If there was something you find interesting about Britney, then sure post and if others find it interesting it will get upvoted. I bet the comments about her conservatorship would be very interesting.
I suspect this story is on HN because of the online bullying aspects of it.
As someone having been at 4 concerts of the guys...
M&S went to shit - well, at least being average - pretty fast.
After "Sigh no more" and "Babel", for some reasone they thought changing their signature style significantly (an alliteration, neat) was going to work.
It did not.
And they know it - whenever you're going to a concert, they pretty much avoid as much as possible playing anything from "Wilder Mind" (i like to call that one "Milder Wind") or "Delta" because the crowd will be unfazed.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, why-so-fucking-ever.
Also, if you have heard anything of the last 2 albums - do you really think they still have a spot open for someone playing a banjo?
As i said, my gut feeling is that his career with M&S was over anyways - you'd be hard pressed hearing him playing the banjo on any of the recent 2 albums.
Yet, it's sad seeing him throwing the towel, for whatever reason.
I understand it's tough to stand up against an internet mob, but in my opinion this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding reasons for him to quit.
I’m glad you posted the follow up comment because I missed your point at first. But I can actually see your point, that maybe he’s making a political statement to avoid the more ugly truth.
It does sound like a hassle to be famous enough to get cancelled. I like the idea of niche fame, where you’re some huge fish in a tiny pond - just enough to make a living but not enough to get cancelled by the horde
I have no idea what the book is about, but judging by the title (Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy) I can only say that this mob behavior/cancel culture just adds one more data point to support the book.
Twitter is absolutely the worst place to discuss politics (or anything?) and the twitter-way of communication has ruined the way we discuss politics in general, even in real life.
The author is a bit of a serial provocateur, and is one of the exacerbating forces of the twitter discourse - which you might also be able to distil from the book’s title. He has dined out on making a boogeyman out of student protests, BLM and “antifa” [0] among far-right media outlets and more credulous mainstream ones.
Regardless of your personal political orientation, if you don’t like the way Twitter has changed the way people talk about politics, it’s probably fair to assume you’re not thrilled about reportage that portrays its subjects as radical democracy-destroyers, rather than people with agency and motivations and grievances that may well be legitimate. And whatever your feelings on _that_, the people who are the subjects of that kind of reportage tend to find it a bit of an irritation.
Not wishing to detract from the awfulness of this fellow’s treatment, he’s strayed into the crossfire of culture war BS, that he probably had no idea was there, in a way that appears to stake out a position. But if he’d done the same with some half-baked Pizza- or Russiagate exposé, you might expect something similar, just from different accounts.
Im glad this was vouched and brought back because it should be on HN. The internet has enabled cancel culture and turned it into a virus, able to infect and destroy anyone, anywhere. Would this level of violence and attack on someone for speaking their mind be so prevalent without the internet? Maybe. The internet has certainly made drive by canceling easier.
I’m not exactly a fan of M&S but jeewiz, why can’t someone say hey “I liked your book” which doesn’t advocate for violence or harm, and be attacked and canceled for it?
Cancel culture is a sickness on society with no end until it consumes everyone. I just hope it turns back and starts consuming the arm chair radicals that support it.
*Edited for grammar and I made a small mistake in clarity.
why can’t someone say hey “I liked your book” which doesn’t advocate for violence or harm, and be attacked and canceled for it? Cancel culture is a sickness on society with no end until it consumes everyone
So writing those two sentences, one after the other, didn't give you a moment's pause?
Not in the slightest. I firmly believe that everyone should be able to speak their mind no matter what it is so long as it does not advocate for violence or harm to another person. They should not lose their job, they should not be ostracized, and companies should be held civilly liable if they terminate someone for speech outside of the workplace. It’s called a free democracy, perhaps you might be interested in checking it out sometime
The problem with your logic is two-fold, (1) speech doesn't have to advocate for violence or harm for it to create violence and harm, and (2) you're conflating government with culture.
As a group of people, a company is entitled to free speech just like an individual. By restricting their ability to terminate someone for their poor representation of the company, you're effectively forcing them to accept speech that could jeopardize their ability to conduct future business.
A free democracy means speech is free from restriction by the government, but doesn't mean the person speaking is free of consequences from their peers.
[edit]
This is relevant context, which goes to the author of the book’s reliability as a source of information.
The mobbing of someone who (implicitly) endorses the political posture of the author is of course a cause for concern, but you’d think there’d be more desire to understand why that might have happened, beyond just agreeing that Thing Bad.
