Well, I don't see online spaces going away very soon. So you seem to have a very nihilistic view of how it is inevitable and unavoidable online spaces are going to transform society towards a certain outcome.

So basically you are arguing the nature of online discourse is going to turn representative democracies into true democracies, for good or bad.

The post is entirely about the use of "racist" and how it evolved into a meaningless pejorative within the context of twoplustwo, and you turned it into being about me. . It's not amazing you and MrWookie need try to flip my criticism of you and MrWookie in order to make it about me. #toxiccult.

I mean I've been wrong about 7 billion different things in my life so I could very well be wrong about this but the companies that now own our "public" space have every incentive to keep us fighting (sorry I mean "engaging with content") and there is no incentive to resolve issues online because you can only lose clout by doing so.

Every post you've ever made is about that. We get it.

i feel like the opposite of this letter is what is actually happening right now.

maybe because of the internet and social media but everyone's racist, stupid, uneducated, illogical thoughts are becoming "dissenting opinions" instead of just being labeled as the stupid mindless **** that everyone would have laughed at them and made fun of them if they said it in person 10-20 years ago.

we have whole media segments like tucker carlson/hannity devoted to catering to the absolute dumbest audience possible. we have whole media podcasts shapiro and the like catering to all the wannabe intelligent people and telling them that their dumb opinions can be defensible by just asking questions.

i would argue that we are probably at the least PC and most open time in our history due to internet anonymity and we have people upset over being told their opinion isn't well thought out or based in reality freaking out about being "canceled"

You only read certain post. That's your problem, not mine. Stop projecting.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=153

What tom really means is:

Has anyone who signed the letter actually been a victim of "cancel culture?" I guess there's Rushdie, but JK Rowling seems to have no difficulty letting us know about how wizards poop and whatnot.

What are you not allowed to say under WNs rule that you were able to under Wookie's?

Who isn't allowed to post in this forum that was allowed to in the old forum?

Which one of the people who have written the letter is unable to say or write anything they want at any time? Is there anyone in the world who has actually been cancelled by this definition?

Nope. You made it about tom. Here's proof.

I bolded the parts that made it about tom. Don't be a hypocrite. Stop your toxic cult behavior. #toxiccult

I mean this exchange is a pretty perfect example of my point. I get clout from my in-group of attractive smart caring non racist people for pwning itshot about his dumb posts and he gets clout with his in-group of mouth breathing chuds for owning me because I think having the black ball in pool getting hit by the white ball is racist or whatever. What incentive do we have to ever agree on anything? Especially on a topic that is completely opinion based and has no impact from or on the material reality of our lives.

Well, the point seems to be we have constructed an unhealthy duality where the choices are being compelled to decide that we are on team, "black pool balls are racist" or team "Covid is just the flu."

And there are a lot of people who legitimately don't believe black pool balls are racist, and don't really appreciate they are increasingly being assigned to be on team "Covid is just the flu" because of it.

Let's see, we got "neoliberal," a tortured false equivalence, the notion that I can't be liberal and also have above median wealth, a blatant strawman, and, damn, I'm an "ideological capture" short of a bingo. Maybe next time.

Trying to equate this to writing about systemic racism is just a tortured false equivalence. Perhaps not being sufficiently specific when writing about systemic racism is bad writing, but it's seldom bad faith, as the subject is usually central to the thesis of the person writing about it. Contrast with JK Rowling signing this letter and complaining about cancel culture. As far as I know, she's still a billionaire, she's still free to say whatever she wants on whatever social media platform she wants, and she can buy whatever speaking position of prominence she wants to say whatever she wants. For her to complain about censorship like this, when she hasn't been censored by any reasonable definition of the word, is bad faith. She wants to be free from criticism and her opinions to be free from any and all negative consequences without actually making a convincing argument for her ideas.

Not at all. Markets might have the power to decide, but I certainly don't think they're always right. Instead, look at what I said. People should have the right to organize boycotts as they wish, and I think any effort to quell that right would be far more problematic than the occasional boycott effort I disagree with. The companies or other entities electing to go along with the demands of the boycotters or not is to be judged on its merits. It's not automatically good because Der Markt decided.

