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Seeing some of the noise in responses since last night... shoulda made my definition explicit up front. Cancel culture is when people whose power rests relatively directly on public approval lose that power (and benefits thereof) via that approval turning to disapproval.
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So a celebrity actor losing a role due to crowd pressure, and being cut out of future consideration for most roles is a fairly clear pure case. A big investor getting disinvited from a speaking gig, but whose money is untouched, is not being canceled, just disliked by some.
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In general you have to be fairly rich and/or powerful on a public scale to be meaningfully cancel-able. It’s cancelation as in TV show, not as in dinner. And there has to be an actual mob (usually led by rival elites) demanding mob justice, but no grounds for actual legal action.
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A mob demanding an arrest for suspected actual crime is not cancel culture. Cases like a waiter getting fired due to being photographed at a neo-nazi rally are corner cases. They are being made an example of as representative of a minority *group* with power by a larger group.
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But don’t get too hung up on definitions. This is a fairly robust concept that is not sensitive to such details. Think “large, less powerful group policing small, more powerful group in extra-legal ways resulting in material losses exacted via social influence mechanisms”
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Should also explicitly clarify on the "culture" point. We are expected to have a meta-level approval or disapproval of cancel *culture* rather than individual cancelations because there's a mechanism-legitimacy debate. Weird, but expected.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin and @vgr
There’s this weird cultural pressure to approve or disapprove at the meta-level, of the tool or the social trend, as opposed to being opposed to dumb or unfair attacks.
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The meta-level discussion is equivalent to questions like "is democracy better than monarchy?" We are not talking about good vs. bad mobs or good vs. bad emperors. We're talking about systematically legitimizing or delegitimizing a mechanism with both good/bad to it.
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Opponents of "cancel culture" want to delegitimize the mechanism itself. The monarchism was once delegitimized regardless of goodness/badness of emperor, and some want to delegitimize capital punishment today regardless of severity of crime or theory of punishment and deterrance.
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Setting aside the practical question of how you would actually do it technically and enforce it legally (would need a digital version of prohibition of large gatherings...), if you *could* literally turn off cancel culture, would you? You're expected to answer yes/no to that.
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I don't think it's either technically or legally feasible without suspending democracy itself, so in a way people who think cancel culture is cancerous (40% in my poll above) should be read as thinking democracy itself is cancerous, though I doubt most have thought that through.
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This matches general level of anti-democratic sentiment rn. I'd guess about a third of the people who voted "cancerous" will, if they stop to think, go on to support something like benevolent dictatorship or neo-monarchism or Chinese way as an alt. Other 2/3 will pull back.
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May be it was some vague association with Myers Briggs in my mind that triggered it, but some time after reading your thread came across this one & thought you may enjoy reading it; emphasis on "may". If not, ignore.
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The Anatomy of a Indian Liberal Pre 2014 👇🏼
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