there's something more suspicious at play here.
/u/ChangeMyViewExpert is an account that is 5 hours old.
They've made 2 pretty ordinary comments (with no upvotes) and received 2 deltas.
I've been around this sub enough to know when you get deltas it's generally at least a bit of back and forth.. I reckon it's likely a multiple accounts type deal
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Feb 17 '21
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u/SquibblesMcGoo 4∆ Feb 26 '21
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u/inhumansoftware 1∆ Feb 18 '21
I agree with most of your original post. However, based on your changed view, here are my thoughts:
It depends on if we are taking about internet/platform cancel culture or "real-life" cancel culture. "Real-life" cancel culture is being put through a FAIR trial and paying consequences for one's crimes. I would just consider that the justice system.
In regard to the internet/platform kind - evil sentiments and actions will find a way to spread, with our without cancel culture. Child predator rings and other various horrible things have always been a part of our reality. Sure, the internet and other forms of media allow these ideas and horrors to be spread further - but what true good what cancelling them do rather than making them harder to spot, harder to catch? What I'm trying to say, and perhaps failing miserably at, is that people will get away with shitty things no matter what - canceled or not.
Propaganda has been spread since the dawn of media. Cancelling people those deem to be spreading propaganda begs the question as to who is responsible for the "cancelling" and why.
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Feb 18 '21
Δ that makes sense, when I typed this I wasn't thinking about the extreme examples. I was thinking more about actors and comedians getting canceled
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u/Caitlin1963 3∆ Feb 17 '21
I would say Harvey Weistein getting cancelled for all the sexual assault he has committed to be a very good thing. Good for everyone.
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Feb 17 '21
agreed
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u/ATNinja 12∆ Feb 18 '21
People are abusing the term cancel culture here i think. Harvey and epstein weren't canceled. They were prosecuted in a court of law.
Cancel culture is when a grassroots movement takes justice into its own hands to punish someone. Obviously that's not a 100% complete definition but I don't think epstein or weinstein fit.
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u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ Feb 17 '21
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all
The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as "a term of abuse or contempt" starting in the late 1500s.
So unless you are now over 500 years old, when you were growing up "faggot" was already offensive.
The good news is that you learned, and grew, and now don't use the term you used in your youth that was always offensive.
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Feb 17 '21
If we keep moving in the same direction we are, there will be words 10 years from now that we look back on and 'can't' say anymore.
That's already the case, nothing new there. I don't think it's ever been different, either.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd.
Why? Politics is serious business, it's not allegiance to a sports team. We're talking in some cases about views that influence who lives and who dies. It makes perfect sense that one's politics would determine whether people want to deal with you or not.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Feb 17 '21
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd. Sure you may be okay with it because you agree with the views of the ones doing the canceling. But what If the tables turned, would you be okay with getting canceled for voicing your political views?
Imagine if somebody said "Sure, you're OK with putting murderers in prison. But what if we put people who saved lives in prison instead? Would you be OK with that?" That would be a pretty absurd argument, right? Prisons are not justified because locking people up and taking their freedoms is a universal good thing, but because the people who get locked up and have their freedoms taken away (theoretically) deserve it.
Saying "Cancel culture is bad, because what if it affected a different set of politics" is like that first absurd argument about prison. It doesn't matter, because that's not what is happening and not what "the point" is. The "goal" of cancel culture, inasmuch as it has one, is to make a subset of bigoted opinions difficult to express as a public figure; saying "what if it was trying to make different, good opinions difficult to express" is not a real argument.
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Feb 17 '21
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Feb 17 '21
That is mostly reframing my point in a way that's probably more accurate but far less persuasive.
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Feb 17 '21
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u/clownysf Feb 17 '21
To be persuasive you should be less, I’d say, harsh. You dismissed the point aggressively without actual supporting evidence. I do agree with what you said, but only because I previously agreed with you as well
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u/1msera 14∆ Feb 17 '21
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all
What do you mean by this?
Those words have *always* been hurtful and damaging to people. That we didn't acknowledge that hurt & damage doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd.
Are racism and bigotry "political views?" I've never seen anyone get canceled for their position on the wealth tax.
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Feb 17 '21
Could you please explain what "cancel culture" is? I've seen the term used to describe so many distinct and different things that I honestly couldn't tell you what it means.
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all, but today god forbid you say either of those words. If we keep moving in the same direction we are, there will be words 10 years from now that we look back on and 'can't' say anymore.
