I would be surprised if it wasn't the case. Industries like these have too many 'king makers' and people idolize the established figures too much. It's basically the same mechanism by which the abuse is facilitated in closed religious communities.
Currently there are major scandals in France around coaches and team officials sexually abusing kids in swimming and figure skating. It is not just a US thing...
Power corrupts. If you want to find industries with sexual abuse problems look for ones where the power is concentrated in a handful of unelected people, doubly so if those people form an "old boys club".
what interests me is: how do people maintain their integrity in such a foul environment? I mean if you can't look yourself in the mirror then how do you keep on creating anything?
A polish pop star who once said that her career took 10 years longer to go off than it otherwise would because she refused to sleep with the important people in the biz. So, you can maintain your integrity.
At a very real risk of being permanently blocked. Just because one person managed to succeed despite not being compromised, that doesn't mean it's possible generally. It seems more likely that almost all the artists that refuse to compromise have their career killed right there.
It's really simple I think: the vast majority of "transactions" won't be well defined "do x to get y" offers but just things that may or may not change certain odds. There's an entire spectrum between the extremes of pure romantic love and list price prostitution and I believe that the point were you really can't fool yourself anymore can be surprisingly far from the former.
Combine a mild dose of self delusion with a huge potential payoff and world view that everything is crap and there's evil everywhere and you'll have no trouble living with yourself no matter what you do.
Is pure romantic love devoid of transactions? Many couples involve two people giving commitment and expecting commitment back. Sure, not all couples are so monogamous, but many if not most are. People have expectations of what to receive from a relationship and when they don't, they consider ending the relationship. Point out a one sided romantic relationship people will tell you to find someone better for you. Sure, it is never put in the language of 'do x, get y'.
Many social groups who help each other with resources without keeping tabs still can recognize when someone is leaching off the group, especially when they recognize the person has the ability to contribute to the group but chooses not to. People who support someone without expecting them to be paid back often have an expectation of the relationship being two sided with sentiments such as "I know if the roles were reversed, you would do the same for me." In cases where the roles do reverse but they don't do the same, you see people quite broken. It wasn't ever a strict tally, but it does hurt the person that their relationship wasn't as too sided as they expected.
We even describe people as being enablers when they give to someone without receiving back what we think is due (with that last part being defined in highly situations terms).
Romantic love is definitely transactional, just like everything else. We are animals in a physical world, after all. Anyone who says that they love someone truly without conditions just hasn't had enough of their conditions broken to know that they have them. I say this as a happily married person going on fifteen years. Our marriage is romantic, sure, but it's also a deal, and you're both putting stuff into the deal and getting stuff out of it to make it work. The romance wouldn't work without the rest of it.
> how do people maintain their integrity in such a foul environment?
They can not require sexual favors when they are about to decide who to help. This ability is entirely within their possibilities.
Because really, the biggest integrity fail in this is sexual harassment, making business decisions based on sexual favors (demanding ones or accepting them) and abuse of power.
An important topic here is that shame is also a construct, and it is a collective construct. Certain things are shameful in one culture, not in another.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have a gut feeling when something feels wrong. We have an inner sense of boundaries which eg. can be damaged by trauma and deeply affects our ability to connect and such.
But when it comes to adult relationships there is a wide spectrum of behaviours and unless everyone tells you something is deeply wrong, I think there are times and places where people may not endure the same sense of shame.
Perhaps, but none of this was forced. It was clear that if you didn't play the game you wouldn't get farther in general, but you had a choice, if you call get out of music a choice.
Also drugs are used as a control mechanism, as we say with the child stars who were being sexual abused. Get them addicted to drugs while the abuser gets what they want.
I also really like this Gaga interview referencing Amy Winehouse
"You can't have it both ways; You can't enjoy listening to somebody singing sad songs about the blues and heartbreak and then not expect them to be truly heartbroken."
A lot of artists already struggle with mental health and addiction issues and that is why their music is powerful and propels their success.
Amy Winehouse is one of my favorite artists. Watch Amy for an amazing, sad, portrait that shows her existing struggles which were amplified to the extreme by our treatment and ridicule of her.
Mac Miller is another example that comes to mind, his last few albums in particular are lyrically intense and personal and candid.
Remember that said woman would look like Harvey Weinstein.
But this sort of behavior reinforces the idea that the industry would be filled with shameless people who would do anything to get ahead. Actual talent would be at best a secondary factor to success. We have lost generations of talented artists simply because they had a shred of integrity.
This assumes that everyone views integrity in the same way. Not everyone views sex as a sacred rite that a lot of cultures make it out to be. Regardless of my views or your views using sex for gain isn't wrong or immoral to everyone. I don't support or think it's right for anyone to have no other option but some people would argue that having the option is better than not and I shouldn't enforce my morals on them.
Note: I'd never use sex in a bargain, vows and dealing with peoples emotions is a very serious thing to me. I'm not everyone though.
Arguably there are two issues here. The first is viewing sex as sacred or not. But if you consider it not sacred, if you think of giving someone sex as roughly equivalent to giving them money, then that brings us to the next issue: Bribery. If the claims are true, then essentially you're expected to bribe people (with sex) who act as industry gatekeepers, or else find it much more difficult to progress in your career. That would be called "corruption"—and to not want to be part of that is indeed a manifestation of "integrity".
Now, one could come up with alternate motivations. "So, let's see just how dedicated you are to your career" ... Oh lord, I can't finish that with a straight face. I mean, if someone does think sex is at least mildly sacred, then being willing to do it for career purposes would show dedication (or desperation), but there are probably lots of other ways to measure that, not to mention that you might end up selecting less for dedication and more for sexual blaséness.
Push those feelings and emotions deep down inside and don't think about them? Drink and use drugs often? See therapists? Probably the same way most people deal with/don't deal with shitty situations.
Other people in the thread have cast this vision as puritanical, but in my view the more interesting angle is that its Judaeo-christian aspect has more to do with the sense of expecting punishment. We are trained by the media to have this idea of people eventually paying a psychological price for doing things considered shameful by the majority. In reality, the propensity of people to feel shame sometimes corresponds to that pattern, and sometimes doesn't. It all comes down to the inability to theorize of different minds.
It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness. --Jacob Boehme
The 'axiom' (idiom) is not that the lack of sex is power, but that everything is sex, and sex itself is power, therefore everything is ultimately about power. But you cannot take sex our of that equation. So it implies that anything you do, even if you don't care about having sex at all, is about sex. Doesn't make sense.
Not that I'm supporting asexual erasure, but sayings like the quote in GP are usually fairly general. Statistically, there are much much fewer asexual people than not, so in general it may hold but that's not to say it holds for every single person.
I think you misunderstand the phrase; it's about society as a whole, not individual people. Things are implicitly about sex and power on an ingrained level, and asexual people are just screwed (SCNR) even more by this.
I disagree with that. Not everything is implicitly about sex, maybe everything is about power (strong maybe) but sex is not a precursor to that. That said, you are probably right that the things that are about sex and power end up disadvantaging the asexuals.
Came here to post this, glad I didn't and forget we can't post about asexuality here.
As an asexual person, not only are we not respected whatsoever here, but in my experienced, also personally attacked.
That your comment about erasure is getting this many down votes is unfortunately absolutely common for HN, and I'm incredibly disappointed in that.
Before people jump in who might not be asexual to try to defend this - it's such a problem I have actually shared emails with an admin who actually seem genuinely concerned about the problem. Just the truth.
I'm not sure why HN has it in for asexuals, but God damn guys, can't you ease up on us?
I found that HN is generally not very friendly to LGBTQ+ people. I don't think it is because there's a certain type of phobia here, but most people here are very logical and analytical people which I've seen resulting in "logical arguments for and against the existence of ..." which is just.. Why
And to speak up about it, as obviously pictured once again here - gets us downvoted into oblivion, only confirming our feelings of being unheard...
For real, it's been such an issue here I have had emails with an admin but didn't press the issue further and I think it's due time to send another one. They really did seem to care and to be concerned.
You're assuming you're getting downvoted due to the asexual aspect of your posts. I don't know whether this applies to other cases, but in this case I'm reasonably sure the reason is different: the existence and behavior of asexual people does not change how overall society works (sadly).
In the very situation the BBC story refers to, it doesn't matter whether you're an asexual musician. The producer/executive/... would still expect sex from you. They don't give a shit, follow their ingrained patterns, and that's the problem.
No part of "Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power." is in any way diminishing or erasing asexual people. If anything, it exemplifies the additional plight that being asexual brings, even over other LGBTQ+ preferences. Society expects you to be about sex & that's gonna be a very slow change.
I'm very much in your camp, so to speak, but I downvoted some of the upthread comments because I think they are responding to something that wasn't really said.
There's a massive difference between an observation and a judgment. Especially if that 'observation' is a commonly quoted statement (aphorism, as has been pointed out).
Personally, I'm pretty close to asexual if we'd consider sexuality a spectrum. As such, if anything, I find the observation valuable because it underlines how much sex plays a role in areas of life where really perhaps it shouldn't.
Pointing out something that is true or at worst perceived to be true is in no way equal to agreeing with it, or morally defending it.
I...might agree with downvoting maybe the poster's original point, but, as an asexual person, blanket statements like the world revolves around sex absolutely do seem to completely ignore the ever-growing movement of openly asexual individuals.
My responses, however, about the general negative atmosphere towards LGTBQ+ folks here, especially asexuals in particular - (no idea why, asexuals in particular; it's just relentless, sometimes) - also got downvoted into near oblivion.
They consistently have, and I regret even opening up about it, honestly, because I hate getting dragged into this shit online, but I wanted to actually back up and validate the OP who has evidently had an extremely similar experience to my own, that; yes, HN has a long-standing problem with LGBTQ+ relations, and neither OP or I are the first to experience or post about it.
That we choose to open up about the negative treatment, and get downvoted for it, for me; is an issue of respect and being heard.
Downvotes on a post saying that we feel the community needs work with regards to respect for LGBTQ+ people obviously only make, at least myself - feel even shittier and more unheard.
Getting downvoted into oblivion for opening up about the negative treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals on this particular forum seems clearly intentionally * phobic and that's just a shit sandwich I can't do much about.
Is it the stigma associated with asexuality? Is is just general * phobia? I'm not sure what makes HN in particular so awful with regards to LGBTQ+ issues - today has certainly all but reaffirmed that for me - but for such an intelligent crowd, and a bunch of people from the Bay area and shit; I'm honestly continually baffled and unfortunately it appears to be a growing issue that is getting worse, rather than improving in any way.
It's ok. If you even slightly hint at being self righteous or virtuous you will get downvoted. I saw it coming the second I said 'asexual people exist', which is just a declarative statement of fact and nothing more.
They got downvotes because it's not relevant to the point of the saying.
Which this little flap just underlined, because asexuality is defined as a lack of interest in sex, once again demonstrating that everything is indeed about sex (or lack thereof).
Not really. That's like saying everything is about food because even when it's not about food, it's still about food in relation to something else. You still have to prove everything is about sex, or we can do this with any object and assert it as true.
It's also leaves out everyone for whom sex is not about power. It's like saying knives are for stabbing, which is true, if you're going to stab someone.
Not really, because asexuality is not an inheritable trait, as far as i understand. It wouldn't have lasted this long in humanity if it was (maybe there were asexuals who have been forced to have sex? I don't know).
It can also just be a lifestyle choice. We wouldn't call this asexuality probably, but nevertheless if someone chooses not to have sex it's kind of a spit in the face to say that everything from work to relaxation is undertaken because of some sex->power pipeline.
> It can also just be a lifestyle choice. We wouldn't call this asexuality probably,
The word there is “celibacy”. It’s not like straight people make a “lifestyle choice” to not get aroused when they see an attractive member of the opposite sex.
> but nevertheless if someone chooses not to have sex it's kind of a spit in the face to say that everything from work to relaxation is undertaken because of some sex->power pipeline.
Not from what I’ve heard from people who make that choice. That group mostly consisting of Catholic priests.
Actually I'd bet that neurologically sex is far from power games, but along each growth the system gets used for personal benefits rather than union. Might be a cultural lens too.
Competition to get at the top of the hierarchy, and the fact someone will be willing to compete, coupled with the intrinsic need for control which comes with power, sex just being a tool to an end... Especially in a culture as puritan and easily offended (only "in public") as the North American culture.
Or maybe someone who've read Frans de Waal "Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes". Power and sex seem to be interlinked due to evolution: the more power one have, the more accessible sex and reproduction become. People are trying to break this link for some reasons (probably good reasons), but it is not so easy.
It might have gone better if you'd said "aphorism" rather than "axiom", because boy howdy are there a lot of people in these comments who don't know what an aphorism is and are taking it literally.
Some fun ones. What was more interesting to me was that a couple of my contemporaries who were taught by him also then went on to be in top ten groups.
It's hard to imagine this is only the music industry. Human use sex as a weapon and a tool all the time. True, it might be more useful in the music industry but why would sex as currency only exist there?
Where there are humans, there is sex. The obviousness of how that plays out may differ but the underlying theme is universal.
A women goes to the "Penguin" Publishing, where the owner is a penguin and asks for her book to be published. The penguin makes the joke: "If you want your book in black and white, black and white has to be in you."
Any industry where there's a massive power differential between "the boss" and "the employee" will likely have this happen.
US Gymnastics.
Movie, TV, and music industries.
US Presidents (and other politicians) and employees.
Hell, you still get it in normal business. The stories my wife tells about former co-workers and bosses are disgusting and a primary reason she no longer works at a former employer.
Perhaps because the music industry is so dependent on personal connections and because talent is very subjective? In academia, doctorate students usually do not have to sleep with their supervisors to get their degree.
Surely not an isolated incident, but music is one of the more homogenous industries out there.
All top country music stars move in the same circles, or highly overlapping circles, for example.
However, if you told me you were a top iOS developer in the tech industry, that gives me zero information about the circles you move in. You also have a long list of unrelated tech companies to choose from. You're not beholden to any one group of people for anything.
Different industries have different structures and different cultures.
This is an entertainment thing and as noted by other commenters has to do with the very aspirational aspects of the positions, along with a total commodity of folks wanting the work. And, an open attitude towards sex. Not a lot of institutionalized systems. Hollywood is not mostly corporate style jobs, on the creative side. With HR departments.
Music industry is a economics of superstars. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803469 Very few stars get huge profits and after that it's long slim tail.
Talent or high work ethic is not enough for success, "getting discovered" aka someone likes you and invests the initial money and effort is another factor.
If personal effort is not enough and the artist has nothing else, selling your ass for an opportunity to earn millions is pretty damn reasonable transaction. I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes.
> if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes.
What's the name for this kind of arguments?
Also, why specifically Bezos? Why not the billionaire next door?
Also, why only the HN crowd? Wouldn't a lot of people too?
I perceive your parent comment to be straightforward and not sinister in the least. Why not Bezos (the billionaire who most easily comes to mind), why not HN (the website we're on)? Seriously, what's with the weird angry insinuating questions.
> I perceive your parent comment to be straightforward and not sinister in the least.
I'll be straightforward too: it's shitposting with childish faux-provocation that doesn't bring any food for thought, littered with assumptions about everyone and presented as universal. Fool language doesn't help either, it's not straightforward it's provocation without substance . r/im14andthisisdeep is the other way.
Sadly, that means that the few women in the tech industry experience even more concentrated abuse.
Furthermore, there are even fewer people up the tech management food chain than in other industries who appreciate the circumstances of sexual abuse victims.
Sort of. The lack of women in the field is a problem. However programmers are in demand which means that women have some awareness that they can scream and get away with it. A female in the arts who screamed can be unofficially blacklisted and not get anywhere, where as a female in programming can scream and find a different job.
Also a lot of tech companies (but by no means all!) are aware of the issue. You can be reasonably sure a large tech company has as good anti-sexual harassment program and will generally take actions to prevent it. A female is about as safe in tech as any other job: not perfectly safe, as safe as possible.
I mostly meant in a probabilistic sense. It's much more likely that a male VC will be having a meeting with a male startup CEO than a female one (on either end!).
It's a race to the bottom though. Once one person does it, everyone else has to do it too, just so they don't fall behind. In the end you are back to where you started, except you have to sell yourself in addition.
You're selling a service, not yourself. There's plenty of people for whom a sexual favor is not a big deal, and they see it as a huge return on investment.
> There's plenty of people for whom a sexual favor is not a big deal
And that's their choice. Sleeping your way to the top is a very separate debate. Requiring anyone who wants a job to fuck you is the topic being discussed.
> Sleeping your way to the top is a very separate debate
You keep saying that, but it's actually the same thing. One cannot exist without the other. You need both kinds of people for the phenomenon to exist. If a boss hires only people who have sex with them, and nobody is willing to, they will not hire anybody. Conversely, if a candidate is willing to sleep their way to the top, but no boss partakes in that, then they are not hired.
It's hard to avoid this situation when the supply so greatly exceeds the demand and a small number of people control who gets to win; corruption is almost inevitable.
Except that most sexual assault victims just get literally fucked and don't save 40 years of bad work.
People generally perceive winner-take-all economies like the music industry through this same fallacious lens: they assume that the star experience is the norm and ignore the long tail. The music industry is a high-profile but economically tiny; it is not representative of the wider economy, and the star experience within it is even more unrepresentative.
It's comments like this which remind me that HN has minuscule female participation. Because so many more women have experience with sexual assault than men, and because people who have experienced sexual assault would downvote this comment into oblivion, the fact that it survives is a testament to how screwed up HN demographics are.
Yeah, this shit didn't happen with a fucking contract - the entire sexual assault probably took place without the offender ever even mentioning a quid pro quo, you just heard from someone else that it was the only way. You can't sue the fucking guy if you don't get a callback.
And to be honest there are people here who loudly won't even do a three-hour whiteboard interview for a high-paying gig that isn't a sure thing.
I just watched Fran Lebowitz's Netflix special and according to her you couldn't even get a job as a waitress in NYC in the '70s without sexual favors. Basically a generation of service industry management looked at sexually assaulting job applicants as a perk.
The generic term "abuse" would have been more precise, and I have used it elsethread. However, it is common for these incidents to take the form of sexual assault: see Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, etc. In any case, "voluntary exchange" is a spectacularly inapt way to characterize sexual coercion by entertainment industry executives.
I thought so. At 20 I used to go out dancing every night for fun. After being repeatedly groped I decided I should get paid for dancing. It was a perfect decision. But not for the money. The thing is it's not the 'getting literally fucked' that is bad. It's that when you choose that as a way to avoid starving their is a social cost: You are a fucking dirty whore. And it follows you the rest of your life. I became a sex worker activist because in Toronto being a stripper/sex worker meant no protection from the law (if cops found you doing a lap dance or on the street they arrest you if you don't give them a hand job (stripper) blow job (hooker).
