I mean, just going off the first few minutes of the video... doesn’t it kind of suck that art criticism has pretty much been reduced to “does this piece of art agree with my political pieties?” Like, leave aside whether or not Shane Gillis’s jokes made you laugh, doesn’t it seem like something profound is lost by making politics the sole measure by which you determine something’s aesthetic merit? The reception of art has been politicized to such a severe extent that aesthetic appreciation apart from social critique is becoming exceedingly difficult.

It’s difficult to answer the question “how is this funny?” naively and straightforwardly, when the question is really a rhetorical question whose meaning is, “these remarks are reprehensible”, which is implicitly asking you to take a stance on whether you agree with the asker’s political judgment, or whether you disagree. And it’s bad enough having to explain a joke, but isn’t it also bad when you take apart a joke and show how it’s mocking the right thing because ultimately it’s “punching up” and therefore you are permitted to find it funny? All this manner of “critique” takes all of the id and spontaneity out of humor and turns it into this very cerebral thing.

You should watch the video, then you wouldn't have made this comment.

Oh, nevermind, just saw your comments that you didn't watch it for personal taste reasons. He basically addresses all of the pearl clutching you repeat in the above posts and demonstrates pretty clearly that it's mostly unfounded b.s.

You'll probably reject that thesis because you already believe 'cancel culture' exists and are primed to see it even when it's not there, but really it's not there.

Well, I’m not going to subject myself to that, but I am interested in knowing what your objection to my question is.

I think you've inculcated yourself in a media frenzy of pearl clutching so much you believe 'cancel culture' is some kind of massive prevalent phenomenon or exists how you think it does. I can't answer a question which has a context that is fundamentally flawed and incongruous with reality.

That was a pretentious way of saying 'log off twitter'.

I mean, as I said, there was nothing in what he wrote that I hadn’t seen elsewhere (stated there in a much less obnoxious way), so I can imagine it.

But no, I turned it off when he defined cancel culture as “powerful people refusing to accept the blowback when they express unpopular opinions” because I’ve seen that tired talking point expressed countless times and I think it’s a naive understanding of what’s currently problematic about the culture, so I didn’t want to watch the inevitable rant of “this person was cancelled but look! They still have a career!” for the remaining 20 minutes, because that’s besides the point, as far as I’m concerned.

I mean, if you think about it, the fact that all of the canceled people still have careers should suggest the entire thing is b.s. No big deal if you don't see that. Also.. if you don't want to present an actual argument we can be done here I suppose. I don't think I really want to be dragged into another one of your standoffish pointless debates about nothing.

I mean, I’m not really committed to “cancel culture” existing, or not existing, or whatever. Again, it’s kind of besides the point. What I find annoying and frustrating is that... okay, here’s an example. I felt like I was taking some kind of political stance by having an opinion one way or the other by enjoying Tarantino’s new movie. As if my aesthetic preferences said something about my political perspective on women’s issues? And then I had to be introspective and assess and respond to these other points of view that I found in New York Times articles and Vox articles and friends’ opinions in meat space. I couldn’t have a neutral encounter with a piece of art, because my encounter with it was partially framed by others’ desire to condemn something for being “regressive” (and of course, “centrist” that I am, I had to take seriously their point of view and evaluate its merits).

You could choose not to read these things. I rarely read NYT and almost never read Vox. I'm perpetually not perturbed by the perspectives they offer as a result.

I think social media and the internet generally has the consequence of amplifying a certain vocal critic kind of voice. It makes annoying grandstanding easier. You gotta learn to just filter it from your life.

I’m trying to engage you productively here.

I mean, I’m not going to watch the video because I do find it quite grating, and come on, it’s weak to saddle someone with watching a 25 minute video as price of entry into a conversation.

But you also didn’t address the question I asked you before. I mean, what I find frustrating is the collapse of evaluating a piece of art’s aesthetic merits into whether it conforms to political pieties (especially “woke” pieties). So: “doesn’t it kind of suck that art criticism has pretty much been reduced to “does this piece of art agree with my political pieties?”” Does Cody address this question? (You watched it, so you should remember if he did, and it should be easy to respond to given that you said i’d think differently about the issue if i’d watched the video.) Or do you have a response to it?

