This really helps crystallize some of my thinking on this. I think what we’re seeing is that the typically-healthy mechanism of community pressure has evolved due to changes in society and in technology into something that’s weaponizable in some dark and vicious ways by the average individual, in ways that were less available in previous times.
Even 100 years ago, if you were the KKK and wanted to go burn a cross in front of someone’s house, you’d need to be part of that power structure, you’d have to physically round up some collaborators, and travel to their house under cover of night (because even 150 years ago, that kind of intimidation wasn’t universally accepted).
Now, any individual can spin up a virtual lynch mob and go after the most vulnerable and personal aspects of a person’s life without ever leaving the comfort of their home, and without even really risking exposing their own identity to the kind of pressure they’re bringing. Mob harassment has always been asymmetric, but now moreso than ever.
So then the question is, we can condemn the bad behavior, but is it horrible enough that we dispense with all forms of community and reputational pressure? And I feel like the unstated argument being advanced here is yes, individuals should have the freedom to speak without consequences from the community, which implies an inconsistent view that the community does not have the freedom of speech to express disapproval or condemnation.
And I feel furthermore this is arising as an overreaction of individuals/viewpoints who historically have not needed to worry about this kind of individual backlash, because it’s a novel feeling for them not to be the overwhelming majority viewpoint. So it seems to them as this abrupt emergence of a threat that must be stamped out immediately, rather than an evolution of something that’s been plaguing minority identities since long before the majority ever needed to care about it.
To elaborate, the boy was photographed looking smarmy, and the accompanying text pointed out that he’d been behaving in a manner that was rude and disrespectful. And that’s all true.
Should a sixteen year old boy get death threats for being rude in public? Of course not. Should he be wildly castigated? No, that’s grossly disproportionate, especially given his age.
But does a woman at a women’s march risk the same? Of course
It’s easy to imagine a woman at the Women’s March doing something that might draw the ire of MAGA, even though the rest of us might consider her actions inconsequential. This is doubly true if the woman in question fits a certain stereotype. In much the same way that Sandmann (young, white, shit-eating grin, school bully physiognomy etc…) fit a negative stereotype progressives have of young “bros” on the right, our hypothetical woman might fit equally negative stereotypes held by MAGA of young women on the left.
So let’s say our hypothetical woman (young, tattooed, face piercing, blue hair) was photographed looking really smug and sticking her middle finger in an old Church Lady’s face while holding a placard that said “PARASITES DON’T HAVE RIGHTS” or something.
Let’s say LibsOfTikTok gets hold of it and decides to “make her famous”. Should the woman accept some responsibility for her predicament? After all, she chose to air her views in public. She shouldn’t be surprised, right?
I’ll explain this just as I explained the other situation.
Should she be surprised? No woman is surprised by this behavior. It happens constantly, and for less lurid stereotypical reasons than you described above. I don’t know why you think that’s even a question.
Does that mean she is responsible? No. That’s distinct from the question of whether it should’ve been expected. Exactly as in the Sandmann case.
Does that mean she deserves the treatment? No, of course not, exactly as in the Sandmann case.
You ignored the question of whether LibsOfTikTok has any responsibilty for knowingly and purposely inciting the mob. Why did you ignore that aspect, and what’s your answer to that?
By my lights, LOTT would bear 100% of the responsibility, because it’s not reasonable to expect people to act as though a deranged mob is watching their every move whenever they go to a protest.
By your lights, it seems like you’d split responsibility between LOTT and the woman because the woman took a reasonably foreseeable risk to be publicly shamed when she chose to join the march, and the fact that the shaming is unfair is irrelevant, because that’s just the price of “putting yourself out there”.
I’m sure you’ll insist this is a strawman, and maybe it is. But it’s not an intentional strawman. I honestly can’t see how to interpret your words any other way. If you knew X might happen if you went there and said that, then if you did it anyway and X happened you’ve no right to complain.
I don’t see how she’s a victim in that situation. She went to the protest to spread a message. She’s literally waving a sign with her political views on it, at an event specifically designed to spread a political message. If a photo of her goes viral, well, that’s more people seeing the message that she wanted to put out in the world, isn’t it?
If you join a mob, with the express purpose of confronting a different mob, it seems entirely reasonable to expect to be watched by a mob.
Why not interpret them as I wrote them? I specifically said that I don’t assign the woman in your example any more responsibility than Sandmann. Here’s the quote.
The point I’m making is broader and more nuanced, and it’s around the extent to which either of these situations represents an example of the new moral panic called “cancellation”, as opposed to predictable mob dynamics that have existed since the dawn of mass media. You may find that to be an unnecessarily fine point to press, but the subject of the OP is about talking about what cancellation actually is and isn’t.