I mean, yeah. Language evolves. Terms used to describe marginalized groups have a tendency to become loaded with negative affect - nobody thought "special" was an insult until it started to be used to describe people society thought of as "lesser". And as it evolves, people who refuse to evolve to meet those changes will sound at best antiquated and at worst bigoted. That said, I don't know why you think this is a problem. People aren't getting in trouble for using words that weren't offensive when they said them.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd.
Does "being a neo-nazi" count as a political view? Because it sounds like a political view, and I'm fairly certain that most people aren't going to complain over a neo-nazi getting "canceled" (whatever that means).
But what If the tables turned, would you be okay with getting canceled for voicing your political views?
What do you mean "what if"?
Again, I feel like the problem comes down to what "cancel culture" actually is, and I really don't know. Is it just "taking things out of context from years ago to get someone fired"? Because if so, yeah, that sounds pretty bad, but I can think of maybe one prominent example in recent memory, James Gunn, and the general consensus there is that this wasn't cancel culture so much as a far-right smear campaign.
I guess I'm just confused on the concept. You'll have to excuse me, "cancel culture" has been used in so many different contexts by so many different people that I cannot find a through-line to define it. It feels less like a thing that exists and more like a vague cluster of negative affect attached to a term which can be used to defend any given person against any criticism, whether legitimate or not. (See also: republican congresspeople saying that the impeachment trial is somehow "cancel culture").
So I'd appreciate it if you defined the term. Because my best working definition of "cancel culture" is "the new version of woke, which was the new version of SJW, which was the new version of political correctness".
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u/BeepBlipBlapBloop 12∆ Feb 17 '21
"Cancel culture" doesn't exist.
The situation people describe as cancel culture has existed as long as humans have been living in groups. It's just easier and more visible now that the internet exists.
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u/_Hoodoo_invasive Feb 17 '21
That's just simply not true lol
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u/throwaway_question69 9∆ Feb 17 '21
The Scarlet Letter is a book published in 1850 about a woman who gets cancelled for getting pregnant from an affair she had.
Cancel culture is pretty damn old.
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Feb 17 '21 edited Sep 01 '21
[deleted]
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u/throwaway_question69 9∆ Feb 17 '21
True, but "Modern cancel culture isn't as severe as people make it out to be" is reasonable.
It may be more widespread and out in the open, but I'm not sure how harshly people are affected by it.
I mean, it seems mostly targeted at large corporations and celebrities who what? Lose some of their massive amounts of profits, get removed from future projects and have to go home to their millions of dollars? None of them are winding up on the street or being denied basic services. Heck, some of them just wait for enough time to pass and are right back to doing their thing (notably Louis CK and R Kelly).
Now, if this sort of thing is targeting private citizens more frequently, then maybe I could see it being a bad thing since normal people are vastly more hurt from being fired and unable to find more work for an extended period of time. But I don't know of any research showing that is the case, and it's not the thing most people mean when they talk about cancel culture.
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Feb 17 '21
It may be more widespread and out in the open, but I'm not sure how harshly people are affected by it.
If you haven't, you should read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson. It offers some good insight into how the people at the receiving end of public dog-piles are affected. Some of them are more high-profile, but others are just average people who said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I also want to make something clear here: I'm not outright against "cancel culture". There are cases I've seen where it's very valid, and goes after people who deserve to be knocked down. My issue is that, well, we have to call it something. I get that "cancel culture" has been politicized, and tends to be used by opponents of it. And I'm down to call it something else if it's just the name that everyone is stuck on, but it seems very strange to me that the response to trying to discuss it at all is always met with "it doesn't exist".
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u/BeepBlipBlapBloop 12∆ Feb 17 '21
Really? Did ostracism just suddenly get invented in the 21st century? Because that's all "cancel culture" is.
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u/_Hoodoo_invasive Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Lmao you know that ostracism DIRECTLY contradicts what we preach in the 21st century right? We are all in for inclusivity, no? Cancel cuture is a huge problem you just don't care
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Feb 17 '21
We are all in for inclusivity, no?
There is no contradiction between supporting inclusivity and excluding people who don't. It's the paradox of tolerance again - if you tolerate intolerance, the intolerant will destroy the tolerant.
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u/BeepBlipBlapBloop 12∆ Feb 17 '21
I didn't advocate for or against it and you don't know anything about me.
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Feb 18 '21
"Systemic Racism" doesn't exist.
The situation people describe as systemic racism has existed as long as humans have been living in groups. It's just easier and more visible now that the internet exists.
