The Privileged White Male Snowflakes used their cancel culture with impunity since 1619. Refer to the Afro-American Lynching Memorial in Alabama. Seems to me a little counter canceling has been in order for some time. It will be a few centuries before the Canceling Scoreboard evens out.
5
Why must these pieces be so ridden with the same old faux-hip cliches?
As soon as I got to the parenthetical "We're looking at you, Aziz Ansari" I had to quit reading.
This isn't clever. It's smug.
3
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it...
11
You progressives can have your PC, your "safe spaces" and your "cancel culture." We liberals will stick with our freedom of conscience and speech, which someday -- after you yourselves have been cancelled, by someone even "more progressive" than you –– you may wish you had back.
18
This clip would fit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene, Turned me into a Newt:
Bedevere: How do you know she is a witch?
Peasant: She looks like one.
[Crowd indistinctly shouts]
Bedevere: Bring her forward!
Girl: I'm not a witch.
Bedevere: But you are dressed as one...
Girl: They dressed me up like this. [Crowd murmurs]
Girl: And this isn't my nose. This is a false one.
Bedevere: [inspects the nose and confirms] Well?
Peasant: Well, we did do the nose.
Bedevere: The nose?
Peasant: And the hat. She's a witch!
Peasant Crowd: Burn her!
etc etc
6
Thank you New York Times! LOL!
4
People who would so easily "cancel" you are neither mature nor worthy of your attention
10
J'accuse!!!!!!!
2
Obama was a New England Republican, and remains so today. The truth cancels him. He was supposed to be the guy who played for our team...he wasn't. He canceled himself.
@larry Give it up bernie bro.
9
Fine. A flawed Monty Python takeoff, but kudos for doing this. I'm sending it to all my Trumpesque and leftist associates.
Worse? How could it get any worse?
2
Because of your article in February alternative country-rocker Ryan Adams got 'cancelled'. His career has been sidelined for almost a year.
1
The internet didn't invent canceling and Nick Boshier and Jazz Twemlow didn't invent that skit. Apologies to Monty Python for the transparent rip off of Life of Brian are in order.
I say we stone the both of them.
1
Clever. Think about it. You could be a canceled-in-waiting. Unless of course you’re perfect.
2
You have to love this running on the same day as a NY Times piece titled, "Is It Time Gauguin Got Canceled?"
8
By putting the individual self above all others, the ego's most consistent goal is to avoid responsibility when this selfishness causes harm. It always tries to project/assign guilt to someone else and thus avoid its own culpability. If it is directly responsible for the harm then its goal is to highlight some other more serious harm that makes its actions inconsequential.
Using the more severe and extinction implying "cancel" in place of asking that perpetrators take responsibility for the harm they created is an attempt by the ego to shift the focus on those who expose wrongdoing and from those who perpetrated it.
Notice how in almost every case where the word is used it is those with power claiming that those without power are somehow worse than the natural consequences of the original act. The natural consequences should be censoring and refusing to include them among the company of the worthy.
1
Cancel culture is what is going on in the Republican party. One must worship Donald Trump as a man of impeachable character or one joins the camp of never-Trumpers and is removed from ones' position or office. Intolerance, divisiveness and exclusion are the operative principles of the Trump Republicans. The cancel culture ascribed to young people is a far cry from the actual cancellation of immigrant and employee rights by the Trump administration.
1
@tony Good point. One could say the same of identity politics.
1
It seems like "cancel culture" only became an issue when it was turned on (mainly white) men.
3
I don't think "cancel culture" is really new or specific to the young. But rather, with the rise of social media, the effects of cancel culture are felt with hyper-speed and intensity. Now you can be some poor schmuck in Podunk, Wherever, who does or says something considered offensive by some portion of the population and all of a sudden 1 million people can scream at you on Facebook, Twitter and in the comments section of the NY Times. Outrage is the new drug of choice.
4
This article is a bit of a bait-and-switch. There is a big difference between choosing to no longer celebrate stars who sexually harass co-workers and icing out a high school girl because you don't like her. Moreover, none of the examples in this article is representative of the political puritanical discourse Obama rightly decries. We should be able to engage in rational debate about healthcare models, the role of government, our military, etc. That doesn't mean Matt Lauer should get his show back.
3
Well said.
I'm afraid some people think the First Amendment is dead. Maybe the whole Bill of Rights.
Maybe we need a new famous Time Magazine cover à la 1966's "Is God Dead?" - - "Is The Bill of Rights Dead?"
Wait!!!! Nobody reads printed magazines anymore.
#IsTheBillofRightsDead just kidding
1
The solution to most of our current problems is deep personal humility. It prevents both causing offense and being offended.
This is not a popular solution, however.
7
@ez Trying sharing that with progressives who march around in righteous indignation all the time.
2
"Cancel culture" seems to be a response to the extreme imbalances of power that we live with today, the consequences of which are hitting the youth of today harder than ever. I think their outrage at things that we've been complacent about is, in many instances, entirely appropriate and a welcome breath of honesty. In many ways, the status quo in this country IS absurd. Any time society's troubles are blamed on people without power, influence, or riches, you have to wonder where that argument is coming from, and who it actually serves.
Case in point: Who coined this newly ubiquitous term, "cancel culture?" "Cancelling" may have originated organically from within social networks, but "cancel culture?" The media, including the New York Times, has regularly adopted negative labels that right wing propagandists created to prejudice the public against liberal ideas. "Political correctness" is one such term, and "Obamacare" (have you ever heard Barack Obama use that term? Nope, and you never will.) is another. When they know that their arguments are logically bankrupt, conservatives abandon logical debate and try to win by controlling the terms of the debate.
1
@Chris The term "politically correct" was coined by leftists. Look it up.
1
@Richard Thank you, I did.
Turns out there's a lot of speculation about the origin of the phrase - a lot more than I was aware of. I'm sure I read an essay in the Times a few years ago that attributed it to conservative commentators, but it looks like the history goes back a lot further than that. A Boston scholar traces it to Stalin's Russia, for example.
Anyhow, it's a lesson to me. Thanks again for the correction.
3
As the passion of the many posts shows, emotions matter. More to the point, it's well informed passion. If one wants to subvert a society, the recipe is time worn. First, separate passion from intellect, then convince people that one or other is irrelevant. Works every time because it undermines the fundamentals of a rising human condition. Extreme beliefs, whether 'left' or 'right', without reasoning thought, are the food of hungry manipulators. Use your head and heart together instead, works every time.
1
I have never visited Breitbart, Infowars or any of the sites designed to explain, affirm, or applaud a certain train of thought or ideology.
Last night a guest and I watched Stephen Fry and Steven Pinker explain Pinker's book Enlightenment Now.
Watching two intellectual giants armed with facts graphs charts data present just the facts was an elixir we needed after the constant stream opinion,belief, ideology, dogma and error.
Knowledge is power.
Until America can again escape cynicism it will continue to decline.
Jefferson and Franklin were scientists not theologians. America is the wealthiest most powerful nation that ever existed. America started with the declaration "We hold these truths to be self evident."
America needs its truths. Truths as the master of truth, Shakespeare, told us is all that can keep us whole.
Salman Rushdie is telling us that Don Quixote is the source of our literature. Isn't Quixote a man with a mistaken perception of the truth. Isn't not knowing truth the source of human tragedy?
3
Now I will feel much better about not being “woke.” What breath of fresh air. Now if I could only overcome my guilt at not being a vegan......
2
I don't want anyone talking about woke until they stop killing and eating animals.
1
In that speech Obama said, "People who you are fighting may love their kids..." That's when I knew he really had no clue. No one doubts that even right wing ideologues people may love their kids. Here's the more important question, do they love the kids of the rest of us?
I know Obama loves his kids but some of his policies were really terrible for the kids of other people. I'd say a better test of how we should judge the actions of someone, is to see they treat the kids of strangers.
1
That is why We watch Bill Maher.
Commonsense is always better option.
The Cancel Culture should not deserve much attention. It’s just a temporary reminder of medieval times. It will implode soon, thus it will cancel itself. Although inevitably it will be replaced by another frivolous “culture”
1
Cancel Culture was just as ignorant in 1283 as it is today.
4
Cancel culture seems an inevitable consequence of the internet. The internet never forgets, so the internet can never forgive. Our consciousness has not yet adapted to memories this persistent. So our forgiveness gene is underdeveloped.
When we had to rely on biological memory--or, at most, resort to libraries to explore the past--we were more likely to forget minor transgressions. Since we can no longer forget them, our minds (I suspect) amplify them. ("I can't forget this, so it must be significant.")
President Obama's advice is good, but we may need more help than that. Persistent fears and hatreds make us (as Trump has shown) easy to manipulate.
1
While there can certainly be a lot over reaction to online accusations (especially by writers looking for the latest scoop/outrage) R. Kelly should certainly not be included on any "cancel culture" list.
Federal grand juries found enough evidence for him to face trial on multiple charges of sexually assaulting children, child pornography, kidnapping, and prostitution. That isn't Cancel Culture - it's being charged with horrendous crimes (and you haven't seen him because he's in Federal custody awaiting trial).
1
But it’s so delicious to be angry in a crowd, for a cause....
So delicious!
1
OK, boomer! President Obama and other critics of youth culture need to get their heads out of the virtual world and go hang out with actual young people on actual campuses. I'm a boomer who lives in the trenches of millennial culture, with teens at home and dozens of college students I meet daily. I can assure you that "cancel culture" existed long before the internet or the millennials came around -- in my youth, it was called meanness, bullying, and boys will be boys. Young people today are unfairly maligned. The millennials I know, on both the right and left, are far tolerant, passionate, reasonable, and open-minded than people my age ever were. You can deride them as "snowflakes" or SJWs, but what that really means is that millennials understand why Bret Kavanaugh and Milo are disgusting and why it's indecent to wear blackface to parties. The credit for internet ugliness should be given to Donald Trump, Boorish Johnson, and their fanbase of louts, trolls, and incels. The kids are all right.
4
In the beginning …
God reportedly cancelled Adam and Eve when they disobeyed.
After killing his brother Abel, Cain was cancelled.
Even Earth was once cancelled with just only Noah, his family, and flocks in pairs reported to have survived.
A “very grievous” sin got the villages of Sodom and Gomorrah cancelled.
As a species, we’ve done a lot of cancelling throughout recorded history.
While new names and explanations will undoubtedly arrive, humans cancelling humans is quite likely here to stay.
3
How many people would "cancel" someone uniquely talented at generating income into their bank accounts? Exactly.
Let's all regain some grip on reality.
2
I wonder how many people today have read or seen the play, "The Crucible," by Arthur Miller. History repeats itself, once again.
8
If Obama ever gets cancelled, lets make sure its over a short statement about cancel culture and NOT about executing an American without trial.
@Dubblay
*Americans
i know a now [too] long-running show that needs to be canceled next year if not sooner.
2
Between O.K. Boomer, Cancel Culture and various other techniques, the world is moving forward with a Sniff and Dismiss arrogance that eventually eats its own, once those are the only ones left.
The good news is that most of this takes place on Twitter. Facebook too, but Twitter is the King. I dumped my accounts in February knowing I'd be cutting myself out of a lot including ties with friends and family, but it was so worth it. My mental health has improved vastly. And I no longer see others I run into as potential enemies. Most people still care about others, are kind, are compassionate and thoughtful. Just not on Twitter. Social media doesn't really do a very good job with either of those things. Log off, Learn things, Love one another.
4
Excellently done -- right out of the Monty Python playbook
142
The video is great--- Very Python and makes its points.
9
@philip Burn her!!
5
@philip A cross between "the holy grail" burn her and "the life of brian" public stoning. "All I said was that halibut was good enough for Jehovah."
12
As long as the most powerful person in the world hurls insults and lies without accountablity and never apologizes or retracts, the supposed ascent of the "cancellation culture" is not a very high priority.
Prior to women's suffrage, the opinions of a majority of people were "cancelled" in advance, weren't they? To the authors it only "seems like everyone is being cancelled" because such exaggerations are in vogue. It takes longer to be more accurate and it's no doubt true that slogans are popular, along with sloppy thinking, but one can hope that writers on such a storied platform as the NYT would find better ways to capture reader's attention.
1
Hating cancel culture is the new woke.
This isn't far from it, as it emphasizes the primary role of poison personalities.
Their spread is picking up steam, and it's all part of what I call The Collapse of Character. More will mean worse, as someone accurately predicted years ago.
They’re are many in today’s culture who are easily offended, and cannot reason why they take offense, because they’ve have lost the value of a cultured society, where someone can form an opinion - right or wrong, without be crucified, by the general public.
2
A couple of lifetimes ago, my hatred of the war in Vietnam radicalized me into the tender embrace of the New Left. After a couple of years, I ran away from the "movement" with my hair on fire. The reason was the dreadful, unrelenting, and very destructive political correctness.
In those days (70's) we called it "right line-ism" (the idea, handed down by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, that for any given political problem there is only one correct solution); today, correct line-ism is called being "woke."
How did we get here? My theory is that a lot of New Leftists, especially former members of SDS, became academics in the 70's and 80's after the movement broke up. (BTW: The movement broke up when Nixon, who was an evil genius, canceled the draft and the student movement evaporated almost overnight. How's that for a lesson in cynicism?) These ex-movement professors brought to their campuses the same intolerance for the free debate of ideas which the New Left had perpetrated.
And the rest is history.
One thing that's new, however, is this "woke" notion of "safe spaces." Where did that come from? If my youthful leftism taught anything it was that there are no safe spaces -- anywhere. I'm appalled by this notion, now rife on campuses, that students should be safe from "offensive ideas" because college -- unlike life -- should create sanctuaries from ideas we hate. This notion of "safe spaces" is elitist, anti-intellectual, and ultimately self-defeating.
6
1283 is hard to relate to; I didn't bother to click on the video because I already saw the "witch" scene in Monty Python and I'm sure it was funnier.
What about a more-serious treatment comparing "cancel culture" to the original cancellation of your whole career and maybe your social life: being blacklisted in the 1950s out of the mere suggestion that you were a Communist Sympathizer, a "pink"?
There wasn't a bigger star than Charlie Chaplin, but just the suggestion that he was a "ComSymp", because Modern Times was an implicit criticism of capitalism, had him actually ejected from the United States in 1952. Man, that's some serious cancellation.
4
When the cancel culture completely eclipsed due process it became a tool of mob mentality. Too quick to judge. Too slow to correct mistakes. Too reluctanct to apologize.
Cancel culture is just the milder former of Fascist's "enemy of the state" efforts. Be careful! They may come to cancel you one day.
2
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
3
Inane video. You went to an awful lot of trouble to produce it--one marvels at the number of of actors, the costumes; you hired a videographer, rented a location. Is this the best the NYTimes can offer in the way of cultural analysis? The accompanying text is shockingly brief, even flippant--too scanty and dismissive to have any bearing on the issue. Satire can be an effective tool in pointing out cultural foibles, but this shallow, insubstantial attempt does nothing to advance its cause.
I liked the part when the rich guy shows up and says taxes are going up 150% and no one notices. Which was the point of the whole video. While diverted from what really affects us we babble on in meaningless dialog trying to prove our moral righteousness. They win every time.
How do we break the spell of marketing science?
3
I’m not sure what cancel culture is. But what I’m seeing seems to be a back door effort to berate the BDS movement on the part of big money.
1
Cancel culture has been alive and well for generations in conservative areas, particularly in the South. Being an atheist or agnostic, a political progressive, or a race mixer or n-lover would have serious economic, social, and political consequences.
An official cancel culture got Jews kicked out of England and Protestants kicked out of France. What is happening to people who are cancelled by the left is just a reaction to long-existing cancelling by the right, and an acknowledgement that toleration is too weak a response to have much effect on the right's alternative universe.
