Ya I bet

I like how Biden’s pretty much the Compromise Democrat that Republican voters always say they want (but of course would never vote for), and now that he’s the democratic front runner it becomes red alert, all hands on deck, no amount of treason or self dealing is too much if it means destroying the man and his family even if the Republicans are practically guaranteed to win against him anyway.

And then you pave the way for a left-wing populist ticket, which will obliterate right-wing populism every time people are actually allowed to vote for it.

Truly some 11 dimensional chess being played here.

What if it's true what some are saying, that Trump doesn't REALLY want to be elected and didn't want to in the first place? That the campaign was mainly a marketing stunt? Then again, if he may be facing some indictments when he's no longer protected from them by being the presiddent, he might want to avoid those for another four years.

None of this speculation is based on factual information, of course. Just some random tidbits that I remember from the news cycle.

It’s a pretty safe guess that trump never wanted to be president, not so believable that his vanity would let him throw the election.

What are you talking about? Haven't multiple people in Trump's administration been charged and some convicted of crimes?



You must live in a different world than I.

I don't know about any of that. I have no idea whether Biden is the front runner or not. I don't know who people are going to vote for. What Biden did in the Ukraine with his son is inexcusable (well, except you seem to laud it) and surely they should be ruined for it as well as anyone guilty of that sort of corruption. I found no smoking gun when I looked into this last week and that's because there doesn't seem to be one. I don't care about Trump all that much it's just surprising (maybe not) to see the extent that people will do mental somersaults to make themselves believe some of these seemingly baseless accusations.

Anyway, I was really hoping for some opinions about that link I posted earlier rather than just a snarky comment about radical christians. Now, I don't really blame anyone for not doing so. I couldn't get through it either but I was wondering if anyone here had studied anything relating to it. It was sent to me by a friend whom I've described here as a sort of socialist libertarian before. I've not found a conspiracy theory he doesn't seem to believe. I've noticed similar mannerisms in other libertarian characters such as John McAfee and the Overstock CEO that was in the news recently (although he was much more subtle). He is specifically one of the reasons I am very suspicious of many that self-identify as Libertarian. You might ask why I consider him a friend and I could go into that in more detail later but basically it's just compassion on my part. Having said that, I've ignored him for several months now and other than his bulk emails I generally don't hear much from him lately.

Yeah yeah ok, but what is your opinion this time?

Yup, definitely. I love Biden, which is obvious because I hate Trump, a Republican, and Biden is a Democrat, which means Biden is the opposite of Trump. I hope it turns out that Biden's secretly a Canadian so that when he loses to Trump, he can move to Canada and become our next prime minister and share some of his segregationist neoliberal wisdom with us.

Write your own book report.

I am not quite sure why I'm bothering to point out a logical fallacy in the post of a redditer who doesn't know the difference between 'affect' and 'effect', and has the words '420' and 'gamer' in their nick, but why not.

You linked from a comment rhetorically asking, "Roman Polanski has won how many Oscars since raping a 13 year old?".

Congratulations, dear reddit poster, on proving the non-existence of something (cancel culture) by constructing a single non-example (Roman Polanski not being cancelled) of it. In other words,

1. If cancel culture exists, then anybody who I think ought to be cancelled will have been.
2. By the contrapositive and the fact that Roman Polanski has not been cancelled, it follows that cancel culture does not exist.

Don't let logical fallacies get in the way of my outrage about the outrage! Sincerely, Reddit

Although to be fair, that post wiggled out of that fallacy by admitting that cancel culture only fails to exist 99% of the time (heh). So I guess its more fallacious of me to imply our reddit friend is making a fallacious argument per se, but certainly one full of specious and moot points: I don't care how many examples of people who ought to have been cancelled but haven't been you can dredge up, that's still a terrible argument for something not existing at all. And if what you are just _outraged_ about is the fact that people on Twitter are _outraged_ about spurious stuff... then all I can say is that you should probably rethink how you spend your time.