> I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes.
Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse, misogyny and humiliation (and who experience most of this abuse in the music industry). It scares me that people say this stuff publicly.
Comparing Bezos 'fucking you in the ass three times to gain an advantage' with the constant threat women face from powerful men leaves me feeling disgusted
> Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse and misogyny. It scares me that people say this stuff publicly.
The point is that for 2 girls complaining about abuse, in this industry there are 100 who perfectly know what they are doing and happy to play the sexual favor game.
The only part where you are right is that it should be made more public, so that "innocent" (not like amber heard) girls would not get so surprised then.
> in this industry there are 100 who perfectly know what they are doing and happy to play the sexual favor game.
Do they 'know', or have they just come to accept this level of violence and danger becuase of their gender?
> The only part where you are right is that it should be made more public, so that "innocent" (not like amber heard) girls would not get so surprised then.
Ah jeez, speculating about Amber's innocence is just tabloid celebrity gawking at this point. Have you met her or heard her story in person? No.
I can tell from personal experience and direct account that SOME girls are happy and proud at having sex with powerful or famous people, and that if it would lead to advantages in their life if would only be better for them because SOME people love the feeling of cheating at life somehow.
Everyone knows now that Amber Heard was physically abusive and literally said in a recording that "No one would believe your complaints since you are a man". Talking about girl privilege...
To me your comment is illustrating your privilege. Prostituting oneself three times to be financially set for life could be a perfectly acceptable trade off for millions of people. The fact that you wouldn’t even consider it shows that you haven’t gone hungry for a while.
I’m not here to argue about a hypothetical utopia where nobody on the planet has to make terrible choices to protect their life. I’m just providing a commentary on the state of the world we do live in. Obviously this hypothetical utopia (or any step in that direction) would be superior to what we have now.
I was referring to the hypothetical utopia of “making sure people don't go hungry”, which is something that has never happened before in human history. But thanks for assuming negative intent.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone. Doubly true if you scope things to the developed world. Triply true if you scope it to the USA only. "No one starves" is just as reasonable a minimum standard to strive for as "no one gets raped".
Yes, there are serious implementation details, but there's a big societal will factor at play too.
I took that as a figurative statement. Hungry for success, or for a way out of a perceived poor future outlook, perhaps not literally hungry (for food).
> To me your comment is illustrating your privilege. Prostituting oneself three times to be financially set for life could be a perfectly acceptable trade off for millions of people.
I hear you and get where you're coming from, yet my take is that I want to shift the dynamics of the system for everyone. Systems change, not personal change. Also this isn't about a 'facing a trade off' or sex work, it's about dehumanization and exploitation at the hands of an abusive powerful person.
And I want everyone to be 'set for life'. It's absolutely possible.
ain't sure what you mean by acceptable. All of this discussion comes to one question : do you have a choice or not.
You have a choice to run a start up and make any sacrifice you think necessary. You don't have a choice to eat something when you're hungry.
If you don't have a choice, then you're a victim.
(and yes, not everyone has a choice, not everyone just has to work more to get the choice, many people, at some point, don't have a choice; abusing their situation is criminal)
> The fact that you wouldn’t even consider it shows that you haven’t gone hungry for a while.
"I give you $1 bn if you kill that one kid" and you answer "I'll never kill a kid, no matter how much you pay me" to which I reply: "Your answer is illustrating your privilege".
Certainly you see the gigantic sophism in your comment?
No, actually I think this is a fairly poor analogy. In your example, one is being asked to harm _another_ for their benefit. In the other, one is being asked to harm _one’s self_ for their benefit.
However terrible and painful the example is, abstractly, I believe people are free to decide what happens to themselves, but not to others. Murder is universally illegal, while prostitution, arguably, shouldn’t be, and isn’t in many places.
What are you talking about? In my understanding you're saying everyone that been offered sexual transaction from a superstar is dying for a piece of bread? I think that statement is very detached from reality
That's not what happens though, is it? It's a dumb example.
It's more like the abuser forms a bond with the naive kid, and in exchange for their 'loyalty' they are rewarded with a form of insecure attachment where they do what they're told to try and get more approval, and basically just try to live with it as if it's normal.
Have a drink with me tonight and I'll make sure to call X about that role tomorrow, alright? Then tomorrow comes and maybe on occasion they actually follow through with the promise, enough to convince you they're being sincere, but most likely there'll be an excuse and another 'request', and more favours. And more dependence and more control.
Trying to compare this hellish cycle of abuse to getting fucked in the arse by Bezos for 100 mil is not just absurd, it's completely out of touch with the grim reality the victims spend the rest of their lives contending with.
The reaction anybody views probably comes from their own prior life experiences.
That doesn't change that a very high percentage of the HN crowd would take this offer are men. A lot men are not in a position to reject offers about their body's sexual value such that it turns into abuse.
A lot of men (99%?) don't get the privilege of making a choice to prove themselves in the business world, versus distinctly with their body.
If this was a more frequent choice, the gender representation in tech/corporate leadership roles would even out much faster. Because less men would be there, having chosen a different opportunity. I perceive this as an underrepresented reality.
I agree, that was the intent. The article talks about gay sexual favors.
However, the distinction is that people with tangible experience with sexual abuse perceive this differently. And unfortunately, women have disproportionate experience with sexual abuse.
It's easier and more honest to simply say "ew" to a crassly worded comment, than to drag the discussion into a pity/privilege party by making up some narrative about the poster.
There’s always one who takes any comment and has to act like that gatekeeper.
You don’t own suffering. You’re not it’s gatekeeper. It’s not for you to decide if one person’s proposed situation doesn’t take into account the situation of one of millions of versions of suffering.
This sounds like you never played “would you rather” as a child. If comments like this leave you disgusted, you would reconsider reading public forums.
Many beautiful women marry rich ugly men they don't love for money. That's not abuse. It's prostituting oneself. I respect these women and men and their decisions. Sometimes sex is business decision.
Trading sex for favors is not automatically abuse.
People trade sex for opportunity because all other tings equal they may get opportunity over someone better. Superstars don't become superstars just because they have unique talents. They are as much or more results of marketing investments. When there are hundreds of equally talented individuals, picking one of them for marketing is more or less random.
When person has opportunity to continue as indie artist or sell their ass for million dollar opportunity, that's just a business deal.
Don't equate sex work (which is what is in op's example) with rape. It simultaneously denigrates sex workers while trivializing victims of sexual violence.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. That's what flags are for. Pouring fuel on the flames is exactly the wrong thing to do, so please don't.
> ... very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes
The most powerful world in the dictionary is "no". As an entirely self-made / self-taught person I know the power of that word.
That you consider it a "pretty darn reasonable transaction" tells about your ethics and morality, not about the ethics and morality of a "very high percentage of HN crowd".
Regarding fame/money, here's Ruyard Kipling's take on it:
"Do not pay too much attention to fame, power, or money. Some day you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are."
I'm raising my kid the way my rebellious parents rose me, telling her "no" is the most powerful word and she should use and abuse it and teaching her there's more to life than fame and money... But feel free to raise yours telling them selling their bodies to obtain fame/money is a "pretty damn reasonable transaction".
A transaction where the terms are fully disclosed with enforceable clauses and which has a clean starting and ending completion state is very different from what is being described in the article or what you are fantastically proposing.
A sexual assault tied to an entertainment career paths has indefinite terms, consists of unagreed upon jeopardy in terms of what is being exchanged, and for how long. It's nothing like an "opportunity".
Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse.
It comes in various forms: sexual or other inappropriate favors for advancement, verbal abuse, or just abusive working conditions like sweatshop hours and burnout culture.
It also helps a lot when the quality of the work performed by the person is subjective and overall success is largely dependent on the work of others (writers, musicians, tour directors, sound editors, etc.).
It'd be a lot tougher to be successful as an electrician or commercial airline pilot if you got there from sexual favors for your boss.
> It'd be a lot tougher to be successful as an electrician or commercial airline pilot if you got there from sexual favors for your boss.
That isn't true, but the reasons are different for each.
For electrician getting your foot in the door is the hard part, from there on it is about on the job training. Getting the first apprentice position is one of the harder steps to success, and sexual favors can work here. Though I doubt this happens much in practice - the field isn't one that people are so excited to get into that they will drop their morals to do so.
For airline pilot, demand comes and goes. You have to get a license first (though you can probably pay your instructor in bed, that just gets training I doubt any instructor/examiner will let you buy the license before you are qualified - if anything they will be tougher one you so you have to "buy" another lesson). Once you are qualified, you can use favors to get a job when jobs are scare and this will put you ahead in seniority later when the others finally get a job; or you can use favor to keep a job - but again: seniority means they may not even have an option to keep you. Note that the above is or - because of constant management change odds are against your ability to use this more than once at a real airline without getting caught and then their HR will ensure you are out.
It's common for instructors and student pilots to date, but the scenario you described would be very rare in the US because nearly always flight school administration handles billing, and ratings are from the FAA, DPE's or Part 141 flight school examiners, who usually don't do individual instruction for initial ratings.
So the instructor would have to be an owner/instructor/examiner, which is rare.
Game development is probably saved because most studios had (have?) really serious gender imbalances. I wouldn't be surprised of reports of harassment by the female devs, but they make up such a small percentage of the population that it doesn't change the entire hiring dynamic like it does in the music industry.
A good rule of thumb is to look for visible gatekeepers. Where they go the abuses follow, and if caught they only need to burnish their image enough to get their pals to rehire them.
Historically game dev has definitely had a big boys club problem. It's better post gamergate, and the trend is heading the right way, but still, it's a bad problem.
What I saw personally, working on an ill fated unreal licensed property around 1999, wasn't sexual extortion. But it was a boys club that loved trading porn in the official irc channels for unreal engine support. CliffyB was particularly fond of posting pictures of his then girlfriend, as well as essentially rick rolling people with this picture involving a cactus and what appears to be a very uncomfortable sexual act.
It may not have been straight up extortion of sexual interactions, but I am sure that if you pushed back on that, you'd have found yourself fenced out of the very small community of people who have huge influence over whether your game ships. It certainly was not a welcoming environment to anyone other than immature young men, which is a label I'd apply to myself at that time for sure.
Again though, I want to emphasize I also see a positive trend in gaming in general. There's a long walk ahead, but the industry is actually walking the right direction, just slowly.
> Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse.
You've perfectly described capitalism where every capitalist state consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.
Once they've done that, people are always fighting each other and compromising their dignity and morals - some to get ahead, some to simply stay afloat and have a family.
I would qualify this by saying many want to be in specific entertainment industries for the (potential) glamor and fame, and will sacrifice a lot to reach that goal. Many may have more practical alternatives, but are driven by a goal. This is the land of opportunity, and many dream of taking a shot at the big-time while still young and attractive. That window of time closes fast.
The idea of possibly being the next Elvis or Madonna if you accept being boinked by a pig with money is hard to turn down for many.
One of the reasons the game dev industry has more abuse (mostly non-sexual) than other software endeavors is because games are seen as more fun or cool to work on, rather than say a sales proposal tracking CRUD system. (I'm happy making sales proposal tracking systems myself, although I admit I have dabbled in the pop music writing industry, and still dabble in neo-renascence tunes.)
My daughter found the clothing fashion industry is similar: high pressure because many want the job of designer and scrape and claw to get it. She changed careers after some nasty office skirmishes among competitors.
> [capitalist states] consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.
is true, and not particularly controversial. Too little unemployment is assumed (true or not) to lead to inflation and inefficiency.
(Although, I'm not sure the second claim follows. If unemployment is reduced by, say, drastically lowering the minimum wage, I don't see why things would look any different. Unemployment isn't the problem, here anyway.)
You're getting downvoted but you're right. It makes good business sense to have what Marx called a "reserve army of labour", a percentage of unemployed people such that there is always more demand for jobs than there is supply, ensuring wages and labour conditions get pushed down.
Everybody involved has always known and assumed that so much that it's almost a cliché. I mean, people were warning about predatory record producers since the 60s or so. Since I'm not against prostitution either, I can't really be angry about this old hat. (Not that I think it's good.)
Entertainers can work their whole lives to break into the business, investing their heart and soul into it, only for one gatekeeper to hold all of that hostage. They hold incredible leverage. That's in no way similar to offering someone a few quid for sex.
I remember reading about a scandal in the 90's or 00's fashion business where it came out the top modelling and talent agencies were in-effect used as escort agencies by super wealthy clients. The arts have always been seedy, but they have also always been a key path to social mobility, so it's kind of a story as old as time.
Same thing happens with cheerleaders of famous teams too.. (at least I remember an article where they were being forced to attend parties wearing little black dresses, with creepy old dudes in attendance).
Yup. Just ask Rose McGowan. I'm sure in retrospect it would have been easier for her career to let mongloid-dick Harvey Weinstein plow her a few times.
The big question is will internet free the good artists that were gatekeeped due to refusing debasing their core values. I have a feeling that only those ready to overcome any such hurdles have the grit to pursue a stage life, but I can be wrong.
I wouldn't put it that way, but I think you're referring to something real. I'm not musical but I was quite active in theatre from a young age and there seems to be a skill around dissociation that is necessary to perform. There's something incredibly intimate that happens between a performer and the audience, someone comfortable with that kind of intimacy with that many strangers probably couldn't have certain kinds of core values anyway.
Those large companies are distributors, packaging a product and selling it to consumers.
Think of distribution like a motorway Vs dirt road.
If you're doing it yourself, you're running down that dirt road trying to get from point A to point B, battling with millions other people trying to do the same.
If you're with a distribution company, you're on their branded luxury touring bus cruising down a motorway, you'll be arriving any minute...
I'm reminded of a quote by Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck; "It reminds me of the comedy approach. You're just gonna eat it for ten years then hopefully be in a movie or something."
> The big question is will internet free the good artists that were gatekeeped
I don't think so. What they need the most is publicity, and this is not magically granted by internet.
Just take a look at e.g. Spotify; I'm sure there are hundreds of extremely gifted artists sitting down at barely a few dozens listenings, just because no one found them.
I've never had to pay spotify a monthly fee to list a song. I've had to pay some one time costs to get the song listed (via a distributor), but I've never had to pay a maintenance fee of any sort.
And I assure you, the stuff I've put up does not make enough money to cover any fees (20 listens a month).
But it's interesting. Do we like artists due to marketing only ? Or seducing feature over artistic quality. A small but gifted artist on Spotify could, in theory (in theory), generate word of mouth at quickly get known. Sometimes I believe that labels were filters for that. They could see who was just very good and who had some 'it factor'.
'Some factor' was usually the previous generations' equivalent of virality - typically a blend of sexual charisma, personal charisma, theatricality, entertainment value, and shock value.
Without that packaging music is a very tough sell. Being competent and creative on its own isn't enough.
I can't think of anyone who has made it on musicality alone without at least some of the above OR enthusiastic and regular promotion by gatekeepers (top radio DJs) while they were still an influence.
Actually interesting, I think we all remember some video game scores deeply even though they were never sold to us, never relied on naming or branding .. it was just 'that music that captured my brain for hours so well'
Some people today do acapella renditions for SNES F-Zero soundtrack.. that says something :)
The problem is there are more great artists with the potential than the world needs. Only one artist can be number one for the week in any given week, and the artist who holds that often does for several weeks (and often they get a second hit). People like a small amount of change in life, which means they listen to a few artists, then change to a different one. Then they grow up/old and review that set of artists for memory sake and need even less new great ones.
I don't have time to listen to all the great music in the world. Even if "God" gave me a list of all the great artists trying to record today, it would take me more than a day to listen to all their recordings. So the labels choose for me, and to a large extent it doesn't matter which ones they choose, what matters is there is a filter to gets the right amount of music to me. In the world being great isn't enough as there are more than enough greats, so if you can great, good looking (this helps me overlook any of your faults - I'd like to think otherwise but I know better), and good in the bed of the label - you make it. If you fail any of the above three you have probably lost (note to the good looking, the labels may use you for sex knowing that you won't make it).
Note too that labels bring in other help for the great. I can record music in my basement: I don't have the best microphones, but they are good enough to pick up the sump pump in the corner. I can mix tracks in my basement as well, lets just say I'm not quitting my day job. I could go on about other parts of the process of turning a great artist into a great recording for mass consumption that labels have figured out.
> I don't have time to listen to all the great music in the world.
The problem is that the filters you describe are so narrow that certain genres of music don't get adequately explored, and some genres don't exist at all. In broad terms that's bound to happen, but the missing and under-served genres are so obvious that the filters are clearly limiting the maximum amount of musical enjoyment and meaning that's available to the average listener.
For a dead simple example-- Bach and Beethoven were known as the greatest improvisers in their eras. So where is the Grammy winning album of someone improvising a set of their own variations in the style of Beethoven? Who is the Michael Jordan of improvising a set of 30 new variations atop the bassline of the Goldberg variations?
Don't get me wrong-- there are people who can improvise perfectly well in those styles. But there's no industrial incentive to push those artists to release something truly transcendent-- e.g., something that reveals for a general audience something new about music in the time of Bach's, who makes it fresh, and who redefines what improvisation can be. There's no period improviser so single-minded and driven that an audience of tens of millions would spend lock-down watching a 10-part miniseries on the making of such an album.
Another one, off the top of my head-- what's the version of math rock where there's no common subdivision shared by each line? Computers make this effortless to write, but AFAICT that genre doesn't exist. For just a simple example, Steve Reich's Phasing exists as a prototype-- it shows that there's a compelling perceptual basis for presenting the same melody at tempos that are very close to one another.
There are many other examples, and the filter you refer to means you've never, ever heard them.
So growing old and getting set in a desire for nostalgic music isn't so much a natural law of musical desires as it is the result of creating "The Matrix" for music in the age of the internet by locking your ears into the same old payola scheme from the before times. (I guess the "heat" captured from your attention is to fuel the machine world of the filters... :)
Discoverability. There is more new music uploaded to Spotify every day than I could listen to in a year[0]. How do I discover the new stuff I like?
Spotify does a terrible job of recommending new music to me - mostly my "Discover Weekly" is a mixtape of my existing playlists, and "Release Radar" is entirely stuff I hate.
I'm not sure how a new band would reach me, but it's not via the methods they're trying now. I haven't been genuinely excited by a "new" band since, oh, Mumford? Bad Shepherds? something like that.
[0] I don't listen to that much music. I would if I got more new stuff, though, I'm sure
Soundcloud used to have pretty great discoverability but people started, in my opinion, the repost feature and you ended up with the same song recommended over and over again. Their genre recommendations were also pretty tight. All of my experience was from about 5+ years ago.
By far the best discovery I've seen was on What.CD, RIP. The similar artists web they had on ever artist page was extremely tight. I tried a few months ago to find the old What.cd data to look into it but wasn't able to find it in a couple minutes of googling.