And I also dispute the implication that “cancellation” is disproportionately perpetrated by left-wingers against right-wingers, as evidenced by the fact that Sandman got payouts from NBC and CNN simply, simply for putting his face on TV, while Chaya Rachik runs the LibsOfTikTok account for the purpose of identifying hate-worthy people and inciting mobs against them, and does so in a daily basis. As far as I know, she’s never paid a dime in damages to anyone, and is in fact running around with DHS secretary Kristi Noem pretending to put immigrants in jail. Left-wing cancellation can ruin reputations or sometimes jobs. Right-wing cancellation can get people murdered.
I’d argue that what Rachik is doing is worse, because she chooses her targets specifically to match stereotypes hated by the right-wing mob, and it appears that inciting harassment is her intended purpose rather than reporting news, and the people she’s targeting often aren’t engaged in any kind of political behavior other than being queer in public. Whereas CNN runs legitimate news stories for a living, and in their haste to avoid getting scooped by social media sometimes they make mistakes, for which sometimes they have to pay settlements.
I would push back slightly around the idea of “typically-healthy mechanism”. Or at least adjust it to “expected and historically applied mechanism”. Pre-internet, we still had communities applying pressure to conform to arbitrary standards of behavior in powerful and oppressive ways. The healthier mechanism wasn’t always used for positive outcomes. It was healthier because its scope was more limited, and any one individual’s sphere of influence was narrower.
[uncited opinion based on sweeping generalization]
Part of why we see monoculture in rural areas and diversity in urban centers is the traditional method of community pressure in rural communities being applied (consciously and subconsciously) to keep anyone who isn’t straight/Christian/white out. A trans person moving to the city to find community and acceptance is much more a victim of ‘cancel culture’ than Sandmann or Andy Byron. For generations (forever?), socially conservative elements of society have used ‘cancel culture’ as their primary tool to punish non-conformists with great efficiency and effect.
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The question of whether mob justice is “typically healthy” is an interesting one. It’s certainly a time-honored tradition, but for most of human history it has resulted in the death of the outcast, which seems pretty extreme to me It was behind the Witch Trials and historically was punitive to women who didn’t fit the feminine standard of their time - not much has changed there, but women singled out now at least get to live. The problem with mob rule is that the mob is not all that bright, and easily influenced by other parts of the mob.
I can’t decide if I find it necessary (because of free speech) and distasteful, or simply wrong. But there are a lot of well-considered arguments here.
I think a lot of my problem with it is selfish; I don’t want to live in a world where it could happen to me. I’m sure I’ve said cancellable things on this board. I’m off social media. But I guess sometimes you have to face the potential consequences of something and then consider whether it’s worth it.
I’ve thought about it a lot when I consider becoming a published author. Is this potentially controversial thing I’m feeling a need to say going to result in some blowback, and would the blowback be worth it? Would it be worth it if it affected my family? If I had to move? Should the potential cost of free speech really be that high?
Could we split the difference? People can say whatever they want to say unless it is to incite harassment, abuse, and violence? No more organizing coordinated harassment campaigns without legal consequences?
It seems obvious to me that it’s a good thing when it results in removing power from someone who’s using that power to harm people, and it’s a bad thing when it results in causing harm to someone who’s not causing harm. This is similar to most other punitive activities. Trying to analyze it divorced from context is silly.
In the past, anyone who wanted to ‘cancel’ someone from a marginalized group got to do so without consequences. The marginalized person was probably alone, people who might be willing to support them would be elsewhere, and other than extreme cases, there would be no way to drum up support after the fact.
Today, the marginalized have power granted to them by the internet. If you want to punch down on someone, they may be able to punch back.
Yeah, true, maybe “healthy” was a bad way for me to describe community normative pressure. just meant that while no human society has ever been idyllic, to the extent that it has been, it’s because shared standards of behavior existed, and because the mechanism of ostracism and reputational pressure allowed standards to be maintained without requiring a Leviathan, a lopsided accumulation of power as in a “benign dictatorship”, which tends to be necessary. So perhaps “necessary but flawed” is a better term for it.
But as you pointed out, community standards of behavior often don’t align to concepts of justice, fairness, or human rights as we understand them. The fact of everything running smoothly in general doesn’t mean that it’s going smoothly for the minority or for nonconformers, which is why things get nasty when the balance of power shifts. The majority knows exactly how they treat the minority, and they want no part of what the opposite balance looks like.
And I think that’s a lot of what this conversation is about. Traditionally majority identities are suddenly finding themselves not being the arbiter of acceptability, and they’re understanding what a terrifying and powerless feeling that can be. Traditionally marginalized identities have more power and in some cases are wielding it as imperfectly as the previous majority. And mediating this, we have the most powerful communications system that’s ever existed, as powerful as it is distorted and anonymous and imperfect. It’s surprising things aren’t worse than they already are.