And see, this is really the crux of it: I think "outrage reddit" perceives "cancel culture" to be media articles bemoaning that cancel culture is a trend or some such thing. If that's all they're arguing, they can have it, because, well, who cares? Lol, that's what you're mad about? The only meaningful definition of cancel culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a set of assumptions and beliefs shared by a group of people (that is, a culture), which ultimately precipitates or justifies the cancellation of somebody's career, somewhere, sometime, in some way (anything from Sarah Silverman being cancelled for a single role for something objectionable she posted over a decade ago to Al Franken losing his entire (political) career).

These are two very separate things: the first is completely unimportant, as far as I'm concerned, and the latter is obviously real, and quite serious, and therefore not to be taken lightly no matter how rare you can prove it is in practice (in particular, because any existence at all of a cancel culture has a chilling effect on everybody who has something to lose).

Problem: the internet has exposed me to a vast ocean of hitherto invisible opinions that contradict my comfortable worldview!

Solution: try to punish people who aren't woke. That will definitely change people's mind and will definitely not drive people on the fence to more extreme opposition, no

Cancel culture is just a commonly occurring phenomenon in the culture to punish people who are considered to have done something inappropriate or offensive by deplatforming them. Whether that impulse exists has nothing to do with whether such attempts are successful (obviously, it still does even if *some* deplatforming attempts are unsuccessful, because many are), or whether people who are deplatformed remain deplatformed forever.

I wasn't just intending to refer to that one post, but the whole ecosystem of posts below it as well.

Oh no, these Jones replies. Oh no.



Sure, whatever. I don't think there's anything new about is, people have been trying to deplatform those they don't like since.. ever. I still think the only new factor is social media amplifying certain voices in the discussion, not that there's new trends in how humans think that didn't exist before.

I constantly make the mistake of bringing up old subjects I don't really want to discuss. Really regret linking that thread.

Still waiting on a cancel culture opponent to tell me which freedom(s) they're willing to give up to stop it.

It’s kind of weird that cancel culture proponents think that pointing out that other cultures have ostracized individuals who do things that are taboo somehow subdued criticism of that practice in its current, very prominent form. It’s kind of like saying, “yeah well, the Syrian Civil War is happening, but I don’t think there’s anything new about it, People have been doing war since like.. ever.” I don’t really get why this is supposed to undermine critics’ arguments.



Hypothesis: the reason you do this is because you want to express your opinions on the topic but you don’t actually want to engage in a discussion with someone who disagrees with you and is willing to engage in good faith.

If the critics were saying the Syrian Civil War was a new, dangerous type of conflict that's a serious new problem.. which is how people talk about 'cancel culture'.. then yes, that would be a good argument to point out that the war is not particularly different from many other wars in history.



I linked a reddit post that I thought had some interesting discussion. That's all it was about. I guess I advocated for one comment, but I wasn't advocating everything in there as 'the right' opinion. Last thing I wanted was to invoke so much more pretentious nonsense.

lmao babies today not knowing what REAL cancel culture looks like. cancel like it's 1789




give conservatives more power

I can’t say that I see many people claiming that it’s particularly novel. To the extent that it is, the thing that seems relevant is nothing that you haven’t already said, namely, social media (and perhaps also the alignment between woke liberalism and corporations). Aside from that, the other thing that’s surprising about the moralism and the censoriousness is that it’s currently so prominent on the left, since in the 80s and 90s it was conservatives who were generally so bent out of shape about violence in video games and movies, explicit music, etc etc.

But no: I don’t see many critics of so-called counter-culture claiming that there’s something fundamentally new about ostracism (a word whose origin is Greek, after all, and describes a relatively common social practice). That criticism seems more like a counter argument proponents of cancel culture are making to an argument that isn’t actually being made by proponents.

Really? Because... https://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?67818-Massassi-Bread-Parade-The-Pretentious-Patrol

Like I've said before: Conservatives aren't cancel culture opponents. They invented cancel culture. And today, not only do they continue to shun people and pressure businesses using their own moral standards, but they opportunistically inflame progressives to shun other progressives.