Look into Last.fm. They do a pretty decent job of recommending similar artists but its more of a what you played tracker than true music discovery.
A Pandora station based on other bands I like seems to work reasonably well for finding new music. Most are still terrible but it finds a good one often enough.
No, good marketers also pick good artists. You can't polish a turd. However most of the products we like are only so popular because of marketing. So in a way the answer is yes?
In German we distinguish between 'Interpret' (the one interpreting or performing an art) and the 'Künstler' (artist). I think this explains it very well: Most of the popular 'Interpreten' are not famous for their exquisite music, but for who they are, as a brand, and how they perform in public and on stage.
The movie Yesterday is such a farce because it suggest The Beatles songs are super successful no matter who performs them, as long as they are the first to perform them. When effectively it was a mix of having skilled musicians, produce and perform good songs on the one hand, but also who they were, the marketing and their performances on the other hand.
reminds me of Gunnm / Battle Alita Angel, where the author coined the term panzerkunst as a martial art name.. first time I read about the real life term.
slight anecdote: some people really do have a glow that we can feel but not really explain, something electric and immediate, that will either catch an audience or even stop the air in the room. I don't go to concert often but the few time it happened I was quite shocked. You can put all the best vocal or musical technicians next to them and they would not be able to create that.
It's almost as HN is filled with actual real human beings with different opinions and emotions, some of them think legalizing prostitution should be done and some of them think using your body for industry favors is bad.
Both of these can be true too... We can be horrified that people abuse their positions of power to force people into sex to achieve a life goal while at the same time believe that prostitution should be legalized for those that choose to go down that path in life.
Legalizing behaviors doesn't endorse them either. It removes some of the danger inherent in the behavior.
Either way it usually has nothing to do with the job. Should we really be accepting of managers hiring/promoting people based on how likely they are to fuck them?
it is bad for promotions/opportunities at work to be doled out on any other basis than a good-faith estimate of capability. that is, assuming you agree that the point of work is to get work done.
Specific instances aren't really part of the point I'm trying to make. It's clear that there exists a non-zero number of people in positions of power expecting sex in exchange for opportunity and a lot of people just accept "that's how it is".
There is a surprisingly large number of comments here trying to justify this by redirecting focus towards the people who ultimately decided to give sex in exchange for opportunity. That's a completely separate debate that isn't even very controversial. It's those comments, and their upvotes, that concern me. Especially when they're high karma accounts on a site targeted at entrepreneurs that might be in a position to coerce someone towards choosing to give sex in exchange for opportunity.
Can you really not see the difference? In prostitution sex is the product being sold. In other environments sex is a distorting factor that puts those not willing to engage in it at a disadvantage and can cause great harm when it becomes an expectation.
I don't think it said they were forcibly raped; but that the sex was in exchange for something of value, like opportunity or promotion. So long as both parties are adults and in agreement, the "not willing to engage" part doesn't apply. Maybe it's still unethical, though.
the point is that even if the participants are okay with it, it still harms people who are unwilling to participate. if I'm a sex worker, my work is sex. nothing wrong with charging money for that. if I'm a software engineer, my work has nothing to do with sex, and my career progression should not be impeded by my refusal to have sex with my boss.
I was intending to make a more general statement on the effects of the practice on all participants and in other industries.
The disadvantage for being "not willing to engage" would be applied to those potential artists who refused the sexual advances of these people and were therefore passed over; despite potentially being a better candidate. I think you could even argue that there may be an element of coercion if the person was willing to engage originally. Now that your manager is responsible for your career are you really safe in saying no the second time?
The question is really whether we're okay with allowing sexual favours to be placed over merit when accepting people into an industry. I think the answer is unequivocally no, even in industries where sex is the product.
That guideline is there because this is such a common, tedious, and reliably provocative form of flamebait. Please make your substantive points without flamebait.
I've seen this take quite a bit lately with respect to cancel culture and I'm a bit confused about it.
Since HN is amazing, I'm hoping someone here can help me understand without it turning into a flamewar.
I don't understand how "cancel culture" is substantially different from what we used to call "boycotts", just with the internet for more social lubrication.
I suppose theres a risk that the allegations at the center of the boycott are incorrect, but isn't that what defamation laws are meant to combat?
The origin of the term boycott was a landlord's agent called Charles Boycott, who was socially and economically ostracised in response to the eviction of tenants.
I think one thing that I've noticed is that defamation laws seem really hard to enforce on people speaking on the internet, especially when one can hide behind a pseudonym or straight anonymity.
I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civil rights bus boycotts wanted a specific policy to change and once that policy changed, they stopped their boycotts. Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual and there doesn't seem to be much that the individual can do to seek redemption—but I may be wrong on this.
I hadn't considered the sort-of agenda that boycotts tend to have.
I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling.
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You lost me a bit on:
> Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual...
I've been conceptualizing the cancel as individuals choosing to not support creators, but this makes it sound like theres a third-party involved. A sibling comment mentioned people repeatedly calling Disney.. am I missing something here?
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I've been involved in one cancel before, so heres the frame of reference I'm coming from:
I like an artist named DojaKat.
A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it.
I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel).
Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists.
When I hear "cancel culture", I think of the cases where someone is accused of something, usually over social media, and without any real chance to defend themselves gets attacked and harassed by a hordes of anonymous strangers online in a witch hunt, typically alongside death threats and demanding that their employers fire them.
So, unless you sent DojaKat death threats or tried to have her fired/have her l7income taken away, I don't see a boycott like that as the same as "cancel culture" at all.
> I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling.
I appreciate this point. I think sometimes these waves of calls for cancellation play into larger movements that have more clearly defined goals, such as #metoo, which I think focused on shedding light on sexual violence/abuse/harassment and to get individuals and organizations to create more policies to prevent it from happening. Maybe when I think of "cancel culture" I think less of the underlying structural goals of it, but you've helped me step back to think of that.
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I think a lot with the call to "cancel" someone (I don't know why I feel compelled to put it in quotes but I keep doing it) is often to specifically tell the organization(s) to remove the individual from participating. E.g., wanting Netflix to fire Kevin Spacey in House of Cards (and other Hollywood production firms to no longer hire him), wanting radio stations to ban R Kelly's music, etc.
So I think it's the idea that for a person to be cancelled, someone has to do the cancelling.
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I guess for me, I wouldn't see that so much as how the phrase "cancel" is being used in the "cancel culture" idea. Yours seems to be you, the individual consumer, doing the cancellation, and also you being open to giving her a second chance through forgiveness.
I see a "cancel" of DojaKat in this instance being people demanding that her record company, her agent, TV stations, radio stations, and others agree to break relations with her and when she apologizes, to not forgive her and to not give her a second chance.
So in summary, I see "cancel culture" as more about trying to rally others, especially groups and institutions, to break off relations with that person (or sometimes a group) and to do so permanently.
I personally don't like it because I believe much more in restorative justice than I do retributive justice, and I also believe that by distancing ourselves from these people, through the power of the internet, they may find other people who feel alienated and cancelled and they could form into more and more radicalized groups.
Boycott is me (or you) choosing not to spend your money or do business with a particular entity due to perceived notions about that entity.
This cancel culture stuff is about not just "not reading the article and not going to the site", its an active attack against someone that you don't like.
A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.
There is a long history of people who have been fired due to public outrage. People have different (and a greater number of) means of communicating that outrage today, but the general mechanism hasn't changed.
When it's against individuals it starts to become harassment and bullying, depending on the severity. These are not things we generally care about protecting organizations from, just individuals.
I'm not sure about that. I'd always heard about it in the context of "deplatforming" people by actively getting them kicked off whatever social media or getting them fired from a job where they can influence society. Maybe that is where the word "cancel" originally comes from for all I know.
> A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.
I guess I'm not sure I see the difference here. complaining about what gina carano says on her twitter is, in a roundabout way, complaining about a disney product. disney didn't fire an actress from one of their popular shows because they got tired of listening to a small group of people complain; they did it because enough people complained that they saw a potential loss in future revenue. this looks a lot like a boycott to me.
What ever happened to the idea that people can express their own opinions without representing their employer? It used to be that many personal blogs had a readily visible disclaimer along these lines: "Opinions expressed do not express the views of my employer."
It was never much of a thing. If your social media posts cause a financial or reputational risk to your employer, they'll take action to resolve that risk regardless of a disclaimer in your bio.
> they did it because enough people complained that they saw a potential loss in future revenue
See, this is something I highly doubt. Do you think that there is such a large part of Disney public that does give a damn about what Gina Carano says? I don't think so. I want to count the ones who actually stop watching "the Mandalorian" because of Gina Carano's tweets. My bet is that they're so few they'd feel stupid after two weeks and start watching it again.
I think the issue here is that taken one by one, each of those who have the power to take decisions succumb to peer pressure and fear of being targeted next. Everyone is replaceable, so everyone prefers to keep on the safe side when confronted by people who are aggressive, determined, and always ready to escalate the pressure to the the next hierarchy level or to to start working out the weakest peers.
So the bottom line is that if the targets of these attacks just stood their ground united and told the mobs to fuck off, the cancellers would just vaporise in a couple of weeks.
Yes, you are correct. Noting that [not] all cancel efforts are the same, and I'm sure there are edge cases and exceptions, it seems that generally cancel culture efforts often gain momentum when the target shows 'perceived weakness' and often lose momentum when the target makes it very clear they don't care. In the case of corporations like Disney, the very idea of telling people to "fuck off" as you say is anathema to PR culture.
People getting fired for an allegation that doesn't pan out, but by then their reputation and career are already destroyed.
Or comments taken out of context or missing nuance.
Or punishment out of proportion to the offense.
In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals.
Suing for defamation can be expensive and risky, and doesn't necessarily restore reputational damage even if you win.
Obviously, some people clearly guilty of the accusations against them and deserve the consequences being meted out against them.
But there is also a long history of "witch hunts" and people being punished in ways that don't deserve. Social media is enabling a new form of that, which is what we call "cancel culture".
> In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals.
This isn't remotely new, though. For one very visible example in our industry, Lynn Conway got fired for coming out as transgender. Similarly, Turing was canceled for being gay. Politicians have been getting canceled for marital infidelity for most of my life (and, wow, Trump really modernized the Republican party on that one). Not to mention the McCarthy era, where people got canceled over suspected affiliation with leftists.
There's a huge panic about how cancel culture is destroying the world... but the difference is that people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry, instead of getting canceled by the intolerance and bigotry of those in power. And, yes. There are certainly cases where the cancellation is disproportionate to the offense. But compared to Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, and many many others canceled in the past... there's nothing new here, and historically speaking, this sort of cancellation is pretty soft.
Turing wasn't 'canceled' for being gay. He was prosecuted by the government according to the laws of the time, by police. Cancel culture is extra-legal and does not involve the use of laws or police.
Cancel culture is also distinct from politicians and infidelity because cancel culture targets non-public individuals. Of course politicians and celebrities were always subject to public opinion; the modern era now means that everyone can be targeted this way, even if they weren't known at all before (Justine Sacco is a simple example).
The McCarthy era was again a matter of government action through government processes with at least some level of transparency, democratic representation, and accountability. It was not spontaneous mobs of individuals without leaders or any kind of accountability. (They also targeted communists, not just 'leftists').
It's ironic you say casually that "people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry", when cancel culture is itself intolerance and bigotry. The standard definition of bigotry is "extreme intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." [0]
It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you who are openly clear that cancel culture is just like historical persecution, but you're totally fine with it because you (wrongly) think it only happens to bad people. As though only people you like deserve to have human rights.
You’re point about cancel culture being against _private_ individuals is new to me.
Where I think of people who have been cancelled I only think about celebrities.
Reading about Justine Sacco’s story was interesting. Do you know where I can learn more about private individuals being cancelled? (Googling only brings up celebs)
I feel a real urge to say, for the record, that I don’t consider myself strongly “anti-cancel culture” or whatever, just that I understand the skepticism towards it and think that it’s referring to something that exists and at the very least has amped up since the end of the Bush administration. Although, truth be told, I doubt that’d be enough if my turn comes, and maybe all that just proves the anti-CC people’s point.
The targets of cancel culture don't always get completely buried, just like attempts at murder don't always succeed. That doesn't mean it wasn't an attempted murder or an attempted cancelling.
Sure, but my point is that the thread author said:
> 2. A yoga studio that was so woke they had gender-neutral bathrooms and person-of-color yoga nights where “white friends and allies” were asked to “respectfully refrain from attending” has closed down due to racial accusations.
That was a lie. Kindness Yoga didn’t close down. So I’d advise others to take the thread author’s words with a grain of salt.
The news article from June 29th it links to says that they'd be shutting down, and the tweet was less than two weeks on. I found another news story from July 10th [1] - two days before the tweet went out - repeating the intention to shut down permanently, and another from August [2] that affirms that a shutdown happened. So at the time the author of the thread was in good faith relaying the truth.
I can't find any news stories indicating that it reopened, so unless you expect the author to live in Denver or be following closely every single example he provides months after the fact, I don't think this is a reasonable criticism.
ETA: Actually, their social media appears dead since June; Yelp shows many locations closed, and the locations it doesn't show as closed have, uh, poems written in memory of them...so I'm wondering if it actually did shutdown and you're not just mistakenly thinking of/talking about a different yoga studio entirely.
You make assertions which would require that the author was mistaken, while ungraciously and unfairly accusing them of lying. Posted elsewhere in this thread is evidence suggesting the possiblity that you may, in fact, have been mistaken. Can you provide evidence to the contrary?
You can schedule a class on their website *today*.
I'll grant that it's more likely a mistake than an outright lie.
I'd still recommend that you read what the thread author says with a grain of salt as they aren't corroborating the claims they're repeating.
If you dig into the sourcing if the Colorado Sun's article, it cites an Instagram post[1] as evidence the business is closing, but the post says no such thing.
> If you dig into the sourcing if the Colorado Sun's article, it cites an Instagram post[1] as evidence the business is closing, but the post says no such thing
In that post, they announced that they will be closing, with the proximal cause being a surge of cancelations immediately after the accusations. I cannot copy paste the text as its within the images.
Edit: "...I have decided to close Kindness Yoga." Previous slide uses vague, passive, avoidant language to reference the accusations.
Yeah, but huge grain of salt there. Several of references in that thread are being twisted out of proportion. Also, they couldn't be bothered to find single example where someone is being "canceled" or ridiculed for being too PC, which makes me think this is an axe-grind-with-the-left issue and less decrying the practice.
Cancelling is patching a hole in the American government, forcing things to be democratic instead of the stupid states rights business they use to ensure laws help and protect the wealthy and influential people.
Cancelling is much more democratic than policing, or the writing of laws. Nothing forces anyone to join in, everything is voluntary, and the cancelling only works when people agree. There is also no undemocratic way to get around it. Weinstein can pay of investigators, judges, journalists, and jurors, but he can't pay off everyone on the internet.
Similarly it's transparent - cancelling comes from specific instances of stuff. Screenshots, links, videos, etc
The big thing that's different between cancelling and historical persecution is that it's targetting people that used to be able to attack single points of failure to avoid being held accountable.
They should be happy it's not like historical persecution because when mobs used to get together to attack the rich, heads used to roll. Now the mob is content with making them not rich
How is cancel culture circumventing the legal system supposed to make it more democratic?
There is no real majority of people involved in canceling someone. It’s just a mad Twitter mob with a Pareto distribution where most people are content with posting mean tweets to virtue signal, and only few who go as far as calling up people’s workplaces to get them fired. It does not involve anyone beyond the mob, and even within the mob most aren’t willing to go very far. Yet it is the actions of only a few extremists that produce most of the mob’s impact. To call that democratic shows that you don’t seem to realize a world outside of your bubble exists, or should be acknowledged.
Cancel culture is basically softcore terrorism, and fittingly, portions of your rhethoric are not unlike a justification for terrorism.
> It's ironic you say casually that "people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry", when cancel culture is itself intolerance and bigotry.
You've hit Popper's paradox right on the head. Sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are examples of intolerance. Fighting those values, and criticizing/boycotting their champions, is not. This is the bright line between what the right decries as "cancel culture" of today vs the "cancel culture" of yesteryear.
> It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you...
So, you're making assertions about opinions that I hold, not based on opinions that I've stated, but upon those of "people like [me]." This is not a good-faith approach to conversation.
You're committing an extremely common mis-representation of what Popper wrote about his paradox.
As Popper wrote, his conception of 'intolerance' was not "sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia". In fact, none of these words had even been invented when he was writing!
Popper was very clear that he conceptualized 'intolerance' as people who will use violence and force and power to silence others. This he was specifically referring to intolerance of other beliefs, whether religious or political. This is exactly the kind of intolerance you are committing.
Please read what Popper actually wrote about the paradox before misrepresenting it - I see this error all the time.
>you're making assertions about opinions that I hold, not based on opinions that I've stated, but upon those of "people like [me]."
No, just about opinions you plainly stated - that you think cancel culture is cool because only people on your list are getting cancelled.
> The McCarthy era was again a matter of government action through government processes with at least some level of transparency, democratic representation, and accountability. It was not spontaneous mobs of individuals without leaders or any kind of accountability.
How were the perpetrators of McCarthyism held accountable?
"With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year,[12] McCarthy's support and popularity faded. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion."
i think boycotting a business or having a highly visible public figure (aka celebrities) face social consequences isn't "cancel culture". it comes with the territory, so to speak.
for me, personally, it's when your average joe gets the other end of internet mob justice and they suddenly seek to ruin everything about your life above and beyond what you would normally face.
Great questions, and I applaud your ability to approach a sensitive topic with such open curiosity.
Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit.
- The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized problem and response can now turn into a localized problem, but global response.
- The ability to go back-in-time is all too easy. That dumb comment you made as a teenager can come back years and years later to haunt you (or people close to you). Maybe you had a massive turn-around already or you were recorded without consent. Often that doesn't matter.
- It is fostering an insidious call-out culture. The focus is no longer on prevention and remediation, but on scoring points and repositioning power towards "the vanguard". Legitimate victims aren't helped to heal and offenders aren't led to improve.
- No room is given to defend yourself, particularly when mobbed upon. Even if the record is set straight later it doesn't matter, as your reputation (possibly friendships, career, and family life) is in tatters.
What I do feel worth asserting is this: no matter what the current norm is, always remember you will be judged according to later standards, right or wrong. The greater the disparity in power the more important this is regardless of role (e.g. boss, parent, etc).
You bet! Now, if you'll allow me to try to present the other side for your consideration:
- Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick.
- That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic.
- People are learning how horrible it is to rely on power and privilege to isolate you from the effects of your wrong-doing. Even if we assume the best of people and that they aren't consciously doing this, it is still pushing awareness closer to consciousness and thus (hopefully) better decision making.