3
The video was quite good, but talking about R Kelly and Louis CK, who should rightfully be canceled because they are abusers, hurt the message.
Be sure to make distinctions between those who genuinely mess up once and feel (rightly) repentant, and those who serially abuse their power.
2
Remember when we weren't allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons in 1985 because it was "satanic"?
Another name for mob rule?
Barack Obama got “Ok Boomered”?! By a bunch of idiots on twitter?!
Yeah, Im canceling twitter.
8
Mob rule is based on schadenfreude. Pleasure in another’s pain, and in getting an inch higher by standing on someone else’s neck. Enlightenment values discouraged this behavior until, post modernism, moral relativism, and now the outsize influence of one V. Putin became dominant influences.
Welcome to where Post-Truthistan borders Schadenfreudistan.
3
"Some cancellations are temporary (we’re looking at you, Aziz Ansari). Some seem permanent (has anyone even seen R. Kelly?)."
The use of the term "cancellation" undercuts the seriousness of the actions causing them. Intentionally or not, the above phrasing suggests that these "cancellations" were levied for transgressions of similar severity, yet didn't didn't have similar outcomes. Aziz Ansari was accused of going on a regrettable date where he he made the woman deeply uncomfortable by failing to accurately read conflicting non-verbal signals. R. Kelly is being prosecuted for sexually enslaving underaged women. Let's not suggest that an unthinking and aggressively "woke" Twitter mob is responsible for R. Kelly's brand diminution.
4
What I took away from the Obama clip was that we are all flawed, eve those that primarolly do good and that life is messy but we don't clean it up by bashing one another. Trump has made the cancel culture blossom and grow, not #Me Too as some here have alleged. He never takes responsibility for his actions as he blames others for his mistakes and failures. Everything he does is "perfect". He demonizes anyone he sees fit including former friends and allies. He even denies he had any relationship with them. He has given our society, young, middle aged and old permission to cast stones and find any apology insufficient. Some people are harder to forgive by the nature of their history and actions, Weinstein comes to mind but one transgression by someone especially for something they did in their youth decades later is not productive.
1
Suits me for everyone to go ahead and cancel me. I'd appreciate the quiet.
3
Intelligent people who are going to a good university should learn something about the power and limits of language. They should learn about logic, argument, definitions, the uses and dangers of broad or vague terms, the problems with defining a term in a way that departs from the natural language meaning of the term, well-defined terms, being on the lookout for arguments that conflate matters or that depend on cleverly navigating back and forth between two or more different common senses that a term may have (as with “maturity” or “strength”), the unsuitability of today’s narrative techniques as a way to determine questions of fact, and more. Intelligent people at good universities who are interested in politics and culture, especially, should take advantage of the fact that they’re going to school so that they can learn about these things.
2
Cancel culture is not new, nor imbued with any meaning. Sometimes you just move on. You get over it. We're done here.
1
Well of course it’s different. Today’s “cancel culturalists” couldn’t learn about 1283 protests because nobody tweeted about them!
7
Cancel-culture reminds me of the 1980’s Moral Majority - same judgmental/hypocritical group.
7
Cancel culture has just been cancelled. Debate.
The truth is the internet allows people to write things they would likely not say in person. When face to face we consider emotions, our and theirs, a range of responses, and the discussion in the context of both the moment and any future relations with them or people we both know. That interconnectedness does exist on the internet, but "likes" give us the illusion it does. The internet is our id; immediate, often reactionary and base.
It's time for the understanding culture.
2
Cancel-culture is popular among many for the same reason Trump is popular among many. Both give their adherents a feeling of purpose, power and prominence.
6
Few emotions are so rewarding to the ego or more likely to hijack an entire neural system than self righteous indignation. No pitchforks are required now that we can instantly join a mob on line from the comfort of our own cozy devices. Given that those devices are in the hands of millions of kids who have an excess of energy combined with a deficit in wisdom it's no wonder we're mired in this destructive and ill considered social tar pit. And then there are the middle aged cranks intent on punishing random culprits just for the sheer power buzz.
It appears that all animals practice a form of cancelling now and then. They seem to have a sense of status but no concept of due process. Humans make laws to manage and remove true evil doers whenever possible, but we should also have the capacity to know better than to ostracize people over faux pas or hearsay or a bad choice. Allowing unhinged emotions and snap judgments to shape a society has never paid off.
Thanks for this brilliant video, NYT. It's time to restore humor to the conversation; to satirize this mania and display cancel culture for the cruel ego fest it is.
7
Fails the tooth test. Unlike the characters here, without modern dental care no one in medieval times had perfect pearly-white teeth. Even the King of England, nor George Washington had them.
1
@Interguru , Actually, medieval teeth were better than early modern teeth, even without modern dental care. The introduction of sugar into the European diet was the culprit.
1
Few emotions are so rewarding to the ego or more likely to hijack an entire neural system than self righteous indignation. No pitchforks are required now that we can instantly join a mob on line from the comfort of our own cozy devices. Given that those devices are in the hands of millions of kids who have an excess of energy combined with a deficit in wisdom it's no wonder we're mired in this destructive and ill considered social tar pit. And then there are the middle aged cranks intent on punishing random culprits just for the sheer power buzz.
It appears that all animals practice a form of cancelling now and then. They seem to have a sense of status but no concept of due process. Humans make laws to manage and remove true evil doers whenever possible, but we should also have the capacity to know better than to ostracize people over faux pas or hearsay or a bad choice. Allowing unhinged emotions and snap judgments to shape a society has never paid off.
Thanks for this brilliant video, NYT. It's time to restore humor to the conversation; to satirize this mania and display cancel culture for the cruel ego fest it is.
Very Monty Pythonesque, and very funny. Alas, I'm guessing even the Pythons themselves must have been cancelled, due to female characters being portrayed by men, and no minority characters, and....
3
The difference that I see between the protest/boycott movements of the past and today’s cancel culture is the squashing of rational debate.
When I attended college classes, the expectation was that anyone could present an opinion and argue it. What has changed today is that students are afraid to voice opinions for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, triggering emotional discord, or revealing that they are members of the “out” crowd.
In the past, debate was about the logical dissection of ideas. Students would research questions such as “Should marijuana be legalized?” or “Should boycotts be used to effect political change?” or “Is capitalism the only successful economic system?” and then present pro/con arguments. But now, the idea is that if someone has a personal, emotional feeling about the topic, that topic can’t be debated because it will injure that person’s psyche. Anyone who makes the mistake of raising a “triggering” topic may then be canceled for being insensitive.
Viewpoints are no longer seen as things that reasonable people may disagree about. Instead, viewpoints are seen as monolithic things that are either good and safe and respectful or bad and dangerous and disrespectful.
This completely destroys intellectual debate! The irony is that trying to make people feel “safe” means that no one feels safe enough to risk censure!
187
@Heather the difficulty is that not everyone has gone to college nor joined high school debate teams, therefore no one understands the "rules". many people, "educated"
or not, do not seem to know the difference between
"facts" and "feelings". in a weird way i can see the confusion. but to "agree to disagree" about "facts" is very different than to "agree to disagree" about personal feelings.... truly, and since we are now in a climate that dismisses science at truthteller (fact) then no wonder the confusion. especially since some scientific organizations have bent the truth at times, so no one knows what is true and what is not true. going by "feelings" like one's "gut feeling" sometimes feels rational..... we are in hard times for sure
9
@Heather I wonder if society has ever really had that much intellectual debate. Was "reefer madness" intellectual debate? How about the Lavender Scare? The House Unamerican Activities investigations?
I hope that college classes remain a place where ideas can be debated both intelligently AND respectfully. I haven't been in a college classroom for two decades, so I don't know for sure, but I somewhat doubt that the extreme cases we hear about every few months in the news represent all colleges.
But I also think we should be skeptical about those who are "silenced." Are they silenced, or just told they are ignorant of the effects of what they say?
As a gay person, I know that what some people think are just their beliefs are, when put into law or just societal action, extremely limiting and oppressive to others. I know that some kids kill themselves because they are forced to go to conversion therapy. That's a result of people debating whether it is ok to be gay.
So, we need to separate people whose views are truly being silenced from people whose views are being challenged.
If a scientist tells flat earther that the earth is round, is the flat earther being silenced?
We should care about people who have unpopular opinions, but also about people whose lives are affected or limited by those opinions put into action.
10
@Heather I noticed this trend most significantly, right after Trump won the election. I suddenly had 'liberal' friends who were UNfriending anybody they knew, who may have supported Trump. But as I try to remind people, not all Trump supporters are monolithic, just as were not all those who supported Hillary. Not all in life and politics is purely black and white.
People don't realize how much they are limiting themselves, and their own ability to grow and change as an individual, when they insist that everyone they come into contact with think exactly like they do, on any and all social and political issues.
I may not have the same socio-political outlook as many of my neighbors in Queens, but that doesn't mean that I don't like the huge variety of lifestyles, cuisines, languages, the (at times) unique new home designs and socio/political viewpoints found here.
10
The particular danger today is that attempts to "cancel" someone based on limited information, perhaps true, perhaps not, with no way for the target to defend themselves, is a permanent smear.
I remember a conversation with a younger relative who was upset with something that transpired with a particular doctor. Her first impulse was not to tell the Dr. that she was upset, but to go online to let the world know her story. I don't think she considered that she was risking destroying someone's reputation as the FIRST response. That's one major wrong with the cancel culture: it is completely indiscriminate. Sure there are times when it is an effective way to get at those who have damaged others intentionally, but it is also a "place" where targets are guilty first, and forever.
194
@cheryl Psychologists call that triangulation, involving a third party in a dispute so as to avoid direct confrontation. Nowadays, the internet lets you triangulate with the whole world.
20
@cheryl Sounds a lot like the Salem Witch trials and McCarthyism, and thus, nothing new. It's not the problem today.
It's a problem ongoing.
11
I just watched the video where Obama urged young people to leave cancel culture behind.
It's brilliant.
Obama has been so extremely successful, both in his personal life and as president, because he had and has a 21st century conception of democracy that most of us didn't even start thinking about. It's also what allowed/allows him to be seen as such a man of integrity and moral leadership, both at home and in many countries abroad.
In the video, he explains something a little bit different than what this article/video is about though.
His words are about political activism. All too often, people do feel very upset about what happens in the world, and really want to do something about it. But then all that they do is being extremely judgmental and call out those whom they disagree with, imagining that they are truly bad people (and we, of course, entirely good and indeed "perfect" people, with pure intentions). And once that's over ... we go watching our favorite show on tv.
That's not how change is made.
And it's also based on a false premise: the idea that the world (and democracy) wouldn't be messy, and that pure intentions would be enough to accomplish change, and that when it doesn't happen fast enough, or when those who accomplish something really good then turn out to be flawed human beings too, we should reject them, be disappointed, judge them, and then give up.
He's not talking about pardoning. He's talking about not judging. And that is crucial indeed.
332
@Ana Luisa Of course I agree Obama was a man of integrity. But because he didn't recognize how the Republicans play the game and attack them head on his reputation is sullied by the fact he accomplished little. People point to health care but if it wasn't for McCain's dramatic vote he wouldn't have even that to take credit for. Sometimes you have to fight, fair play is a two way street. He should have recognized that the only way Republicans can win is to lie and cheat and they never play the game with any integrity.
22
@Donald Forbes
Not sure you have your history correct. The ACA passed both houses of Congress in Obama's first term and McCain voted against it. He voted not to "cancel" it after trump was elected. The ACA had been in effect about 6 years at that point so Obama could point to it as an achievement and one that was making a difference already for many Americans.
Republicans are repugnant, yes, but we still need to work with facts and accurate history.
42
@Ana Luisa @Ana Luisa Of course I agree Obama was a man of integrity. But because he didn't recognize how the Republicans play the game and attack them head on his reputation is sullied by the fact he accomplished little. People point to health care but if it wasn't for McCain's dramatic vote he wouldn't have even that to take credit for. Sometimes you have to fight, fair play is a two way street. He should have recognized that the only way Republicans can win is to lie and cheat and they never play the game with any integrity.
1
So it sounds like many of you in the comments section agree with cancel culture insomuch as it’s a weapon utilized against the people you hate, namely, Republicans. The problem with cancel culture is that once anyone can be canceled, everyone can be canceled, for reasons as ridiculous as the ones mentioned in the video.
Perhaps one of histories greatest “cancels” was when Robespierre suggested that, “King Louis must die so that the nation might live.” Little did he know that he too would have to die. The vigilante environment he facilitated ultimately resulted in his execution by the guillotine. The revolutionaries did not believe he was radical enough.
Cancel culture may seem great and all while its targeted at your enemies, but as a behavior it is virtually uncontrollable. Everyone has something to lose by promoting cancel culture, regardless of your political ideology. Cancel culture is not activism, it’s a sick nation suffering from hyper political polarization.
85
@Josh I liked your comparison to the French revolution, mob mentality never ends as long as there is hatred and uncertainty in the air.
4
"...it’s a weapon utilized against the people you hate, namely, Republicans."
@Josh: I am certain that there is a version of cancel culture practiced by Republicans against Democrats, Progressives and Liberals as well, and I imagine that it could be called "Snowflaking." Which is, of course, absurd, being that Trump himself is the biggest snowflake in American history.
11
@DJ McConnell You don't even have to go to snowflaking. Remember the Dixie Chicks? They were cancelled by conservatives for speaking out against the Iraq War.
How about gay country singers or sports athletes? We've seen them cancelled.
We saw the cancel Colin Kaepernick.
If you want to argue cancel culture is a problem, go ahead, but we need to acknowledge that while there may be a new term for it, the phenomenon is not new and it is most certainly not confined to one side of the political spectrum or one generation.
17
What awful framing.
Cancel culture? Really?
Like all the attention to rude people couldn't be filled by equally gifted people who don't get a chance to promote their contributions to culture without the rudeness.
Ignoring an rude, awful person isn't 'cancelling' their lives, it's cancelling our attention to their lives. There's a difference, and the clinging to their right to the public sphere, despite their misdeeds, seems silly and beyond the pale.
1
If a tree gets canceled in the woods and nobody hears it, does the cancellation make a sound...
This bit is spot on. Time to bring back armor.
1
Is this what political cartoons of the future will look like? It’s fascinating to say the least and the Times deserves plaudits for bringing this to it’s...watchers.
Might the center be holding? Against the bad faith machinations of both far left and far right? Are my fellow liberals awakening to the degree to which those groups share more in common with each other than they do with everyone else committed to providing greater stability and wellbeing for all? Are liberals realizing we cannot “destroy” our opponents? That they will still be here long after Trump is gone?
It may be too early for hope when Charles Blow wants to cancel the most successful NYC mayor in a generation and Jamelle Bouie has written columns that implicitly leave no room for anything more than outright civil war. The question is how many of these far left individuals are bluffing? How many will return to well appointed apartments with city views when the tables turn? Because the far right that they bait are far less likely to go quietly. They are not playacting while writing overwrought prose for well fed readers. And they’re armed, where we all are most certainly not.
Let’s end cancel culture and the presuppositions that have given the far left carte blanche.
2
Cancel Culture is about liking something, a personality or show, and then giving them/it up. Hong Kong used to love LeBron James until he said you should not support democracy there in a tweet because he makes a lot of money selling jerseys in China. When he showed his true colors that's when Hong Kong canceled him and so did I.
This video is too late. As evidenced by many of these comments, humor has been canceled.
2
I'd like to repeat a comment I read here from another user a few weeks ago that has really stayed with me:
Social justice work without compassion is just vengeance.
Too many on the left are too gleeful at seeing people get taken down. I understand the human impulse. These are mostly groups that have been subjugated their entire lives (minorities, women, the young, the queer) and now they wield a mighty power, so they relish using it to turn the tables. I'm sure it is very satisfying. But it is vengeance, not justice.
