Do you not see the hypocrisy in writing this when you write the longest, most repetitive posts of anyone in this form?

Right, because of someone doesn't agree with you then they must be dishonest or playing sides. Is it ever possible that you're just wrong or an opposing point of view is also valid?

I think that is a dangerous way to look at it but many do.

It is often used as a mocking reply to this concept saying 'lol, as if Matt Damon is cancelled'.

Sure people at the level of Matt Damon, Silverman, Rogan will not lose all their employment opportunities. The 'cancelling' is usually limited to making them shut up and no longer offer their view on subjects where they may not fully conform with the more woke left. That works, often. Were they just refuse to opine anymore saying it is not worth it, not because they are wrong but because they are being buried by the cancel tactics.

People below that top tier get hit with more severe consequences often kicked off tv or movie sets or out of other jobs as the cancel mob rages and that is regardless of any merit proven or not. It is understandable that many jobs do not want the distraction that can be created by having an accused '____ist' on set or at the desk.

The cancel mob knows that too and wields that threat with zestful joy.

So again it feeds into how the left mob controls speech and thought, which is their goal.

Nope. You don't understand what the word hypocrisy means, and that is not my fault.

I am not speaking against the length of my posts. I often sigh too when I look back at them. But the rest does not apply and would have to for their to be hypocrisy.


False. I agree to disagree more than anyone on this forum. I make sure (or always try to) to distinguish when I am offering opinion and if someone is coming at me with their opinion, i accept that. I don't have to agree with it but i accept they are entitled and we can disagree.

But that does not mean I cannot call out obvious BS in certain situation. When in the BFI and they are arguing Obama was at fault and not Trump in 2020 for the lack of PPE, i will say 'they are not being an honest broker' in that discussion. They are gaslighting, lying, etc to just hold to their side.

You can cry all you want saying 'how dare you' as if we have to accept even the most specious and obvious non truthful things as if just an 'alternative fact' that deserves respect and not to be called out, but I disagree.

I think the one of the biggest failings of modern society was the News allowing this 'alternative fact' universe to form where on every topic they invited guests from left and right to engage in a masturbatory exchange of alternative facts, where the actual facts did not matter but each side was treated equally with respect. I think it is people who watched that mess who have now brought that form of argumentation to the internet where the standard seems to be 'if you could not get a perjury verdict in a court of law' then what I am saying is just as valid as what you are saying. Facts be damned. I have alternative ones.

Who is in charge of this tightly knit, well organized zesty thought control machine that strikes these poor victims down with their words and how are they funded? Do they provide their members with health benefits? You must have some theories on this, since you have theories on everything, so since this evil form of thought control is your latest passion project - why not present what you believe to be the actual infrastructure behind it. Who are the leaders, how are recruits found, how are things paid for, how do they share their messaging internally and externally etc. I realize you will avoid these genuine questions as you continue your weird yelling at clouds thing, but it might help your cases when you present these pretty derpy beliefs if you have at least a theory behind the machine you claim exists.

All the best.

Do I even need to post how easy it is to pre-own certain posters now and who this statement by me, upthread applies to...

"...I expect the reply to this, from some to be 'oh we are too feel sorry for rich celebrities now', but as always that misses the point ..."

Apparently you felt the need.

Hardly a week goes by without some conservative calling for violence in some form--civil war/kill the gays/the only good Ds are dead Ds etcetc. But let's focus on the Real problem--wokesters

These diatribes are becoming increasingly unreadable. Can you PLEASE use actual paragraphs? Ya know where you put the evidence in support of a claim in the same paragraph as the claim? And not just stream-of-consciousness narratives?

at least washoe sprinkles in YouTube videos in his similar posts.

is this the freeze peach thread where 90% of the posters dont know what free speech is?

No but its often fun to tickle the trolls.

but I think Roccoco who isn't a troll missed the point while you overtstate the downside massively while missing the upside

The like of Matt Damon are rarely being forced to keep quiet about their views. What is happening is that they're being forced to be far more considered about their views. Given they are nothing special as intellectuals and have massively much too much influence, this is a very good thing. Some may even realise, after a litle contemplation, that they havn't got a clue what they are talking about and shut up about it.

The same applies to everybody but most of us dont have our pearls of wisdom repeatedly broadcast to millions of idiotic fans who think our views matter just because we're on tv.

Good thread, and good points throughout.

The irony of the right in America using "cancel culture", as a bastion of stomping on free speech is comical. The problems of "cancel culture", aren't that difficult to understand, imho.

