Cancel Culture and Virtue Signaling -- What’s the case against them?

But is it okay to practice it routinely as I do?

I think so. If a restaurant puts a sign out front saying “No MASKS ALLOWED,” it’s not only wise not to step inside, but it’s also virtuous, in my opinion, to deprive them of my patronage and to tell others that it’s a good restaurant to avoid. If they go out of business because I and my friends stop patronizing them (very unlikely) I consider us as having done something virtuous.

Yes, it’s fine boycott businesses with unsafe health practices, for example, and even to post about it on social media. If someone says “oh, you’re just virtue signaling”, just ignore them and continue on with your virtuous ways.

Of course. It is okay to signal virtue with a public display when there are good reasons to do so. The point is that virtue signaling is an established idiom that does not just mean signaling virtue, it has negative connotations - so I would use a different expression to describe what you are doing. “He is not just virtue signaling, it is important for us all to prominently demonstrate our solidarity and compliance with public health measures.”

If you said you were virtue signaling, that would be an admission that you were insincere and you were just doing it to look good.

And if someone says to me “You are trying to cancel that restaurant, which is not your function” my response is like “Sure it is. Can’t do it very effectively, but I can try and I can feel fine about trying.” I guess I just don’t get the criticism.

Would that criticism be more valid if I tried harder to deprive that restaurant of income? If I wore a signboard saying “This is a dangerous restaurant to eat in” or if I just had no valid reason, just didn’t like the owner, or the staff, or the food, and wore a signboard saying “This place sux.” Or left a bad review on Yelp? People all the time accusing people of evil who write bad Yelp reviews, say they’re practicing cancel culture. I say they’re just expressing their opinions.

I don’t see the difference. If Mike LIndell were to stop spouting election conspiracies, and just go back to hawking pillows on late-night TV, the left would leave him alone. South Africa got rid of Apartheid, and the world started doing business with them again.

“Cancel culture” is the phrase you use when you choose to keep doing despicable things and want to portray yourself as the victim.

“Cancel culture” is a right-wing construct, and if you aren’t onboard with the goals of modern conservatism, you should stop using their terminology. You’re playing right into their hands when you do.

ONE children’s book publisher discontinues a couple of old titles because they include cringe inducing tone-deaf stereotypes………that’s cancel culture.

But if a state legislature makes it illegal for libraries to carry 850 titles that deal with race and gender issues…….that’s OK.

If a social media company, in course of enforcing their terms of service, revokes the posting privileges of conservatives…….that’s cancel culture.

If another social media company forbids the posting of liberal viewpoints as part of their terms of service……that’s OK.

Cancel Culture is simply a construct that conservatives use to demonize the free speech rights of people that disagree with them. And, we speak with our wallets as well as our mouths……it was conservatives that codified the idea that money IS speech.

I’m a huge fan of the 1st Amendment. I don’t believe that the government has any right to prosecute or penalize people for speech, which I why I found it incredibly disturbing that the Trump White House reviewed the social media accounts of thousands of employees, and fired dozens for expressing or even liking the wrong opinions. One woman was fired from a White House job for liking a post by Taylor Swift encouraging people to vote, because the photo in the post was an endorsement of a Democratic candidate. It didn’t matter that the employee was a huge Taylor Swift fan that had literally liked everything the singer had posted, she was out of her government job.

But I don’t believe private citizens or companies are under any such obligation. I believe the intent of the First Amendment is the limitation of governmental power, period. I don’t believe the Constitution intended to protect assholes from the private consequences of unpopular speech,

To take it further, I believe social opprobrium is an important tool towards the maintenance of a civilized society. You can hold all the shitty opinions you want as long as you keep them to yourself, but if you start spouting them in public, you should be prepared to lose your girlfriend or your job.

Yes, it may seem unfair, but to legislate otherwise would infringe on the both the free speech and association rights of your girlfriend and employer.

You do however, retain the right to bitch about your loveless and jobless state and to blame it on “cancel culture”. And I’m free to laugh at you.

Are people really including that as part of virtue signaling? If so, then those complaining about virtue signaling are in the wrong. Those aren’t even really signals, those are practical actions done to help prevent disease. When I’m out shopping while wearing my KN95, I’m not doing that to signal anything, I’m doing that so that I won’t catch COVID-19. That’s not at all the same as wearing a ribbon for some cause or another or something of that sort. Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a ribbon, assuming the person wearing it actually does support that cause.

I agree that this is the form it sometimes takes. To be fair, I think the reason it takes this form is because typically racist people don’t change, and public pressure to fire them from their job is often the only recourse available. In particular I’m thinking of the people depicted on the viral videos of white people harassing / abusing minorities in public. People like the white lady who called the cops on a Black child who she accused of stealing her cell phone, the lady who called the cops on a Black man for walking his dog in Central Park while Black, etc. IMHO people like that are unlikely to change. Being fired from their jobs is typically the only punishment those people will face. The alternative is to say that we can’t do anything about that behavior, since typically there aren’t any legal sanctions available.

It’s not a criticism of your actions, it’s a question of the correct use of terminology to describe what you are doing.

Both virtue signaling and cancel culture are idioms with specific connotations - aspects of meaning that are established by usage that cannot be deduced from the separate words.

Nobody is disputing that in some circumstances, public displays of virtue or organized boycott are valid and justified acts. You just cannot use the idiomatic expressions virtue signaling or cancel culture to describe positive and justified acts or you will simply be misunderstood.