3
I write many dumb things in the NYT comments sections and thank them for having only a "Recommend" and no "Thumbs Down" equivalent. It's so very good for my well-being.
1
The apocalyptic "end of the world unless we put all we have in it" comes from that period as well. It is now endorsed unconditionally by most all of the 2020 Democratic candidates.
I find it necessary to be tolerant of everyone because no one measures up to my personal perfection. I cannot go through my life cancelling all my inferiors. I cannot afford that much rope.
Are we Americans really this inexcusably immature, or is this as fictitious a problem as voter I.D. fraud?
1
For more on "cancel culture" I strongly suggest watching the witch-burning sequence in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
I'll bet President Obama loves it.
1
Seems like cancel culture means you get criticized. Hmmm...so you can't criticize anyone for the stand they take on one topic or another? It is the same with PC. You get criticized. So what. Someone says that by expressing yourself in the way you do, you are perpetuating racism or the subjugation of women. You can ignore it, you can argue against the logic, or you can take it to heart and consider it. It's up to you. Personally, if I say something that I find out later can be considered a racial epithet or some such, I'm not offended by finding that out. I don't see how PC and this other thing called Cancel Culture are such a big scourge, but I can absolutely see how racism and demotion of women is.
2
This article I think is ATTEMPTING to say that Cancel Culture is bad because it doesn't allow for nuance or fairness and doesn't allow for apologies. Unfortunately the 4 examples they give directly contradict these arguments.
R Kelley is accused of pedophilia and literally no one is defending him in this article or in the comments. There is no admission of wrong-doing and no apology has been given. He has not been treated at all unfairly by Cancel Culture.
Louis CK has given a mild apology but has tried to mostly "move on quietly". There is no sense that he is trying to make his wrongs right and so there is no subsequent redemption. He has not been treated unfairly by Cancel Culture.
Kanye West currently has an album at the top of multiple album charts. It appears that Cancel Culture only goes into effect when he says ignorant and stupid things but he is otherwise left alone to create his art (it's as if freedom of speech matters). He has not been treated unfairly by Cancel Culture.
Which brings us to Azis Ansari. The ONLY person in the list who can be considered to have been "wronged" by Cancel Culture. And in this instance the culture very quickly studied the case, gave him a cautious pass. When he tried to "leave it in the past" he was called upon to speak up. In his subsequent special he spoke honestly and openly about his experience and the culture thanked him and he is now doing just fine. He was only minimally (and temporarily) wronged.
So… what's the argument?
5
Substandard Monty Python decades late.
3
A little less than half of America believe that you should be able to have your citizenship stripped for not supporting their political ideas. I'm tired of the entrenched power structure whining about "cancel culture" while literally canceling people's lives.
Arrogance and hubris have always existed. Today, many simply confuse their moral high horse with the moral high ground.
5
How does one cancel one's self from this "culture"? How does one drain the swamp when we're all neck deep in muck?
This hysteria over 'cancel culture' is absolutely depressing. Seriously, how terrible it must be for there to be consequences for sexual harassment and abuses of power? Oh the humanity.
Then there's this criticism that 'there's no room for redemption'. That's not true at all, the person who always comes up in these convos is Louis C.K., but he never did anything that showed real repentance. He gave a half apology and didn't seem to understand why what he did was wrong. I challenge anyone to look at the cases of Dan Harmon and Aziz Ansari. Both apologized profusely, Aziz resisted at first but later came around to seeing how what he did was problematic. Whereas Dan Harmon never denied what he did, he asked for forgiveness from his accuser (which she granted him), and he apologized to his fans for failing them. He demonstrated a real understanding not only that he did wrong, but why it was wrong. How is this so hard for folks to understand?
It is possible to come back after your bad behavior has been exposed, but it takes real soul searching. Yes there are some notable and ridiculous examples (a large majority of which seems driven by far right bad faith actors), but none of those examples are mentioned in this piece, instead it brings up 2 people who did something atrocious. This whole video is a giant paranoia burger. Honestly disappointed in the NYT for this one
1
When the USgov CANCELS it's need for forever war.
When The USgov CANCELS it's bailing out of Banksters over the 99%
When the USgov cancels for profit healthcare industry.
When the USgov Cancels it's nanny state for Corporations and fossil fuel industry.
When USgov CANCELS it's never ending backing of military coups for democratically elected governments.
This woke lecture from a former President who betrayed the change that was promised, fueled the brutal fires of wealthy inequality, expanded wars of aggression and fought harder for TPP than for BlackLivesMatter is vile and disgusting.
I so wish Obama looked to MLK rather Reagan for guidance.
#toofarleft? Funny the DNC seems #toofargone to know how to truly stand up for the 99%.
1
I wish I could cancel Donald Trump, but for that to work, I would have to cancel the NY Times, too, since he keeps popping up on the front page day after day....
1
I thought this was actually going to be about something interesting, since 1283 is the year that England conquered and subsumed Wales, killing the last Prince of Wales on the battlefield and executing his brothers in some of the earliest documented instances of "Drawing and Quartering". Davydd ap Gruffydd had repeatedly rebelled against his older brother and had sought succor from the English King during periods of exile from Wales, however that meant nothing to Edward Longshanks once Llywelyn the Last was killed and wales belonged to Davydd, and Edward decided it was time to movie in for a permanent conquest.
This video was incredibly stupid. It wasn't even original or funny, it was just a cheap knock-off of the angry witch-burning mob from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
2
"... since 1283 is the year that England conquered and subsumed Wales ..."
Thanks for pointing that out. AFAICT, the year 1283 was affixed by the Times.
The Times also claims that "The internet didn’t invent the angry mob."
The struggle over Wales concerned a power struggle among political elites, which is very different from a mob action.
A better example would be the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, although that too concerned a power struggle.
And, of course, "the internet" is a technology, so it can't "invent" anything.
Very sloppy framing by the Times.
The article mentions men who are “cancelled’ over accusations of sexual misconduct and fails to distinguish between “cancelling people” due to their actions and due to merely expressing a thought. It is notable how often this tactic is used against women for expressing an opinion, and how much online abuse is directed at silencing women. The scold’s bridle would not have been out of place in this video.
Important to note that isn’t just an online phenomenon, and it’s not just a matter of people’s hurt feelings or reputations. Many people are calling for the head of the Toronto Public Library to resign for allowing an unpopular opinion to be uttered in the library. A woman the UK is right now in court arguing that it was wrong to fire her for stating that humans can not change sex.
The imagery in the video is really not too far off. Compare this video to footage of crowds outside Megah Murphy’s speech at the Toronto Public Library shouting “shame on you” and “walk of shame;” consider the protestor who showed up at her Vancouver appearance. with a cardboard guillotine with a sign that said, “Terfs, Swerfs, Step right up.” Images of hanging, beating, and shooting women branded as terfs are common.
2
Cancel culture isn't a thing, so let's stop pretending that it is
I suppose that the NYT was frantic to fill a blank space in their paper so they put whist "Nothing Burger" in. this kind of activity has been occurring in human society since the cave men and women. It there is someone posting to my Facebook Page that I don't want, off they go. Get over it.
@Jeff
Acting like a caveman is progress?
This short was legitimately funny, great satire, very well done. Props to President Obama for starting this ball rolling.
Hilarious! Makes me with The Monty Python Show was still on the air.
It feels like we are our culture is shifting evolutionary directions where the monitoring and sanctioning ability of social media is making the entire world a 'small town'. The trend in the 20th century was away from small towns to the 'anonymity' and lower ability to monitor and sanction beliefs and behaviors that urban centers provided. Those that live in small towns tend to be super aware (and constrained by) the opinions of their neighbors. In this way, folks accustomed to small town life often learn how to be 'civil' with each other (because they know that the 'mob' can be fickle), while also watching their step to avoid embarrassment and estrangement.
But urban and suburban communities don't have, or have unlearned across generations, the same experiences to draw on, and are living in a social-media sponsored small-town without the norms or skills to handle themselves in it.
2
The book "1984" is all about 'cancel culture'. Be careful what you indulge in. But the 'movement' is rooted in the concept that people don't think for themselves and are led like sheep - true enough if your thinking is no deeper than the next Twitter post. For others the public twittering is a distraction and background noise to real life. Being skeptical of populist diatribes should be a requirement for entry into adulthood.
6
The article mentions Kanye West, but Kanye deserves to be ignored. Cancel culture is about banishing people for mistakes they made years ago and for not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. Kanye's actions today continue a long pattern. He deserves cultural insignificance even if we give him the benefit of the doubt.
3
"Cancel culture?" I believe it's called "shunning" -- hardly a novel concept, unless you're Nathaniel Hawthorne....
5
Interesting. Millennials as the new Puritans. Hmmm
1
@Jay✅Jay✅Jay Not really a revelation. When you never learn to fail, you think you are perfect.
1
Yes, there is nothing new about wokeness...hating on others and thinking your opinion is more valid than others is age-old. It was to be rectified by Liberty and Equal Protection, but alas, few hold those values dear anymore.
12
Not nearly as ugly as it gets in real life.
btw: I do think you could have mentioned lesser known people, 'non-famous' people who have been 'canceled', hounded, threatened by the 'angry' mindless mob to illustrate just how pervasive this is.
I definitely agree that people should speak up, speak out, but how about they have given thought to it first. How about it's followed by a conversation, a discussion? (i.e. the hard work). Many just hop on the click bait bandwagons rolling by for their 15 minutes of fame and that is extremely destructive to any positive change.
4
According to one of their classmates, the in crowd at Columbine High School treated Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as outcasts— what today we would call canceled. That did not turn out well for either the canceled or the cancelers.
4
That’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Did they murder because they were shunned or were they shunned because they were seen as dangerous and made people feel unsafe?
Oh, there go those darn kids again. Who do they think they are calling attention to injustice?
Truth to power.
1
There’s a difference between truth to power and social media driven rush to judgement, or the cruelty of taking a person at their worst moment and ruining their lives for it. Can you withstand such a harsh standard?
4
@Jay✅Jay✅Jay I suggest you think more about the implications of social media. There is a great generational divide among us older folks who didn't grow up with it and therefore overvalue it's unique aggressive characteristics compared to younger people who accept social media as part of the fabric of society all their lives.
I would submit to you that powerful men who have been historically protected by the social system from the consequences of their bad behavior meant that individual victims either suffered in silence or endured the shame and finger pointing of their immediate social and family groups. The implication was and to a great extent still is that they did something to deserve what happened, or that they just didn't measure up and therefore withdrew from career opportunities. "She asked for it the way she dressed". Slutty behavior puts you at risk, etc etc. It was always the female's fault to some extent, and many men are still oblivious to that as your comment indicates. Now THAT was a harsh standard.
If you understand how social systems operate and change, you must realize that a period of upheaval will eventually result in a new equilibrium. Everyone needs to chill out and let it happen. This is the equivalent from my generation of calling us dirty hippies. urging young men to get haircuts, and making remarks about whether young women wore or burned their bras. All nonsense designed to devalue a different point of view by a younger generation.
2
Well Obama is definitely an expert on how change is not made... not real change anyway. Unless Trump’s presidency counts. Maybe he should stick to jet skiing on Richard Branson’s private island in the Caribbean. Looked fun.
11
@Keef In cucamonga- Cancel him!!!!!
Still asleep? Cancelled the NYT?
1
--Shut up, will you? Shut up!
--Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
--Shut up!
--Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
--Bloody peasant!
--Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?
8
@Publius This was heavily based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
2
Are you actually saying Louis CK is the victim of being "canceled?" He is a sexual predator. What is with the Times and protecting and enabling sex criminals?
8
YES! You’re right!!!! #cancelmysubscription
You don’t need to go back that far for angry mobs how about the 1830’s when mobs chasing catholics blacks and Indians were common.
1
Violent and murderous Lynch mobs were active in the South well into the 20th century. Emmett Till, a Black adolescent was lynched in 1955. If given the space they would be back tomorrow I’m afraid.
1
The New York Times has been cancelled, pre-cancelled and post-cancelled.
2
Why did the omniscient and omnipotent God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad ask' Cain, where is your brother Abel? '
Why did Cain reply ' Am I my brother's keeper?'
Whatever happened to Esau's birthright and inheritance that defied and surprised God?
Whatever happened in the Garden of Eden between Adam, Eve and Lucifer that defied and surprised God?
Who was God's mother, spouse and daughter?
1
Your all so serious. Cancel them!!!!
Cancel the Times! (Not the newspaper - the era!)
1
White men are so fragile. They are getting cancelled, black men are getting death and prison. What are these white men upset about? Oh.... being cancelled for raping and sexuality harassing women aka CRIMES. Wasn't Colin Kap cancelled for daring to kneel? Meanwhile women get cancelled all the time... usually for having the temerity to speak the truth. Where were your tears for Anita Hill? She was cancelled. Where were your tears for any black woman who has dared to complain at her job only to be labeled as an angry black woman, cancelled and blacklisted. We walk a fine line every day and we're not committing crimes and expecting society to forgive us.
4
"Pre-cancelled", lol!
1
I must say, I’m shocked to see something like this on the NYT site. The NYT is one of the biggest contributors to this idiotic state that we are in. Reminds me of the communism that we saw in the 60’s and 70’s. That’s where we’re headed unless we all wake up.
4
@Thor
The Times vacillates between McCarthy-like rantings against the Russians to the propaganda machinery that existed during the last World War.
2
Cancel culture really is pathetic. It has only been made possible by the internet and social media, something else that is pathetic. Influencers? Pathetic. I can see the tantrums forming now.
4
Maybe it's time for the editors at your paper to re-read Dutch Schultz's comment to Mike Berger.
1
Well -
the NYT has been cancelled ever since it didn't come out with the headline:
''Racist Birther cancelled from running for President!''
3
The question is should due process take place or is an accusation enough? And does the cancel culture have sufficient wisdom to draw a distinction between the crass (Louis CK) and the criminal (R Kelly)?
If we live in a world where we have guilt by accusation, all that reveals is who has power and who does not. If an accuser is believed, they have power (white woman accusing black man of rape in Jim Crow South was enough for a lynching; no need for #metoo then, the woman was believed as a fact because she wouldn't lie about it, would she?); if they are ignored, they feel powerless.
The goal of the state is to attempt to balance the power of the accuser with the power of the accused. Due process is designed to ensure that the powerful cannot impose guilt on the powerless.
5
Just because history is full of angry mobs that stone, burn, lynch, expel, and otherwise slaughter individuals or groups does not make it right. Most often, the actions of angry mobs were encouraged by those in power, secular and religious leaders, and directed against minorities and sects without power. And often the mobs were riled up by superstition and other falsehoods, whether about heretic witches or child-eating Jews. Those doing the targeting are always self-righteous about their actions.
It is proper to call out misdeeds. It is proper to eschew those whose words and actions one opposes. It is also morally correct that reactions should be proportional to actions. It is morally correct that the attackers or cancellers examine their own behaviors. It is also true that public criticism and condemnation, even when justified, is not in itself a solution to many problems.
Once in a while, an angry mob ushers in a revolution, and sometimes that leads to social progress.
And, to the editors of the Times, angry mobs are not funny. They weren't funny in the 13th century, when throughout Europe Jews were killed and banished by angry mobs. They weren't funny when they lynched Emmett Till. They weren't funny in Charlottesvile when white-supremacists attacked peaceful protesters and killed one of them.
4
Louis C.K. admitted to sexual harassment and masturbating in front of people against their will. Aziz Ansari was accused of date rape. R. Kelly is credibly accused of child abuse, rape, and sexual abuse. Those seem like pretty good reasons for not giving someone a public platform, and in the case of Ansari where the case was more questionable there was room for forgiveness. Even Louis C.K is staging a comeback. If you are going to lift up examples of people who have been "canceled" in attempt to show that "canceling" people is a rife and wrong, some better "cancel culture" examples are needed.