Lol, Reid would have loved working for a politburo SNL clone. I'm sure that a materialist dialectic comedy sketch of Shane Gills and his crimes against the People would be h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s. Anyone who enjoys media purely for its aesthetics is a fascist.

Thats absolutely true. One could just avoid such publications. But such publications aren’t exactly niche media outlets. If mainstream publications like the NYT or the New Yorker (which also ran similar articles) are the sort of publications you have to avoid to not be exposed to hysteria... maybe something’s wrong with the culture, and it’s not merely about having a healthy media diet? It doesn’t get much more mainstream than those publications.

watching you flail is curious

I will admit that I haven't really been following this discussion too carefully, so I probably said something dumb. I definitely didn't find that video funny, though.

What's kind of off-putting is that this kind of humor only seems to actually be funny if you vehemently agree with his point of view. I guess that makes it satire or critique with a comedic element more than pure comedy. Actually, I know where I've seen this format before: in the ashes of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, in Sacramento.

I don't expect you to watch the whole video. I just read the reply at the top of this page before I read the reply where you said you don't like it.



Flatly: I don't think that's the case. Cody does address that, sort of. Comedians like Jerry Springer have ranted before about PC culture and all. Cody then points out how many comedians have tried to make that "my gender is an inanimate object" joke, Jerry Springer included. Then he says it's not funny because it's overplayed and not really original to begin with. It's "airline food" tier humor. And he says maybe the reasons people don't laugh at your 'my gender is attack helicopter' joke isn't because they're piety policing, it's because the jokes are just not funny. Maybe we just have an abundance of washed-up comedians who blame their failing career on PC culture?

He also talks about how it's ludicrously easy to escape this 'stalinist' culture, how many people who made extremely offensive comments apologized and how many of them are still mainstream figures. Or how the people who tend to have career trouble for comments tend to be arrogant, unrelenting *******s and never back down from any statement.. and even then, most of the time their careers actually continue just fine.

That's not to say nobody in the world ever piety polices, but just log off twitter and stop reading them. Problem solved. 99% of the people I interact with in real life don't speak/act like that.

I don't think it's funny. His style may be abrasive and maybe it bothers you enough to not watch it. That's fine, you're free to do as you please.. it's not really a big deal.

That said, I think he presents a pretty solid argument for why 'cancel culture' isn't all that real and is mostly manufactured.

TIL: throwing on a suit, growing a beard, and disheveling my appearance will make my Vox essay more palatable to millennials who consume confirmations of their opinions masquerading as news in the medium of video monologues.

So... basically a left-wing Rush Limbaugh, but for people with smartphones rather than AM radios.

You manage to out-pretentious yourself every day, and I'm not sure how.

Hey, it was just an observation. The Young Turks have already been doing this for about a decade, so it's not exactly new. I'm not totally against the medium and people have said valuable things in it (maybe even Rush Limbaugh), but I know it when I see it.

On the topic: was Sarah Silverman not canceled? I watched a bit of that video, and I fail to see how he can dismiss the possibility that people are being blacklisted from Hollywood for gaffes in their past. And also with Al Franken being forced to resign, which Silverman laments in her interview with GQ.

I haven't quite watched that editorial video about how cancel culture isn't such a big deal (and I'm not sure I will), but I have to wonder just who is he defending here: the people with the authority to pull the trigger and kill a part of somebody's career as an actor, politician, or comedian?

I mean, just because there are idiots who spuriously shout "fire" doesn't mean that fires don't exist. Good people have been fired for stupid reasons just to save face with the Twitter mob, and that's a legitimate thing to be on hair-trigger alert about IMO.

Looks to me like her career is running strong.