This hardly makes a lick of sense, except as a tortured effort to make me look like a hypocrite for supporting a social safety net. Wealth inequality is a real and measurable thing that exists no matter how much wealth I have. "Cancel culture" is just a pejorative branding of things go on all the time without issue, but that all of a sudden become "cancel culture" when there is an objection about a favored person or a favored subject.

If you let people criticize ideas or organize boycotts, then you can't support progressive taxation or a social safety net. Just an incredibly silly assertion.

I dunno, is the letter an obvious proxy to get some ulterior ideas enshrined under the guise of wealth inequality? I'm not saying it can't be done, but I haven't seen one.

Of course, I know things about reality, and what happens in reality, is that the right gleefully engages in the same actions that can be described as "cancel culture" all the time, and whining about "cancel culture" is instead a cynical, bad faith attempt to disarm the left so that right wing ideas can be propagated and enshrined without reprisal or criticism.

Those people are just on team "free thinking skeptic" or team "not a PC sheeple" and they swear fealty to their in-group in the exact same way. We are all the fish who doesn't know what water is. We swim in the sea of capitalism. Capitalism turns everything into a transaction, even (in fact especially) social interactions and that creates the conditions that most of us would agree are garbage. We just wouldn't agree whose fault it is.

idk, are they? Bari Weiss is a signatory, she spent her college years trying to get faculty cancelled for criticizing Israel (and when challenged about it today, she doesn't say "I was young and dumb and I was wrong", she says people aren't describing it right). Dahlia Lithwick signed it, pretty sure I remember her strenuously opposing Kavanaugh's confirmation; she's a Supreme Court reporter who, iirc, was so bothered by his confirmation that she hasn't physically been back to the SCOTUS since. I follow Yglesias on Twitter (though it's been ~a year since I've read Twitter that much) and I've never known him to be particularly anti-cancel-culture.

I hardly have exhaustive knowledge about every signatory to the letter, but from the ones I do recognize, their actions outside of signing this letter don't really say to me that they oppose what you claim. And the letter doesn't particularly say that either. Seems like you made that up.

My reading of the letter is that, generally, it's telling people "stop overreacting". I bet lots of the signatories would still not find it "overreacting" to fire someone who's openly a Nazi in their spare time. If we agree that's not controversial, then it is exactly what Wookie says it is: a debate about where the line should be drawn.

Crying about "cancel culture" is just the right wing trying to carve out a "racism and sexism (or worse) are okay" exception to at-will employment, which they've otherwise been totally happy weaponizing against the working class for decades. They're so cool with it that they've spent the last decade fighting (and winning) several cases about being able to "cancel" employees for any reason they want as long as they claim their Christian beliefs compel them to do so.

Wow, I can't believe tom is trying to cancel ihiv.

I'll cancel your ass like that *snap*

Any word on whether the letter signatories will forcefully argue nothing should happen to this guy?

Tech CEO goes on racist tirade against Asian family in restaurant

Is it abhorrent that people identified and released the names of this man and the company he runs?

In before Kelhus uses this guy to make generalizations about liberals (he's from San Francisco!).

Heh. I decided to remedy this and see what Yglesias is talking about these days. This is the first (non-pinned) tweet on his TL at the moment:



Hobbes is one half of a podcast duo I really liked, back when I actually drove places in a car and listened to podcasts. They did an episode on this Ebonics stuff once, it was a great listen and I highly recommend it, though you can also just read the tweet thread which has a lot of the same material. And the context of that tweet thread Yglesias linked is:





lol! Tell us more about how anti-cancel-culture Yglesias is.

This Hobbes guy sounds pretty smart.

He is!



I really need to start listening to You're Wrong About again

This is really bizarre...

On one hand, you have them arguing cancel culture does not exist, but rather just criticism of thought, and then moments later, they are actually advocating against someone to be cancelled, and trying to prove it's existence.