5
@Merlot "credibly accused" is an awfully low standard.
How about tried and convicted in a due process by law?
If credibly accused is your standard, I'm sure all those lynch mobs in the Jim Crow South found those accusation "credible".
@OneView You can choose what you like, but a person who married an underage girl illegally, was caught on a sex tape with an underage girl, was found to have child porn, and is accused by multiple women and girls of having abused them is in my mind “credibly” accused. Of course if he hasn’t been convicted he won’t be in jail, but that doesn’t mean I or others need to support him nor does it mean that not supporting him is a part of “cancel” culture. He remains a bad example.
An updated version of the stoning scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
5
@FJR - ATL https://youtu.be/ffwFXGPRDu4
Canceling is much easier than being rational and talking things out.
8
Brilliant. And the bottom line is that as long as you can keep the rabble happy with bread and circuses, they'll neither notice nor care that you're robbing them blind. Worked then, works now.
6
Somehow, Micheal Jackson’s has not been cancelled.
This is completely offensive! We must make sure Nick Boshier and Jazz Twemlow are fired and never work again. Come on mob, let's get them! ;)
1
"... with the help of a medieval mob."
Clearly appropriated from Monty Python's "Holy Grail" (1975) and "Life of Brian" (1979).
3
Why didn't this article show a old photo of a civil rights march and scold the participants in it for being in a cancel culture and to take Obama's advice: “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff” he said, “you should get over that quickly.”
Obama can go back to his bank speaking circuit or building his library or whatever this sellout does now. He left us a huge mess to deal within clean up. Dithering, opening the Oval Office to the banks and literally picking his cabinet from a list sent to him from Citigroup. Expanding the wars, hiding the NSA's wiretapping of our phone and internet activity and then using the Espionage Act to go after whistle blowers and the press more than any other presidents COMBINED. Know as "Deporter-in-Chief" he deported more undocumented immigrants that all previous presidents COMBINED. Eight years never addressing the racist criminal justice system and keeping marijuana a Schedule I drug that allows law enforcement to induct and process millions more into the criminal justice system affecting their prospects for employment in our stellar gig economy. Giving us a right-wing healthcare plan that is a give away to the pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies and bailing on a public option. Pushing the job and union crushing TPP knowing full well what NAFTA did to the Brexit states. The man has been a huge disappointment. So Mr. Obama, you actually cancelled yourself.Bye boomer.
2
Great video! Loved it! Humans and their stupidity going on and on forever and ever and now amplified thanks to the Internet...
1
I am offended. They took a really funny Monty Python skit and may it offensive. Burn Her ..
1
many true a word is said in jest
Funny, but not. When Monty Python did this skit on witches/witchery, it was a spoof on history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g
2
Thanks, NYTimes, for sticking up for the billionaires again. You don’t disappoint.
2
Does anyone remember “you’re fired”!?!
Oof. Politics aside, imagining Twitter as a medieval lynch mob is not an original observation, it is literally the go-to metaphor. Hate to criticize creators but I don't get why the NYT thought this was strong enough to publish. Oh well.
And the mob yelled, “crucify him, crucify him!” I have no solutions.
2
I canceled this video by not even watching it.
4
The limits of cancellation will soon be evident, and we will still need one another to return to sanity after the reign of terror that has been unleashed by Trump.
We need to think deeply about how this might work. Post-war Germany might hold some clues because a lot of people had to live in some measure of harmony with neighbors who had been all-in for Hitler.
I hope there will be a U.S. after Trump shambles offstage, and we will decide together what form it takes.
1
Great premise! But so-so execution.
I guess, the ny times couldn’t get Monty Python to write this sketch?
Next time try having men playing the role of and dressed as women in your sketch... what, no, wait. That’s offensive!
D’oh!
1
Obama was once against gay marriage....cancel his pension?
1
Ridiculous. Don’t spend anymore of my subscription money on this, please.
1
Social Media should be renamed to AntiSocial Media. It would better describe the phenomena. Dump it.
2
Americans are sick of identity. Sick of censoring. Sick of being told what to think and believe. In sum they are sick of the Left's latest extremes. Do we have to take the good with the bad? Perhaps, just not that much bad. There's a limit.
3
"She's a witch!" followed by angry cheers of affirmation.
1
I have no idea what "cancel culture" is. From this article and video, it is pretty stupid and petty. Are we raising young people today to be unrealistic as to what life really is?
2
The virtuous mob is certainly back with a vengeance. The woke masses fail to see that their lack of tolerance is just as Orwellian as the centralized fascism they loathe with such venom. I hope this fever runs its course soon.
7
Excuse me, no facts while we are watching disney+.
1
As a medievalist, I am offended by this portrait of the Middle Ages. Why do peasants always trudge through mud? Why are medieval people always portrayed as stupid? I’m going to cancel my subscription to the New York Times!! (Just kidding!)
4
Thank you!
Cancel Culture as Medieval Mob? That's laughable. As if simply ignoring a person is the same thing as dragging someone out of his house and tearing his limbs off and then burning the pieces. I suggest you look up the Erfurt Massacre of 1349 if you want to know what a Medieval Mob really does.
Those leftist woke mobsters are hypocritical and arrogant.
7
In the beginning …
God reportedly canceled Adam and Eve when they disobeyed.
After he killed his brother Abel, Cain was quickly canceled.
Long before we knew of global warming, Earth was cancelled with great floods. Only Noah, his family and flocks are reported to have survived.
A “very grievous” sin got the villages of Sodom and Gomorrah cancelled.
As a species, we’ve have done a lot of canceling.
While new names and explanations will undoubtedly arrive, humans cancelling humans is likely here to stay.
I'm afraid that their social media post trails may one day cause these cancel culture kids to rethink things when they are "canceled." No one is perfect, and some judgment should be used about the severity of the transgression, e.g. Al Franken.
3
Technology continues to run ahead of human wisdom in some areas. It's still true that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
On the Times' Obama cancel culture story, a commenter described knowing a woman who'd led a cancel campaign against someone. Later she was canceled herself, and then she wondered what happened to understanding, second chances, etc.
All of those got canceled too.
Or as a previous generation used to say, what goes around comes around.
1
Cancel Culture. In young US citizens, I think it's a response to sensory and information overload. They are bombarded with mental input. Everyday, their attention is demanded by numerous entities. It can't be managed without snap rejection! If you reject something or someone, you can check it off the list. You don't have to think about it, spend any more precious time or mental energy on it. It goes in the Bad List in your head and from now on, any exposure to it can be handled in an instant.
This is also why they are plagued with demands to identify and describe themselves to others, virtually and IRL, with respect to all kinds of personal orientation. They need quick ways to winnow the absolute fire hose of profiles, tweets, texts, loves, likes, hates, check-ins, notifications of infinite types! It is a thoughtful and strong person who can see it for what it is, because the whole mess has become internalized and normalized in their heads. For those without the insight to recognize its disadvantages, there is little time and energy left for contemplation or a generous approach to considering others.
2
Cancel culture is activism in the media age, using the internet to say "don't support so and so's behavior". It is a struggle for influence in the public debate. Canceling is an expression of political dissent.
Yes, it sounds judgmental. Remember that the young live under a real oligarchy, and have not seen successful movements against this power. They live in a media fishbowl, and strike wherever they can to express dissent, and the famous are great targets for their need for social action. As dissent progresses, they will move from canceling bad actors to canceling bad systems.
Ha! This is a story with its germination in the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden: first Eve, then Adam, were canceled . . . by no less than The Lord Himself. And seriously, if there were only Adam and Eve, then their kids, with whom then did the kids begin begatting? Cancel them! -C
Accurate.
I'm offended! You're canceled!!!
Wa ha! Love it!
All this "anti-cancel" discussion is a silly - but typical - distraction - just another way of complaining that "you're being politically correct." Shocking. God forbid that young people should be too energetic and enthusiastic. They don't actually lynch anyone.
Fine with comedy, but R. Kelly needs to be put in jail. I wonder if the people making comments about this even know how he abused women. Do appreciate the Monty Python like film, though!
I think the Brits are making fun of contemporary America a la Monty Python.
Otherwise, why not re-brand CanCult as 'amerikan middelbrow kultur' because, at a certain point, American citizens need to come to terms with reasonable standards of judgment and our relations with others. Besides, after all, operative definitions should always reveal mental disorders for what they are.
One might also say that Hawthorne was the first to observe a radical either/ or wobble between non-judgment (all is permitted) and totalitarian rightness... So today Transcendental versus Puritan redux and the past is still present.
2
"I think the Brits are making fun of contemporary America ..."
Boshier and Twemlow are Australian.
That's even more humiliating for Americans -- being mocked by mere colonials.
@JNR So B&T do great Monty; I stand hilariously corrected!
We live in an age of pure convenience and euphemism, with news delivered via any modality but printed paper, and a dissolute economy whitewashed with glib terms like “tech”, “gig” and “sharing”.
Glued to phones, we’ve become a nation of shrugging neckbenders.
2
R. Kelly is not relevant to the discussion of cancel culture. He is a multi-decade predator receiving just rewards.
1
I think the very end of the video is the most important message. While the twit has stirred everyone up into an angry mob, we're being robbed.
4
I love this! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We desperately need humor. This was an outstanding clever poke at the whole intolerant cancel culture.
2
The cancel culture is all fine and great until you're the one being cancelled. Even the most liberal, politically woke die hard individuals aren't immune to being cannibalized by their own at a moment's notice when the mob turns.
5
People mock politeness and decorum then mourn their absence. Very tough to get the ink back in the bottle once the shunning begins. "Cancel culture" is adolescent,intellectually lazy and medieval in its cruelty. No wonder it's so popular. I don't know if Sartre would sigh or chuckle. "L'enfer, c' est les autres."
3
Hilarious!
King proclaims: "I Increase the taxes by 150% ...". Nobody listens.
The deeper meaning: We are embroiled in trivialities while the big shots abuse us. How true this is today and thruout history. Take your pick.
4
Why cancelling each other is so tricky:
"What made you think she was a witch?"
"She turned me into a newt."
"I got better."
3
A bad Monty Python ....
1
There were Australians in 1283?
@DMP: Only Aboriginal ones.
2
You do realize that the comment ‘ok boomer’ is directed at the people who wrote and commented on this article, right? You do get that, don’t you? Don’t you?
Loved it. But please note, #MeToo-blamers, that there's an ocean of difference between un-employing R. Kelly or Charlie Rose, who've transgressed against and in fact "cancelled" women for decades, and someone who said something offensive 16 years ago then failed to apologize fulsomely enough. The first is righteous.
1
@monty
Charlie Rose and R. Kelly don't belong in the same sentence.
1
The more a bad story is repeated...the more influence it can have!! The blatant Alternative Facts spewed from Trump and Fox have worked to undermine our Democracy and our standing in the World.Trump support needs to be called out for what it is...UNAMERICAN and UNPATRIOTIC !!
If we’re using sex offenders as examples of those who have been unfairly cancelled, maybe we should reconsider our entire premise
2
Just ignore them. Never look at social media, and you won't even know what anyone is saying about you.
2
The difference between a lynch mob and this cancellation culture is a matter of degree. Both use/used it to instill fear and compliance. Young folks have fallen into becoming just like what they purport to oppose in the first place.. and become what they hate. Unwittingly.
1
You see, once upon a time people talked to their neighbors. When they spoke face to face with one another they would discuss what was happening with themselves and their neighbors. They might discuss virtue, who had it and who didn't. Who deserved to be admired and who did not. Then they would go home and discuss other people with their own families and other neighbors and get their input. Judgement and condemnation took a while. It doesn't anymore. People don't change. People have always been stupid, petty, avaricious, racist, zealous and two-faced. They are also virtuous, good, self deprecating, righteous and humble. We know what people are. It is our technology that allows a swift, whole sale and frightening condemnation.
4
Um, why throw Louis CK and even worse, R Kelly into this comparison?
If I'm not mistaken, their 'cancellations' involved sexually predatory actions, not just words.
Unless they were mentioned for the purpose of 'spicing up' this comment section(?) Or maybe Nick and Jazz actually don't see the difference.
Dubious either way, imo.
I agree that the Cancel Culture concept, "If you're not like me, you're wrong," is wrongheaded.
However, two aspects of societal cancellation work wonderfully for me:
* Cancel the politics of hate
* Cancel Trump and the Trump administration
2
Cancelation only works on the social-media-obsessed or the famous.
Otherwise, the modern form of mob rule is pretty limp.
2
“Cancel culture”? How in the name of Samuel Johnson did that choreac phrase become part of common parlance? Wasn’t there, not that long ago, and in a land not that far away, such words as “censure” and “ostracism “?
1
@Freestyler , as well as “banishment, and my all time favorite “shunning,”... the way the Quakers practiced it.
Robespierre was the ultimate canceller. 30k heads chopped off in 47 days. Mostly common people, many children.
Pardon me, but how did this video inspire an assault on MeToo? MeToo does not come from some deep, dark conspiracy to "cancel," persumably, men. It is a long overdue revulsion to exploitation and the violent abuse of women.
Many of you doth protest too much, MeThinks.
Looking at the examples given I think Cancel Culture is doing okay. Louis CK was a jerk who used his power and game to sexually harass women in gross and demeaning ways. I am not interested in hearing his brand of comedy any more than I’m interested in hearing Bill Cosby’s (one you left off your list). Kanye clearly hasn’t been canceled despite his many thoughtless comments - he has a hugely successful album blowing up the charts. And Aziz Ansari’s “cancellation” was judged wrong and he was summarily un-cancelled. If those are examples you’re going with I’m going to say the kids today are doing it much better than previous generations.
And to be clear we are talking about comparing mobs with pitchforks to “we aren’t giving you a platform anymore”. I’ll stick with the younger generations on this. The kids are alright.
2
"We found a witch, may we burn her?" asks the mob.
"How do you know she is a witch?" asks Sir Bedivere.
"She looks like one!"
"Bring her forward."
"I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch!" cries the accused.
"But you look like one." states Sir Bedivere.
"They dressed me up like this!"
"Well, we did do the nose...and the hat..." the mob admits.
"Burn her anyway!"
"We have ways of telling whether she is a witch."
"Tell us what they are! Do they hurt?"
"What floats in water?" asks Sir Bedivere.
"Witches! Throw her into the bog!"
"Wood! Build a bridge out of her!"
"But can't bridges be built of stone?"
"What else floats in water?"
"Apples, small rocks, a great gravy?"
"A duck!" proclaims Sir Arthur.
"Exactly!!" cries Sir Bedivere.
"So, if she weighs the same as a duck she'd made of wood?"
"And therefore?"
"A witch!"
-Monty Python (my best paraphrasing)
2
This is, what? The third article the NYT has posted recently about “cancel culture?” Yet, somehow, they get more obtuse every time.
In this comedy piece about how there is supposedly no room at all for imperfection, the author specifically mentions the non-pariah status of Aziz Ansari followed *immediately* by “has anyone even seen R. Kelly.” No. And for very good reason! Are we supposed to feel guilty for “cancelling” a sexual predator now?
4
Pretty ill considered text here.
Is the problem with R Kelly that the "mob" won't accept his policy/grant him redemption?
Somehow I'm guessing serial rapists are not who President Obama had in mind when he made his comments.
4
Ok, this Boomer is confused. I thought distancing myself from some of my more boorish friends was a personal choice. I still wish them well. Then I was told that I was ghosting these individuals and I was being petty. Ghosting? What the heck? So, I just cancelled them. No problem. My point is, we have become far too thin skinned. If we want power over others we must become empowered by cancelling ourselves first.