- The importance of allyship is making massive strides. As oft quoted, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". On a personal note, as a kid watching a neighborhood kid get his bully-buddy to stop throwing snowballs at another kid taught me a lesson I've never forgotten.
- "Good" and "bad" deeds always have a "blast radius" and require support of some kind to sustain. Engaging organizations and platforms that surround people is a critical component to making a change, or all you're doing is swapping the hood ornament on the car without touching the engine underneath.
> - Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick.
I was under the impression the virtue signalling specifically requires insincerity.
For example, if you inject yourself into a conversation to lecture everyone about what a great ally you are (and you don't even really mean it), that is virtue signaling.
If you try to make it all about yourself, and assert completely risk free opinions that challenge nothing, that is virtue signalling.
Simply sharing and asserting your values doesn't have to be virtue signalling.
> - That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic.
Nobody objects to the underlying idea of witch hunting. If there were actual witches that were using magic powers to poison the town, of course we should have an inquisitor to hunt them down.
This has only ever been a discussion about tactics.
Thanks for your extra thoughts -- I think they add some very relevant color that I was intentionally omitting.
I think there are lot of loaded words in our political vocabulary and their meaning can have subtle (or even significant) shifts based on who uses them. If "virtue signaling" includes a connotation of insincerity, and that aspect changes everything entirely as you show.
I used it in a more strictly technical sense, but I think it fair to say that with most language the neutral, technical version is the least common in actual usage.
-- it is selectively enforced depending on what side someone is on -- especially with regards to forgiveness of something which happened some time ago.
-- Context is irrelevant. People are being canceled for using the wrong word when enumerating words which cannot be said. again, some people can say them, some can't.
-- it is completely out of proportion to things which do actual damage. This really bothers me. Someone saying something really bad means less to me than even the mildest act of violence
-- some places are upping the ante to claim that speech is actual violence and that if certain people aren't fired, then the workplace is unsafe
I wouldn't consider that by itself as representative of anything - it's completely normal that people get upset about other people for all kinds of subjective reasons, that's normal free speech and diversity of opinions, I'm not the one to judge whether their upset is justified or not.
But what seems problematic for me is when institutions react to random outrage groups (which often are very vocal but small groups) on social media by blindly joining in the outrage and rapidly severing ties with people (firing them, removing authors, etc) without a serious investigation of what - if any - actual wrongdoing there was, what were the circumstances, etc. I would expect some semblance of due process instead of "just" doing what the crowd says immediately for PR reasons.
> -- it is selectively enforced depending on what side someone is on
Joss Whedon is a showrunner and filmmaker, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. A few years ago while going through a divorce, his ex-wife alleged that he had sex with female staff on one of his shows. This lead to allegations that his demeanor on the set of Justice League was snide and unprofessional. Which lead to former Buffy and Angel actors coming forward, and alleging that Joss called an actress "fat" when she got pregnant almost 20 years ago.
James Cameron is a filmmaker of Titanic and Terminator fame. He has been married five times, notably to filmmakers he's worked with and actresses who worked on his films. Some of his divorces have been attributed to affairs with other actresses under his employ. He is a notoriously angry and difficult director to work for, and on the set of The Abyss he was punched in the face by an actor who was nearly allowed to drown because Cameron didn't want to spoil the take.
Joss Whedon is effectively canceled. He has been forced to step down from a new show he was developing for HBO, and his fanbase on various Internet forums has viscerally turned against him.
James Cameron is an Academy Award winner, one of the most marketable brands in the entertainment industry, and everyone will be lining up to watch Avatar sequels over the next few years.
For me personally, the inconsistency and near-randomness of it all is just... unsettling.
I see the difference as being that boycotting is a means of protesting a specific policy or practice in the hopes that an organization changes.
Cancel culture is wanting to punish a person (or virtue signal) for something in the past. Maybe they deserve it - I get it more when there's a history of credible charges of sexual assault or something (but then, I'd prefer they be tried in court and punished via the legal system). But the bar seems to have lowered and now you get fired for a tweet people don't like. And maybe people have the right to do it, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. If we're not careful it takes over the role of rule of law in our society and will do a worse job of it.
In the recent case of Gina Carano specifically, I don't think her tweet is remotely offensive to the level of being fired, and the effect will be that she's given a voice and seen as a martyr by people who have far more extreme opinions than what she's voiced previously.
IMO the main issue with cancel culture is when it targets people who are innocent or gives unreasonable punishments for small mistakes. Those being cancelled are tried in the court of social media, where critics attack without evidence or even knowing the accusations. The accused' friends and employers fear being associated with the accused, even if they ultimately get cleared of any wrongdoing, and they can sue for defamation but it won't necessarily work out.
People have gotten kicked out of colleges for using racist words in text messages. People have been fired for their jobs for messages taken out of context. Non-public individuals start getting death threats online and they get called out in the streets, for small mistakes or things taen out of context.
A separate issue is that people sometimes get cancelled for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes even when they were still young. The issue here is that people change. It would be like boycotting a company because 20 years ago they exploited workers, regardless of whatever they're doing today. It's a really grey area.
There is no such thing as cancel culture. It is a rhetorical device created to shift blame, allowing perpetrators of injustices to claim that they are really the victims.
Define injustice. Are you talking about serious hate crimes, i.e. physical violence? "Softer" but still awful actions, such as discriminatory hiring practices? Or impolitic comments that cause no actual harm? If you are talking about the first two, they are not merely injustices but crimes with legal (often criminal) remedies.
Cancel culture typically refers to instances of the third option, someone saying something mean and having his life ruined for it. A good example: a guy's business was ruined because his daughter wrote some mean things online as a kid. https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-... They were certainly bad, and her parents ought to chastise and punish her for them. But neither she nor her father should face "cancellation". I feel just as sorry for her; she may never get into college or get a good job because of this. These weren't "injustices"; no man was harmed.
A boycott is when consumers protest an organization by refusing to do business with them. Typically this is done to try an effect a change in behavior or policy in said organization.
Cancel culture usually targets an individual. The objective is typically not change in policy, but the ostracism of the target.
E.g. refusing to buy from Nike until they pay better wages to their manufacturing labor is a boycott. Pressuring a company to fire a certain employee because a group doesn't like the political views of said employee is cancel culture.
Yes, they are equivalent to boycotts, but think about how hard it was to organize a boycott. They were done at large scale to protest things like “black people must sit in the back of the bus.”
Now your career can end because “You encouraged too much forgiveness for a girl who attended the wrong kind of party at 18.”
It can be, sure. Or getting you fired or otherwise demanding that your income stream is taken away. Without any recourse or chance to defend yourself, typically. This is often alongside mass outrage and death threats and usually the majority of the participants are just jumping on to score points or be part of it or whatever, without really having put much thought into whether the accusations are true or how their actions will affect others.
Like "terrorists" vs "freedom fighters" it's very much about which side you're on. And if you feel like you're about to slip into minority status, you suddenly have a very different opinion on the majority making their voices heard than you did when you were the majority.
The surface level distinction is that a boycott is aimed at an organization while canceling is aimed at a person. That has deeper consequences because our mental model of organizations and people is different.
With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved.
But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future.
Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill.
It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of.
In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.
_Are_ cancels intended to be permanent? I posted about the only cancel I've intentionally been involved in elsewhere:
I like an artist named DojaKat.
A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it.
I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel).
Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists.
I mean, I'm no authority on any of this. But my impression is that most of the high profile cancelations I've seen have no attached list of demands at which point the person is considered to have made amends and can return to their previous stature.
> Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
Unless you were publicly telling other people that they shouldn't stream her then I wouldn't interpret it as any kind of "cancel". We're all free to stop consuming from anyone for whatever reason we like. That's not canceling people, it's just having a preference.
Since cancels arise out of conversation and theres no central organizer I don't see how a cancel _could_ have a list of demands.
At the same time, I'm sure the individuals who are opting to not support could conceivably be swayed back into supporting the creator in most cases.
I guess my point is that theres a de facto list of demands in most cancels, you just don't see them because theres no central authority to reiterate it.
____
I didn't tell other people to stop streaming her, but I learned about the video and chose to boycott because other people were telling me to do so.
If I had posted on Facebook: "I saw an old video where DojaKat used an offensive racial slur, and have thusly chosen to stop consuming her music. Here is the video for your reference"
Would that have constituted cancelling? I'm just expressing my preference to my friends, no?
>This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians.
I was with you up until here. This is blatantly wrong. Regular people are being cancelled all the time. Besides, people in prestigious positions deserve due process just like anyone else. Cancel culture intentionally circumvents any semblance of due process or fairness.
For the record, I'm not making any statement either for or against "cancel culture" in general, just articulating how I think it differs from boycotts.
Just a slightly orthogonal point: don't discount the "internet for more social lubrication" issue.
The use of feedback and machine learning (even simple mechanisms) in social media to selectively show the most engaging content has, in my opinion, been a fundamental cause of cancel culture. Cancel culture requires "moral outrage", and enragement is engagement, so Twitter (esp) is a factory for moral outrage.
This is fundamentally different from boycotts in the sense that boycotts were "organised", "led", or "stirred up" (according to your pov) by people. For example, anti-Nestle campaigners collecting petition signatures. There's a real world cost, a responsibility to be taken, a time lapse.
In contrast, moral outrages are manufactured almost autonomously by curation algorithms that are constantly searching for engagement. Outrage happens to be one really good strategy for that. The barrier to participation is extremely low - just click here, type an optional tweet dunking further on the target if you wish - and the speed they can spread is fast.
Compounding this is the propensity to be outraged has increased, I think, partly because "engagement-rich" modes of thinking have been spread. I'll resist giving concrete examples to leave the discussion politically neutral.
I really think there's an awful lot of responsibility for this problem on the social media companies and their leaders.
In my eyes it's usually like competing witch hunts / trials with modern legal system :)
Way too often people are not interested in justice but revenge, even with the facts out there the will to destroy someone you don't is bigger than reason.
Well, I saw somebody illustrate the point very with this comparison "How can you argue somebody should lose their job and not be forgiven for a bad word they said 10 years ago, but at the same time argue criminals who robbed somebody should get forgiven and get probation in less time?"
I've seen a handful of people make the point on permanency, but it doesn't sit right with me.
Since theres no central authority enforcing a cancel, how can it be permanent?
How many times has Kanye West been "cancelled"? It seems to me everyone forgets about having cancelled him whenever he releases a new album ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And it makes sense to me, since cancels are done by disconnected individuals, a cancel ought to only last as long as the cancelling collective's attention span.
Lower threshold for one to occur. A cancel attempt can be really small. Sometimes a single person is enough.
More targeted and more often aimed at specific individuals.
As a side effect of the above, it is much easier to devolve into harassment and worse crimes than when it was a business that was being boycott.
More access to data to cancel on. Much easier to take information out of context now that social media exists.
Cancels also take on characteristics of a meme. A given behavior may lead to a cancel attempt while far worse behavior by others is ignored. There is a lack of rhyme or reason that pairs up with how some things become a meme and other similar things do not.
What is considered worthy of being canceled has increased to include many actions that the majority does not feel comfortable cancelling over, but given the previous changes a smaller group is needed to convince HR that someone should be fired.
That’s what I was telling a friend who’s against social media the other day. Without social media there would be no gay marriage. Social medias amplify minority issues.
That's a somewhat odd statement. Gay marriage was legalised in several countries before the advent of what we consider social media (Facebook etc.) - and a lot of other social change happened well before computers were even a thing, let alone instantaneous communication. Can you expand on what you mean?
My theory is that social changes happen when things get really bad for enough people, so minorities are often excluded or it takes a lot of time for them to get their voice heard/change to happen.
Do you have a source on a country that legalized gay marriage without social networks? I’m not saying it can’t happen but that would put a dent in my theory. I think Taiwan had it happen before FB but they have what I would consider social networks before we did.
I'll grant that none of these were before the internet but
there's nothing uniquely special about gay marriage that required the internet for organising, a huge amount of activism was done in person, just like in various other civil rights movements in assorted countries pre-internet.
Interesting! Actually, looking at the timeline[1] it looks like these were pretty isolated until 2011 and BOOM, in 2012 you get 13 countries legalizing it, in 2013 you get 35, in 2014 you get 42, the rest is history.
So I might still have a point?
Same thing if you think about the #metoo movement, all it took was a tweet for the world to start moving, whereas it took a woman to kill herself in France in 1944 for women to get the right to vote.
Many of these countries' social medias are heavily controlled by their government + they are developing countries and/or lagging behind in terms of social norm. I'm pretty sure things are changing quite fast for them though!
You know how positive feedback loops exist in social media (in terms of engagement) with negative outcomes (whether for the user, society, ..)?
Maybe that’s following a YouTube rabbit hole and now you’re unintentionally watching flat earth or politically radicalizing videos. Maybe you internalize that content which you otherwise wouldn’t have consciously decided to watch had you not been led there.
A sibling comment refers to cancel culture as democratic. That would be great if it were deliberate and rational. But I wonder how much canceling stems from a similar, for example Twitter-centric, pipeline to the YouTube flow above?
Informed, justified, and deliberate canceling as the voice of the people sounds great and I would very much be behind that. But I worry that an increasing portion of the mob is comprised of people led to outrage not by choice but by social media dark patterns.
On the one hand, I've known of all sorts of ridiculous and unbalanced leftist moral outrage misdirected to individuals rather than the broader system (which is what leftists are supposed to oppose).
On the other hand, I feel like the phrase "cancel culture" itself has become an ill-defined catch-all used to attack an ill defined group of people - a situation that mirrors these misdirected leftist attacks.
> On the other hand, I feel like the phrase "cancel culture" itself has become an ill-defined catch-all used to attack an ill defined group of people
“Cancel culture” is what, after about four decades of nonstop use, the Right has done a search and replace in their canned narratives to replace “political correctness” with. With exactly the same complaints and descriptions of the nature and effects, including the continuous argument that it is new.
Mafia owned Elvis. If the king didn't had a chance what chance have the pop stars? Get serious, where is lust, regardless of industry, there is Mafia, organized or not.
I'm not aware of any documented control of Elvis by the mafia. Are you perhaps confusing the "Memphis Mafia" nickname of his entourage with the actual mafia?
> the Mafia is very much a part of the music industry,
I'm not too familiar with the pop side of the music industry. I dipped my toe into the Rap/R&B side of the business building websites for new artists. There were literal gangsters in the recording studios sitting across from me drinking and smoking and they made plans for every aspect of these young girls lives: what and when they could eat, who they could see, where they could travel. They were given an allowance. Sexual favours weren't requested or performed in front of me but it was clear these girls were under control. And by girls I mean 15,16,17.
This is why I don't understand the massive cultural obsession over KPOP. It's one of the grossest abusive industries, and anyone who wants to know is able to do a simple google to find out. Those fans? They could use their collective economic impact to help those folks they "love". Instead they just let them get used and abused for their fantasy.
What Kpop fans are these? None of the Big 3 Kpop companies are worshiped and the men who founded them are hated. Smaller Kpop companies are not worshiped either. There's some BTS fans who like Big Hit but that's about it.
Really? Prince's right to his own (stage) name? Taylor Swift and the rights to her early albums? And even if we're just talking about royalties, it looks like half of established artists have had lawsuits about labels defrauding them in some way, and the other half seem to have similar issues settled out of court.
The first problem here is using Google to find information about Kpop rather than Naver. Many of the abusive practices in Kpop also happen in the western music industry. It doesn't make it right, but Americans and American media have a massive blind-spot when looking at foreign cultures.
Kpop has become popular because it fills a niche that the western music industry doesn't cater to anymore. Some of it is actually better than the American pop scene. Right now there's no male western pop act with this Kpop idol's level of skill.
Every fan of a Kpop artist has a long list of how they have been mistreated and mismanaged, and sometimes these aren't even justified, the fans are being oversensitive. The fans pay for protest trucks to park outside the music company buildings with screens displaying their demands for better treatment.
Isn't the problem here that the talent is fungible? The rewards are so high that there's no shortage of sufficient talent to make another Bieber or Taemin.
People personally connect with the performer, but the performer's popularity is dependent on the whims of the industry and their managers.
It would be naïve to expect a different outcome when the underlying drivers are the same.
Both Japan and Korea are notable for their talent development pipeline. Did the West fall behind somehow, or is the market for these types of performances simply not as lucrative in the West? Or maybe it's simply easier/more predictable to manage solo acts?
[1] Places k-pop behind pop, rock, oldies, hip-hop/rap, dance/electronic and indie/alternative.
It is a little ironic that you say they're not required to give sexual favours and say right after that they're just like models, another industry where that is very very common.
Hollywood/Music/Modelling are industries of individuals, sometimes coming together for productions, entire segments of the industry never work in classically professional environments.
Given how fundamentally exploitative the KPop industry is, whether or not the exploitation is also sexual is not particularly important to me personally. The industry is unhealthy for the people that participate in it and it should not exist in it's current form.
I worked for a startup that contracted with the major record labels at the time, with a lot of the funding coming from the record labels.
One day a group of four men arrived at the office. They were investors and not too happy with how the stock had been performing. This was a time before naked shorting was illegal. They all wore suits and one of the men carried a baseball bat into the office. They all had stereotypical gangster accents. They had a closed door meeting with the CEO that day, baseball bat and all, and I'm pretty sure they got paid that day.
It was one of the most bizarre work experiences in my life. Mafia in the music industry? Yes, yes it is.
The attitude of "they don't catch every criminal, therefore it isn't being enforced" that people take towards financial crimes is silly.
40% of murderers get away with it but no one goes around trying to claim that "murder but by illegal but it certainly isn't enforced".
Over 60% of rapists get away with it. 70% of robbery. 80% of theft. 87% of burglary.
Just because financial crimes (maybe) have a slightly higher rate of "getting away with it" is no reason to make the disingenuous claim that it isn't enforced.
Refer to "Practices Related to Naked Short
Selling Complaints and Referrals" by the Office of the Inspector General: https://www.sec.gov/files/450.pdf
> Our audit disclosed that despite the tremendous amount of attention the practice of naked short selling has generated in recent years, Enforcement has brought very few enforcement actions based on conduct involving abusive or manipulative naked short selling.
> Of approximately 5,000 naked short selling complaints
received in the ECC between January 1, 2007 and June 1, 2008, only 123 (approximately 2.5 percent) were forwarded for further investigation.
I guarantee that more 2.5% of murders are investigated. Reg SHO violations remain massively under-investigated still today, to the extent that the SEC is well aware of simple ways to bypass: https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-...
The stories around Death Row Records are now legend.
Dr. Dre said he saw one sound tech get beat down by six guys because he rewound the tape back too far.
