zlacker

>>tosh+(OP)
I find it weird that so many people seem to think that "attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity" (I guess this is a fancy way of saying cancel culture?) is a big problem, because frankly I have no idea how big a problem it is. Where are the statistics on this? How many are actually impacted by it? There are many articles citing examples and saying how dangerous it is (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/25/online-shaming-d...), and yes there are certainly such examples, but are these just outliers? Is this like air travel, where really for the most part it's ok for people to speak their minds and people get overly freaked out because of rare events?

Actually curious to hear what people on here think about this.

>>andrey+AN
What kind of data are you looking for? Number of people fired for a tweet? Number of colleagues shunned for not being woke enough?

>>ciaran+iO
Yes, something along those lines. It's not like it's impossible to categorize and quantify and catalogue 'cancel culture' events -- even if the result is somewhat subjective , it's better than just this vague belief based on rare examples. I mean honestly, is this 'cancel culture' really a thing, or it is mostly celebrities sometimes being criticized (at times rightly by sensible progressives, at times wrongly by overly woke people) that somehow has many on HN and a whole lot of people so anxious?

>>andrey+fQ
It's not about just the celebrities. People are anxious that they, personally, might be fired or lose friends if they don't believe the right things.

>>SpicyL+SR
But is that actually happening? Is this a legitimate fear for regular people or just celebrities?[1] If you lose friends for expressing your beliefs, were they actually your friends? (Or alternately - maybe they are actually good people who have finally tired of your toxic behavior, and you should reconsider your beliefs if your friends are abandoning you for them?) Are people actually being fired for expressing reasonable opinions, or is most of the firing happening when people express truly hateful and dangerous things?[2]

I honestly have no idea. I'm not on Twitter or Reddit and I religiously avoid confrontation on Facebook so maybe I'm just out of touch. My anecdotal experience suggests that apart from a few outliers the impact of cancel-culture on regular people is overblown. I don't know what statistics I'd look at to determine if that's broadly true. It seems like every time I hear someone say something like "Now I'm not even allowed to express opinions or state facts anymore!" what they actually mean is "Now when I say kind of horrible things online in a deliberate attempt to be confrontational people yell at me on Twitter!" I see a lot of what I would consider radical-right and sometimes downright hateful opinions expressed on Facebook, and the people expressing them aren't getting cancelled, fired, or even called out. Mostly they're just being congratulated by their filter bubble.

I have definitely scratched my head at some of the high-profile 'cancellations' for things that seem pretty innocuous. It seems like this mostly only happens to celebrities who have positioned themselves as liberal thinkers, though. Definitely a problem for them, and I don't envy the PC pitfalls they have to navigate. But to be fair it happens on both sides of the political spectrum - recently I've seen a number of right-leaning folks on my Facebook feed "cancelling" the NFL for the national anthem thing, or for considering renaming teams with culturally insensitive names, etc.

[1] Not that things that are only problems for celebrities aren't real problems, but I think it changes the discussion a bit.

[2] A recent example I saw of something I would consider dangerous and hateful was a screenshot of a Facebook post with a picture of a noose and a caption about teaching criminals and looters to fear the law again or something equally horrible. The profile picture was an older white woman and indicated she worked at a school. Two things stood out to me here: 1) It could easily have been faked, in part or in whole. She should have an opportunity to defend herself (the whole point of the legal system) assuming she's a real person and the profile itself wasn't entirely fabricated as outrage porn. 2) If it was real I would definitely not want my kids attending a school that would keep her on staff.

>>graham+981
Yes, it is actually happening, and not just to celebrities:

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...