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In practice, the real alternative to cancel culture is usually know-your-place culture for the masses. Civil-debate-culture is not an actual option. It’s what elites get to enjoy when the masses know their place and stay there quietly without getting uppity.
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What underlies cancel culture is the advent of tools that can upend the power of establishment elites in business, media, politics, etc. Cancel culture is the organism releasing (active & unwitting) antibodies to snuff out foreign invaders, who clearly don't know their place.
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It's more about taking over spaces that others thought they owned, and never expected to be challenged on. The cancelers are the foreign bodies, not the ones being canceled.
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I see the converse. All the privileged suburban kids w/pricey degrees go into media & politics, earn a pittance, paying dues. Then watch outsiders on YouTube/podcasts/startups make a killing. They lead cancel brigades as unwitting tools of the establishment, enforcing status quo.
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Hmmm...thinking... I can see your case when an online mob tries to get a network celebrity fired. But in the process, the mob is an enforcer of corporate power. They behave like revolutionaries, but in service of establishment power. Same with the corporate coopting of wokeness.