The amount of intimidation, blackmail and extortion many in the rap game talked about was legit. Even in the DMX documentary, the two founders talked about twice strong arming record labels and their owners to let artists they wanted to sign out of their contracts.
This is why I don't listen to the music they play on the radio and only listen to demoscene tracks and armature folk recordings. You can feel this stuff going on in the music.
I used to cover (photography) the BET music awards for a newspaper between 2006-2009. I saw the same things, in dressing rooms, green rooms and after parties. Someone controlled the female artists, who they can talk with, who could take pictures of them, etc. It made my job hard and sometimes impossible.
No, if you are trying to actually protecting someone, you don't end up isolating them nor controlling who they can talk to. Protection would be that the artist decides who she/he talks to and you enforce that. If you make those decisions and expect artist to comply, it is not protection anymore.
I worked for the movie industry only for a couple of years and on very technical low-level roles, almost apprentice level. Think data tech or in color grading and only as a side gig.
I also frequented movie festivals.
Don't take this personally but I think you were at the wrong parties. Good signs to tell if you are "in" or not: do you know how to get illegal drugs on set? have you ever been to a private event in a hotel room or AirBNB before or after a ceremony? have you ever been in the same room with an A list celebrity or actor when they are using an illegal substance?
If the answer to all those is no then yeah it's probably that you are in the wrong parties.
If you've been there and like never witnessed a movie level epic orgy then that's great for you. I know they are not usual on some circles, I've heard Disney and Netflix try to keep their staff on a tight leash. Honestly I wished my experience was more like yours because I liked the industry and it was a little bit of a dream of mine to be more involved with the movie creative process, and one of the reasons I didn't get more into it was that I was not comfortable mixing illegal drugs and orgies with work in the way it was usual.
I don't think OP was in the entertainment industry. He has worked with several large companies at a very senior level and has never experienced anything like what is alleged to occur in the entertainment industry.
Yes, thanks for clarifying - I should have highlighted that I worked in tech. This is why I was wondering how life is different between companies (and even organizations within a company).
Oh sorry I thought you were talking about roles on the entertainment industry. I also work in tech and worked in tech most of my life and even talking about this stuff in certain circles can get you fired. Not so much about the drugs thing, but for for reason the tech industry is very conservative regarding sex.
> but for for reason the tech industry is very conservative regarding sex.
IDK about that it's the same or slightly better than the rest of corporate America IME. Maybe a bit more lenient, if anything.
Industry is "very conservative" because talking about sex can almost instantaneously turn into sexual harassment. So you have to be careful talking about it. Drugs don't have the same liability concerns, if people aren't obviously loaded on the job.
I'm talking about frivolous lawsuits as well as legitimate grievances. People have a right not to deal with sexual discomfort (I don't have a better name for this concept - the uncomfortable feelings people have when talking about sex). Some people are very very uncomfortable talking about sex for various reasons. You can't even mention it without toing this line, or potentially crossing it.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding the tech industry being conservative on sex. I've met so many very openly LGBTQ in software. It definitely feels more common than elsewhere, especially with these corporate jobs.
The discomfort is considered to be part of the broad topic of ‘consent’. In a similar manner to people consenting to actual sexual actions, you should get consent about talking about sex, because people’s boundaries are all over the place, and you’re almost certainly not going to get informed, free consent in a workplace with power dynamics.
Right, in a way that's what I'm talking about. I still wanted to come up with a separate term for the "feelings", vs. the concept of consent which is designed to prevent people inflicting these feelings on parties against their will. I still don't like my own choice of wording... feels kinda weak, or an understatement
I believe the reason you don't see this kind of parties in tech is because the industry is filled with people who are introverts, not specially groomed/attractive and/or not very good reading social cues.
If we already had a GPT-deepfake interface I would now ask it to generate a costumed Elon Musk confusedly 'John Travolta'ing (the Pulp Fiction meme) in the middle of a SciFi sex party.
No, I don't think so. That's a 1980s era explanation. There are people who aren't especially attractive in all industries. Even in Hollywood, look at what Weinstein got up to, and he isn't exactly Adonis reborn.
I think the explanation is simpler: music and acting jobs are easy. Lots of people can sing, dance, semi-convincingly repeat lines written for them by other people, or even write scripts. It's just not a very skilled set of jobs. It doesn't take 5 years of study to become a great actor, people just luck into it all the time. Anywhere you get the intersection of a lot of money and easy jobs, you get jobs being parcelled out according to criteria like looks, knowing the right people, having the right parents, having the right party attitudes, or how easily they get into bed. After all, what other criteria are they going to use to differentiate between the masses of hopefuls applying for their chance at fame and fortune.
In contrast, tech is hard. It takes years of study to even get in on the bottom rung. Then it takes many more years of obsessive-level study and work to climb to the top. The difference in skill between a newbie and a master is enormous. If you're interviewing for a master software developer, and say "hey, you party much?" and they reply with something lame and boring like "no, I prefer to spend time with my wife and kids" then in a well functioning organisation they will still get the job. In quite a few other industries, if the interviewer is young that reply could easily cause you to be ranked lower than some other candidate who said "I'm always up for a good time!"
I'm not sure where to start with this, so I'll start with the broad strokes: You've underestimated the difficulty of creative work (or what is traditionally seen as creative) and overestimated the difficulty of "tech" (which I would argue is also a creative field). If anything, tech is ridiculously easy to get into even if you are patently and demonstrably unskilled. The same is simply not true for other creative work (at least not if it has to pay the bills).
Also, young naive tech people are consistently and often financially exploited by startups in the valley all of the time. It’s just a different kind of exploitation.
I would say the grandparent even has the correlation backwards.
Tech isn’t necessarily harder or easier, there is just so much demand for tech that employees can afford to walk away from egregious behavior. Most creative industries do not suffer from extremely high demand.
In fact this isn’t even true for all tech. Academia sounds like a big hazing ritual. Games has had high profile abuse cases. And startups can be plenty exploitative.
tech is ridiculously easy to get into even if you are patently and demonstrably unskilled
For what definition of "get into tech" is this? Be somewhere in the proximity of a company that calls itself a tech company? Maybe? Be hired as an actual software developer after starting from scratch - this is by no means "ridiculously easy". I've helped people try to break in and they found it extremely hard.
I am as always assuming schooling. If you've done no relevant schooling it may be difficult at first, but relatively I'd say it still isn't very difficult when compared to other industries.
> music and acting jobs are easy. Lots of people can sing, dance, semi-convincingly repeat lines written for them by other people, or even write scripts.
Oh please. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I can't speak to acting, but it takes far more than 5 years of study to become a professional dancer or musician
(oh and FWIW I've been a professional software dev for 25 years, having lucked into it just by being a nerdy guy in the right place at the right time)
John Lennon formed the Beatles when he was 20, after flunking out of music school, failing his O-Levels and being written off by his teachers. He wrote his first top 10 hit when he was 15, just a year or so after getting his first guitar. The Beatles was formed mostly of his mates, no extensive 5+ year study of music went into any of this.
Naturally talented group, yes, but that is nowhere near the same as requiring years of study to be able to get work in the field at all.
The history of most bands and professional musicians is the same. They're all self taught and it doesn't take years before they can get work. The slogan "learn to code" was deemed a quasi-offensive thing to say to out of work Appalachian coal miners because it implied that anyone can learn to code pretty easily, and that's widely recognised across society as not being true. How many of those coal miners could already sing songs or play musical instruments? Probably quite a few.
Music, acting, and dancing are much, much more difficult than you portray them to be. It's just that the people who are good at it make it look easy. The competition is also extremely fierce and ruthless. There is little demand for most artists.
In tech, there is high demand for even moderately proficient individuals. There are tons of free tools and helpful resources to help you study and improve. If you have access to a computer and the internet you are already in a great position to practice. Being a master is obviously tremendously hard, but it is far from necessary for a good life.
If I had to choose, I would pick tech since there is a greater probability of having a very decent standard of living, and tech workers are generally left alone when it comes to the rest of their lifestyle. They do not need to keep up a personal style and social life that directly feeds into their job prospects. That's why the last point you mentioned is actually in favor of tech being easier.
I worked in film visual effects for nearly a decade, and my wife was a AAA producer (since left the industry.) Perhaps because we were a couple, I never encountered any sex orgies, but the drugs, oh yeah, the drugs were very prevalent.
Well it will make it easier to get promoted if you are good looking and/or mentally and physically fit enough to do a shit ton of drugs every day so you are "friends" with everyone. So yeah a lot of people don't want it to go away.
I don't like mixing it with professional life because it pushes people that can't take it away from a job were partying and getting intoxicated is "required". Even if they are good at that job.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of serious, dedicated folks in the upper ranks of most businesses... and then there are other types of folks. Ex-CEO of Broadcom is one example. I worked at a startup where the well-connected CTO invited me to come to Tijuana with him and the secretary for a night of indiscretions. I've found having long hair and looking like a partier gets people to open up to you and you find out some of the straight laced folks you thought you knew are much different.
Of course individual cases happen - I know of a few. I was more thinking about the way corporate parties are depicted in media (Hollywood movies, mostly).
I am French and worked for French, German and US companies (tech) and I never witnessed what was discussed above.
Flights in corporate jets were convenient and everyone was either chatting, or reading, or working. Multiple week travels in great hotels were pleases where people got to know, had dinner and then everyone went to their room.
Parties were parties (including after-parties), some drinking, lots of laughing and that's all.
All this from "general population" parties/travels, to top level ones.
Like I said: I must have been to the wrong parties :)
I was signing contracts or giving GO/NOGO for others (as customers of vendors, very large contracts) and I was getting invitations to dinners, sport events or "company walk-though" in interesting places (that I never took because this the way I work). These were "normal" sales invitations, no hidden agenda.
Since we’re sharing weird work stories, I was working for an early cloud provider in SF back around 2010, coming out from NYC about once a month or so. Got into the office right off the plane late afternoon once and one of the sales guys wanted to get drinks after work, told me he’d come by the company apartment to get me.
So he swings by to pick me up and I didn’t ask where we were headed, figured just some cocktail bar or something normal. Nope, we roll up to a strip club out near North Beach. It actually was my first time in one, I was young and it never was my thing. The guy had a bottle of vodka on a shelf behind the bar that he used for clients (but honestly for whoever), and the strippers all knew him. I start talking to one of the performers about regular things - the school she was studying at, her family, etc. Then somehow we start talking about how they had a private room that was mainly for Zynga employees, with video game setups, bottle service and private dances. She made it clear that lots of tech companies came in to entertain clients, investors, and whoever else they wanted to.
Last time I let a sales guy bring me somewhere without telling me what the plan was first.
This kinda reminds me of an experience I had years ago, working at a small startup that was "disrupting" a particular industry. One of my coworkers was interested in this other company's software products so we contacted them and they sent a couple of sales people over for a meeting.
Okay, here's what happened. I'll never forget it because it was so weird. There was a younger guy and a much older guy. They introduce themselves, the younger one hands us business cards and pamphlets, and then the oldest one... starts telling us names of all the people he sold products to.
It was so weird because neither of them knew much about the product they were selling. Just their customers. And they tried hard to figure out if we knew any of their customers. Given our company's culture, we were all fairly new and thrown off guard by that lol. I think only one of us knew any of the people he was talking about.
We ended up not buying any of their products, because among other things, it was the worst sales pitch I've ever heard of. Like they relied on connections lol.
I wonder if it's common in other industries e.g. dance. And how many victims there are, and how many of them are those most easily exploited: the poor, weak, and underage.
My sister-in-law withdrew from a US-based doctoral operatic program, and a residency with the Royal Opera, specifically because she realized she could not further her career without granting continuous sexual favors.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 474 ms ] threadNo way? Next you'll tell me Hollywood has this same problem...
Many social groups who help each other with resources without keeping tabs still can recognize when someone is leaching off the group, especially when they recognize the person has the ability to contribute to the group but chooses not to. People who support someone without expecting them to be paid back often have an expectation of the relationship being two sided with sentiments such as "I know if the roles were reversed, you would do the same for me." In cases where the roles do reverse but they don't do the same, you see people quite broken. It wasn't ever a strict tally, but it does hurt the person that their relationship wasn't as too sided as they expected.
We even describe people as being enablers when they give to someone without receiving back what we think is due (with that last part being defined in highly situations terms).
They can not require sexual favors when they are about to decide who to help. This ability is entirely within their possibilities.
Because really, the biggest integrity fail in this is sexual harassment, making business decisions based on sexual favors (demanding ones or accepting them) and abuse of power.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have a gut feeling when something feels wrong. We have an inner sense of boundaries which eg. can be damaged by trauma and deeply affects our ability to connect and such.
But when it comes to adult relationships there is a wide spectrum of behaviours and unless everyone tells you something is deeply wrong, I think there are times and places where people may not endure the same sense of shame.
Institutions of power are masters of controlling people. It's almost scientific.
"You can't have it both ways; You can't enjoy listening to somebody singing sad songs about the blues and heartbreak and then not expect them to be truly heartbroken."
A lot of artists already struggle with mental health and addiction issues and that is why their music is powerful and propels their success.
Amy Winehouse is one of my favorite artists. Watch Amy for an amazing, sad, portrait that shows her existing struggles which were amplified to the extreme by our treatment and ridicule of her.
Mac Miller is another example that comes to mind, his last few albums in particular are lyrically intense and personal and candid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddRN5lYMTJY
I salute your inflated ego, sir!
But this sort of behavior reinforces the idea that the industry would be filled with shameless people who would do anything to get ahead. Actual talent would be at best a secondary factor to success. We have lost generations of talented artists simply because they had a shred of integrity.
Note: I'd never use sex in a bargain, vows and dealing with peoples emotions is a very serious thing to me. I'm not everyone though.
Now, one could come up with alternate motivations. "So, let's see just how dedicated you are to your career" ... Oh lord, I can't finish that with a straight face. I mean, if someone does think sex is at least mildly sacred, then being willing to do it for career purposes would show dedication (or desperation), but there are probably lots of other ways to measure that, not to mention that you might end up selecting less for dedication and more for sexual blaséness.
I am not speaking from experience here.
There's no reason for these things to be sacred cows outside of what society tries to program us to believe.
How much of the content you consume comes out of this environment?
Are you letting that content set what you imagine is normal behavior?
As a society, what role does the entertainment industry play in setting behavioral norms?
Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power.
But on the point of averages: the median human has two breasts and no testicles.
As an asexual person, not only are we not respected whatsoever here, but in my experienced, also personally attacked.
That your comment about erasure is getting this many down votes is unfortunately absolutely common for HN, and I'm incredibly disappointed in that.
Before people jump in who might not be asexual to try to defend this - it's such a problem I have actually shared emails with an admin who actually seem genuinely concerned about the problem. Just the truth.
I'm not sure why HN has it in for asexuals, but God damn guys, can't you ease up on us?
We exist because we exist, nothing else.
For real, it's been such an issue here I have had emails with an admin but didn't press the issue further and I think it's due time to send another one. They really did seem to care and to be concerned.
In the very situation the BBC story refers to, it doesn't matter whether you're an asexual musician. The producer/executive/... would still expect sex from you. They don't give a shit, follow their ingrained patterns, and that's the problem.
No part of "Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power." is in any way diminishing or erasing asexual people. If anything, it exemplifies the additional plight that being asexual brings, even over other LGBTQ+ preferences. Society expects you to be about sex & that's gonna be a very slow change.
There's a massive difference between an observation and a judgment. Especially if that 'observation' is a commonly quoted statement (aphorism, as has been pointed out).
Personally, I'm pretty close to asexual if we'd consider sexuality a spectrum. As such, if anything, I find the observation valuable because it underlines how much sex plays a role in areas of life where really perhaps it shouldn't.
Pointing out something that is true or at worst perceived to be true is in no way equal to agreeing with it, or morally defending it.
My responses, however, about the general negative atmosphere towards LGTBQ+ folks here, especially asexuals in particular - (no idea why, asexuals in particular; it's just relentless, sometimes) - also got downvoted into near oblivion.
They consistently have, and I regret even opening up about it, honestly, because I hate getting dragged into this shit online, but I wanted to actually back up and validate the OP who has evidently had an extremely similar experience to my own, that; yes, HN has a long-standing problem with LGBTQ+ relations, and neither OP or I are the first to experience or post about it.
That we choose to open up about the negative treatment, and get downvoted for it, for me; is an issue of respect and being heard.
Downvotes on a post saying that we feel the community needs work with regards to respect for LGBTQ+ people obviously only make, at least myself - feel even shittier and more unheard.
Getting downvoted into oblivion for opening up about the negative treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals on this particular forum seems clearly intentionally * phobic and that's just a shit sandwich I can't do much about.
Is it the stigma associated with asexuality? Is is just general * phobia? I'm not sure what makes HN in particular so awful with regards to LGBTQ+ issues - today has certainly all but reaffirmed that for me - but for such an intelligent crowd, and a bunch of people from the Bay area and shit; I'm honestly continually baffled and unfortunately it appears to be a growing issue that is getting worse, rather than improving in any way.
Which this little flap just underlined, because asexuality is defined as a lack of interest in sex, once again demonstrating that everything is indeed about sex (or lack thereof).
'Everything is about food.'
'Well, an iPhone isn't food.'
'Well, you had to mention that an iPhone wasn't food, therefore everything is indeed about food, or lack thereof!'
...
There's a term for this type of fallacious reasoning, I forget what it is - anyone?
That's just absurd, of course an iPhone is not food...
However,
- You can use your iPhone to take pictures of your food
- You can look up how to cook food
- You can order food
- You can use it in jobs, that help you earn money to buy food
- The people in china who assemble them do it, so they can buy food - etc...
Everything is about food, just like sex, because those two are among the most important things for survival of an individual and the species.
Complaining about the erasure of asexual people as you use "guys" to erase non-men is an unfortunate combo.
Thanks for pointing that out. I appreciate it.
It can also just be a lifestyle choice. We wouldn't call this asexuality probably, but nevertheless if someone chooses not to have sex it's kind of a spit in the face to say that everything from work to relaxation is undertaken because of some sex->power pipeline.
The word there is “celibacy”. It’s not like straight people make a “lifestyle choice” to not get aroused when they see an attractive member of the opposite sex.
> but nevertheless if someone chooses not to have sex it's kind of a spit in the face to say that everything from work to relaxation is undertaken because of some sex->power pipeline.
Not from what I’ve heard from people who make that choice. That group mostly consisting of Catholic priests.
All in all, it's human intrinsic nature.
However sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Interesting career choice :)
Where there are humans, there is sex. The obviousness of how that plays out may differ but the underlying theme is universal.
A women goes to the "Penguin" Publishing, where the owner is a penguin and asks for her book to be published. The penguin makes the joke: "If you want your book in black and white, black and white has to be in you."