I have no idea if her firing has anything to do with any kind of 'culture' or if some producer randomly found it and fired her. People being fired when dirt was discovered in their past is nothing new, not even remotely new. And losing one contract isn't a big deal. To clarify what I said above.. it seems she still has plenty of comedy bookings, and most everything I can find online is defensive of her. This isn't going to hurt her career very much at all. Like, all of the articles I can find were generally pretty neutral or defensive in tone.. so it seems to me the mainstream response is largely apathetic or defensive of her. I don't see this 'blacklisted' thing at all. In other news, Louis CK is still doing shows and was given rapturous applause by the audience. And what he did was pretty ****ing messed up, so..

As Cody even points out, Mel Gibson still has a career. In fact, I have a much harder time thinking of someone who made publicly inflammatory comments who *doesn't* still have a career.. Chris ****ing Brown is touring right now and he viciously beat Rihanna.

This is what I don't get. None of the evidence suggests anyone is actually 'blacklisted' as long as they still have talent. I think people who live in an insular internet bubble may overestimate the scope of the trend by a huge degree.

In other words, you don't lend credence to the notion that she lost her movie role because of something that we can sufficiently recognize as existing and reasonably label as "cancel culture".

Also, have you ever been on Twitter? It's full of people champing at the bit to get so-and-so taken off the air / yanked from the public eye.

In fact, I can think of an extremely pertinent example of cancel culture in the current age: flagging Youtube videos.

This happens ALL the time. The basic pattern is as follows:

1. Find a vlogger who espouses opinions about your politics or religion that don't sit well with you.
2. Look for objectionable material buried somewhere deep in the video.
3. Use Twitter, Tumblr, 4chan, or Discord to enlist your followers in flagging the video for violating Youtube's community standards.

Great! You've just deplatformed somebody from Youtube on a frivolous (and probably fabricated) technicality. Good luck to them in getting their subscribers back if they are ever reinstated by a faceless bureaucracy run by bots and with no transparency or independent accountability.

The internet thinks the internet is important, wow. Literally nobody cares about twitter mobs except twitter mobs. Just look away from the screen.

I edited my post above and give plenty of concrete examples of how being a pretty heinous ****ing person has almost no relevance for career prospects. Your theory 100% fails to explain how Chris Brown has a career. Like, dude, let some contradictory evidence in.

This is much more an issue with Google basically not moderating their platform than anything to do with mobs.

And you all get mad when I say social media should be deleted. Hello?

Lol. Tell that to the team of men pointing flashlights in your face that are mounted on assault rifles when they show up at your doorstep because somebody who disagrees with you on Steam decides to SWAT your liberal ass for the lulz.

The mobs are imposing a cost on Google, which Google does not want to pay. It is cheaper to have bots automatically remove flagged content then to pay moderators to do the same. I imagine a lot more, actually.

You can argue that Google is right or wrong to make this calculation, but you definitely are putting your head in the sand if you think the mobs don't exist enough to force them to do so in the first place.

Explain how jet fuel can melt steel beams.

i have yet to see a case where an unfairly removed channel wasn't restored after manual review. though i haven't really researched it.

i just found out that that jeff dunham still has a career. wtffff

do people swat over politics? i thought that was just when 4chan wanted to get annoying people killed 'for the lulz'. thanks for reminding me of another reason i don't go on 4chan though.

The politburo will thoroughly and fairly review your case and contact you once a determination has been made. Meanwhile

It was just an example. Gamers who frequent 4chan tend to SWAT/dox/harass, social justice twats tend to flag for violation of community standards or otherwise try to de-platform.

Meanwhile, you've lost all your subscribers or have been demonetized. Months later, after you've lost multiple appeals bungled by low-level bureaucrats at Google, and only then finally flagged down a Google employee on Twitter under threat of public shame to manually review the case, you'll be "restored".

Of course, Google is known for its legendary customer service, so

There’s a certain irony in the fact that when I brought up “cancel culture” in this thread I almost took solace in the fact that what I said was met with confusion, because it meant that I was talking to people who weren’t contaminated by this dumb internet controversy and lived in blissful ignorance of it. But, after unwittingly introducing the conversation to this site, I now want to tune out of it because someone’s repeating the exact platitudes that made Twitter so freaking annoying when this controversy was at its height. (And those platitudes consist largely of: you don’t need to pay attention!)

FWIW this actually got a chuckle out of me