The people who seem to voice the strongest objections are all boring liberals. Probably because it's a fundamentally illiberal act, trying to control what other people say and do. But also because they are ideologically incapable of proposing a solution to the problem, because any real solution to the problem must also control what other people say and do, and is therefore illiberal. So they'll always just stamp their feet about the injustice of it all while ignoring all pertinent questions about it.

Yeah, I mean you're right about that. But giving conservatives more power is all liberals have been capable of doing for decades now, so I'd just assume that's their strategy because they don't know alternatives.

Sounds about right.

I guess that's fair, though one might ponder why seemingly the left is more about morality policing. OTOH though I don't think 'proponents of cancel culture' is an actually existing category of people. As far as I've seen, the stance is more that the opponents are being hyperbolic and overstating their case, not that deplatforming people is good. Maybe I'm wrong and there are people who think deplatforming in general is a good tactic, ersus people just being angry and saying stupid ****. It's more that we're arguing about different things in categorically different ways, we're not really disputing about the things we think we are.

We can't let little issues like big businesses unethically discriminating, due to public (or Chinese government) demands, stand in the way of letting big businesses ignore the ethics of the society in which they operate.

Like, this is how the way we're speaking feels: someone is saying, 'we have to deal with gremlins infesting the attic'. I go, 'there aren't gremlins in the attic'. 'Oh, so you're a proponent of attic gremlins.'

China's harvesting the organs of political prisoners? Nah, what matters is someone got fired from a movie.

This is basically what I'd demand from the discussion about 'cancel culture' if I was to take it seriously:

• Actual definition and discussion of what cancel culture means. And not just an ad hoc definition to cover someone's ass who hasn't really thought about it. Try to use the word 'culture' as honestly as possible. For instance, if cancel culture is real, is rape culture as well? I doubt many of the people worried about cancel culture think rape culture is real, but most likely wouldn't realize their ad hoc definition fails to exclude what they want it to. So real work needs to be done. In fact, I'd suspect the reason it's called 'cancel culture' at all is cynical conservatives wanted to mock/parody ideas like rape culture without putting any thought into the words themselves, which itself is kind of ****ty but whatever. Point being, honest attempt to evaluate and make the words clear are necessary and I don't think the people mad about this are using the word 'culture' correctly.
• Actual argumentation about the scope and scale of the problem. As it is now, the only argument it even exists seems to be just spewing out a loosely connected list of people whose careers have been effected for some reason. Don't include positive but also negative examples, actually discuss the limits of the perceived issue. Actually going exhaustively though an industry, tracking scandals and how they effect careers over different time frames would help IMMENSELY with the assertions.
• Related to the above, actually doing the comparative work necessary to prove 'cancel culture' is an issue today. Comparative work is extremely work intensive, to e.g. go through the careers of celebrities in the 1980s to prove a negative is NOT easy work, but is necessary for the claim at hand.

And, yeah, let's not sit here and presume people who dispute the factual basis for the claims somehow promotes or advocates for specific examples.

Basically I'm saying, 'prove there are really gremlins in the attic through legitimate work' before going on incessantly about a problem that may not really be what you think it is. If someone does the work and pretty well demonstrates a new trend exists, good on them and I'd have to concede it. But without the work, it's people making loose ad hoc arguments to cover their ass. This is why academia exists..

I mean, just look at the Cody Johnson video you posted. His argument is that cancel culture is holding people accountable, and if you don’t like it (like the comedians, who don’t like it), you’re behind the times and need to get with it. Seems like a defense to me. So no: there are plenty of proponents of cancel culture (and their views aren't totally unreasonable, either).

I guess that's true, he did claim that. I think he didn't advocate deplatforming though, just 'holding people accountable', which may or may not mean deplatforming. But it might, so I'd have to concede that a bit.

Personally, I would be willing to agree on the hypothetical as long as it meant having an actually substantive discussion about it. Whether you think it's actually happening or not, it's possible for the public (or foreign governments) to pressure private businesses to punish unpopular opinions and actions. So what should be done to prevent it?

i.e. what freedom(s) are you willing to give up to prevent this from happening?