I feel like this is based on a true story.
It’s not normal to fuck your way to the top or use your power for sex everywhere. It’s abnormal in many places.
Avoid systems that make you feel uneasy. Whoring/pimping ain’t for everyone. The same way I’d say avoid tech if hyper competition makes you uneasy.
US Gymnastics. Movie, TV, and music industries. US Presidents (and other politicians) and employees.
Hell, you still get it in normal business. The stories my wife tells about former co-workers and bosses are disgusting and a primary reason she no longer works at a former employer.
All top country music stars move in the same circles, or highly overlapping circles, for example.
However, if you told me you were a top iOS developer in the tech industry, that gives me zero information about the circles you move in. You also have a long list of unrelated tech companies to choose from. You're not beholden to any one group of people for anything.
This is an entertainment thing and as noted by other commenters has to do with the very aspirational aspects of the positions, along with a total commodity of folks wanting the work. And, an open attitude towards sex. Not a lot of institutionalized systems. Hollywood is not mostly corporate style jobs, on the creative side. With HR departments.
Music industry is a economics of superstars. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803469 Very few stars get huge profits and after that it's long slim tail.
Talent or high work ethic is not enough for success, "getting discovered" aka someone likes you and invests the initial money and effort is another factor.
If personal effort is not enough and the artist has nothing else, selling your ass for an opportunity to earn millions is pretty damn reasonable transaction. I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes.
What's the name for this kind of arguments?
Also, why specifically Bezos? Why not the billionaire next door?
Also, why only the HN crowd? Wouldn't a lot of people too?
Do you have a beef with the HN crowd or Bezos?
I'll be straightforward too: it's shitposting with childish faux-provocation that doesn't bring any food for thought, littered with assumptions about everyone and presented as universal. Fool language doesn't help either, it's not straightforward it's provocation without substance . r/im14andthisisdeep is the other way.
Furthermore, there are even fewer people up the tech management food chain than in other industries who appreciate the circumstances of sexual abuse victims.
Also a lot of tech companies (but by no means all!) are aware of the issue. You can be reasonably sure a large tech company has as good anti-sexual harassment program and will generally take actions to prevent it. A female is about as safe in tech as any other job: not perfectly safe, as safe as possible.
Getting literally fucked to save 40 years of bad work doesn't sound too bad.
With Weinstein or hypothetical influential Valley figure, the choice might be between literally or metaphorically being fucked.
And that's their choice. Sleeping your way to the top is a very separate debate. Requiring anyone who wants a job to fuck you is the topic being discussed.
You keep saying that, but it's actually the same thing. One cannot exist without the other. You need both kinds of people for the phenomenon to exist. If a boss hires only people who have sex with them, and nobody is willing to, they will not hire anybody. Conversely, if a candidate is willing to sleep their way to the top, but no boss partakes in that, then they are not hired.
See also: growth hacking which is rampant in the tech startup industry
It's hard to avoid this situation when the supply so greatly exceeds the demand and a small number of people control who gets to win; corruption is almost inevitable.
People generally perceive winner-take-all economies like the music industry through this same fallacious lens: they assume that the star experience is the norm and ignore the long tail. The music industry is a high-profile but economically tiny; it is not representative of the wider economy, and the star experience within it is even more unrepresentative.
It's comments like this which remind me that HN has minuscule female participation. Because so many more women have experience with sexual assault than men, and because people who have experienced sexual assault would downvote this comment into oblivion, the fact that it survives is a testament to how screwed up HN demographics are.
And to be honest there are people here who loudly won't even do a three-hour whiteboard interview for a high-paying gig that isn't a sure thing.
I just watched Fran Lebowitz's Netflix special and according to her you couldn't even get a job as a waitress in NYC in the '70s without sexual favors. Basically a generation of service industry management looked at sexually assaulting job applicants as a perk.
But sexual assault is offtopic in this thread. OP discussed voluntary exchange and not sexual assault.
Come on, you can't possibly think seriously about what you just wrote.
Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse, misogyny and humiliation (and who experience most of this abuse in the music industry). It scares me that people say this stuff publicly.
Comparing Bezos 'fucking you in the ass three times to gain an advantage' with the constant threat women face from powerful men leaves me feeling disgusted
The point is that for 2 girls complaining about abuse, in this industry there are 100 who perfectly know what they are doing and happy to play the sexual favor game.
The only part where you are right is that it should be made more public, so that "innocent" (not like amber heard) girls would not get so surprised then.
Do they 'know', or have they just come to accept this level of violence and danger becuase of their gender?
> The only part where you are right is that it should be made more public, so that "innocent" (not like amber heard) girls would not get so surprised then.
Ah jeez, speculating about Amber's innocence is just tabloid celebrity gawking at this point. Have you met her or heard her story in person? No.
Everyone knows now that Amber Heard was physically abusive and literally said in a recording that "No one would believe your complaints since you are a man". Talking about girl privilege...
This is an argument for making sure people don't go hungry, not for letting rich people rape people who want a job.
Yes, there are serious implementation details, but there's a big societal will factor at play too.
> The fact that you wouldn’t even consider it shows that you haven’t gone hungry for a while.
I hear you and get where you're coming from, yet my take is that I want to shift the dynamics of the system for everyone. Systems change, not personal change. Also this isn't about a 'facing a trade off' or sex work, it's about dehumanization and exploitation at the hands of an abusive powerful person.
And I want everyone to be 'set for life'. It's absolutely possible.
We can agree here!
Who is going to provide this lifestyle?
You have a choice to run a start up and make any sacrifice you think necessary. You don't have a choice to eat something when you're hungry.
If you don't have a choice, then you're a victim.
(and yes, not everyone has a choice, not everyone just has to work more to get the choice, many people, at some point, don't have a choice; abusing their situation is criminal)
1) Get $100M and anal sex from Bezos
2) Be hungry
You can take third option, do not take Bezos's offer, do not make startup and instead do same basic work. So in this case you have choice.
"I give you $1 bn if you kill that one kid" and you answer "I'll never kill a kid, no matter how much you pay me" to which I reply: "Your answer is illustrating your privilege".
Certainly you see the gigantic sophism in your comment?
However terrible and painful the example is, abstractly, I believe people are free to decide what happens to themselves, but not to others. Murder is universally illegal, while prostitution, arguably, shouldn’t be, and isn’t in many places.
It's more like the abuser forms a bond with the naive kid, and in exchange for their 'loyalty' they are rewarded with a form of insecure attachment where they do what they're told to try and get more approval, and basically just try to live with it as if it's normal.
Have a drink with me tonight and I'll make sure to call X about that role tomorrow, alright? Then tomorrow comes and maybe on occasion they actually follow through with the promise, enough to convince you they're being sincere, but most likely there'll be an excuse and another 'request', and more favours. And more dependence and more control.
Trying to compare this hellish cycle of abuse to getting fucked in the arse by Bezos for 100 mil is not just absurd, it's completely out of touch with the grim reality the victims spend the rest of their lives contending with.
That doesn't change that a very high percentage of the HN crowd would take this offer are men. A lot men are not in a position to reject offers about their body's sexual value such that it turns into abuse.
A lot of men (99%?) don't get the privilege of making a choice to prove themselves in the business world, versus distinctly with their body.
If this was a more frequent choice, the gender representation in tech/corporate leadership roles would even out much faster. Because less men would be there, having chosen a different opportunity. I perceive this as an underrepresented reality.
I viewed that comment as referring to that crowd.
FWIW, I believe GP was not making any gender distinction..
However, the distinction is that people with tangible experience with sexual abuse perceive this differently. And unfortunately, women have disproportionate experience with sexual abuse.
You don’t own suffering. You’re not it’s gatekeeper. It’s not for you to decide if one person’s proposed situation doesn’t take into account the situation of one of millions of versions of suffering.
This sounds like you never played “would you rather” as a child. If comments like this leave you disgusted, you would reconsider reading public forums.
a) People in position of power demanding sexual favors from people so that they can get on with their work or get small rewards.
b) Competitive entertainers prostituting themselves for rare opportunities to become wealthy celebrities. Exchanges of sex for extreme rewards.
Equating how people prostitute themselves for celebrity status and high income to the abuse that some background dancer gets every day is wrong.
I understand that people live and understand things trough celebrities, but that's not where the real problems are.
No. I think you overestimate the frequency of this happening. Most people don't want to give sex for opportunities.
Most of the people I've met just want their unique talent to be recognized and honored.
Trading sex for favors is not automatically abuse.
People trade sex for opportunity because all other tings equal they may get opportunity over someone better. Superstars don't become superstars just because they have unique talents. They are as much or more results of marketing investments. When there are hundreds of equally talented individuals, picking one of them for marketing is more or less random.
When person has opportunity to continue as indie artist or sell their ass for million dollar opportunity, that's just a business deal.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The most powerful world in the dictionary is "no". As an entirely self-made / self-taught person I know the power of that word.
That you consider it a "pretty darn reasonable transaction" tells about your ethics and morality, not about the ethics and morality of a "very high percentage of HN crowd".
Regarding fame/money, here's Ruyard Kipling's take on it:
"Do not pay too much attention to fame, power, or money. Some day you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are."
I'm raising my kid the way my rebellious parents rose me, telling her "no" is the most powerful word and she should use and abuse it and teaching her there's more to life than fame and money... But feel free to raise yours telling them selling their bodies to obtain fame/money is a "pretty damn reasonable transaction".
A sexual assault tied to an entertainment career paths has indefinite terms, consists of unagreed upon jeopardy in terms of what is being exchanged, and for how long. It's nothing like an "opportunity".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It comes in various forms: sexual or other inappropriate favors for advancement, verbal abuse, or just abusive working conditions like sweatshop hours and burnout culture.
It'd be a lot tougher to be successful as an electrician or commercial airline pilot if you got there from sexual favors for your boss.
That isn't true, but the reasons are different for each.
For electrician getting your foot in the door is the hard part, from there on it is about on the job training. Getting the first apprentice position is one of the harder steps to success, and sexual favors can work here. Though I doubt this happens much in practice - the field isn't one that people are so excited to get into that they will drop their morals to do so.
For airline pilot, demand comes and goes. You have to get a license first (though you can probably pay your instructor in bed, that just gets training I doubt any instructor/examiner will let you buy the license before you are qualified - if anything they will be tougher one you so you have to "buy" another lesson). Once you are qualified, you can use favors to get a job when jobs are scare and this will put you ahead in seniority later when the others finally get a job; or you can use favor to keep a job - but again: seniority means they may not even have an option to keep you. Note that the above is or - because of constant management change odds are against your ability to use this more than once at a real airline without getting caught and then their HR will ensure you are out.
So the instructor would have to be an owner/instructor/examiner, which is rare.
Same with getting a pilot job more or less.
Hollywood is really in a different category.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/rumour_leading_jap...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/tech/gaming-metoo-twitch/inde...
A good rule of thumb is to look for visible gatekeepers. Where they go the abuses follow, and if caught they only need to burnish their image enough to get their pals to rehire them.
What I saw personally, working on an ill fated unreal licensed property around 1999, wasn't sexual extortion. But it was a boys club that loved trading porn in the official irc channels for unreal engine support. CliffyB was particularly fond of posting pictures of his then girlfriend, as well as essentially rick rolling people with this picture involving a cactus and what appears to be a very uncomfortable sexual act.
It may not have been straight up extortion of sexual interactions, but I am sure that if you pushed back on that, you'd have found yourself fenced out of the very small community of people who have huge influence over whether your game ships. It certainly was not a welcoming environment to anyone other than immature young men, which is a label I'd apply to myself at that time for sure.
Again though, I want to emphasize I also see a positive trend in gaming in general. There's a long walk ahead, but the industry is actually walking the right direction, just slowly.
You've perfectly described capitalism where every capitalist state consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.
Once they've done that, people are always fighting each other and compromising their dignity and morals - some to get ahead, some to simply stay afloat and have a family.
The idea of possibly being the next Elvis or Madonna if you accept being boinked by a pig with money is hard to turn down for many.
One of the reasons the game dev industry has more abuse (mostly non-sexual) than other software endeavors is because games are seen as more fun or cool to work on, rather than say a sales proposal tracking CRUD system. (I'm happy making sales proposal tracking systems myself, although I admit I have dabbled in the pop music writing industry, and still dabble in neo-renascence tunes.)
My daughter found the clothing fashion industry is similar: high pressure because many want the job of designer and scrape and claw to get it. She changed careers after some nasty office skirmishes among competitors.
> [capitalist states] consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.
is true, and not particularly controversial. Too little unemployment is assumed (true or not) to lead to inflation and inefficiency.
(Although, I'm not sure the second claim follows. If unemployment is reduced by, say, drastically lowering the minimum wage, I don't see why things would look any different. Unemployment isn't the problem, here anyway.)
1. The job is incredibly rewarding, both in terms of money and fame.
2. There are thousands of pretty much equally qualified people for the job.
Here the "hiring manager" clearly has enormous leverage.
Another way to put it is that anyone who can be exploited will be exploited. The differences are only in frequency and visiblity.
This is a huge thing hugely related to the rest of the 'industry culture' being talked about.
Fucking disgusting abuse of power. Makes me sick.
Those large companies are distributors, packaging a product and selling it to consumers. Think of distribution like a motorway Vs dirt road. If you're doing it yourself, you're running down that dirt road trying to get from point A to point B, battling with millions other people trying to do the same. If you're with a distribution company, you're on their branded luxury touring bus cruising down a motorway, you'll be arriving any minute...
I don't think so. What they need the most is publicity, and this is not magically granted by internet.
Just take a look at e.g. Spotify; I'm sure there are hundreds of extremely gifted artists sitting down at barely a few dozens listenings, just because no one found them.
And I assure you, the stuff I've put up does not make enough money to cover any fees (20 listens a month).
Without that packaging music is a very tough sell. Being competent and creative on its own isn't enough.
I can't think of anyone who has made it on musicality alone without at least some of the above OR enthusiastic and regular promotion by gatekeepers (top radio DJs) while they were still an influence.
Some people today do acapella renditions for SNES F-Zero soundtrack.. that says something :)
I don't have time to listen to all the great music in the world. Even if "God" gave me a list of all the great artists trying to record today, it would take me more than a day to listen to all their recordings. So the labels choose for me, and to a large extent it doesn't matter which ones they choose, what matters is there is a filter to gets the right amount of music to me. In the world being great isn't enough as there are more than enough greats, so if you can great, good looking (this helps me overlook any of your faults - I'd like to think otherwise but I know better), and good in the bed of the label - you make it. If you fail any of the above three you have probably lost (note to the good looking, the labels may use you for sex knowing that you won't make it).
Note too that labels bring in other help for the great. I can record music in my basement: I don't have the best microphones, but they are good enough to pick up the sump pump in the corner. I can mix tracks in my basement as well, lets just say I'm not quitting my day job. I could go on about other parts of the process of turning a great artist into a great recording for mass consumption that labels have figured out.
The problem is that the filters you describe are so narrow that certain genres of music don't get adequately explored, and some genres don't exist at all. In broad terms that's bound to happen, but the missing and under-served genres are so obvious that the filters are clearly limiting the maximum amount of musical enjoyment and meaning that's available to the average listener.
For a dead simple example-- Bach and Beethoven were known as the greatest improvisers in their eras. So where is the Grammy winning album of someone improvising a set of their own variations in the style of Beethoven? Who is the Michael Jordan of improvising a set of 30 new variations atop the bassline of the Goldberg variations?
Don't get me wrong-- there are people who can improvise perfectly well in those styles. But there's no industrial incentive to push those artists to release something truly transcendent-- e.g., something that reveals for a general audience something new about music in the time of Bach's, who makes it fresh, and who redefines what improvisation can be. There's no period improviser so single-minded and driven that an audience of tens of millions would spend lock-down watching a 10-part miniseries on the making of such an album.
Another one, off the top of my head-- what's the version of math rock where there's no common subdivision shared by each line? Computers make this effortless to write, but AFAICT that genre doesn't exist. For just a simple example, Steve Reich's Phasing exists as a prototype-- it shows that there's a compelling perceptual basis for presenting the same melody at tempos that are very close to one another.
There are many other examples, and the filter you refer to means you've never, ever heard them.
So growing old and getting set in a desire for nostalgic music isn't so much a natural law of musical desires as it is the result of creating "The Matrix" for music in the age of the internet by locking your ears into the same old payola scheme from the before times. (I guess the "heat" captured from your attention is to fuel the machine world of the filters... :)
Spotify does a terrible job of recommending new music to me - mostly my "Discover Weekly" is a mixtape of my existing playlists, and "Release Radar" is entirely stuff I hate.
I'm not sure how a new band would reach me, but it's not via the methods they're trying now. I haven't been genuinely excited by a "new" band since, oh, Mumford? Bad Shepherds? something like that.
[0] I don't listen to that much music. I would if I got more new stuff, though, I'm sure
By far the best discovery I've seen was on What.CD, RIP. The similar artists web they had on ever artist page was extremely tight. I tried a few months ago to find the old What.cd data to look into it but wasn't able to find it in a couple minutes of googling.
Look into Last.fm. They do a pretty decent job of recommending similar artists but its more of a what you played tracker than true music discovery.
The movie Yesterday is such a farce because it suggest The Beatles songs are super successful no matter who performs them, as long as they are the first to perform them. When effectively it was a mix of having skilled musicians, produce and perform good songs on the one hand, but also who they were, the marketing and their performances on the other hand.
reminds me of Gunnm / Battle Alita Angel, where the author coined the term panzerkunst as a martial art name.. first time I read about the real life term.
slight anecdote: some people really do have a glow that we can feel but not really explain, something electric and immediate, that will either catch an audience or even stop the air in the room. I don't go to concert often but the few time it happened I was quite shocked. You can put all the best vocal or musical technicians next to them and they would not be able to create that.
Also HN: Sleeping your way to the top? THE HORROR.
I know quite a few people who did the latter, they don't seem to regret it at all.
Legalizing behaviors doesn't endorse them either. It removes some of the danger inherent in the behavior.
There is a surprisingly large number of comments here trying to justify this by redirecting focus towards the people who ultimately decided to give sex in exchange for opportunity. That's a completely separate debate that isn't even very controversial. It's those comments, and their upvotes, that concern me. Especially when they're high karma accounts on a site targeted at entrepreneurs that might be in a position to coerce someone towards choosing to give sex in exchange for opportunity.
The disadvantage for being "not willing to engage" would be applied to those potential artists who refused the sexual advances of these people and were therefore passed over; despite potentially being a better candidate. I think you could even argue that there may be an element of coercion if the person was willing to engage originally. Now that your manager is responsible for your career are you really safe in saying no the second time?