Now, perhaps there’s a case for reclaiming these derogatory expressions from the right wing shits who habitually use them as buzzwords to impugn decent people doing decent things. But if the negative connotations are to be expunged, the reclaiming has to actually take place as a broad community effort - if you unilaterally try to use these expressions with anything other than their established meaning you will simply be misunderstood.

That’s not a boycott, that’s just personal taste. I don’t like tomatoes, so I don’t buy tomatoes. I’m not boycotting them, I just don’t enjoy them. A boycott is a political action intended to inflict financial harm and negative publicity on an organization in order to force a change of policy. When they boycotted the buses in Montgomery, they didn’t just stop taking buses, they organized protests and worked hard to convince other people not to take buses. When they boycotted grapes in the late ‘60s in support of the workers’ strike, there was a concerted effort to convince the public to stop buying grapes. When Christian evangelicals decided that Disney was getting too leftist, they organized a boycott to try to force Disney to change employment policies, park admittance rules, and to stop including “liberal” messaging in their movies. Republicans who disagreed with the Dixie Chicks’ opinions on the Iraq war boycotted their records, and demanded that radio stations stop playing their music.

Boycotting is inherently a political action. It’s not just “personal choice,” it is - and always has been - about using public economic action to force a political change.

The most charitable definition of “cancel culture” is “a boycott I don’t like,” although I think a stronger definition, based on actual usage, would be “a boycott organized by liberals.”

Because it’s a ridiculously blunt tool used quite often by lemmings in an inconsistent manner. Why is it that it’s a career ending problem if Joe Rogan discusses or even uses a racial slur yet if the Prime Minister of Canada or the Governor of Virginia wear black face it isn’t?

Ultimately, it’s the progressive’s analogous action of accusation of blasphemy it’s just the penalties are currently slightly less severe. 'Blasphemous' man stoned dead in Pakistan | 7NEWS

Yup.

The people complaining about other people not patronizing businesses are generally entirely in favor of it when the reason for not doing so is one that they agree with; whether that reason is political, personal, or just that they don’t like the hamburgers.

Which was simply considered utterly normal, for most of my lifetime, when what was being cancelled was, for instance, favorable representations of gay people.

Yup, exactly.

Talking about the tools as if they’re something brand new invented by Evil Leftists – that’s a different thing from saying “X doesn’t deserve to suffer Y consequences for Z.” I may or may not agree with someone saying the latter for any specific instance of X, Y, and Z; but the first claim is just utter nonsense.

I think the use and implication of accusations of supposedly hypocritical “virtue signalling” is often that the accuser is trying to give the impression, or else actually believes, that just about everyone really agrees with the accuser about the issue. It’s a case of the delusion I call “Everybody is Me”; or else a deliberate attempt to present a probable minority as an overwhelming majority.

Because Rogan’s career isn’t dependent on people who might not support him for using that kind of language.

Just to add: I don’t know if others agree, but to me “cancel” alone does not have the negative connotations of “cancel culture”. Talking about (say) canceling some public figure who turns out to be a closet racist does not imply that the people doing the canceling are doing anything wrong. Whereas “cancel culture” is used mostly by the right, to imply that there’s some systematic effort to shut down dissenting opinions and suppress the free exchange of reasonable ideas. It will also, of course, be invoked by anyone who is canceled. The cancelee will invariably seek to portray themselves as a victim of systematic “cancel culture” rather than someone justifiably canceled because of their specific deplorable acts.

Nah, even the NY Times has many editorials expressing contempt for cancel culture. President Obama warned about cancel culture. Are those right wing racists?

Professional penalties for pushing back against crackpot ideas such as music theory, math, and being on time are all constructs of so-called white supremacy are examples of cancel culture.

I edited my post from “almost exclusively” to “mostly”, probably just as you were replying. Agreed. The term “cancel culture” has sometimes been employed as a valid criticism of people getting too carried away with shutting down valid dissenting opinions.

Personally I’m disinclined to use the expression because it has been so heavily appropriated as a go-to “mah freedum” talking point by right wing assholes when they are called on their bullshit.

The thing is freedom to be odious is important. Freedom that is only allowed when it’s bland and universally agreeable is not freedom. Look at the cross in piss art as an example. Piss Christ - Wikipedia

Should that be forbidden and the artist stoned for blasphemy/sacrilege? Or is the fundamental right to true freedom of thought and expression more important? I know this board leans to the so-called and misnamed progressive censorious scold side of things but true liberalism understands the importance of free thought.

Did Joe Rogan lose his podcast in the last couple of days and I missed it? Because otherwise, it sounds like you just listed three people who were criticized for racism without losing their jobs over it.

The people being canceled are still free to continue with whatever they were doing. They’re just not free to do so without other people using their freedoms to counter them. We’re not talking about government censorship. We’re talking about ideas fighting it out in the private sector. If an actual falsehood is spread, like saying that John Doe used the N word when he actually didn’t, that’s one thing, and will usually blow up in the face of those making a false accusation (see Jussie Smollet). If we’re just talking about an asshole getting their comeuppance, I see nothing wrong with it.

But odiousness itself is not a virtue. Coupled with other attributes, which the Piss-Christ artist had, it could be virtuous. When Giuliani tried to shut him down by using his official powers as Mayor to close an art exhibit in a city museum, he was risking losing the support of those who placed artistic freedom above religious values, and that risk was that he would make some of the lifelong enemies, like me, who he did make for that choice.

I think it’s great that Giuliani exposed his values, which I don’t agree with at all. I’m glad to have cancelled him for life based on that single choice of his.

He was stoned to death, however. Lib news didn’t cover it of course.