1
That skit has 'Monty Python' all over it. It would be funny as all heck if it sadly wasn't true. So is the current state of the society in the good old U.S.A.
“O.K., Boomer” is an ad hominem ageist slur that makes the speaker a hypocrite, and is just as bad as any foul tweet offered up by our beloved leader.
4
They really knew how to assemble an angry mob back in 1283.
“Do not trust the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you or I were going to be hanged.”
Oliver Cromwell
2
So many questions. Is this a social media thing? The examples of cancelled people offered here are all celebrities that I have scarcely heard of, except when their names pop up in the news occasionally when they do something spectacularly stupid. Does that mean I've cancelled them? What if I just don't care?
extreme self-righteousness leads to condemnation too quickly
cancel culture is often a knee-jerk reaction before we have all the facts
Marginally funny I guess? Facebook first admitted 3,000 fake Russian ads online, but a year later revised it to 126 million and just recently added a fake free-speech halo as garnish on top of the whole steaming mess. Cancel culture has excesses of course, but maybe public outcry provides the best path for redemption. It takes time and humility on all sides. I find it amusing and ironic that only today 1 column over in NYTimes' editorial section, Mr. Blow is torching Bloomberg's apology for stop and frisk as insufficiently pure. Who is the decider on these matters anyway?
1
IMHO, its a good thing people are standing up and talking what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to them. Not long ago there were public water fountains with "Whites only" and others with "Colored only." Another example was up until the late 1960s/early 1970s women had to have the husband's name on the credit card. Both examples are simple privileges. The changes didn't occur as a result of the people with the lever or power deciding they wanted to change, it was the result of people standing up and saying they were offended and that behavior is no longer acceptable. Those are two examples of the many behaviors in our society that once were acceptable. Those behaviors went on for so long aided by silence.
@Tyrone Actually, in most cases it WAS the result of people who controlled the levers of power. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed with a couple of women and minorities voting for it. Mostly it was passed and enforced by old white men.
Women received the vote in 1919 not because they somehow voted themselves rights, but because old white men did the right thing. Interesting, isn't it?
1
And while the common folk argue about who is pure enough, right enough, woke enough, the political lords take from all what they want.
We humans are a curious lot.
9
High tech bullying is what it is. And the cyber generations are using it to great destructive effect.
OK Boomer is but one example. Their childish, offensive reflexes are cleaving the Democratic party in two. They foolishly refuse to learn the electoral college lessons of 2016 and the nation is poised to pay dearly for that.
When will they grow up, take responsibility for their actions and gain a wiser and more tolerant perspective on their fellow human beings?
1
Cancel "Kultur" is nothing more than the high school bullying of which perhaps 2/3 of Americans have first-hand knowledge. Many of us have grown up, and don't have time to put up with that abuse anymore. You can "cancel" whomever you wish, but keep track always of your karma's location. Yesterday's victims aren't the pushovers they once were.
2
Apologies to Monty Python?
3
Well stated.
The greatest example of leadership in our history re not doing this ie the cancel culture was Lincoln working with slave owning unionists in his administration to first save the union and then end slavery.
He knew without the former, you could not get the latter and sometimes at least for awhile to have to put up with an evil.
2
Political correctness run amok, combined with the loudest voices getting the most attention, a dumbed-down public that idolize 'celebrity' and want to be a part of their 'fandom', to the speed and wide net cast by social media, and a current environment of rabid divisiveness and an inability to actually Communicate and engage in Discourse with our fellow man, is a recipe for disaster.
The problem is a lot of people seem unable to distinguish among actual crimes, insults, and differences of opinion. R. Kelly by all appearance is a criminal. Aziz Ansari is apparently a jerk. Someone who voted for Donald Trump, or someone who believes that men don't magically change into women because of personal feelings that they are women, is someone who disagrees with you. Criminals are supposed to go to jail, people with bad manners are ok for verbal criticism, and people who don't agree with you are part of democracy and intellectual freedom.
4
Let he/she/they who is without sin cast the first stone?
3
It took decades, a documentary and many victims brave enough to tell their stories of heinous abuse to finally bring criminal charges against R. Kelly, a public figure who enjoyed immense popularity even after a trial for child rape. He is hardly a "victim" of "cancel culture" or an "angry mob." His name in this op-ed is an insult to all real victims of predators.
6
Amen, Pres Obama. This Republican misses his mature national leadership.
1
Cancel culture is nothing more than a ban. A group of people are angered over something and force their opinion on every single thing touched by the person they are angry with - that person, the company they work for, any and all associates - in an effort to drive that person from society.
As will all bans, it is a slippery slope.
Recently a college newspaper triggered a huge controversy for publishing the photos of students protesting an on campus appearance by Jeff Sessions. Seems the students felt their privacy had been invaded and were afraid of repercussions because they could easily be identified in the photo. The photos were taken down with apologies from the journalist. This triggered criticism from professional journalists who felt basic journalistic practices were under assault. Which, in my opinion, they were!
These protestors just experienced the slippery slope. I'd be willing to bet these college activists would have no problem mining photos of protests by white supremacists, outing them and demanding the bad guys get fired. This actually happened after the Charlottesville protests and was covered in the media.
I am NOT defending racists protests. I'm pointing out that you cannot demand protection of your identity while you protest in public if you feel entitled to hunt down and persecute protestors with whom you disagree. You want to call out bad actors? Then know that you may be called out by those who see you as a bad actor.
2
The ending is the important point.
2
Obama's advice, from someone who knows it very well. He cancelled himself out very well. He was so much at odds with himself that he could not do nearly as much as he could have when he won the election by a landslide. His timidity made possible the rise of the Trumpist mob and the prosperity of the one percent.
"Cancel Culture" is vigilantism, plain and simple; thumbs wielding digital pitchforks. At the heart of it all, though, is an addiction issue: The most serious global addiction crisis does not involve opiates, but righteous indignation and virtue-signalling. The two go hand in hand as the most addictive substance on earth. There apparently is NOTHING like faux outrage for supplying that dizzying hit of dopamine.
1
What I liked about this particular video is the moment when the ruler realizes that he can get away with doing anything he wants, because the people are all too busy fighting among themselves to pay attention to his decrees. So he's off to raise everyone's taxes by 150 percent, and burn all of the crops, without a peep of objection. That's our plutocracy in a nutshell.
3
For more insight into the cancel culture phenomenon, I recommend reading "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. It made the NY Times Book Review's 2018 list of 100 notable books. It's analytical, readable, wise and conveys information that goes well beyond the usual culture war opinionizing.
Didn't this used to be referred to as "shunning" someone over a misdeed, or some other perceived transgression? Maybe it's time for everyone to lose their electronic devices and try 'living life' in reality and not in cyber-land.
No. This goes beyond that. Because with cancel culture finding redemption is difficult if not impossible.
Shunning wasn't always usually permanent. Cancel culture generally is.
1
No actor credits? Cancel them.
As many have noted, the cry of “these kids today and their silly ideas” isn’t new - I expect there’s some cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon making similar complaints. As “shunning” also has a long history, I’d suggest this isn’t something to worry about.
On a side note: remember how the Dixie Chicks were essentially banned from many radio stations for criticizing then-President Bush? Sounds to me like “cancel culture” before the term was even invented.
85
@John M
"I’d suggest this isn’t something to worry about"
You might reconsider when you become the target of it. While it is marginally better than being burned at the stake during medieval times, the damage of wrecked lives, families and careers this leaves in its wake is irresponsible. Especially when there is no recourse against unfair accusations.
Not to forget how this subversive intimidation stifles expression and innovation.
What we are seeing here is the arrival of a new Dark Age.
14
@John M
Exactly, it's simply a new word for shunning, a very old concept. See also: Boycott.
5
@Captain Nemo So just to clarify: Conservatives are fine with cancel culture when it's targeting people they hate, like liberals, minorities, or women.
9
Very entertaining and informative video!
Thank you!
Reminded me of Life of Brian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ&list=RDQc7HmhrgTuQ&index=1
2
I'm older, so I don't really get "cancel culture." I've never liked Louis C. K. His comedy didn't appeal to me. Does that mean I cancelled him? What's the difference between not liking someone and cancelling them? I meet lots of people in my various activities--some I like, some I don't. Some I spend time with, some I don't. Have I cancelled the ones I don't like? Does it matter if the person doesn't know he's been cancelled? If some people don't like me, and I'm sure some don't, does that mean I've been cancelled? How would I know? I find this all very confusing.
104
@Ms. Pea No, not liking someone is not a cancellation. You've been cancelled when some subset of the population decides to put pressure on those who support you to no longer do so. This could mean demanding your employer fire you, demanding advertisers no longer supply ads for your show, demanding clubs no longer allow you to do stand up at their venue, etc. You've been cancelled when there has been some moral action (in the eyes of the cancellers) taken against you, usually leading to the destruction of your reputation and financial ruin.
36
@John Amis Can you give an example of any wealthy person who has become poor due to cancel culture?
19
@Randall Why do you insist the person be famous? The issue with cancelling the famous is that it sets a dangerous precedent for regular people. Is this the sort of punitive culture you want to live in? Perhaps the answer is yes, but we should at least be honest about it. For the meantime, look up (as an example) Jonathan Kaiman. Again, whether you think he should be ruined financially and have his reputation destroyed is up to you, but don't pretend its anything less than that.
15
"For a brief moment, we wondered: Could even President Obama be canceled?"
No.
1
Wasn't somebody supposed to say, way, way, back "he who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone . . ." Some things never change.
2
Enjoyed it immensely. Might I refer you to the stoning scene in the LIFE OF BRIAN.
2
The cancel culture warriors are cancelling themselves. Their absurdities are undermining their own values and ensuring that Trump is re-elected. They can find a safe space in Canada. Good riddance. Let them be boorish moralists elsewhere.
3
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Everyone is a mixed bag. When these people grow up, they will start to understand that.
2
Thank god for the satirists!
They will make us sane yet.
Of course, one is reminded of Monty Python's many sketches re: the peasantry. The tradition is not dead
...but their teeth are much, much too nice.
2
The first thing that jumped to mind after viewing this farcical video was the widespread hostility directed toward veterans returning from Vietnam. These men and women, some actually assaulted and spat upon by people no doubt confident in their righteous indignation, had to endure the brunt of that vitriol as well as the trauma of the war.
5
"Cancel culture" is the equivalent of an Internet based lynch mob. It's always been around but now with high speed networks and social media apps it is just faster and more widespread. When I look at what CNN did to that poor High School kid from Covington I feel disgusted. When the so-called "responsible" journalists are just as damaging as the angry unwashed masses, we are seeing the early beginning of the collapse of a civilized society.
I'm becoming more convinced their will be some sort of (un)civil war within the next 25 years.
5
I've never paid much attention for people who ostracize an individual. When people need a group of others to validate them they are cowards or ineffectual alone.
I was ostracized or cancelled if you prefer, in 7th grade. I learned to not care. It was slow but began to dawn on me that I had quite a bit more freedom. I chose my friends carefully and I maintained that freedom. Best of all, I don't need to ask crowd support or permission from anyone if I want to tell a person to go away because they bore me.
2
Perhaps if personalities are so easily banished or canceled, they were never deserving of the influence and fame in the first place. Next in line are the billionaires and monopolists whose worthiness is may simply be excessive narcissism, arrogance and greed. The "older generations who failed" are a fiction. All generations fail that allow emotion to rule over reason. Welcome to your first failure "social media" generation.
1
Cancel cultural doesn't work if you don't care about other people's comments. Or if they can't effect your life. It is worth remember writings about giving other people power
2
R. Kelly hasn't been canceled. He's been charged with a large number of criminal acts.
7
Monty Python did this theme beautifully in "Life of Brian", at the stoning scene. "He said Jehovah!"
Back in 1979, furious intolerance was pretty much exclusively the province of the right and religious zealots. It is no longer, though many readers here think it so.
This seems to be an especially crude, elitist, and snotty editorial. It’s not particularly strong on its history either. The mob is us; we the people. It was the mob that freed us from Great Britain. It was the mob that gave us liberte, fraternite, egalite. How crude of them. But it was the elite who gave us the auto de fe, slavery and, ecologically, an economy of death. How brilliant they are. I stand with the mob and fear that pitchfork time is once again upon us.
5
@Jeremy Chapman
Yes there's a mob of people out there- faulty, imperfect humans- who experience your point of view as fundamentally judgmental, holier-than-thou, nationally divisive, and basically taking pleasure in pointing out the mistakes and failure of others.
You will reply - "But MY mistakes aren't so bad. Reasonable people will not make waves out of MY past errors and misjudgments".
They will reply: You're cancelled.
2
Very Monty Python!
Cancel culture is a cancer of the body politic and needs to be combatted by an equally vigorous campaign on the social media. This video is a good beginning. But there are many more things one can do: from publicly ridiculing and calling out the virtue warriors to denying promotions, letters of recommendation and so on to people you know to be involved in online mobs. And most importantly: push back against every instance of political correctness gone wild and stand up for what you believe in. Cancel culture does not have recourse to actual violence - yet. But it will, if we let it run unopposed.
1
I just wrote a nice comment explaining how I "cancelled" Walmart decades ago. Then, I cancelled the comment.
1
Cancel culture seems to coincide with ghosting...
If you want people to take your op-ed seriously, maybe don't conflate the consequences of the actions of sex offenders with victims of bloodthirsty mobs. Sometimes cancel culture is needed when the institutions designed to hold monstrous behavior in check seems more invested in protecting the status quo.
4
Some people are writing that the Me2 movement was the hallmark of the cancel culture, but it actually can be dated back to 2013 with Justine Sacco (#HasJustineLandedYet).
Cancel culture is horrible, but its worst excesses have now spread from celebrities, CEOs and companies down to ordinary citizens. The culture takes aim at both the priveledged and the ordinary alike. It may even be easier to get an ordinary person fired & shamed for their "transgression."
Remember the next time you dismiss Ben Shapiro or Dennis Praeger pushing back against cancel culture that it is only the rich and influential who can withstand the attack when it is aimed at them. Ordinary folks who dare to post an offensive tweet are now defenseless against cancel culture.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
1
Maybe the proper target for cancellers shouldn't be the offending artist, but the massive audiences that funded and elevated the artists. The explaining needs to come from the other side too.
Much needed humor in a humorless world. Monty Python lives!
Monty Python meets Lord of the Flies, and a perfect analogy for what is happening within the Democratic party on the eve of the first primaries. It also serves a laughter tonic for an otherwise dreary day weather-wise. I would send a video link to Charles Blow if I weren't concerned of being pre-canceled before my fingers left the keyboard.
5
I know it's a comedy video, but this seems to miss the point of cancel culture. It's easy to focus on nitpicky instances where someone said something mildly offensive and got derided on social media, but the underlying energy is to stop allowing people who have done egregious things to white wash it away through a PR campaign. Belittling it through focusing on the most childish examples takes away from the reality, that for too long people in power have been able to abuse it behind closed doors without fear of repercussion. No more.
13
@John You don't see that cancel culture is itself a way that bad actors will exercise power to promote themselves? That's naive.
1
@John: One must be careful lest the Jacobins take control of the revolution.
2
@John
All you are saying is that people ought to stay off so called "social media" and similar online tar pits.
Maintain deniability by only speaking with people in person-and throw your smart phones in the river or down a manhole.
Those who love to polish their halos by" cancelling" others might ocassionally pause to consider that there are people of good will who might disagree with whatever is currently "wokest", or how best to improve our society. They might even consider that they themselves might be wrong.
Self-righteousness is a heady drug, though, and anonymity a fine shield against accountability.