This is how we got here step by step:
1) The model for cancel culture was set by conservatives, whom are the original cancel culture. I lived and observed it.
2) The rise in income inequality in America, has provided bigger voices for conservative billionaires, who used this increased power to invest in propaganda networks via TV, radio, news, politicians.
3) With this increased power, conservative billionaires dismantled institutions, and demonized all government. This was the beginning of the first extremism (think early 80's).
4) Conservatives, with the help of Clinton and some democrats sold American labor oversees (mainly to China).
5) Enter the rise of the internet, technology, twitter, and mass WW platforms of communication. People who previously never had a significant voice in society, now could easily team with others and get their opinions heard.
6) Younger generations in America were brought into a new economy that saddled them w/ debt, less opportunities for wealth savings, home ownership, crumbling infrastructure, privatized health care, and an eroding climate environment.
7) 2008 financial crisis began waking people up to wealth cons that young people fell for, and how corrupt wall street is. Enter occupy wall street.
8) The major shift to the right, began in the 80's, goes too far. Come 2016, the media accumulation and propaganda of conservative billionaires reaches extreme heights, and visions for labor, the economy, gay rights, immigration, etc.. become more main stream instead of more extreme right.
9) Young generation with their new weaponized technology push back against the extremism, by using extreme desperate measures of their own. Young people don't have the same political and monetary power that conservative billionaires do, so this is their only route to push back against the growing extremism and marginalization of groups on society by holding corporations accountable for their actions. This comes in the form of canceling movie stars who are sponsored by X company / corporation, and so on.


Now, in an ideal society, when all voices can be equal, arguing back bad ideas and propaganda is the best path to protect all free speech. However, when you are marginalized, have no political power, little upward mobility to get your voice heard, it's totally understandable why people would take to twitter to call people to be "cancelled". When right wing groups organize to push their propaganda on school campuses, young people don't think they have a voice, so they try and shut it down. What's the alternative? Will they get a platform to show why these ideas are bad? No.

Money = power = political speech. With no money, you have no voice. This is the backdoor.

Has it gone too far and is it sometimes wrong? Of course.

The problem is the "co" in Trump and co is the bulk of the GOP. Democrats, for all their faults, have not embraced gaslighting as a party-wide tactic.



Rococo points out the obvious problem with hand-wringing over celebrities. The cancel-callers don't have the power to do the actual canceling. They can only make a former statement/picture/etc viral and it's up to the employers/platforms of the cancel target to actually do the canceling. Netflix chose not to cancel Chappelle for instance, despite lots of howling for that. These people are telling these companies they will stop using their product if they employ that person. If the employer doesn't care, the cancellers have no power.

This is also how viral phenomenon operates on the internet generally. The same kind of thing drives stuff like pizzagate and qanon and the viral smearing and conspiracy campaigns against Obama and Hillary. The dregs from the defunct r/thedonald, and the comment sections of infowars and breitbart rally up and spread their messages across social media, trolling the left in the hope that their storm gets noticed by mainstream media. The crucial difference is only one side of the "top levels" is willing to pick up unsubstantiated trolling for political gain. Birtherism got to the high level, pee-pee tapes did not.

If you want to focus on the little guy who doesn't have a publicist and millions of dollars to defend themselves, I'm not at all convinced that trolling such people is a mostly left wing phenomenon. That kind of thing is a problem with the internet generally.

To your point of everyday people getting fired, is this much different than being quoted in the paper for something your employer doesn't agree with? It's still up to your employer to decide if they want to bear the brunt of the boycott or protest they might incur by keeping you. You speak of this as though it is a plague of fringe-liberal agenda issues getting people fired but I think that is difficult or impossible to actually assess unless there's been an independent study on that somewhere. I don't know how you really escape survivorship bias for instance. You're likely only going to hear about the people that got fired, not the ones that didn't. And you're further likely to hear more about people getting fired controversially.

Sure I would not used the word "forced" there but I do think they are being put under significant pressure to shut up.

I don't agree with you either that it is a good thing for them to speak less. I don't put any more import on a celebrities view of things than anyone else. I look to what specific experience a person has on a topic before put any import on their comments. Certain celebrities tend to be more activist and involved (Clooney, Damon, Jolie, Penn) and since they are putting in some work, I want to hear what they think too.

Does that mean they cannot be wrong or silly? No. But I still do not think their voices should not be welcomed in the debate. But everyone needs to be more 'considered' and public figures moreso, so we agree there.

