ducasse
ducasse

@bix I'd echo what @frostedechoes said (pun accidentally-intended). The Washington Post running a 3000 word major piece dragging up an incident of a non-public figure from two years ago leading to the loss of job/career would say differently. Among numerous other incidences.

Cancel culture is junk-food dopamine where the crowd gets to feel like they're dismantling racism whilst conveniently missing the bigger picture. It's hobby-politics.

"There's something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains forgiveness."

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patrickrhone
patrickrhone

@lucian @bix @frostedechoes I have nothing to add other than this is an interesting and important debate and I’m glad you all are having it. <grabs popcorn>

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esjewett
esjewett

@lucian @bix @frostedechoes It is indeed uncomfortable when the structures of power that have been used to oppress are turned on the oppressor and laid bare in all of their arbitrary cruelty.

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix @esjewett @frostedechoes Oh, absolutely, I agree. Just because something becomes (or looks liable to become) a runaway train does not mean it didn't have a (worthy and necessary) destination to begin with.

However it simply feels reckless to dismiss the potential ramifications and clumsy-negative habits formed from allowing something such as this to go unchecked, granted immunity and impunity to moonlight as progressive, protected from any inquiry or criticism by virtue of its virtuous beginning.

Things build from the bottom up, and because there is, and was, good in the beginning does not mean there is no room for misuse and when misuse becomes the norm the damage is done and must be unpicked in reluctant bashful hindsight.

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ducasse
ducasse

@esjewett Yes, but when the oppressor becomes simply anyone at all that is other than the one/group that calls out the oppressing, you've lost sight of the actual villain:

"Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing." —Hannah Arendt

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esjewett
esjewett

@lucian We are probably talking past each other a bit due to my being cryptic. My point was simply that yes it’s clearly bad in many ways, but there is some virtue in it’s role in the current American conversation: to allow white people to experience some of the indiscriminate, disproportional, mob retribution that is a core part of the black experience in this country. Turns out, that’s a shitty thing to experience.

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ducasse
ducasse

@esjewett I can see that, to an extent, except for me to accept it as a justified end would be to see the victims being only whites, which isn't the case. Everyone and anyone is fair-game, except when a rival mob turns the cancelling on one its own, when suddenly rules and bounds are now introduced. I also fail to see how a "see we ruined your life, it's not very nice is it?" can be the most efficacious tract to take towards a unifying of cause. The mob eats its own, directing its ire redundantly at those who were already on board. The criteria of admission to the "good-side" becomes increasingly small. Deviation from the line is tantamount to Dissent; dissent then tantamount to herecy; the punishment; exile.

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix I don't decide whether I deem something to be, or have the potential to be, out of control based on whether the Atlantic say it is or isn't. Nor do I think anyone should. Nor do I think anyone should come to their conclusions based on the stance of any media organisation, public figure, random internet stranger, or the neighbourhood stray cat, and I don't mention the cat to be mocking, but merely to highlight the folly of guiding ourselves by the opinions and thoughts of others -- whoever they be.

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix Thats fair.

Let's reconvene some time in the future and reasses how ridiculous the concern is based on how many more ridiculous incidents we have?

More like the data analyst social‐democrat-progressive who tweeted a single tweet summary of Princeton University's Omar Wasau's research done in the 60's that found violent protest tended to hurt the democratic cause and Black people, which subsequently led to the data analyst being fired from his job for doing so, and labelled racist for deigning to tweet the work of a Black Professor whose conclusions they didn't like.. Oh, nevermind that he also apologised for tweeting it either. (remember that line I keep tweeting about disdaining forgiveness?)

Oh, which was followed up, let's add, by white [Nathan Robinson(https://twitter.com/owasow/status/1273642987185147904?s=19) writing an article telling professor of said research why he was essentially "anti-black", for having done said research albeit without having actually read said research in question; the baying cries for cancelling him are eerily silent however.

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix fixing the broken link

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix I thought it only fair to spare the timeline my confused meanderings: It is a System.

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ducasse
ducasse

@bix I'm terrible at napping! (p.s. I hope it's not in bad taste to say I'm very much enjoying this dialogue).

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