Cancel culture

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nobspeople
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Cancel culture

Post #1

Post by nobspeople »

It's the new thing, this cancel culture.
Many say this is when people demand someone be fired, a show be cancelled, a song boycotted, etc, over things said in the past. Sometimes it's a bad joke that's twenty years old while other times it's something that was said two days ago.
Wikipedia says: it "is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is commonly used in debates on free speech and censorship.

Cancel culture is a noun: a phenomenon or practice of publicly rejecting, boycotting, or ending support for particular people or groups because of their socially or morally unacceptable views or actions.

Is this a trend of here to stay?
Is there a time when this 'cancel culture' action is acceptable? A time when it's not?
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AgnosticBoy
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Re: Cancel culture

Post #11

Post by AgnosticBoy »

nobspeople wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 1:25 pm Is there a time when this 'cancel culture' action is acceptable? A time when it's not?
Condemnation of Russia is a good example of acceptable cancel culture. Condemnation in this case is coming from a lot of countries, from different political parties, etc. This at least shows that it's not politically driven, unlike some of the cancel culture that I see going on between Republicans and Democrats the United States.
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Re: Cancel culture

Post #12

Post by Purple Knight »

AgnosticBoy wrote: Sat Feb 26, 2022 12:29 pm
nobspeople wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 1:25 pm Is there a time when this 'cancel culture' action is acceptable? A time when it's not?
Condemnation of Russia is a good example of acceptable cancel culture. Condemnation in this case is coming from a lot of countries, from different political parties, etc. This at least shows that it's not politically driven, unlike some of the cancel culture that I see going on between Republicans and Democrats the United States.
Russia has the advantage of being an entire country and not just a person. And it's a decently large one both in size and scale. In other words, the ability of cancel culture to hurt Russia is certainly nonzero, but it's still limited.

If Russia was some tiny country I'm not sure if I would care what wrongs it had committed... if it came to the point of cancel culture leveraging so much power that it was basically, do what we say or you cease to exist, that would certainly upset me.

I'm hard left on most issues but not all of them. This is one where I differ. I see leveraging social power to crush people as the same sort of wrong as institutional white power (though perhaps not to the same degree).

There's a point where one party has so much power over another that it's identical in practice to slavery. The underpowered party has no choice but to obey. That's wrong.

And I'm not for hate speech. I'm against hate speech. But that needs to be addressed legally. It's also wrong for people to exert so much power over other people that they prevent them from engaging in legal acts. The legal system needs to mean something. If the law says it's legal, it should be legal. If someone else jumps in and crushes you for doing it because the government is so flaccid that it doesn't care about defending its own legal system and would rather extralegal systems crop up and punish people, you were still punished... and it doesn't really matter by whom.

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Re: Cancel culture

Post #13

Post by AgnosticBoy »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #12]

There are sizable Russian populations that exist outside of Russia. I'd be on the look out for Russians becoming targets for discrimination (although racial discrimination is illegal in the US), intimidation, and cancellations. And I'm referring regular citizens, i.e. the ones that are not even tied to the Russian government.
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Re: Cancel culture

Post #14

Post by Purple Knight »

AgnosticBoy wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 10:32 pm [Replying to Purple Knight in post #12]

There are sizable Russian populations that exist outside of Russia. I'd be on the look out for Russians becoming targets for discrimination (although racial discrimination is illegal in the US), intimidation, and cancellations. And I'm referring regular citizens, i.e. the ones that are not even tied to the Russian government.
I would especially be on the lookout for this because the de facto interpretation of racial discrimination is that it's permissible if the person being discriminated against is white. I actually agree with this in most cases but in this case it could be a potential problem. In modern day, in Western countries, whites have so much power that it is impossible for discrimination against one to do anything but create a fairer playing field. However, Russians could become an underclass, as was almost seen with the Irish with their influx into America.

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Re: Cancel culture

Post #15

Post by AgnosticBoy »

nobspeople wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 1:25 pm Is this a trend of here to stay?
I've already answered these questions but just wanted to share some additional observations. The cancel culture trend may not be here to stay if we can find a way to counter it. One way would be to unmask (reveal their identity) those who are calling for others to be cancelled. A lot of the cancel culture use the internet to form online mobs to get others cancelled. Shining light on these groups might help to deter them, especially if they have their own skeletons in their closet.
nobspeople wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 1:25 pmIs there a time when this 'cancel culture' action is acceptable? A time when it's not?
I would imagine that shunning people or boycotts of the past were more about actual behavior and not just words or views that someone post online. Personally, I would not shun anyone just because of their words unless it involved advocating/inciting/threatening physical harm.
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Re: Cancel culture

Post #16

Post by AgnosticBoy »

nobspeople wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 1:25 pm Is this a trend of here to stay?
Is there a time when this 'cancel culture' action is acceptable? A time when it's not?
Elon Musk has theorized that about 20% of Twitter accounts are not that of real people, but instead are AI bots.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter can't move forward unless the company shows public proof that less than 5% of the accounts on the social media platform are fake or spam.

He spent much of the previous day in a back-and-forth with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company's effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

In his tweet Tuesday, Musk said that "20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher. My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate."

He added: "Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does."

Twitter declined to comment.
Source: NPR

So why do I bring up bots? It's because they may be behind a lot of the cancel culture that occurs on social media. Imagine someone programs thousands of bots to post negative comments or outrage. A person or company (perhaps even the social media companies themselves) can trigger these bots to react to any news story or person that they don't like and want cancelled. Eventhough these bots are not of real people, but not knowing that and having these bots post lots of negative comments at once can still scare companies into giving in, or making someone look bad, etc. I could imagine political groups using this tool, and many others for nefarious reasons. This is not inconceivable given what the following AI bot can do:
Microsoft Created a Twitter Bot to Learn From Users. It Quickly Became a Racist Jerk.

Microsoft set out to learn about “conversational understanding” by creating a bot designed to have automated discussions with Twitter users, mimicking the language they use.

What could go wrong?

If you guessed, “It will probably become really racist,” you’ve clearly spent time on the Internet. Less than 24 hours after the bot, @TayandYou, went online Wednesday, Microsoft halted posting from the account and deleted several of its most obscene statements.

The bot, developed by Microsoft’s technology and research and Bing teams, got major assistance in being offensive from users who egged it on. It disputed the existence of the Holocaust, referred to women and minorities with unpublishable words and advocated genocide. Several of the tweets were sent after users commanded the bot to repeat their own statements, and the bot dutifully obliged.

But Tay, as the bot was named, also seemed to learn some bad behavior on its own. According to The Guardian, it responded to a question about whether the British actor Ricky Gervais is an atheist by saying: “ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism.”

On a website it created for the bot, Microsoft said the artificial intelligence project had been designed to “engage and entertain people” through “casual and playful conversation,” and that it was built through mining public data. It was targeted at 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States and was developed by a staff that included improvisational comedians.

Its Twitter bio described it as “Microsoft’s A.I. fam from the internet that’s got zero chill!” (If you don’t understand any of that, don’t worry about it.)
Source: New York Times
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