Left cancel culture targets dissent from the notion that there exist marginalized communities that deserve to be uplifted. The left has been calling out oppressive behavior for decades. Right-wingers have taken to ridiculing cancel culture because they were shook by movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter taking some white male scalps, threatening the status quo, a status quo held up by our corporate media that seeks to force debate into an "orderly" format that maximizes its role as referee of the terms of debate rather than seeking to maximize justice, the ultimate goal of leftist counter culture.

Left cancel culture is an anti-establishmentarian expression of free speech in the form of criticism. Right-wing cancel culture is usually an establishmentarian attempt to deny that criticism, fearing that it will destroy the foundational mythologies that conservatism relies on as justification for its oppression.

Well said.

Pre-twitter / technology, there's a long list of right-wing cancelation via their power structures. The notion this is primarily driven by the left, or it's a purity test is a very shallow and sophomoric view that doesn't understand how or why we got here. I tried to explain why in an above post.

I still think hairs are being split too literally here.

the cancel mob has absolutely realized they can cost people jobs, and other severe consequences by just being the mob. You saying 'well ultimate the boss has to say your fired' does not mean they are not the one knowing they can fairly predictably cause it.

It is very different than being quoted for your own words in a newspaper and being fired for it.

Again using the Spotify example and Rogan, the goal of that cancel was to make Rogan so radioactive that Spotify would say 'even with no truth to the allegations, it is too much and we will move on'. Now Rogan happened to be too big to cancel but there are many smaller than Rogan who do get purged under the weight of such a massive smear and lies campaign.

So when you know what the tactic is likely to achieve often and you employ it, I think it fair to say you caused the cancelling even if the boss is the one to pull the trigger. If he is not doing it on merit and it only doing it to silence the noise, then they won.

Good summary but you speak to the origins and not the current manifestation of left cancel culture which is more now about thought and speech control of anyone who does not agree. You do anything or say anything that is seen as a transgression and the left mob is coming for you with all the tools of lies and misrepresentation and slander they can muster, no matter how established your leftist bonafides are.

This I can agree on. Our remaining differences on who is doing it and its impact I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on.

I like and largely agree with your post above.

I am just not sure I would label that cancel culture. You have elevated way up the food change to the very basis of power dynamics and influence at the highest levels which I don't associate as Cancel culture, per se.

Let me put it this way. All cancel culture is a power dynamic, not all power dynamics are cancel culture.

In the future we will have an accepted definition of what cancel culture is and I think it be defined more as a 'mass mob phenomena where facts and truth could be checked at the door and a person 'canceled' simply by the weight of accusations'.

If they do not label that 'Cancel culture' they will need to come up with a name for that phenomena then, as it certainly is its own thing and a very powerful thing.

The historically disempowered mob of average citizens found a tool (the internet) that gave them tremendous power. Unfortunately that power was rarely used for truth and good and was quickly coopted as just another power dynamic tool of abuse.


And i guess you could say if they were only using that tool against the deplorable elements on the right, then game on, but unfortunately they have found it is often more valuable as a tool to silence dissent on their 'side', the left. To ensure all parties march to the most virtuous drum beat in lock step and don't question ...or they shut up.

Whenever ordinary people attack the wealthy and powerful on Twitter, QP will be there to defend our precious celebrities.

Good post. And ya there's always the potential for some coloring outside the lines/being misguided etc.

The conservatives/Rs have never held themselves to fighting fair--hell one of the old criticisms they always used to toss around was that if the Ds --really believed-- in what they were doing they'd be down here in the muck with us doing whatever it takes. So in a way they were kinda asking for it

You call it a mob, but some would say it's power to the people. Maybe a grassroots movement flexing its muscles is a good thing in a democracy.

You previously mentioned Al Franken. He was appropriately canceled and no lies or slander were used to bring him down. The left mob does a fine job just sticking with the truth.

The easiest way to define cancel culture is simply to add that it must be left and not right in the definition. Like Trump lobbying the NFL to ban Kaepernick for speech he doesn’t like certainly looks from a distance like cancel culture. But it isn’t because Trump is right wing and by definition not part of cancel culture.

What are the big cancel culture events for the right and left?

I generally think of Rogan, Kavanough, MEtoo, going after comedians and university speakers as examples of it from the left and education book banning, educational restrictions on teaching, Kapernick and Jan 6 as examples by the right.

I think of Franken and Damon being the left going after others on the left. I view these examples as shallow and sophomoric purity tests as well.