I initially wrote this in the “guy caught cheating at Coldplay concert and social media loses its mind” thread, but on reflection, it’s a better fit here.
Being placed on leave is usually a necessary preliminary step to being cancelled fired, especially in high-profile cases. Cancel culture strikes again!
Please note that I am not defending the guy. What I’m saying is that there’s a lot about this situation that we don’t know. But apparently social media knows all, and they’re out to get him, because that’s what social media does in the cancel culture world.
The guy was embracing a female colleague at a concert. Were they having an affair? Probably. Was that wrong? Not if his marriage was already on the rocks. Maybe they were already contemplating a divorce. Maybe they were already separated. We don’t know. But cancel culture doesn’t care. And it may very well have destroyed the guy’s career. Was such a consequence justified? Again, I refer to these three words: we don’t know.
Maybe an investigation will exonerate him, echoing the findings in the Chris Hardwick case. But the evidence in his defense would have to be very strong given the tsunami of negative social media commentary against him.
That’s not cancel culture, that’s tabloid culture. It could have been a similar story, if probably without video, if a journalist had snapped such a picture in the 80s.
No, tabloid culture only applies to the famous. This guy wasn’t famous. Cancel culture can destroy anyone, famous or not. It can, in fact, create infamy, as it seems to have done in this case, creating unwanted “fame” that becomes of prurient interest to disreputable tabloids.
The other thread isn’t about how tabloids are exploiting the situation, it’s about how social media has lost its mind over it.
If this guy wasn’t a CEO, I don’t think the response would have been nearly as big. Maybe not TV famous, but CEO of a decent size company brings some notoriety/fame.
Mocking rich people who get caught publicly doing something humiliating is a very, very different phenomenon than boycotts and other forms of canceling.
Absolutely not true. How prominent you are is often in relation to the size of the relevant industry or community in which you operate. It doesn’t matter if 99.9% of the world has never heard of you if you’re important in a particular community that has the ability to ostracize you.
The issue is not the he’s being “mocked”. The issue is that he’s been put on leave and may very well be fired. You seem to constantly underestimate the power of the cancel culture that’s enabled by social media.
The point is that social media isn’t engaged in this takedown of him because he was a famous celebrity – his prominence, such as it was, simply made him recognizable to someone who happened to be in attendance at that concert. Once he was identified, cancel culture went nuts with its usual unaccountable vindictive delight.
As I’m getting into the AI world, I noticed him before thanks to the Astronomer company. If not famous, he was getting there, and more of a name among the investment community:
What you are trying to peg as cancel culture is more like FAFO. Don’t try to excuse very anti-ethical acts. Adultery is widely considered to be anti-ethical due to the violation of trust and commitments made within a relationship.
He’s not at risk of losing his job because of cancel culture, he’s at risk of losing his job because he was publicly seen cheating with the HR head. It would have been no different if they were caught in flagrante at the office Christmas party.
Also I don’t think pointing out Trump’s atrocities is really helpful in this thread, which seems to be more about private citizens rising up en masse to harass people on the Internet and get them fired.
CECOT isn’t anywhere in the same ballpark.
That isn’t “cancel culture,” it is state-enforced totalitarianism.
That is not what this discussion is about.
(Likewise, I don’t think it’s helpful to blame liberal cancel culture for what is taking place in the US government, that’s a blatant attempt to shift accountability.)
Another thing I was thinking about is that it’s common for people to share something they find amusing or outrageous and share an opinion about it, without intending to destroy someone’s life. When something goes viral it’s not that intense for the vast majority of participants. Unlike when you have an angry mob IRL where everyone wants to punish the accused. The dynamic is different, and I don’t think we can say the problem is the vast majority of people involved, the problem is a minority of psychos. I don’t know how we can rein that in.
For instance, I find that CEO story amusing, especially because of all the Coldplay jokes. I can comment on it and not be trying to ruin the guy.
The automatic presumption of guilt in both those statement is duly noted.
Note the difference in my position versus those two. Rather than presuming guilt, I’m saying that we don’t have all the facts. We don’t know the full story. Were they having an affair? Probably, but maybe not. We don’t know. Was he “cheating” on his wife if they were in the process of an amicable divorce and mutually agreed to see other people? We don’t know.
We do know that some very nasty accusations were made against Chris Hardwick and three separate investigations concluded otherwise. We know that this guy has been put on leave pending the results of an investigation. He may be fired, or he may be exonerated. We don’t freaking know. But social media, ever-vindictive, unrepentant, and utterly unaccountable, has already deemed him guilty in a tsunami of malicious denigration.
No we don’t know this. I can’t believe you’re still spreading this bullshit. We know literally zero about what those investigations actually determined.
We don’t know if this will take place here. What we do know is that the wife did remove references to the “innocent” guy in her social media.
On Edit: And I did not consult with @iiandyiiii before making my reply. What we do know is that if that hugging was innocent, the immediate reaction was not, as even the Coldplay member commented then.
How is presumption of guilt relevant? It still has nothing to do with cancel culture. If it had been an office party rather than a concert, the damage to his career would have been the same.
It has everything to do with cancel culture, because it has huge impact with zero accountability. That’s a dangerous imbalance of power. It’s easy to be piously judgmental from the comfort of your armchair, but I’ve seen careers destroyed by this toxic bullshit.
Go ahead and enjoy it, I don’t care. That’s totally missing the point. My point is the one I just made above.