25
While I agree that cancel culture has gotten out of hand, I feel the article could have chosen some better examples than 2 alleged sex offenders. One of which, R Kelly, has far and away worse allegations than Louis who was mostly tried for misconduct rather than the far more serious allegations of R Kelly.
While I think Louis can atone for those mistakes and improve as a person; that doesn't mean cancel culture is to blame for his all of his woes.
If the allegations are proven true, R Kelly has crossed a line far more serious and more than once. He's had his extra chances and needs to be tried to the full extent of the law.
So I just thought it was maybe a poor decision to use these two as examples of cancel culture.
17
@ManDen - I agree with you but I would go the extra step and say that ALL of the examples show cancel culture done right. Aziz was “acquitted” after listening to the story but he didn’t gain a “fully clean slate” until after he cleared the air by addressing the incident head-on. Kanye has people complaining about the ignorant things he says but has suffered not at all for them - almost as if people value free speech.
Louis CK has yet to address or atone for his sins and seems to think that time out of the spotlight is enough for absolution. To him I say good luck but I’m not on board.
And R Kelley’s long-alleged actions are coming home to roost. Who has sympathy for those actions?
If the writers want to say cancel culture is bad they should show examples of people truly hurt by something other than their own stupidity and stop blaming a culture that is tired of boomer hypocrisy.
4
@ManDen
Define "sex offenders"?
Until recently that only referred to individuals-all men-who were actually convicted of crimes they were accused of. Today-anyone-any man, that is- can be a "sex offender" merely by being accused or because some one makes an unsubstantiated or unprovable accusation and , perhaps, other people don't like the way he dresses or the car he drives,
I have pointed this out and reminded people of the various disasters of innocents accused, like Gary Dotson who served many hard years for a rape that never occurred, or the McMartin school teachers-convicted by hysterical parents on the say of a few toddlers encouraged to invent by a social psychologist with dolls. The so called Central Park Wilding put boys in prison for years, though they had done nothing. When I make these points I am often decried and denigrated for bringing up irrelevent and old , and boring information , repeatedly.
When people want to cancel or degrade-they will not be turned from their passion-as the occasional tarring and feathering of loyalists in the revolutionary colonies showed.
1
@meloop I would just point out that I used alleged in both cases with Louis and Kelly. I did not speak on Aziz or Kanye as I was not familiar with their circumstances.
I definitely see your point and feel for cases like those you described. However, I will avoid speaking on them as I am unfamiliar with the specifics of those cases.
It's interesting how distance from the more toxic social media platforms -- Twitter and Facebook -- changes one's perception of the cancelled, or even of cancellation.
Removing oneself from the ongoing competitive conversation that is call-out culture brings perspective. Imagine how society might be transformed if we take a few steps back from this obsessive need to always be chattering online.
Let's start here: stop "reporting" tweets and other social media activity.
14
Great fun, guys. Thanks so much for brightening what weather- and politically-wise has been a dreary morning.
5
We need some room for innocent mistakes, ignorance, dialogue, openness to learn, where that applies. That is the only way learning, growth, development, evolution happen. No one's mind is changed by cancel culture. Cancelling should be the last resort, not the first.
20
@Elizabeth cole Well-said!
Great video! Though maybe it is important that there is some evolutionary movement here: cyber warfare is distinctly different than physical. So cancel me on the internet, painful as that is, but leave my person/my body alone!
4
Bravo, bravo! Thank you for making my Monday and my week brighter.
To all the naysayers - I take it you're not Monty Python fans?
19
@Dana
I don't care how good the fish was, don't say the word Jehovah.
@Dana
She turned me into a newt!!
I got better.
BURN HER. BURN HER.
What's really troubling about cancel culture isn't the sometimes capricious nature of the shunned, but that it seems to be replacing real activism. At the risk of sounding like I need an "OK Boomer" (I'm not), it often appears that young people think they invented activism. Do they have real beefs? Absolutely - older generations have left the world in a complete mess, particularly when it comes to the environment and affordability. But every generation has had legitimate beefs, and every generation has its own way of forming effective protest and reform. And as good as it may feel in the moment, social media cancel culture is not effective at encouraging lasting change.
24
@Northern Wilf One thing I disagree with about your statement, "...it often appears that young people think they invented activism..." is that this generation of young people are too busy congratulating themselves for being "woke" to look at the mess the world is now. And when I say that, it implies that these young people aren't active, let alone being guilty of your charge. Keeping progressive thoughts in ones head isn't activism, it's conceit.
9
@Tom
But isn't that true of every younger generation? That is: isn't that just true of the young? I have heard a LOT from boomers over the years that when THEY were young, the activism was real, the stakes were real, and the marches were legitimate. But the older generation back then said it was just primarily spoiled college kids who went to marches to hang out with their friends and do drugs. Sounds kinda familiar, no? The stakes are very real now as well - the environment, gun violence, etc. - and, yes, there is also a lot of self-congratulatory narcissism. I think it's just that every generation thinks their music is the coolest and that their struggle is the most legitimate. Maybe we can find common ground by accepting that we are all kinda lame but that each generation has a few bright lights that will represent us!
16
@Belzoni Got to disagree. This is not a matter of "every generation throws a hero up the pop charts" as Paul Simon satirized, because there is actual history and facts, not "narratives." And regardless of what the detractors say, people put their lives on the line for civil rights, stopping the Vietnam War, abortion rights, etc.
This current generation's "wokeness" is little more than self-serving apathy. Actually, it's less than apathy. It is now, given what's in the White House, complicity. It's the latest incarnation of being a "Good German." Using a low-wattage light bulb doesn't mean squat.
1
First time I hear this term but the concept is not new to me.
The legal system was set up to give each person a chance to a defense. Cancelling is saying someone is guilty without giving them any legal right to defend themselves. Is that not vigilantism?
31
@Sara
Huh? Conduct does not have to be illegal to be reprehensible. Who we choose to listen to/elect to office/give our money to is rightly based on other standards -- social, moral and ethical.
You seem to posit that if its not illegal (or if our criminal justice system simply fails to prosecute it) -- nobody has any right to say anything about it. That's incorrect.
@Sara
Indeed, this is exactly what this is. Pretty scary when you add in the majority of young people don’t like the first amendment and think socialism is better than capitalism. This is our future...
1
@Marta No, you are not paying attention. What Sara is saying is that social media allows posters to lie in an attempt to hurt some other poster. It is a "guilty, always guilty, no matter what" paradyme. It is the digital age equivalent of a lynch mob.
Please stop confusing a "backlash" to "cancel culture". Most people who practice or participate in cancel culture never tell or share it with anyone...they just stop. Stop shopping there or going there or listening to them or it. I do not know why you are pushing cancel culture in article after article but I do know that you have it all wrong. If one is truly canceled there is no coming back. A true cancel is a total shunning. The one true difference is that no one has asked most of those who are allegedly canceled to opine or present their seemingly negative behavior for public display or on social media platforms. This is, in essence, the new town square but a global one where those who seek to engage with thousands may want to appropriate to "the buyer beware" and replace it with "the users of the social media beware." I also cannot understand why people who post photographs of themselves or manifestos, statements that may seem crude that somehow 100 percent of those viewing them will approve of it and 100 percent will pass on the chance to critique it and or bash it.
5
@marielle
I almost never use the social media,walked out of a store when the background was a toxic talk show, refuse to watch horror movies, will not engage in anti-feminist conversation, etc. I don't think I am the center of the universe, so the notion of "cancelling" someone or something is meaningless. It just seems like mental hygiene. Life is too short to spend it filling your head with unhealthy thoughts.
2
For clarity sake I found this in Urban Dictionary:
"A modern internet phenomenon where a person is ejected from influence or fame by questionable actions. It is caused by a critical mass of people who are quick to judge and slow to question. It is commonly caused by an accusation, whether that accusation has merit or not. It is a direct result of the ignorance of people caused communication technologies outpacing the growth in available knowledge of a person."
Perhaps a shorter definition is "personal destruction by digital mob."
Mobs often arise because people feel powerless. Often those same people are manipulated by cleaver persons for their own aims. Sometimes the anger of the mob is justified because an inequity goes unpunished.
The perception of the difference between a protest and a mob action is often in the mind of the observer.
Mob rule is problematic in that, actual or digital, damage cannot be undone. Mob rule is never good. The atmosphere that breeds it is worse.
39
What do people, like other predatory mammals do when they sense their existence is threatened? They attempt to eliminate/cancel/destroy the threat. The underlying reality is that many people correctly perceive themselves as being threatened, and are frantically trying to identify the enemy, and "cancel" it. Welcome to the life of a species that, to this day, fails to comprehend the downside of having exploded itself (progressed) way too far outside its ecological niche.
9
Millennials may have become the majority, they may be starting to mob, they may be increasingly angry, but compared to what?
Far less long standing, far less wealthy, far less organized, infinitely less powerful than the angry mob that has been threatening since even before the 1964 presidential election to cancel the union.
Obama should be wagging fingers strictly at Republicans.
7
@Prof
What is this about? I cannot even figure out the subject under discussion here.
And there it is. “Obama should be wagging fingers strictly at Republicans”. He must be pure or Obama must be purged (BTW Prof, could you please guide us to the manual of acceptable “wagging finger behavior”, is it only Republicans??. Some of us are confused about what is acceptable wagging finger behavior and what is not).
No self criticism is tolerated in the church of, a “perfect life must be lived over 60 years” or you opinion is invalid. And your political positions can not deviate from accepted purity.
This kind of purist culture is exactly what will get Trump re elected. The “I can’t vote for Hillary because she is.....(fill in the blank)” has given us the most repulsive leader in our country’s history. And I fear it is about to do so again. May the force of purity be with us all as we all slide into the abyss.
Congratulations Jill Stein.....your spoiler role is safe again for 2020!
2
@Quizical "OK . . . ."
Hey at least they're just cancelling, not staging sit-ins or harassing the wives of officials. Attitudes don't change, just the ways people express them.
"Singing songs and carrying signs, mostly saying 'Hooray for our side'" - Stephen Stills. (He may have been too fond of tequila, but he knew a thing or two about why people do what they do to each other.)
10
I've cancelled Facebook. I am so happy and will never come back to my life again. It has been proven a trickster and how invasive, damaging it has been to our social fabric. Also cancel all the other nonsense like Instagram and Snapchat.
Twitter is ok because I can follow NASA and some other tech stuff. And anything else you need there is always email.
35
@wyatt I hear you, but I'm still on FB. It may be my circle, but I rarely see anything negative. It could be that we have silently agreed to share our thoughts in smaller circles. Maybe I am on a restricted list for my "friends," meaning I don't hear and see the things that are being said between, say, family members. However, I myself do not use such a forum to say anything negative of huge consequence. I certainly don't delve into politics. I may say something negative about a music awards show or something like that. I have had just one person come at me when I supported a friend's post that was borderline partisan. He was one of her relatives and likely would have attacked anyone who agreed with her. I am from a different demographic than most of her family members. We went to a very integrated high school and I wonder if that plays into how we interact on FB. It's been 30 plus years since we graduated and we still seem very open altho' it's not perfect. All All Class Reunion was fairly segregated. Smaller class reunions are more integrated. I may be naive, but I still hope for a day when we can all be more sensitive. I feel like another generation or two will have to move along before this happens and who knows where civilization will be by then. So much of how make ourselves different from one another are mere agreements into which many people, sadly, buy to gain power, however minimally power manifests.
2
@wyatt You could also pick up the phone and call someone. That's why they are called phones.
1
@wyatt I'm on Facebook but my Facebook "friends" are actual real-life friends, not some stanger on Facebook. If everyone did that too, a lot of the evil of Facebook would be choked off.
I've cancelled Facebook. I am so happy and will never come back to my life again. It has been proven a trickster and how invasive, damaging it has been to our social fabric. Also cancel all the other nonsense like Instagram and Snapchat.
Twitter is ok because I can follow NASA and some other tech stuff. And anything else you need there is always email.
2
The idea that cancel culture is a bigger problem than the behavior that created it is laughably false.
It’s equivalent to people being more offended by Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the anthem than by the shootings of unarmed black children by police. Guys, one of those things is monumentally more bad than the other. And you shouldn’t have to be told which one is worse. If you need a hint: the one that is worse is the one where unarmed children are shot by police.
If cancel culture offends a person more than the nefarious behavior victims have had to endure from powerful people for centuries, there’s a more than 0 chance that person is part of the problem.
24
Cancel culture as it exists allows people to anonymously call out behavior they object to. Which isn’t brave and it isn’t productive. Real change requires more than tweeting your opposition to someone’s behavior.
50
@JWyly
I think my other post will not get through the filter, so let me try it this way:
The power of anonymity is one of the few vestiges of power that ordinary people have left. When the accuser of one of the senator candidates in the 2017 Alabama special election came forward publicly, her house burned down and arson was suspected.
In Hong Kong, protesters wear masks to protect their identities out of fear of retribution. Protesters in Russia do the same.
On a scale from 1-infinity, 1 being the most pressing issue facing our society and continuing in descending order of importance to eternity, anonymous posts on social media calling out impropriety of wealthy and powerful people are somewhere in between that squirrel who keeps getting in my trash can and my desk drawer at work that is just off of level.
7
The trouble is that people routinely conflate legitimate differences of opinion with the extremists on the other side. There is no room for moderation, nuance, or forgiveness in cancel culture. There are cases where it’s ok—but there is a vast continuum of difference between a Weinstein and a Franken, and too often people on one end of a continuum are treated the same as the worst.
17
The commercial advertisement that played before the video was for petrochemicals and materials processing giant Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corp (SABIC). The theme of the image ad seemed to be, better collaboration of all the world's peoples through chemistry. Or something to that effect.
6
R Kelly shouldn’t be mentioned in this article about the cancel culture- while he may be extremely talented - his demons finally caught up with him. you haven’t seen him because he’s in jail.
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@Reb
I had to google "R. Kelly" to know who he was. Obviously, I never cancelled him, I just never knew he existed.
... and the reason I googled his name is that I was wondering whether this was the same Kelly (general Kelly?) who had been working in the White House under President Trump.
@Reb Yeah, but I was just in an airport and saw the staff in a restaurant there dancing to one of his songs. Some of them even began to step. Even I felt a need to bop my head and then I remembered what a jerk he was. It's hard to entirely cancel him, jail or not.
@Reb
I had to Google "R. Kelly" to know who he was. Obviously, I never cancelled him, I just never knew he existed.
I sometimes feel canceled in this comments section. Sometimes people don't read my whole comment or they misread it and then they write some snide remark. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen. Sometimes I can't respond to that person because comments have been closed.
It usually sounds like the subject is very personal to that person and they've been triggered by my comment or what they perceive is my comment. The amygdala is very active in some people. I think it must be a result of some trauma in that person's life and that's why they're so touchy.
11
@I go by many names First time I’ve personally heard someone discuss the amygdala and how it affects people’s reactions to things outside of a therapists office. Good call.
1
@I go by many names
You are right about that! Also many people seem to not actually read the articles before commenting. However there do seem to be fewer trolls in NYT websites than some other media outlets, maybe they moderate more.
@I go by many names
This is not being "canceled"; it is being "ignored" -- most comments are.
Every so often I meet one or several people who have recently found the True Path, whether it is religious or secular, political or interpersonal, Right or Left, social or psychological. Whatever their new-found source of enlightenment, they are so, so sure they are correct that they feel obliged to correct me and anyone else present about every detail, at once despairing at our actions and ambitiously aiming to 'fix' us. Social media has metastasized this woke-osity.
Their sheer, blind arrogance involves assuming that we, the unwoke, are almost beyond help, bound by our past, while they walk in the shining light of Truth. Past wisdom and life experience beyond theirs is irrelevant. Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged? Fagedaboudit! The True Path means we do not make mistakes. We are beyond humility or compassion. You must crash and burn. The Walk of Shame is your only redemption.
