zlacker

Your example is off base again. If a rank and file employee gets a DUI and Google refuses to fire them over it yeah it's wrong to try to organize a lynch mob against Google for that.

I didn't construct some arbitrary personal bar. I simply acknowledged that edge cases exist that reasonable people might feel necessitate community action as a matter of self preservation. That doesn't undermine the general principle.

At the end of the day we're discussing social standards so there aren't going to be any airtight logical arguments and the edges will inevitably be blurry. If you adopt an extremist mindset you'll be able to rationalize just about anything. That doesn't mean you're actually in the right though.

>>fc417f+(OP)
My point isn't that edge cases exist or not. It's that what's an edge case to you may not be to others. The culture will dictate what is extreme or not. Now you can argue that this can result in some mob mentality taking down people who aren't deserving. True, but in society we see that we've tended to get better over time at making this determination, even if there are blips along the way. To quote Theodore Parker, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Now, it's our job, when we see the arc not bending the right way (or fast enough) to do something, but I think to avoid allowing the arc to have levers is not doing ourselves any favors.

And with all the talk of cancel culture (not government action, but just all private citizen action), I've actually seen very few examples of it resulting in something that I consider unacceptable. Note, I'd consider physical threats outside the bounds of cancel culture -- those are just physical threats.