The question is really whether we're okay with allowing sexual favours to be placed over merit when accepting people into an industry. I think the answer is unequivocally no, even in industries where sex is the product.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That guideline is there because this is such a common, tedious, and reliably provocative form of flamebait. Please make your substantive points without flamebait.
Some of this is good, e.g. calling out sexual abuse. Some of this is bad, e.g. cancel culture that has no means of forgiveness.
Since HN is amazing, I'm hoping someone here can help me understand without it turning into a flamewar.
I don't understand how "cancel culture" is substantially different from what we used to call "boycotts", just with the internet for more social lubrication.
I suppose theres a risk that the allegations at the center of the boycott are incorrect, but isn't that what defamation laws are meant to combat?
The origin of the term boycott was a landlord's agent called Charles Boycott, who was socially and economically ostracised in response to the eviction of tenants.
I guess overall for "cancel culture", I see it similar to boycotts, but often boycotts edit are /edit of a specific individual, and also without the stipulation that the boycott will stop if a behavior changes. AFAIK, the civil rights bus boycotts wanted a specific policy to change and once that policy changed, they stopped their boycotts. Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual and there doesn't seem to be much that the individual can do to seek redemption—but I may be wrong on this.
Would love to hear your thoughts in response.
I hadn't considered the sort-of agenda that boycotts tend to have.
I bet a lot of cancels also have a salient agenda, but since the movement is so democratized it gets lost in the noise. Just a gut feeling.
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You lost me a bit on:
> Much of "cancel culture" I guess wants an organization's policy to change, but often that policy is to excommunicate an individual...
I've been conceptualizing the cancel as individuals choosing to not support creators, but this makes it sound like theres a third-party involved. A sibling comment mentioned people repeatedly calling Disney.. am I missing something here?
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I've been involved in one cancel before, so heres the frame of reference I'm coming from:
I like an artist named DojaKat.
A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it.
I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel).
Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists.
Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
So, unless you sent DojaKat death threats or tried to have her fired/have her l7income taken away, I don't see a boycott like that as the same as "cancel culture" at all.
I appreciate this point. I think sometimes these waves of calls for cancellation play into larger movements that have more clearly defined goals, such as #metoo, which I think focused on shedding light on sexual violence/abuse/harassment and to get individuals and organizations to create more policies to prevent it from happening. Maybe when I think of "cancel culture" I think less of the underlying structural goals of it, but you've helped me step back to think of that.
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I think a lot with the call to "cancel" someone (I don't know why I feel compelled to put it in quotes but I keep doing it) is often to specifically tell the organization(s) to remove the individual from participating. E.g., wanting Netflix to fire Kevin Spacey in House of Cards (and other Hollywood production firms to no longer hire him), wanting radio stations to ban R Kelly's music, etc.
So I think it's the idea that for a person to be cancelled, someone has to do the cancelling.
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I guess for me, I wouldn't see that so much as how the phrase "cancel" is being used in the "cancel culture" idea. Yours seems to be you, the individual consumer, doing the cancellation, and also you being open to giving her a second chance through forgiveness.
I see a "cancel" of DojaKat in this instance being people demanding that her record company, her agent, TV stations, radio stations, and others agree to break relations with her and when she apologizes, to not forgive her and to not give her a second chance.
So in summary, I see "cancel culture" as more about trying to rally others, especially groups and institutions, to break off relations with that person (or sometimes a group) and to do so permanently.
I personally don't like it because I believe much more in restorative justice than I do retributive justice, and I also believe that by distancing ourselves from these people, through the power of the internet, they may find other people who feel alienated and cancelled and they could form into more and more radicalized groups.
This cancel culture stuff is about not just "not reading the article and not going to the site", its an active attack against someone that you don't like.
A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.
I don’t see the material difference there, what about it being an individual makes you feel it’s different?
Your last point is intriguing to me.
If I were to simply not watch films with Gina Carano in them anymore, would you still say I’m canceling her?
I’m still curious if me choosing to not watch films with problematic individuals in them would be considered cancelling or a boycott?
I guess I'm not sure I see the difference here. complaining about what gina carano says on her twitter is, in a roundabout way, complaining about a disney product. disney didn't fire an actress from one of their popular shows because they got tired of listening to a small group of people complain; they did it because enough people complained that they saw a potential loss in future revenue. this looks a lot like a boycott to me.
See, this is something I highly doubt. Do you think that there is such a large part of Disney public that does give a damn about what Gina Carano says? I don't think so. I want to count the ones who actually stop watching "the Mandalorian" because of Gina Carano's tweets. My bet is that they're so few they'd feel stupid after two weeks and start watching it again.
I think the issue here is that taken one by one, each of those who have the power to take decisions succumb to peer pressure and fear of being targeted next. Everyone is replaceable, so everyone prefers to keep on the safe side when confronted by people who are aggressive, determined, and always ready to escalate the pressure to the the next hierarchy level or to to start working out the weakest peers.
So the bottom line is that if the targets of these attacks just stood their ground united and told the mobs to fuck off, the cancellers would just vaporise in a couple of weeks.
Or comments taken out of context or missing nuance.
Or punishment out of proportion to the offense.
In the past, boycotts were aimed at corporations. Not buying or consuming a specific product, or protesting that company. Cancel culture is more aimed at individuals.
Suing for defamation can be expensive and risky, and doesn't necessarily restore reputational damage even if you win.
Obviously, some people clearly guilty of the accusations against them and deserve the consequences being meted out against them.
But there is also a long history of "witch hunts" and people being punished in ways that don't deserve. Social media is enabling a new form of that, which is what we call "cancel culture".
This isn't remotely new, though. For one very visible example in our industry, Lynn Conway got fired for coming out as transgender. Similarly, Turing was canceled for being gay. Politicians have been getting canceled for marital infidelity for most of my life (and, wow, Trump really modernized the Republican party on that one). Not to mention the McCarthy era, where people got canceled over suspected affiliation with leftists.
There's a huge panic about how cancel culture is destroying the world... but the difference is that people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry, instead of getting canceled by the intolerance and bigotry of those in power. And, yes. There are certainly cases where the cancellation is disproportionate to the offense. But compared to Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, and many many others canceled in the past... there's nothing new here, and historically speaking, this sort of cancellation is pretty soft.
Cancel culture is also distinct from politicians and infidelity because cancel culture targets non-public individuals. Of course politicians and celebrities were always subject to public opinion; the modern era now means that everyone can be targeted this way, even if they weren't known at all before (Justine Sacco is a simple example).
The McCarthy era was again a matter of government action through government processes with at least some level of transparency, democratic representation, and accountability. It was not spontaneous mobs of individuals without leaders or any kind of accountability. (They also targeted communists, not just 'leftists').
It's ironic you say casually that "people today are getting canceled for exhibiting intolerance and bigotry", when cancel culture is itself intolerance and bigotry. The standard definition of bigotry is "extreme intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." [0]
[0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry
It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you who are openly clear that cancel culture is just like historical persecution, but you're totally fine with it because you (wrongly) think it only happens to bad people. As though only people you like deserve to have human rights.
Where I think of people who have been cancelled I only think about celebrities.
Reading about Justine Sacco’s story was interesting. Do you know where I can learn more about private individuals being cancelled? (Googling only brings up celebs)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...
Also any number of academics, who wouldn't normally be considered celebrities or politicians:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
https://mobile.twitter.com/sooppressed/status/12824046471609...
I feel a real urge to say, for the record, that I don’t consider myself strongly “anti-cancel culture” or whatever, just that I understand the skepticism towards it and think that it’s referring to something that exists and at the very least has amped up since the end of the Bush administration. Although, truth be told, I doubt that’d be enough if my turn comes, and maybe all that just proves the anti-CC people’s point.
I'm reading through the articles now, and have concerns that the author is over editorializing at least some of them.
I know for a fact Kindness Yoga is doing fine, I walk past there daily.
> 2. A yoga studio that was so woke they had gender-neutral bathrooms and person-of-color yoga nights where “white friends and allies” were asked to “respectfully refrain from attending” has closed down due to racial accusations.
That was a lie. Kindness Yoga didn’t close down. So I’d advise others to take the thread author’s words with a grain of salt.
The news article from June 29th it links to says that they'd be shutting down, and the tweet was less than two weeks on. I found another news story from July 10th [1] - two days before the tweet went out - repeating the intention to shut down permanently, and another from August [2] that affirms that a shutdown happened. So at the time the author of the thread was in good faith relaying the truth.
I can't find any news stories indicating that it reopened, so unless you expect the author to live in Denver or be following closely every single example he provides months after the fact, I don't think this is a reasonable criticism.
ETA: Actually, their social media appears dead since June; Yelp shows many locations closed, and the locations it doesn't show as closed have, uh, poems written in memory of them...so I'm wondering if it actually did shutdown and you're not just mistakenly thinking of/talking about a different yoga studio entirely.
[1] https://theknow.denverpost.com/2020/07/10/denver-yoga-studio...
[2] https://theknow.denverpost.com/2020/08/07/courageous-yoga-bi...
I'll grant that it's more likely a mistake than an outright lie.
I'd still recommend that you read what the thread author says with a grain of salt as they aren't corroborating the claims they're repeating.
If you dig into the sourcing if the Colorado Sun's article, it cites an Instagram post[1] as evidence the business is closing, but the post says no such thing.
[1]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBotnpslXVj/
In that post, they announced that they will be closing, with the proximal cause being a surge of cancelations immediately after the accusations. I cannot copy paste the text as its within the images.
Edit: "...I have decided to close Kindness Yoga." Previous slide uses vague, passive, avoidant language to reference the accusations.
Cancelling is much more democratic than policing, or the writing of laws. Nothing forces anyone to join in, everything is voluntary, and the cancelling only works when people agree. There is also no undemocratic way to get around it. Weinstein can pay of investigators, judges, journalists, and jurors, but he can't pay off everyone on the internet.
Similarly it's transparent - cancelling comes from specific instances of stuff. Screenshots, links, videos, etc
The big thing that's different between cancelling and historical persecution is that it's targetting people that used to be able to attack single points of failure to avoid being held accountable.
They should be happy it's not like historical persecution because when mobs used to get together to attack the rich, heads used to roll. Now the mob is content with making them not rich
There is no real majority of people involved in canceling someone. It’s just a mad Twitter mob with a Pareto distribution where most people are content with posting mean tweets to virtue signal, and only few who go as far as calling up people’s workplaces to get them fired. It does not involve anyone beyond the mob, and even within the mob most aren’t willing to go very far. Yet it is the actions of only a few extremists that produce most of the mob’s impact. To call that democratic shows that you don’t seem to realize a world outside of your bubble exists, or should be acknowledged.
Cancel culture is basically softcore terrorism, and fittingly, portions of your rhethoric are not unlike a justification for terrorism.
You've hit Popper's paradox right on the head. Sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are examples of intolerance. Fighting those values, and criticizing/boycotting their champions, is not. This is the bright line between what the right decries as "cancel culture" of today vs the "cancel culture" of yesteryear.
> It's also always disturbing to encounter people like you...
So, you're making assertions about opinions that I hold, not based on opinions that I've stated, but upon those of "people like [me]." This is not a good-faith approach to conversation.
As Popper wrote, his conception of 'intolerance' was not "sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia". In fact, none of these words had even been invented when he was writing!
Popper was very clear that he conceptualized 'intolerance' as people who will use violence and force and power to silence others. This he was specifically referring to intolerance of other beliefs, whether religious or political. This is exactly the kind of intolerance you are committing.
Please read what Popper actually wrote about the paradox before misrepresenting it - I see this error all the time.
>you're making assertions about opinions that I hold, not based on opinions that I've stated, but upon those of "people like [me]."
No, just about opinions you plainly stated - that you think cancel culture is cool because only people on your list are getting cancelled.
How were the perpetrators of McCarthyism held accountable?
"With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year,[12] McCarthy's support and popularity faded. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy#Censure_and_th...
"We have some power so we're gonna do it now, why you so mad" is pure antisocial behavior.
Any movement based on diversity, celebrating differences etc cannot afford that look.
for me, personally, it's when your average joe gets the other end of internet mob justice and they suddenly seek to ruin everything about your life above and beyond what you would normally face.
Some arguments I'm familiar with around cancel culture are below. My goal isn't to assert them -- just enumerate some of them. People are welcome to reshape them or knock 'em down as they see fit.
- The Internet is a global namespace: now you can have people anywhere in the world outraged. What used to be a localized problem and response can now turn into a localized problem, but global response.
- The ability to go back-in-time is all too easy. That dumb comment you made as a teenager can come back years and years later to haunt you (or people close to you). Maybe you had a massive turn-around already or you were recorded without consent. Often that doesn't matter.
- It is fostering an insidious call-out culture. The focus is no longer on prevention and remediation, but on scoring points and repositioning power towards "the vanguard". Legitimate victims aren't helped to heal and offenders aren't led to improve.
- No room is given to defend yourself, particularly when mobbed upon. Even if the record is set straight later it doesn't matter, as your reputation (possibly friendships, career, and family life) is in tatters.
What I do feel worth asserting is this: no matter what the current norm is, always remember you will be judged according to later standards, right or wrong. The greater the disparity in power the more important this is regardless of role (e.g. boss, parent, etc).
And your call out at the bottom is good wisdom :)
Edit: this->these
- Virtue signaling is a critical component to personal and social moral growth. Showing where you stand and putting your money where you mouth is necessary to decentralize authority and improve the standards that are "baked" into society. Otherwise you're just appealing to whoever has the biggest stick.
- That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic.
- People are learning how horrible it is to rely on power and privilege to isolate you from the effects of your wrong-doing. Even if we assume the best of people and that they aren't consciously doing this, it is still pushing awareness closer to consciousness and thus (hopefully) better decision making.
- The importance of allyship is making massive strides. As oft quoted, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". On a personal note, as a kid watching a neighborhood kid get his bully-buddy to stop throwing snowballs at another kid taught me a lesson I've never forgotten.
- "Good" and "bad" deeds always have a "blast radius" and require support of some kind to sustain. Engaging organizations and platforms that surround people is a critical component to making a change, or all you're doing is swapping the hood ornament on the car without touching the engine underneath.
I was under the impression the virtue signalling specifically requires insincerity.
For example, if you inject yourself into a conversation to lecture everyone about what a great ally you are (and you don't even really mean it), that is virtue signaling.
If you try to make it all about yourself, and assert completely risk free opinions that challenge nothing, that is virtue signalling.
Simply sharing and asserting your values doesn't have to be virtue signalling.
> - That people misapply a legitimate action or are overzealous in its application doesn't mean the underlying idea is wrong. The Internet is still quite young and its inviting a global confrontation of how to deal with deeply-seated social problems. Expecting this new-found power to be wielded without making mistakes is unrealistic.
Nobody objects to the underlying idea of witch hunting. If there were actual witches that were using magic powers to poison the town, of course we should have an inquisitor to hunt them down.
This has only ever been a discussion about tactics.
I think there are lot of loaded words in our political vocabulary and their meaning can have subtle (or even significant) shifts based on who uses them. If "virtue signaling" includes a connotation of insincerity, and that aspect changes everything entirely as you show.
I used it in a more strictly technical sense, but I think it fair to say that with most language the neutral, technical version is the least common in actual usage.
-- Context is irrelevant. People are being canceled for using the wrong word when enumerating words which cannot be said. again, some people can say them, some can't.
-- it is completely out of proportion to things which do actual damage. This really bothers me. Someone saying something really bad means less to me than even the mildest act of violence
-- some places are upping the ante to claim that speech is actual violence and that if certain people aren't fired, then the workplace is unsafe
Apparently, that is a prerogative of only group Y nowadays.
But what seems problematic for me is when institutions react to random outrage groups (which often are very vocal but small groups) on social media by blindly joining in the outrage and rapidly severing ties with people (firing them, removing authors, etc) without a serious investigation of what - if any - actual wrongdoing there was, what were the circumstances, etc. I would expect some semblance of due process instead of "just" doing what the crowd says immediately for PR reasons.
Joss Whedon is a showrunner and filmmaker, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. A few years ago while going through a divorce, his ex-wife alleged that he had sex with female staff on one of his shows. This lead to allegations that his demeanor on the set of Justice League was snide and unprofessional. Which lead to former Buffy and Angel actors coming forward, and alleging that Joss called an actress "fat" when she got pregnant almost 20 years ago.
James Cameron is a filmmaker of Titanic and Terminator fame. He has been married five times, notably to filmmakers he's worked with and actresses who worked on his films. Some of his divorces have been attributed to affairs with other actresses under his employ. He is a notoriously angry and difficult director to work for, and on the set of The Abyss he was punched in the face by an actor who was nearly allowed to drown because Cameron didn't want to spoil the take.
Joss Whedon is effectively canceled. He has been forced to step down from a new show he was developing for HBO, and his fanbase on various Internet forums has viscerally turned against him.
James Cameron is an Academy Award winner, one of the most marketable brands in the entertainment industry, and everyone will be lining up to watch Avatar sequels over the next few years.
For me personally, the inconsistency and near-randomness of it all is just... unsettling.
Cancel culture is wanting to punish a person (or virtue signal) for something in the past. Maybe they deserve it - I get it more when there's a history of credible charges of sexual assault or something (but then, I'd prefer they be tried in court and punished via the legal system). But the bar seems to have lowered and now you get fired for a tweet people don't like. And maybe people have the right to do it, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. If we're not careful it takes over the role of rule of law in our society and will do a worse job of it.
In the recent case of Gina Carano specifically, I don't think her tweet is remotely offensive to the level of being fired, and the effect will be that she's given a voice and seen as a martyr by people who have far more extreme opinions than what she's voiced previously.
People have gotten kicked out of colleges for using racist words in text messages. People have been fired for their jobs for messages taken out of context. Non-public individuals start getting death threats online and they get called out in the streets, for small mistakes or things taen out of context.
A separate issue is that people sometimes get cancelled for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes even when they were still young. The issue here is that people change. It would be like boycotting a company because 20 years ago they exploited workers, regardless of whatever they're doing today. It's a really grey area.
Cancel culture typically refers to instances of the third option, someone saying something mean and having his life ruined for it. A good example: a guy's business was ruined because his daughter wrote some mean things online as a kid. https://forward.com/news/448382/the-ceo-of-holy-land-hummus-... They were certainly bad, and her parents ought to chastise and punish her for them. But neither she nor her father should face "cancellation". I feel just as sorry for her; she may never get into college or get a good job because of this. These weren't "injustices"; no man was harmed.
Cancel culture usually targets an individual. The objective is typically not change in policy, but the ostracism of the target.
E.g. refusing to buy from Nike until they pay better wages to their manufacturing labor is a boycott. Pressuring a company to fire a certain employee because a group doesn't like the political views of said employee is cancel culture.