The greater wrong is to be sure you yourself cannot be wrong.
47
@Speakin4Myself
You sound like you found your True Path.
@Speakin4Myself Good point. Among the best examples of those who have found the "true path" are the Taliban, ISIS. and the Chinese Communists during the Cultural Revolution. Total devotion to a narrow ideology, zero tolerance for anyone else.
@Speakin4Myself In part I agree. But I also think there are positive aspects to wokeness. Considering others, trying to see things from another point of view, acknowledging that theire are things about the life experience of others that one might never be able to truly understand, that is all worthwhile.
Can wokeness go to far? Absolutely, and so can religion and tradition and security, so many things, as I believe you were pointing out with your post.
Honestly, I feel like the hating of wokeness is the new woke. We must all say how wokeness is bad now. Look, Obama said wokeness is bad, and he's cool, so be cool like him and hate wokeness!
Let's all take a breath.
Labeling it "cancel culture" when someone commits sexual assault and makes no real attempt to make amends (and more importantly, to set it right) and then that person is allowed to go back to their millionaire life without consequence -- is about making the victims out of the perpetrators while silencing victims. Why are we focused on what's happening to the perpetrators of abuse like Louis CK, rather than on the abuse that they did?
Is it, perhaps, because white men are always seen as the center of the narrative, and because we must protect them at all costs from the consequences of their actions? These people are millionaires so they are already safe in court. Their high-powered lawyers can prevent any real consequences. But now we are told they must also be equally safe in the court of public opinion. Come on.
19
@Rachel C.
And of course the underlying notion that losing your job/public reputation is tantamount to utter ruination! That if Louis C.K loses his microphone, his life is over. Please -- tell that to the gazillions of women who endure harassment/humiliation regularly just moving through the world trying to make a living.
Yeah, well. Cultural mores and assumption do shift with time. People should spend less time being self-righteous. Learn to roll with punches, and be able to laugh at oneself. "Cancel" not, that thyself might not be cancelled.
18
Millennials, Gen Z and their "Cancel Culture"... Reminds me of NBC in 1969 cancelling "Star Trek". A bit premature and, once they grew up, they realized the error of their ways.
Such is life. It never ceases to amaze me how the young know everything until they truly grow up and realize that they didn't.
The two most important life skills one needs to master:
1) Understanding human nature
2) Understanding yourself
Both take decades.
34
Regardless of what they did in 1283, cancel culture is a sick and twisted cruelty. Oh, so were the burnings and hangings of the 1200's. The presumption is that we all have evolved since those days. Obviously the young among us have regressed, and in more ways than this. Time to grow up, kids.
Oh, and we boomers are not going anywhere. We are still here, and we are not done yet. So the youngsters should stop trying to push us out of the way. And, by the way, we are not responsible for the things that anger these kids. Generations before us despoiled our world, and we Boomers spent a lot of our energy trying to fix it, AND had a lot of success. The 'throw your phone away every year to buy a later model' generation is clearly not on the side of the angels, and is not overbrimming with virtue. So they should get off their high horses, and put their energy into growing up.
OK, Millennials.
29
@Elaine Yes, the young people have regressed and need to grow up. Some people certainly should get off their high horses.
Millennials aren't pushing people out of the way by wanting 75 year olds to retire and open up job opportunities.
There's a reason you were called the Me First generation, and it wasn't because you discovered things.
@Matt S.
Sorry, but the 'me first' title is inaccurate. We have been a very giving generation, seldom putting ourselves first. After all, it was our trying to raise our kids better than we were raised that created the ultra selfish millenial generation. And we have been caring for aged parents while raising our families, working and trying to make the world a better place, too. If you think otherwise, then you just don't know us.
1
People need to learn what happened during China's Cultural Revolution. It was the same mentality.
33
@RickF, but millions of deaths more violent.
@RickF Right On!
@RickF People need to learn what happened during the Lavender Scare.
Love the video, as an aged boomer who has long adored Monty Python and any attack on ideas good, bad, or mediocre. Humor lightens the load for those of us who fear politics will drain all humanity from, well, humanity.
Agreed, some topics require seriousness -- like taking R Kelly out of circulation, thinking Louis CK's return to the stage is still too early, and maybe Obama's good lecture might have involved less finger-pointing and more "here are some things to consider" when addressing the younger generations. But then he didn't have Aziz Ansari helping with his talk.
The cancel culture has come, and it will go -- but the insiders and the outsiders will always be a sociological fact of life. Right now, the concept has media attention -- and it's a 'fun' diversion from someone we should all cancel quicker than a drunk uncle barging into our backyard wedding. But he's getting broadcast time 24 hrs a day instead, with the possibility we'll see him four more years after 2020!
10
Why is it that drunk uncles are getting all the bad press? Why not drunk nephews for a change?
1
This darkly humorous video is probably more effective in pointing out the excesses and incongruities of “cancel culture” than a hundred haranguing lectures would ever be.
7
"Pre-Cancel". Now THAT's an idea for the times.
With its special feature of trapping people with double-bind mind-fracks, whereby apology (even if sincere) is doubly-punished, this whole thing is an exercise in monkey-mob logic. It carries the seeds of its own cancellation, you see. The backlash is brutal, it looks a lot like Trump on a roll. And it's started.
54
@George
Pre-Cancel is not without precedent. Years ago there was a movement in psychology to label some children (usually boys) as "pre-delinquent" . What, pray tell, is pre-delinquent? Children who hadn't done anything wrong but, because of social-economical factors were most likely, probably, may, might be criminals when they grew up and so would require watching/treatment. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
6
Are you really arguing R Kelly deserves public redemption? He was afforded due process. He was convicted of federal crimes. How is cancelling R Kelly inappropriate? Should we offer Jeffrey Epstein redemption too? What about the war criminals? Are they redeemed because Trump says killing civilians isn't a crime worthy of punishment?
I understand your points about due process, distraction and wasted effort. However, there's no good line to draw in abandoning public disapproval. I mean Kanye West is a terrible person. This is the man who said slavery is a choice. Why should he go on making millions of dollars on record contracts? Consider his cancellation a form of consumer sovereignty. Consumers (eg. the mob) are boycotting the Kayne brand.
Does that make you feel better? Calling cancellation something different? That's what were talking about. A messy and crude form of personality boycott. Would you equate boycotting Nestle for selling breast milk substitutes in African to a 13th century mob? How about boycotting racist bus companies in Alabama?
You can perhaps make the argument that today's outrage needs to be directed in a more thoughtful and organized way. However, telling people to "get over it" is absolutely the wrong message. I wouldn't cancel Obama but my esteem for the man has definitely come down a notch.
11
@Andy - Whew! Guess Obama dodged a bullet there, didn't he! Sure he doesn't need a little bit of "canceling"?
2
@Andy Well, Epstein is dead, so...
1
@Andy I normally applaud and recommend your comments, but I think this one goes too far. The most useful comments here argue for a sense of proportion, rather than turning a blind eye toward the egregious offenders you cite. How can we lump Harvey Weinstein together with Al Franken, or Ralph Nothram with Steve King and expect to be taken seriously? When outrage is subsumed with bling rage the effect is vitiated.
Moreover, We see the same phenomenon on the right when we are treated to accusations of "socialism," or "open borders," only we call it demonization instead of cancel culture, and fail to notice that our own behavior is no different because of the rightness (leftness?) of our cause.
Shifts in the zeitgeist will always make the behavior of our forebears seem unenlightened. Evolution is not the exclusive property of the young, nor is bad behavior and sloppy thinking limited to those with whom we disagree.
2
the 13th century was not "just like us only they wore funny clothes" to quote a former student.
How do you have cancel culture in Europe when, until sometime between the 17th and 19th century if you weren't a member of the church of the realm you had no personhood?
21
@sally Wow. Way to miss the point of satire.
8
@sally
Excommunication was a thing, I gather.
4
@sally Scarlet As were also part of pre-cancel culture's canceling tactics.
1
I remember raising polite objections to our military action in Iraq back in the day, which was met with derision and calls of "freedom-hater" and "enabling terrorism". I've heard taunts from the right about not being a "real American" (evidently my citizenship could be cancelled) when my political views were in opposition. Over the years I've seen how listening to certain music made you a "Satanist", and how suffering from a terrible disease meant you must be a "pervert". Perhaps, instead of laying "cancel culture" at the feet of young people, we should look at the society they were born in to, and the hostility that society has engendered towards people whose ideas are different. Maybe older people don't like the taste of their own medicine.
203
@SZ
So, the problem is not that the "medicine" itself is destructive and corrosive, but that scores must be settled?
PS: the young people will not win that battle, when fully engaged.
8
@Wine Country Dude No, the point is that young people who act that way learned it from somewhere, and older people whining about how awful "cancel culture" is should take a look at their own behavior and stop being hypocrites.
20
@SZ Cancel culture is idiotic, but you raise an interesting and resonant point. I think the Twitter mob is a bunch of morons myself, but it definitely seems a lot of the older generation's objections boil down to the fact that they are upset to learn that not everything will cater precisely to their tastes.
9
The current press obsession with cancel culture should itself be cancelled. Move along, nothing new to see here.
13
Ernest Owens shows poor journalism in his opinion of Obama’s opinions. I like the former President. His opinions are calmly presidential. Who is Ernest Owens? The great cancelled culture?
3
What, no credits for the actors? Did they get cancelled?
4
A delightful spoof on modern day cancel culture that could have also made reference to the real medieval practice of public shaming, the charivari (or shivaree, Katzenmusik, etc.). I was hoping to hear the added cacophony of the mob banging on pots and pans, a frightening mock serenade that once accompanied the act of shaming an adulterer, a wife beater, an impotent husband, etc. While some charivaris ended in violence to the intended target, I don't know if any led to a public hanging (could have). The general goal of a charivari was to humiliate an alleged offender to the point of driving that person out of the community. Just saying, a little rough music would have been fun for this historical purist.
4
Excellent. Thanks for ‘spilling the tea’ on the the cancel culture’s weak and hypocritical foundation. Personally, I adhere to a different God, one who forgives, heals and restores.
6
One of those defenses of cancel culture was in the New York Times itself. That was the moment I decided to cancel the Times. The rush of power I felt in logging in to unsubscribe was heady. I could get used to this. What’s next?
2
@Rebecca Todd If you unsubscribed, how are you able to post? Only subscribers can post.
Well, apparently you are still reading and commenting. Not exactly canceling.
It’s so nice to know that future generations will be absolutely pure in every respect, will never do anything politically incorrect, and will never make a mistake that they have to apologize for. When absolutely perfect cancellers say “OK Boomer”, I say “No Problem Drooler”. For some reason they get upset. I guess the old expression “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” doesn’t seem to apply to them.
11
Surely there is precedence behind the "cancellation" of sex offenders (Louis C.K., R Kelly, et al.) and war criminals (Obama). Perhaps you may not identify Obama as a war criminal or Louis C.K. as a sex offender, but the younger generations do-- and if they are perceived as such, a "cancellation" response is both merited and appropriate.
As for the court of public opinion: when American courts are failing to convict actual criminals with any sort of consistency (as is perceived!), then mob justice will always follow.
You cannot sit in a high tower touting the principles of capitalism while also crying when the capital-holders "vote" with their dollars.
7
You are so busy cancelling these people that you forget: much worse people are coming in to fill the void. If you only leave room for saints, you will get instead the worst, lying, hypocritical criminals. Since no one is a saint.
1
“Cancel culture” or social media attacks are just another form of shaming rituals.
There is nothing new under the sun.
4
@dj sims - I agree with some of what you've said, particularly that we've lost any sense of proportionality. But I think you've fallen into a trap when you say "there should be some punishment," and that's the trap of assuming that because the mindless cancel culture mob is angry, the person they're angry at has actually done something wrong. In many cases, all they did was offend somebody's overly-delicate sensibilities, or spoken a truth people find a little too inconvenient.
Cancel culture is a rejection of one of the most sacred and vital principles this country was founded on - the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But even more fundamentally, and even more alarmingly, it's a rejection of any notion that we should strive for humility over arrogance.
The sense of self-righteousness being is exhibited is absolutely every bit as toxic, every bit as noxious, as any of the ostensibly racist or sexist remarks that tend to set off the mob these days. And in some ways it is worse, as it is specifically and intentionally bent on destruction of the person's entire life.
If we're going to truly come to a place where we have a kinder, more just and more equal society, the cancel culture must disappear to the very same extent that which they rail against has to.
10
I want to believe that this is rarer than we've been led to believe; my sister, a college professor, tells me this is so and I never see it in my own classes. My daughter, though, currently a sophomore in college, tells me it's real and crippling. She just told me this weekend that many of her classes have fallen silent, especially her sociology one because students are "terrified" of "offending" each other.
I assume both perspectives to be true. I think the egregious examples get picked up and circulated by the media and often blown out of proportion, but, as an educator, it's my daughter's perspective that most alarms me.
Professors have to set the tone. An opening conversation for the course should lay the ground rules and I would hope that any college worth its salt would uphold them.
1. We all have different perspectives; that's what makes a class dynamic, so it's a given that we won't see eye to eye, but that doesn't mean we get to blind each other.
2. Listen and then process. Disagree robustly from the "I" perspective. Offer counter arguments grounded in observations about the text or theorem, not the person.
3. Know that debate, dissent, and discourse are the life's blood of any discussion-based course. Welcome the format but leave the room knowing that an opinion about a text is just that...never a judgement of the person making it.
We have to stop catering to the "I'm so offended" machine. It's intellectually and socially crippling; shut it, alone, down.
34
@AhBrightWings I agree, and I think college classes should be places of healthy and respectful debate.
I just want to point out, this must applies to conservatives, too. If you grew up being told one thing by your family and conservative community, and you get to college and a lot of people believe differently, you can't just complain. Examine their beliefs and your own.
Too many people think they are a victim because people don't approve of their beliefs, like the belief that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry, that gay kids should be put in conversion therapy. They fail to see how those beliefs put into law or into societal action have real consequences for others.
Those people's beliefs shouldn't be completely silenced, but they shouldn't be entertained simply as neutral points of view and left unchallenged because the conservatives may be offended.
Everyone isn't being canceled. There are billions of people who have not been canceled. Furthermore, there isn't anything wrong with having an aversion to molesters and rapists and saying so publicly. Ultimately, just because one group of people "cancels" someone, doesn't mean another, more powerful, group will also cancel that person (Weinstein and even more prominent leaders come to mind). I will reserve my right to theoretically cancel someone and the rest of the world will reserve its right to listen to me or not. What I see as the discomfort here is when a lot of people decide to cancel someone and other people, who possibly stand to make a lot of money off of that person, think "not so fast." There is this irrational fear that "wrongly accused" people will be canceled. Well, when has anyone really had an issue with that possibility? You only need to look to our justice system to see that we have absolutely no issue with canceling people who are perfectly innocent, or whose crimes are nothing compared to the crimes of others who walk freely among us. Again, it seems like we are only afraid of extremely privileged people being "wrongly accused" in this cancellation process, and that is why so many unprivileged/disadvantaged people have taken to it. What other recourse do suggest?
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@GYA
You said this much better than I did. In cancel culture minorities and women have a voice. The systems run by white, rich men make it such that they are not actually touched by the criminal justice system. Cancel culture does touch them, which is why they are whining. They want the ability to Brock Turner the rest of us without repercussion. Times Up.
Hmmmm. I'm an older guy, so maybe someone could answer this question for me: Is there a difference between "cancelling" and boycotting". They sound pretty much the same to me.