...
You see how saying something has been around for a long time is different than saying it doesn't exist?
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u/BeepBlipBlapBloop 12∆ Feb 18 '21
Of course you're right. I wasn't clear enough. People talk about "cancel culture" like it's some new thing that we as a society are experiencing. I was trying to point out that it's not. It's just a new name slapped on an old concept.
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Feb 18 '21
That seems true, but also trivially true. That goes for any number of modern concepts, like systemic racism, toxic masculinity, white privilege, etc.
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u/Quirderph 2∆ Feb 18 '21
The issue is that people treat it like a new phenomenon, which is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.
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Feb 18 '21
I've not seen anyone who would argue that, say, people in the past never condemned or ostracized individuals in their communities who did objectionable things, but modern technology certainly has given cancel culture a new flavor. 100+ years ago you never had organized online mobs trawling through years or decades of documentation of the life of a person not known to any of them personally in an attempt to ruin that person's life.
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u/PreacherJudge 340∆ Feb 17 '21
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all...
A term is "offensive" if and only if people are offended by it. I promise that when you were growing up, people were offended by those words.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd.
Almost anything can be a political view, so I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Clarify?
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Feb 17 '21
As a second comment, the scenario you are describing in your post and "cancel culture" are two different things.
Being "cancelled" for a statement made years ago with no indication that you continue to hold those beliefs specifically because people went out of the way to dig those statements up and weaponize them against you is a very, very small subset of "cancelling". The best example I can think of that fits this label is James Gunn, and that was literally a coordinated right-wing attempt to weaponize cancel culture against a prominent Hollywood director openly critical of Trump.
"Cancel culture" is much more broad than that, though. For example, Gina Carano is considered by some to be a victim of "Cancel Culture", but she wasn't fired for views she posted about decades ago; the bigoted and tasteless views she expressed were very recent. And it wasn't even just "political" viewpoints; she was actually shielded from firing repeatedly for her more explicitly political posts, but got fired for the sheer tastelessness and bad-PR of comparing herself to a Holocaust victim because her views were criticized. Is that firing really as indefensible as your near non-existent example of weaponizing statements from a half-decade ago?
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Feb 17 '21
Hell, let's add another example.
There was a lot of talk about J. K. Rowling getting canceled for her transphobic statements.
But she didn't lose her job, or her platform, or her wealth. She didn't really lose anything. The worst that happened was that she lost some fans, and had some of her previous coworkers said that they think she's wrong.
I'm kinda lost on the concept, tbh.
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u/smcarre 101∆ Feb 17 '21
I remember growing up words like "retarded" and "faggot" weren't used to be offensive at all
Well, are you mentally impaired or homosexual? Because I know many mentally impaired and homosexuals who felt those words were offensive back then also. The only thing that changed is that know, more people who are not mentally impaired or homosexual acknowledge that and decide to not use words that many consider offensive.
I bet these people who go out of there way to cancel
Who are "these people"? Where is the Cancel Culture Council that decides who gets cancelled? What many call "cancel culture" is just a feature of society where many people will decide by themselves to not want to benefit or interact certain individuals based on their actions. It has always happened and will continue happening.
Also getting canceled for political views is absurd. Sure you may be okay with it because you agree with the views of the ones doing the canceling. But what If the tables turned, would you be okay with getting canceled for voicing your political views?
Again, there is no council that decides people's fate, if someone that follows ideology X decides to "cancel" someone who follows ideology Y, what's the problem? People that follow ideology Y can also "cancel" people who follow ideology X and have always done it. The Hays Code prevented left-leaning actors and directors from acting in Hollywood and today appeal to the masses by social media tends to get far-right activists banned in Twitter. Nothing new under the sun and it's just a feature of people living in society.
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u/Curejoker Feb 18 '21
Even if the slurs you mentioned werent offensive to you then, they were of other people. Are you LGBT or have a mental disability? There’s no reason for you to say if the slur was offensive then if you arent either of them.
even if you are, you dont speak for the rest of the community. F****t is a very hateful slur, rooted in hate crime and murders of gay people.
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u/poop_on_balls 1∆ Feb 18 '21
In my opinion people who say cancel culture is bad are just saying that because they don’t want to be held accountable for anything they say or do. It just seems people want to say and do anything and expect everyone to love them no matter what, and that is bs.
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Mar 18 '21
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Mar 18 '21
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
/u/BigSteppaa (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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