I think you are getting confused about the definition of cancel culture.
Definition one: Not supporting celebrities when their problematic actions come to light. This is the one that was made to prevent people from banding against or facing consequences for their actions.
Definition two: A harassment campaign where people bring up actions from years ago even when they changed, taking things wildly out of context, and calling out in bad faith to bully small-scale content creators.
The commentor is talking about definition one here, and it seems that you are talking about definition two.
Exactly. But there’s not really a distinction in the term.
I said it’s terrible as a whole, because actions taken in case one rarely have any considerable effect, while I can list a few for case two. If they were two separate terms I would’ve obviously been against the second definition only, but they’re all under the same umbrella.
Not to mention people can make bad faith arguments for both (“yeah we just found out that guy raped 27 girls last year, but after that we don’t know anything so he’s changed!” / “ok, the only racist remarks that person did were 40 years ago, but have they really changed or are they just hiding it?”) so the line gets blurry.
Overall, the number of “campaigns” that actually worked at “cancelling” a bad person is way too small to justify the harassment to all the other people. That’s why I think it’s not worth it, just support who you want, let people live their life and only harass them if they’re currently doing something bad (or if the bad thing they did in the past was straight-up illegal like the aforementioned Weinstein).
And what I said was “Let’s not excuse it because of some rare cases where it achieved something good.” I’m not trying to frame this specific case as a bad thing, I absolutely don’t think it was.
There are other examples though. Lots of them. I agree with your premise, but the evidence is that the threat of cancellation does trigger action in many celebrities and public figures.
I honestly didn’t see much of that, except in cases where it was a legal issue like Weinstein or Kevin Spacey. Rowling is still around and didn’t care in the slightest. Kanye can’t shut his damn mouth and still sells like crazy. Not to mention Musk who keeps getting worse. It seems unless the law is involved, it only works on small creators and people with a slight sense of guilt.
I think you are getting confused about the definition of cancel culture.
Definition one: Not supporting celebrities when their problematic actions come to light. This is the one that was made to prevent people from banding against or facing consequences for their actions.
Definition two: A harassment campaign where people bring up actions from years ago even when they changed, taking things wildly out of context, and calling out in bad faith to bully small-scale content creators.
The commentor is talking about definition one here, and it seems that you are talking about definition two.
Exactly. But there’s not really a distinction in the term.
I said it’s terrible as a whole, because actions taken in case one rarely have any considerable effect, while I can list a few for case two. If they were two separate terms I would’ve obviously been against the second definition only, but they’re all under the same umbrella.
Not to mention people can make bad faith arguments for both (“yeah we just found out that guy raped 27 girls last year, but after that we don’t know anything so he’s changed!” / “ok, the only racist remarks that person did were 40 years ago, but have they really changed or are they just hiding it?”) so the line gets blurry.
Overall, the number of “campaigns” that actually worked at “cancelling” a bad person is way too small to justify the harassment to all the other people. That’s why I think it’s not worth it, just support who you want, let people live their life and only harass them if they’re currently doing something bad (or if the bad thing they did in the past was straight-up illegal like the aforementioned Weinstein).
The article is literally about a case in which it has worked, which doesn’t fit your definition of it being bad.
And what I said was “Let’s not excuse it because of some rare cases where it achieved something good.” I’m not trying to frame this specific case as a bad thing, I absolutely don’t think it was.
There are other examples though. Lots of them. I agree with your premise, but the evidence is that the threat of cancellation does trigger action in many celebrities and public figures.
I honestly didn’t see much of that, except in cases where it was a legal issue like Weinstein or Kevin Spacey. Rowling is still around and didn’t care in the slightest. Kanye can’t shut his damn mouth and still sells like crazy. Not to mention Musk who keeps getting worse. It seems unless the law is involved, it only works on small creators and people with a slight sense of guilt.
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