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We cancel because we're powerless. There are no castles to storm, people really do die in angry mobs, and Monty Pythonesque satire fails to sooth and falls on deaf ears these days. Cancelling is an exercise in self-delusion, a salve for wrongs perceived and real, that gives us that gift of momentary righteousness.
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A perfect commentary on our times. I do love the end of the video!
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The humor in this video derives from presenting the politics of our own moment as historically equivocal, as if they could happen anywhere or at any time when just the opposite is the case: we all know that there couldn't be cancel culture in 1283, because much of the behavior that is now considered "cancel"-worthy was perfectly acceptable then. It's especially troublesome because the video also very intentionally pretends that issues of race and gender are not at the heart of the issue when in fact they are. I don't entirely subscribe to the tactics of cancel culture, but I don't think we can legitimately critique these tactics if we also shrink from or dismiss the political values it seeks to represent, yet this video tries to do both at once--to dismiss the tactics of cancel culture by denying it the historical basis of its articulation. In this, the video's creators reveal that they are perhaps themselves less offended by the modality than by the substance of today's politics. This video Op-Ed is not so much a critique of cancel culture as it is an attempt to neutralize its political force. Obama himself was more nuanced.
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@Jeremiah Crotser
I think you're over thinking all this. The video is just a good piece of satirical humor, very much reminiscent of Monty Python's humor...or maybe Monty Python should be cancelled too???
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@R.F. Humor does not exist in a vacuum. It just doesn't. What "makes" something funny is worth considering. Monty Python's humor is funny usually because it is shedding light on something--from English mythology to industrial capitalism. This video is "funny" because it equivocates the political reality of today.
@Jeremiah Crotser to say that behavior which is now cancel-worth "was perfectly acceptable then" reflects your total absorption in your historical moment and your inability to understand that cancel culture is not the tool of ideologically pure and virtuous people like yourselves but is, rather, a totalitarian and intolerant impulse that, yes, arises again and again throughout history. No, they would not have cancelled people in Medieval Europe for being homophobic or racist, obviously because such ways of thinking and understanding did not actually exist, particularly since race and LGBTQ identities did not exist, but I assure you, they would have burned you at the stake for introducing an ideological impurity into the community in order to safeguard it.
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What cancel culture fails to do is distinguish between the person and their crime. Many religious traditions teach that we should love the sinner while also denouncing their sin. That is always difficult to do, but now we have given up even trying. We have lost any sense of proportionality, such that even minor offenses result in complete public ostracization. There should be some punishment, but it should be limited and should provide a path to redemption. If we love the sinner, that means that we pray that they will see the error of their ways and will become a better person who can be welcomed back into society.
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"We are all individuals ... we can cancel for ourselves!"
Personally, I don't "cancel." Like cjr, below, I simply "move on." Canceling sounds like it requires far too much conscious effort.
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My son cancelled his subscription to Dad.
I actually prefer the term cancelled than rejected. How many magazine subscriptions have I cancelled, mainly because I have moved on, don't have the time or do not want to pay the price.
And then there are the emails, we want you back!
Its true, I want him back, but feeling cancelled does not hurt nearly as much as feeling rejected.
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@cjr - I suspect that many of the people who have been cancelled, and thus lost their jobs, their community, their reputations, and sometimes even their homes would disagree with you.
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@Kristin Are you conflating so called "cancel culture" with actual sexual harassment and abuse cases?
Who among these people have lost their jobs, communities, reputations and homes do you feel was wrongfully "cancelled"? I really hope you don't come up with criminals who are now facing jail time and millionaires who lost their prestigious jobs, which they are not entitled to, and lost them because they harassed other hard working people whose reputations and jobs were on the line. And don't come at me w/ Al Franken - he wasn't cancelled. I may not fully agree with the process in his case but it's not the same as being canceled.
@cjr, sharper than a serpent's tooth.
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wonderful video, Monty Python lives!
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Since when should private opinion be subject to “due process”? That’s what we are talking about. Nobody put Louis CK in prison or fined him or encroached on his rights in any way. People decided that they no longer liked consuming his comedy because he had done some pretty gross stuff. Are you telling me I have to keep liking Louis and paying to listen to his comedy even when I learn things about him that I don’t like? He got cancelled because many people didn’t want his product anymore. What are the rules that govern that decision? Do I need to offer due process before I change my mind about buying tickets to a show or a pair of sneakers?
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@Baldwin Baldwin - You're right. Just not on point.
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@Baldwin Except this isn't the whole story. People didn't simply decide they no longer "liked" Louis CK. What happened is a subset of the population collectively decided to pressure comedy clubs to not allow Louis to perform standup at their venue, and they pressured Netflix to cancel his show. They've done their best to ensure Louis is a cultural pariah, and that no company would be foolish enough to employ him in any capacity (unless they dare to be cancelled as well). Due to his previous powerhouse status, he might be able to bounce back slightly, but it sets a dangerous precedent; anyone who is'nt Louis would have been financially ruined by the same treatment. Is this the sort of punitive culture we want to live in? Maybe the answer is yes. But we must at least be honest about what's happening.
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@Baldwin "Do I need to offer due process before I change my mind about buying tickets to a show or a pair of sneakers?"
That's called critical thinking. It's not required but it may enhance the quality of your life if you practice it.
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Why the rush to judge others?
I believe the drive arises from the need to feel special.
Notably, the rush to assume the role of victim in this country stems from the same need.
In our modern, busy, noisy, huge world, the village is gone (at least for most of us in the US). Many of us start to feel like just another number, another widget. Few have the talent and drive of Barrack Obama, Bill Gates, or Marie Yovanovitch.
The innate human desire to feel special is easily lost. In today's America, being a proud victim or a virtuous "canceller" has become a easy - though eventually self-destructive - path to being embraced.
And, please note, I am NOT saying that victims and evildoers do not exist.
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@Steven --Don't we constantly judge others and they judge us? Isn't it unreasonable to expect that we will like every person we meet? Of course we'll like some more than others. Judging others is part of being human. It's a normal reaction to strangers, and a part of our survival instinct. Some people our intuition just tells us we don't want to spend time with. Judgement doesn't have to be mean or harsh, but it is just a fact. We simply pick and choose who to trust, or who to want to spend time around. I don't see the connection to feeling "special."
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@Ms. Pea
True enough, but there is a difference between judging by instinct, judging with some consideration, and judging based on intimate knowledge. There is also a difference judging a person for ourself, discussing such with our close group, and shouting that judgement in public.
It is the shouted judgment (typically with rather limited knowledge) that I am referring to (and is what the editorial was centered upon).
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@Ms. Pea--Choosing not to associate and cancelling have completely different motivations, it seems to me. Choosing not to associate is mostly a private affair. You may tell a few of your close associates and family why you would not wish to be in someone's circle. You might even do so in ways that you show anger or a sense of vicitimization either to your colleagues or the person who is the subject of your objection.
What you do when you "cancel" someone on social media is share your choice, outrage, hurt, personal damage, etc., with the world. Not only that, but by sharing that choice, you implicitly ask for support in your cancelling from people world-wide, people whom, in many cases you do not know. You want all of the social media mob to "do you a favor, though," if you catch my drift.
Sadly, the cancel culture mentality is not limited to the Weinstein-level monsters that deservedly are shunned, but also to people who make mistakes or act in ways that seem to be accepted (and even accepted ) by their culture at the time they did what they did. And those persons come in all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and on and on. The person who does the cancelling on social media is not happy until the cancel mob is inflamed and on the march across the web with keyboards at the ready. And then that mob descends on the person in question. Where is the justice and love of your fellow human beings in all of that?
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I work at an elementary school and part of my job is to monitor recess. Cancel culture occurs with children all the time on the playground. I imagine it has always been that way with children.
Our responsibility as adults is to think logically and critically, what children under a certain age cannot do. Given the lack of funding for education since around 1980, it is not a great surprise that we have many adults who cannot think critically and logically.
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@I go by many names: As a veteran middle school teacher, I can confirm that canceling is alive and well in middle school, and has been since well before the advent of the cell phone and social media. Kids call each other out all the time, occasionally legitimately, but more often in an attempt to bolster their burgeoning sense of self-advocacy and agency. Sadly, the current cancel culture online and in our culture in general has only exacerbated the "knee-jerk" nature of this sort of social interaction in the middle school jungle, and there is a lot of work involved in getting the average 12-year old to see things from another perspective when they feel ostracized or, conversely, when they "join the mob." Teaching them to think for themselves is a never-ending task, and has pretty much always been the same. It's just a lot harder now.
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@I go by many names
Perhaps cancel culture is another expression of "adults" who refuse to grow up. We seem to want child status to continue forever, wishing for a world without personal responsibility where others direct and provide for us. And where we can act out emotionally and expect everyone to respond.
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I'm against all doxxing and canceling. It's one thing to vent spleen where the target deserves it, but it's quite another to refuse to rest until the person's entire life has been dismantled. Like, do we really have to make sure someone, even someone we believe is bad - loses their job, etc. etc?
Also, I wish we were more capable of recognizing that people are complex. Something as simple as belonging to the other political party makes our adversaries see us as less human. That's scary. People can have very bad qualities (or do bad things) and redeeming qualities at the same time.
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Another way of looking at it: If you, through hard work, have become a media personality, it is important to remember that the price of fame is public scrutiny. If you achieve this coveted position, remember that your actions have outsized impacts on yourself and others. I love listening to people say “I am all about personal responsibility” until it is applied to them.
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And as the peasants fight among themselves, the executioner escapes and the Lord comes in and increases their taxes. In that regard at least, very little has changed.
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@tomg
Bingo; amazing how persistent divide and conquer is...because it works.
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But social media, the tech-inflated expression of human social interaction, is all about signaling and status. Mobs have indeed been around forever, but real mobs at least required people to get dirty and take some personal risks. At the very least, they had to leave their houses or pubs. Now, we can sit at home and click or swipe and achieve that same smug, righteous feeling.
The problem comes when "serious" media pay too much attention to digital mobs.
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@Bob Krantz True! "Some people were mad about something on Twitter" should not qualify as serious news.
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Let’s distinguish between two very different speech acts. One says “I’m sorry for what I did; I regret it; I wish I had not done it.”
Another fails to say that, but uses some of the same words or hopes to inspire some of the same reactions. Examples include “I’m sorry you’re offended,” “I’m sorry that I upset you,” “I’m sorry, but I had no choice,” etc.
The distinction is not difficult. Many children understand it perfectly. Somehow many adults do not.
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@P I think the video makes a very good point. You *might* be distinguishing between these different kinds of apologies. Or maybe not. I'm not sure if these kinds of mobs are all that more accepting of your former example than the latter.
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@MA Oh I certainly agree that the video makes good points. But one point it seems to make is to indict the mob’s rejection of “I’m sorry that you’re offended,” painting it with the same brush as the mob’s other nonsense. And with that point I would disagree.
For a mob to similarly reject a more genuine apology is one thing. And plenty of canceling mobs surely do so. But prior to and independent of any mob’s reaction, I think there’s still a very clear and meaningful difference between the types of apologies I distinguished.
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@P You can't demand an apology. You can ask for one and if the person really means it, they would more likely say "I'm sorry for what I did, I wish I hadn't done that."
If you demand an apology and the person wants to shut you up, you'll get "I'm sorry I offended you."
Ask for one, see what you get and take it from there. Maybe you won't get one at all. You can't force someone to regret truly regret their actions. They may just regret being caught or called out. Part of the problem is that "cancel culture" does not ask, they demand, as if apologizing is just part of a ritual.
1
All but the most heinous criminals are given a hearing where it’s established lessons have been learned and debts to society have been paid. Cancel culture doesn’t provide this. Its much more punitive than the prison system.
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"Ostracism" comes from the first democracy, ancient Athens.
Every year they could vote to banish one person from Athens.
This kept even the most powerful from earning the ire of the voters.
E.g., it was used against Alcibiades; he was Socrates' friend, and, in some contexts, a hero, but obviously controversial in his love of power and recklessness.
The term comes from the broken shards of clay pots, "ostraka," on which the names were inscribed during voting.
So yeah, it's older than medieval times and part of the democratic ethos.
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@we Tp
Great mini lesson on ostracism. They recognized it's power, such that it was limited to one person a year.
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@we Athenian ostracism does bear some superficial resemblence to "cancel culture," but it was vefry rare and involved a complex process involving voting by all of the citizens (well, the people who could vote).
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I’m a boomer. Love the video technique. This isn’t my parents’ grey haired lady NYT! Plus points for the point made. We need lighter non-hard hearts.
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@Incognita Can we stop with the generational attacks? Lots of "grey haired ladies" like this too. Let's quit the bias that we rely on to relate to each other (IMO, social media exacerbates that)
1
#MeToo leverages cancel culture on the left, but simultaneously cancel culture has been popularized (and similarly weaponized) by the right. The epithet "snowflake" has been leveraged by the right and the left, with the goal of being concisely dismissive. While it could be argued both left and right have elements of cancel culture adoption, it's unquestionable that Trump's modis operandi has held cancel culture as his central tenet. Trump wields pithy epithets for anyone he opposes, whether politicians, media or celebrities. A Trump rally's entire script draws entirely from the cancel culture mentality. Won't it be ironic when the massive snowball, accelerating downhill collecting more and more snowflakes, ultimately runs Trump over? "A man reaps what he sows."
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@JB You're right that "cancel culture" and left politics are not quite the same thing; there's a right PC as well as a left PC. And a moderate PC, I guess.
I think many people are shocked to see how the values of the right's primary critics have changed. We used to think of "liberal" and "left" as synonymous; but today's left is distinctly illiberal, which is striking.
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@MA Some small fringe portion of the left is illiberal. All of the right is conservative. There's a huge difference.
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Excellent commentary on our times.
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@JL
Out times? Excellent commentary on humanity. There's nothing new under the sun.
As much as I agree with the sentiment, this was painful to watch. I’m sure it will be candy for the rhetorically diabetic boomer class eager to pounce on “kids these days”.
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@OverMistyMountains Thanks for proving the point of the video and for illustrating a logical fallacy.
2
Elders these days, man. Can’t trust anyone over 30.
The #MeToo movement was the thing that escalated cancel culture into the mainstream. An accusation was enough, period, end of story. Let's all show some compassion and consider the entire context of a person's actions before rendering judgement.
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@LennyM - "The #MeToo movement was the start..."
Hilarious. Since it hadn't happened to men before it never happened.
For years, decades, centuries, millennia all a man had to was to accuse a women of being "loose" and she was. Her reputation ruined, no longer marriageable, no longer welcomed in social settings, ostracized. Girls and women had to be careful so no one could make such an accusation because no one was going to "show some compassion and consider the entire context of a person's actions before rendering judgement". Ditto for "witch", "harpy", etc. Even to this day there are different standards for men who are elected with questionable qualities and women who are chastised and required to resign.
MeToo says don't dismiss me out of hand as we have been.
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@Marie
If we accept (regardless of your analysis of the past) that a woman or women need only raise an accusation against a man, with no proof but emotional histrionics, then we are all still stuck in the recent and distant past, except that it is the males who are "witches"--for now. If that is the standard (never mind the Constitution), then #MeToo can quite easily become #Me Next--for women.
Do you really think that being just as quick in accusing men (alive today) as you say men were (through all history) to accuse women is any improvement? Is it fair to blame people who weren't alive for the misactions of others--because of their gender? Isn't that just revenge?
In my experience and reading of cultural history, women are (and have always been) a lot more judgemental of other women--and harder in that judgement.
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@Allen How can you not accept the past that is undeniable? How can you deny the double standard women experience? How can you casually dismiss the social, economic, educational and business control and power men have had over women since women wore bones in their hair?
Trump has five kids by three different wives. Can you imagine if Warren had five kids by three different husbands?
Most men aren't harassers and most women don't falsely accuse.
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