I don't get it, the religious right has perfected boycotting over the last 50 years. Starting with burning records of the Beetles because John Lennon said they're bigger than Jesus and moving to burning disco albums. In the 90s the AFA said as long as Waldenbooks sells porn we'll boycott Kmart, the then owner of Waldenbooks. They've boycotted Disney, the Dixie Chicks, Target, French Fries, the Teletubbies, JCPenny's because of Ellen, to one of their own, Rob Bell, for questioning if non-christians go to hell.
But when "them bleed'n heart liberals" do it, its called "cancel culture?" Why? Its a tactic that the right has been using for years but suddenly it bad form? This definition of cancel culture is bullshit. Everyone has always been free to choose from whom they wish to purchase goods and services, and boycotts have been weaponized by the right for practically the last century. As much as I've disagreed with many of the motivations for those boycotts, I've never disagreed with the freedom of speech they have to perform a boycott. Why is it suddenly bad just because the "radical antifa left" is doing it?
Don’t you dare point out their hypocrisy!!! It damages the narrative and impinges on their inalienable right to be sanctimonious and holier than tho! /S
Social media just makes it more visible. This kind of activity used to be social but it was hidden behind church doors, just because its more visible doesn't bring it to a new level its been at this level for a long time already.
For me, there's a difference between boycotting a powerful corporation by not buying their products or services and starting an angry Twitter mob to badger someone so much that they quit a large aspect of their life to protect their friends and family.
Neither tactic is exclusive to the left or right certainly.
People disliked it when the religious right used to do it and they still dislike it when it's done by the "radical antifa left". I don't understand what is surprising about this?
The point apparently being, the people complaining the loudest about cancel culture seem to be the people who were most likely to do these things before the twitter mobs. RE: McCarthyism, Freedom Fries, the Satanic Panic.
Maybe so, but there are a bunch of people quietly watching the situation that absolutely hated right-wing cancellations and that find to their surprise that they also hate left-wing cancellations.
To many it seems like while bigotry used to be the best way to bully and intimidate people, now performative anti-bigotry is the best way to bully and intimidate people. So what we see is merely an evolving toolset for sociopaths.
I think that with religion falling out of favor, many of the people that would be shaming others from a religious context are finding less formal systems of morality from which to cast their judgement.
Cancel culture beats people into the ground with words so far that they drink bleach which has literally happened. boycotts end shitty business practices.
Oh come on, you want to talk about cancel culture, lets talk about the Satanic Panic. When I was growing up it was in full effect. I personally was affected by it. How you ask? Let me link you a story I've already posted in the comments before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159399
My mother was "canceled" and actually had her life ruined because of a false confession, and a deranged group of Christian cultists. But you're upset because someone had their social media account banned because they were being an absolutely awful person. Oh no!
A lot of these accounts that are getting banned are from Q-Anon. These people are coming up with bullshit lies that affect the lives of other people. But you don't side with the people that are having their lives turned over because of these idiots spreading falsehoods, you're defending the deranged maniacs who were correctly moderated into oblivion. You're response is, oh no some of these deranged maniacs who ruin the lives of people on the internet by indulging in conspiratorial fetish might drink bleach!
Boycott involves someone not consuming goods and services. The cancel thing involves yelling at private individuals in a public place to the extent they loose their livelihood. There is a clear difference between a business decision based on financial calculations to either sell or not sell porn and someone thinking a book is great or not.
The second difference is the virality. Once an idea, a meme, of someone being X is out there, nobody cares where it came from and it’s virtually impossible to reverse. One can stop the action that sparked the boycott and it will end. The person being canceled can do absolutely nothing to make it stop. Also, malicious targeting is easy: getting a meme go viral is a fairly well-understood and commercialized endeavor while convincing a significant number of people to join a boycott inevitably involves a lot of legwork and the people actually agreeing with the original premise. The latter is not true with cancelling, you just take “X is Y” for granted after a very short while
Thanks to this post I've reread Solzhenitsyn's Live Not by Lies [1]. It is still relevant today as an ethics guide, not only in the context of the Cancel culture.
35 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 68.0 ms ] threadEdit: Sorry for the snarky question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I suspect this story is on HN because of the online bullying aspects of it.
M&S went to shit - well, at least being average - pretty fast.
After "Sigh no more" and "Babel", for some reasone they thought changing their signature style significantly (an alliteration, neat) was going to work.
It did not.