Yeah, that's also a big part of it. As has been mentioned prior in the thread, advocating for a company to fire a worker is 100% free speech. If you see this as a problem that needs fixing, then you're suggesting speech needs to be limited in some way. Otherwise,

You'd be suggesting one of the following:

- Speech needs to be limited
- Businesses need to be enjoined from responding to public/foreign government pressure
- Consumer choice needs to be constrained

but not really, because any of those options are as offensive to you as the status quo. But it's fine. Nobody's ever said liberalism was complete and self-consistent, right?

Also as I keep hinting, as far as cancel culture goes, the Chinese government pressuring western businesses is much more concerning than whatever the Twitter mob is doing. Partly because the Chinese government is asking for much more odious things, like forcing western businesses to deny the sovereignty of Taiwan, but also because the companies are much more eager to comply than they are with concerned citizens of their own countries.

Which is to say: as far as I'm concerned, if you're really worried about "cancel culture" all you've managed to do is identify a subset of the actual problem, that our society has been structured to shield businesses from having to represent the values of the people. The only fix for the subset is to solve the real problem. So you've gotta decide what you like more, a world without cancel culture, or a world without capitalism.

Literally who is arguing that a cogent defense of "sticks and stones" contra the thought self-appointed police requires some kind of law or regulation? I thought I was just defending comedians in the public sphere of ideas against people who advocate for the (in my mind) dangerous prevailing zeitgeist that we ought to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to the careers of people we'd like to punish for offending us. There is no need to bring the Chinese government (let alone our own) into the discussion in order to advocate for a shift in mindset in our own culture.

Also Reid, regarding the stuff about how if 'cancel culture' exists, then surely 'rape culture' must as well: the answer obviously is that they both clearly exist somewhere, and the onus is always on somebody who claims that they don't exist. What's being (probably deliberately) confused here are the two words 'exists' and 'prevalent'. And whether or not something like 'cancel culture' is prevalent seems to be an entirely moot point. After all, the whole principle of having freedom of speech (the idea, not the actually codified legal right) is that we voluntarily sacrifice our right not to be offended in order to facilitate the free expression of ideas and avoid a chilling effect, and the novel mechanic behind this freedom is that it does not work if you apply it selectively, except in very selective circumstances like shouting fire in a crowded theater. And again, let me emphasize that I am by no means talking about legal rights, but simply that people who seem to be quick to dismiss the principle that we should be wary against any kind of endemic culture of shafting people's careers for offending us... well, that's just dangerous IMO.

Even if you could reform society to make censorious demands of private businesses impolite (on the questionable theory that most people don't already think so), the simple fact that people will always disagree about some issue, will always prefer to associate with like-minded people, and that unrestrained private businesses will always compromise on any issue in order to maximize profit, means there is no amount of social reform that will stop us from having this same discussion a few weeks later. And if all you're doing is arguing about how it's bad, but you have no interest in talking about actually doing something about it, please consult the image Reid posted.

And yes, there is a need to bring up the Chinese government. They are the worst and most successful actor in "cancel culture", and since they are not really part of our society, they exist well beyond giving a **** what you and I think is morally right. Yet every business we've got, from airlines to movie studios, folds over to every demand they make no matter how immoral we think that is. If you can't wrap your head around the Chinese government manipulating our businesses, there is absolutely no point in talking about the people who actually live here doing the same thing.

Let me elaborate on this point so it's as clear as possible: If we create a culture where we aren't allowed to tell our businesses what to do anymore, but we don't do anything to stop the Chinese government from telling our businesses what to do, then we might as well start learning Mandarin because we're living in China.

Yeah, I’m also a little confused by the idea that there’s a “solution”. The proponents of cancel culture offer it as a social (non-political, non-policy) way of promoting change (through persuasion, shaming, or “education” about appropriate behavior). The way to fix cancel culture is to persuade people it’s bad?

Joker was banned in China. Now, I'm not saying Joker being different would be a massive cultural loss. But I am saying e.g. Marvel movies are written to pass Chinese censors. It bothers me that the movies we watched are modified to comply with a totalitarian government.

Imagine if Taxi Driver was never made because it wouldn't succeed in international sales.