Now your career can end because “You encouraged too much forgiveness for a girl who attended the wrong kind of party at 18.”
With a boycott, the intent is to change the organization's behavior. Once the organization stops doing the thing you don't like, you can stop the boycott. Problem solved.
But with canceling, there is an assumption that people have a deeper, immutable character. They are canceled because of an act or acts they have already done, and the cancelation is intended to be permanent based on the assumption that those acts reveal who the person really is and that we can never trust that they won't do those acts again in the future.
Part of the justification for this is that canceling a person sends a signal to other people "don't be like that". The canceled person is considered irredeemable but an accepted casualty to root out a societal ill.
It's also important to consider what people are being canceled from. This is a sanction mostly applied to celebrities and politicians. These people are not being ostracized from all society—they can still go to the grocery store. They are being kicked out of the high prestige realm they were a member of.
In that sense, it's maybe more acceptable that the sanction is permanent because they're only being kicked out of a club, and not left to die alone in the wilderness.
I like an artist named DojaKat.
A while ago a video surfaced of her singing a song with a racial slur in it.
I saw the video and said to myself "Oh man, I don't want to support a racist artist, this sucks, but I don't think I should stream her on Spotify anymore (In my mind, that was the cancel).
Some weeks later, DojaKat released a video in which she apologized, talked about how much she's grown as a person, and promised to do better. It seemed sincere to me, so I added her work back to my Spotify playlists.
Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
I mean, I'm no authority on any of this. But my impression is that most of the high profile cancelations I've seen have no attached list of demands at which point the person is considered to have made amends and can return to their previous stature.
> Am I correctly interpreting that as a cancel?
Unless you were publicly telling other people that they shouldn't stream her then I wouldn't interpret it as any kind of "cancel". We're all free to stop consuming from anyone for whatever reason we like. That's not canceling people, it's just having a preference.
At the same time, I'm sure the individuals who are opting to not support could conceivably be swayed back into supporting the creator in most cases.
I guess my point is that theres a de facto list of demands in most cancels, you just don't see them because theres no central authority to reiterate it.
____
I didn't tell other people to stop streaming her, but I learned about the video and chose to boycott because other people were telling me to do so.
If I had posted on Facebook: "I saw an old video where DojaKat used an offensive racial slur, and have thusly chosen to stop consuming her music. Here is the video for your reference"
Would that have constituted cancelling? I'm just expressing my preference to my friends, no?
I was with you up until here. This is blatantly wrong. Regular people are being cancelled all the time. Besides, people in prestigious positions deserve due process just like anyone else. Cancel culture intentionally circumvents any semblance of due process or fairness.
The use of feedback and machine learning (even simple mechanisms) in social media to selectively show the most engaging content has, in my opinion, been a fundamental cause of cancel culture. Cancel culture requires "moral outrage", and enragement is engagement, so Twitter (esp) is a factory for moral outrage.
This is fundamentally different from boycotts in the sense that boycotts were "organised", "led", or "stirred up" (according to your pov) by people. For example, anti-Nestle campaigners collecting petition signatures. There's a real world cost, a responsibility to be taken, a time lapse.
In contrast, moral outrages are manufactured almost autonomously by curation algorithms that are constantly searching for engagement. Outrage happens to be one really good strategy for that. The barrier to participation is extremely low - just click here, type an optional tweet dunking further on the target if you wish - and the speed they can spread is fast.
Compounding this is the propensity to be outraged has increased, I think, partly because "engagement-rich" modes of thinking have been spread. I'll resist giving concrete examples to leave the discussion politically neutral.
I really think there's an awful lot of responsibility for this problem on the social media companies and their leaders.
Boycotts are conducted by people with an existing relationship with the target.
Boycotts are usually seeking to inflict financial damage, rather than primarily reputational.
Boycotts are addressing an issue directly, cancel culture is addressing systematic issues with selective enforcement.
Boycotts are trying to change the behaviour of their target, rather than make an example out of them or as punishment.
Boycotts are typically temporary, not permanent.
Since theres no central authority enforcing a cancel, how can it be permanent?
How many times has Kanye West been "cancelled"? It seems to me everyone forgets about having cancelled him whenever he releases a new album ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And it makes sense to me, since cancels are done by disconnected individuals, a cancel ought to only last as long as the cancelling collective's attention span.
More targeted and more often aimed at specific individuals.
As a side effect of the above, it is much easier to devolve into harassment and worse crimes than when it was a business that was being boycott.
More access to data to cancel on. Much easier to take information out of context now that social media exists.
Cancels also take on characteristics of a meme. A given behavior may lead to a cancel attempt while far worse behavior by others is ignored. There is a lack of rhyme or reason that pairs up with how some things become a meme and other similar things do not.
What is considered worthy of being canceled has increased to include many actions that the majority does not feel comfortable cancelling over, but given the previous changes a smaller group is needed to convince HR that someone should be fired.
Do you have a source on a country that legalized gay marriage without social networks? I’m not saying it can’t happen but that would put a dent in my theory. I think Taiwan had it happen before FB but they have what I would consider social networks before we did.
Taiwan was very recent - 2019.
I'll grant that none of these were before the internet but there's nothing uniquely special about gay marriage that required the internet for organising, a huge amount of activism was done in person, just like in various other civil rights movements in assorted countries pre-internet.
So I might still have a point?
Same thing if you think about the #metoo movement, all it took was a tweet for the world to start moving, whereas it took a woman to kill herself in France in 1944 for women to get the right to vote.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage#Timeline
1. China 1,394,015,977
2. India 1,325,349,639
3. US 329,484,123
4. Indonesia 272,856,400
5. Pakistan 233,431,156
6. Nigeria 213,986,428
7. Brazil 212,041,332
8. Bangladesh 162,532,538
9. Russia 142,588,206
10. Mexico 128,840,997
The thing that matters more is GDP/capita
Maybe that’s following a YouTube rabbit hole and now you’re unintentionally watching flat earth or politically radicalizing videos. Maybe you internalize that content which you otherwise wouldn’t have consciously decided to watch had you not been led there.
A sibling comment refers to cancel culture as democratic. That would be great if it were deliberate and rational. But I wonder how much canceling stems from a similar, for example Twitter-centric, pipeline to the YouTube flow above?
Informed, justified, and deliberate canceling as the voice of the people sounds great and I would very much be behind that. But I worry that an increasing portion of the mob is comprised of people led to outrage not by choice but by social media dark patterns.
On the one hand, I've known of all sorts of ridiculous and unbalanced leftist moral outrage misdirected to individuals rather than the broader system (which is what leftists are supposed to oppose).
On the other hand, I feel like the phrase "cancel culture" itself has become an ill-defined catch-all used to attack an ill defined group of people - a situation that mirrors these misdirected leftist attacks.
“Cancel culture” is what, after about four decades of nonstop use, the Right has done a search and replace in their canned narratives to replace “political correctness” with. With exactly the same complaints and descriptions of the nature and effects, including the continuous argument that it is new.
Mafia owned Elvis. If the king didn't had a chance what chance have the pop stars? Get serious, where is lust, regardless of industry, there is Mafia, organized or not.
I'm not too familiar with the pop side of the music industry. I dipped my toe into the Rap/R&B side of the business building websites for new artists. There were literal gangsters in the recording studios sitting across from me drinking and smoking and they made plans for every aspect of these young girls lives: what and when they could eat, who they could see, where they could travel. They were given an allowance. Sexual favours weren't requested or performed in front of me but it was clear these girls were under control. And by girls I mean 15,16,17.
It's a bit dystopic. As much as the old music industry sucks, at least established artists had power.
Example of an established artist with power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSo9NTb1llI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGW99ilZ7oQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFELwBpskpU
Really? Prince's right to his own (stage) name? Taylor Swift and the rights to her early albums? And even if we're just talking about royalties, it looks like half of established artists have had lawsuits about labels defrauding them in some way, and the other half seem to have similar issues settled out of court.
These videos explain a few of these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn0gmu_m-os
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxj9rogBPi0
Kpop has become popular because it fills a niche that the western music industry doesn't cater to anymore. Some of it is actually better than the American pop scene. Right now there's no male western pop act with this Kpop idol's level of skill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEKVyfsYnuM
Comparing similar acts shows why Kpop is becoming popular.
Kpop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkwYeEMpTIM
western pop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe6D899cz3c
Every fan of a Kpop artist has a long list of how they have been mistreated and mismanaged, and sometimes these aren't even justified, the fans are being oversensitive. The fans pay for protest trucks to park outside the music company buildings with screens displaying their demands for better treatment.
Both Japan and Korea are notable for their talent development pipeline. Did the West fall behind somehow, or is the market for these types of performances simply not as lucrative in the West? Or maybe it's simply easier/more predictable to manage solo acts?
[1] Places k-pop behind pop, rock, oldies, hip-hop/rap, dance/electronic and indie/alternative.
[1] https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/8531464/k-...
Rather, it's a really rough, possibly exploitative gig. They are just like models, but they also sing and dance.
The Music Industry and Hollywood though, they will protect themselves.
We hear more about someone being cancelled for the slightest Tweet than for example Bryan Singer's decades long rapey escapades.
Corey Feldman was literally mocked in public for suggesting that he was abused. By none other than Barbara Walters.
It is a little ironic that you say they're not required to give sexual favours and say right after that they're just like models, another industry where that is very very common.
It's not like 'modelling' or 'acting'.
The bands are run by organized machines.
Hollywood/Music/Modelling are industries of individuals, sometimes coming together for productions, entire segments of the industry never work in classically professional environments.
One day a group of four men arrived at the office. They were investors and not too happy with how the stock had been performing. This was a time before naked shorting was illegal. They all wore suits and one of the men carried a baseball bat into the office. They all had stereotypical gangster accents. They had a closed door meeting with the CEO that day, baseball bat and all, and I'm pretty sure they got paid that day.
It was one of the most bizarre work experiences in my life. Mafia in the music industry? Yes, yes it is.
It might be illegal now, but certainly not enforced!
The attitude of "they don't catch every criminal, therefore it isn't being enforced" that people take towards financial crimes is silly.
40% of murderers get away with it but no one goes around trying to claim that "murder but by illegal but it certainly isn't enforced".
Over 60% of rapists get away with it. 70% of robbery. 80% of theft. 87% of burglary.
Just because financial crimes (maybe) have a slightly higher rate of "getting away with it" is no reason to make the disingenuous claim that it isn't enforced.
Well, maybe not murder in general, but there is certainly a point where the prohibition is seen as theoretical. Consider BLM.
> Our audit disclosed that despite the tremendous amount of attention the practice of naked short selling has generated in recent years, Enforcement has brought very few enforcement actions based on conduct involving abusive or manipulative naked short selling.
> Of approximately 5,000 naked short selling complaints received in the ECC between January 1, 2007 and June 1, 2008, only 123 (approximately 2.5 percent) were forwarded for further investigation.
I guarantee that more 2.5% of murders are investigated. Reg SHO violations remain massively under-investigated still today, to the extent that the SEC is well aware of simple ways to bypass: https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-...
Dr. Dre said he saw one sound tech get beat down by six guys because he rewound the tape back too far.
The amount of intimidation, blackmail and extortion many in the rap game talked about was legit. Even in the DMX documentary, the two founders talked about twice strong arming record labels and their owners to let artists they wanted to sign out of their contracts.
No, if you are trying to actually protecting someone, you don't end up isolating them nor controlling who they can talk to. Protection would be that the artist decides who she/he talks to and you enforce that. If you make those decisions and expect artist to comply, it is not protection anymore.
Plenty of travel, plenty of team building, plenty of dinners and hotels.
My wife asked me a few times about the orgies the movies show, and damn it, I must have always been at the wrong parties.
It is interesting how this varies by companies and organizations.
I also frequented movie festivals.
Don't take this personally but I think you were at the wrong parties. Good signs to tell if you are "in" or not: do you know how to get illegal drugs on set? have you ever been to a private event in a hotel room or AirBNB before or after a ceremony? have you ever been in the same room with an A list celebrity or actor when they are using an illegal substance?
If the answer to all those is no then yeah it's probably that you are in the wrong parties.
If you've been there and like never witnessed a movie level epic orgy then that's great for you. I know they are not usual on some circles, I've heard Disney and Netflix try to keep their staff on a tight leash. Honestly I wished my experience was more like yours because I liked the industry and it was a little bit of a dream of mine to be more involved with the movie creative process, and one of the reasons I didn't get more into it was that I was not comfortable mixing illegal drugs and orgies with work in the way it was usual.
IDK about that it's the same or slightly better than the rest of corporate America IME. Maybe a bit more lenient, if anything.
Industry is "very conservative" because talking about sex can almost instantaneously turn into sexual harassment. So you have to be careful talking about it. Drugs don't have the same liability concerns, if people aren't obviously loaded on the job.
I'm talking about frivolous lawsuits as well as legitimate grievances. People have a right not to deal with sexual discomfort (I don't have a better name for this concept - the uncomfortable feelings people have when talking about sex). Some people are very very uncomfortable talking about sex for various reasons. You can't even mention it without toing this line, or potentially crossing it.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding the tech industry being conservative on sex. I've met so many very openly LGBTQ in software. It definitely feels more common than elsewhere, especially with these corporate jobs.
In a year or two, perhaps.
I think the explanation is simpler: music and acting jobs are easy. Lots of people can sing, dance, semi-convincingly repeat lines written for them by other people, or even write scripts. It's just not a very skilled set of jobs. It doesn't take 5 years of study to become a great actor, people just luck into it all the time. Anywhere you get the intersection of a lot of money and easy jobs, you get jobs being parcelled out according to criteria like looks, knowing the right people, having the right parents, having the right party attitudes, or how easily they get into bed. After all, what other criteria are they going to use to differentiate between the masses of hopefuls applying for their chance at fame and fortune.
In contrast, tech is hard. It takes years of study to even get in on the bottom rung. Then it takes many more years of obsessive-level study and work to climb to the top. The difference in skill between a newbie and a master is enormous. If you're interviewing for a master software developer, and say "hey, you party much?" and they reply with something lame and boring like "no, I prefer to spend time with my wife and kids" then in a well functioning organisation they will still get the job. In quite a few other industries, if the interviewer is young that reply could easily cause you to be ranked lower than some other candidate who said "I'm always up for a good time!"
Tech isn’t necessarily harder or easier, there is just so much demand for tech that employees can afford to walk away from egregious behavior. Most creative industries do not suffer from extremely high demand.
In fact this isn’t even true for all tech. Academia sounds like a big hazing ritual. Games has had high profile abuse cases. And startups can be plenty exploitative.
For what definition of "get into tech" is this? Be somewhere in the proximity of a company that calls itself a tech company? Maybe? Be hired as an actual software developer after starting from scratch - this is by no means "ridiculously easy". I've helped people try to break in and they found it extremely hard.
I am as always assuming schooling. If you've done no relevant schooling it may be difficult at first, but relatively I'd say it still isn't very difficult when compared to other industries.
Oh please. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I can't speak to acting, but it takes far more than 5 years of study to become a professional dancer or musician
(oh and FWIW I've been a professional software dev for 25 years, having lucked into it just by being a nerdy guy in the right place at the right time)
John Lennon formed the Beatles when he was 20, after flunking out of music school, failing his O-Levels and being written off by his teachers. He wrote his first top 10 hit when he was 15, just a year or so after getting his first guitar. The Beatles was formed mostly of his mates, no extensive 5+ year study of music went into any of this.
Naturally talented group, yes, but that is nowhere near the same as requiring years of study to be able to get work in the field at all.
The history of most bands and professional musicians is the same. They're all self taught and it doesn't take years before they can get work. The slogan "learn to code" was deemed a quasi-offensive thing to say to out of work Appalachian coal miners because it implied that anyone can learn to code pretty easily, and that's widely recognised across society as not being true. How many of those coal miners could already sing songs or play musical instruments? Probably quite a few.
In tech, there is high demand for even moderately proficient individuals. There are tons of free tools and helpful resources to help you study and improve. If you have access to a computer and the internet you are already in a great position to practice. Being a master is obviously tremendously hard, but it is far from necessary for a good life.
If I had to choose, I would pick tech since there is a greater probability of having a very decent standard of living, and tech workers are generally left alone when it comes to the rest of their lifestyle. They do not need to keep up a personal style and social life that directly feeds into their job prospects. That's why the last point you mentioned is actually in favor of tech being easier.
I don't like mixing it with professional life because it pushes people that can't take it away from a job were partying and getting intoxicated is "required". Even if they are good at that job.
I am French and worked for French, German and US companies (tech) and I never witnessed what was discussed above.
Flights in corporate jets were convenient and everyone was either chatting, or reading, or working. Multiple week travels in great hotels were pleases where people got to know, had dinner and then everyone went to their room.
Parties were parties (including after-parties), some drinking, lots of laughing and that's all.
All this from "general population" parties/travels, to top level ones.
Like I said: I must have been to the wrong parties :)
I was signing contracts or giving GO/NOGO for others (as customers of vendors, very large contracts) and I was getting invitations to dinners, sport events or "company walk-though" in interesting places (that I never took because this the way I work). These were "normal" sales invitations, no hidden agenda.
So he swings by to pick me up and I didn’t ask where we were headed, figured just some cocktail bar or something normal. Nope, we roll up to a strip club out near North Beach. It actually was my first time in one, I was young and it never was my thing. The guy had a bottle of vodka on a shelf behind the bar that he used for clients (but honestly for whoever), and the strippers all knew him. I start talking to one of the performers about regular things - the school she was studying at, her family, etc. Then somehow we start talking about how they had a private room that was mainly for Zynga employees, with video game setups, bottle service and private dances. She made it clear that lots of tech companies came in to entertain clients, investors, and whoever else they wanted to.
Last time I let a sales guy bring me somewhere without telling me what the plan was first.
Wow, that sales guy must be thinking: last time I’m bringing the prude guy.
Okay, here's what happened. I'll never forget it because it was so weird. There was a younger guy and a much older guy. They introduce themselves, the younger one hands us business cards and pamphlets, and then the oldest one... starts telling us names of all the people he sold products to.
It was so weird because neither of them knew much about the product they were selling. Just their customers. And they tried hard to figure out if we knew any of their customers. Given our company's culture, we were all fairly new and thrown off guard by that lol. I think only one of us knew any of the people he was talking about.
We ended up not buying any of their products, because among other things, it was the worst sales pitch I've ever heard of. Like they relied on connections lol.
They'll seldom if ever make the mistake of inviting a clean cut / square type of person.
Music and Arts are a hellhole for this kind of stuff
Bolshoi ballet:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/dance/ballet/bolshoi-brothel-oli...
classical music:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/05/19/612621436/...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/charles-dutoit-sexua...