And they know it - whenever you're going to a concert, they pretty much avoid as much as possible playing anything from "Wilder Mind" (i like to call that one "Milder Wind") or "Delta" because the crowd will be unfazed.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, why-so-fucking-ever.
Also, if you have heard anything of the last 2 albums - do you really think they still have a spot open for someone playing a banjo?
As i said, my gut feeling is that his career with M&S was over anyways - you'd be hard pressed hearing him playing the banjo on any of the recent 2 albums.
Yet, it's sad seeing him throwing the towel, for whatever reason.
I understand it's tough to stand up against an internet mob, but in my opinion this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding reasons for him to quit.
It does sound like a hassle to be famous enough to get cancelled. I like the idea of niche fame, where you’re some huge fish in a tiny pond - just enough to make a living but not enough to get cancelled by the horde
Twitter is absolutely the worst place to discuss politics (or anything?) and the twitter-way of communication has ruined the way we discuss politics in general, even in real life.
Regardless of your personal political orientation, if you don’t like the way Twitter has changed the way people talk about politics, it’s probably fair to assume you’re not thrilled about reportage that portrays its subjects as radical democracy-destroyers, rather than people with agency and motivations and grievances that may well be legitimate. And whatever your feelings on _that_, the people who are the subjects of that kind of reportage tend to find it a bit of an irritation.
Not wishing to detract from the awfulness of this fellow’s treatment, he’s strayed into the crossfire of culture war BS, that he probably had no idea was there, in a way that appears to stake out a position. But if he’d done the same with some half-baked Pizza- or Russiagate exposé, you might expect something similar, just from different accounts.
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...
I’m not exactly a fan of M&S but jeewiz, why can’t someone say hey “I liked your book” which doesn’t advocate for violence or harm, and be attacked and canceled for it?
Cancel culture is a sickness on society with no end until it consumes everyone. I just hope it turns back and starts consuming the arm chair radicals that support it.
*Edited for grammar and I made a small mistake in clarity.
So writing those two sentences, one after the other, didn't give you a moment's pause?
As a group of people, a company is entitled to free speech just like an individual. By restricting their ability to terminate someone for their poor representation of the company, you're effectively forcing them to accept speech that could jeopardize their ability to conduct future business.
A free democracy means speech is free from restriction by the government, but doesn't mean the person speaking is free of consequences from their peers.
The mobbing of someone who (implicitly) endorses the political posture of the author is of course a cause for concern, but you’d think there’d be more desire to understand why that might have happened, beyond just agreeing that Thing Bad.
But when "them bleed'n heart liberals" do it, its called "cancel culture?" Why? Its a tactic that the right has been using for years but suddenly it bad form? This definition of cancel culture is bullshit. Everyone has always been free to choose from whom they wish to purchase goods and services, and boycotts have been weaponized by the right for practically the last century. As much as I've disagreed with many of the motivations for those boycotts, I've never disagreed with the freedom of speech they have to perform a boycott. Why is it suddenly bad just because the "radical antifa left" is doing it?
Neither tactic is exclusive to the left or right certainly.
To many it seems like while bigotry used to be the best way to bully and intimidate people, now performative anti-bigotry is the best way to bully and intimidate people. So what we see is merely an evolving toolset for sociopaths.
This doesn't feel like that though, given just how often Ngo shows up in the right-sociopath column.
Or, as I said in another comment, Winston Marshall has picked a really weird hill to die on.
My mother was "canceled" and actually had her life ruined because of a false confession, and a deranged group of Christian cultists. But you're upset because someone had their social media account banned because they were being an absolutely awful person. Oh no!
A lot of these accounts that are getting banned are from Q-Anon. These people are coming up with bullshit lies that affect the lives of other people. But you don't side with the people that are having their lives turned over because of these idiots spreading falsehoods, you're defending the deranged maniacs who were correctly moderated into oblivion. You're response is, oh no some of these deranged maniacs who ruin the lives of people on the internet by indulging in conspiratorial fetish might drink bleach!
I, for one, have no sympathy.
The second difference is the virality. Once an idea, a meme, of someone being X is out there, nobody cares where it came from and it’s virtually impossible to reverse. One can stop the action that sparked the boycott and it will end. The person being canceled can do absolutely nothing to make it stop. Also, malicious targeting is easy: getting a meme go viral is a fairly well-understood and commercialized endeavor while convincing a significant number of people to join a boycott inevitably involves a lot of legwork and the people actually agreeing with the original premise. The latter is not true with cancelling, you just take “X is Y” for granted after a very short while
[1] https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies