I’ve given examples and other people have given examples and apparently you didn’t look at them. I’m not gonna copy half the article into my comment - what do you want exactly, just a list of names? As well as JKR, the Sun article mentions Sarah Jane Honeywell (a former children’s TV presenter), Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer, Taylor Swift, Gillian Philip (already discussed), Katarzyna Richter who was fired from LOT Polish Airlines after taking unflattering pictures of rival BA cabin crew and posting them on Facebook, and 19-year-old Tesco worker Jade Pinner from Essex who “found herself cancelled when she recorded a TikTok video of herself ranting about hard-to-please shoppers”.
Because the Right doesn’t care about anything but maintaining a position of privilege. The Left mostly consists of a collection of marginalized groups of “everyone else” and people in a position of privilege who feel a sense of guilt over it. Epitomized (obviously) by the election of Donald Trump. The Right lost their shit when Obama got elected so in response they elected someone who epitomized their ideals - a dangerously buffoonish amoral rich white guy who likes to throw his weight around.
And now the Left is losing their shit and attacking anything that isn’t “woke” enough.
If those are the examples that you have to offer, then I am assured that the concerns about cancel culture are overblown hysteria.
Wait, I don’t know a lot of those names, but Taylor Swift? She’s an example of someone who got cancelled? Cancel culture is the most ineffective social phenomenon in history and deserves no more of our consideration.
I find it similar to the concerns about all the men whose lives have been ruined by false sexual harassment/assault charges.
Here’s another example:
And here’s the knitting purity spiral thing that was mentioned on the other thread:
Perhaps you missed it?
For anyone who doesn’t want to dismiss an entire phenomenon on the basis of one name, here’s the article again:
Thank you for sharing that.
It not only confirms my feeling that these concerns about cancel culture are overblown, but it also shows me one of the instigators who is hyping it and creating terror in the easily scared and misled.
Through hyperbole and outright fabrication, they have managed to get you to think that this is a real thing, and have caused you to self censor. Not only that, but it has also caused you to reach out and insist that others censor themselves.
It’s a fairly common tactic, accuse others of what you are doing, this gets them to shut up and let you do what you accused them of. The author of the unherd piece gets a 10 out of 10 for fear-mongering, but a -tree(3) out of 10 for accurately describing reality.
What, this?
Once again, hard to call her cancelled.
Now this one has some slight merit to it. She was a presenter for a children’s show, and engaged in activities that the parents of the children would be upset about. So, the company that she worked for decided that she was no longer a good fit for the position of honor they had given her.
That she chose to blame others for her being fired, rather than take responsibility for her own actions is unfortunate, but I don’t see how it in any way strengthens your position that this is a real thing that anyone at all needs to actually spend any time being concerned about.
? BBC radio 4 is trying to shut people up? It’s the home of the Archers, Desert Island Discs and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, not exactly a hotbed of radicalism…
No, and it is a rather ridiculous assertion that that is what I said. It took me a while to unpack what it was that you were accusing here.
unherd is not owned by BBC, not related to it. The fact that the author of the article that is successfully getting people like yourselves to censor yourselves and others has had a few contributions to BBC does not mean that he runs it or controls it.
So, to the question, no, BBC radio 4 is not trying to shut people up. Now, to the question that I must ask you, what compelled you to ask me that question? Was it actually a misunderstanding on your part, where you thought that someone who contributes 5 pieces controls the network, or was it a loaded question, intended to accuse what you could not come out and directly accuse?
In the interests of civility, I will assume the former, and now that you have been educated, you need not ask such an ignorant question again.
If cancel culture doesn’t actually, y’know, cancel people, if someone whom you’re citing as a victim of it is literally the best-paid celebrity on earth, it sounds less like a problem and more like an attempt to stifle criticism by mislabeling any sort of critical debate as the enemy of free speech.
That’s kind of what I thought it was already, though.
According to the article, the knitting purity spiral stuff comes from a documentary the author made for BBC Radio 4. Pretty sure in the other thread it was introduced that way. And Radio 4 is a mainstream, presumably reliable source, which is partly why I take the article seriously.
I don’t pretend to understand everything in your rather cryptic post, but it sounded like you were describing come kind of conspiracy theory and claiming the knitting purity spiral stuff was ‘hyperbole and outright fabrication’. Which… doesn’t exactly fit with it being originally published by the BBC.
You’ve seemed pretty reasonable in the past, so did you just not realise that was the original source? Or were you really meaning to accuse the BBC of publishing documentaries that spread fear and encourage people to censor themselves?
And could you please explain what exactly you were trying to say in plain English? Some evidence wouldn’t go amiss, either.
The original question was whether it constitutes bullying. I don’t think failing to destroy a celebrity’s career proves that one way or the other. Sometimes the cancelling efforts work, sometimes they don’t. Some people bounce back and a few never work in the same area again. It’s about the phenomenon of joining in with online mobs that pile on someone, rather than individual opinions or debate.
The original question mentioned doxxing, and that is what happened to the protester who was filmed screaming at a Trump supporter. Someone then started a petition to get her fired and she ended up quitting her job. @Dr.Conrad_Shadowdale can say if that’s the sort of thing he was asking about.
K9bfriender, perhaps you could say what you would consider a genuine example of cancel culture? Because I’m starting to feel like nothing will ever be good enough.
In another direction, since we’ve mentioned Taylor Swift, don’t her fans hound any critic of Taylor’s? Certainly not canceling Taylor but is the “hounding” of, not by. the critics considered “bullying.”
not as far as I know. Boycotts (and similar tactics) are efforts to try to push for change. i.e. we won’t support/patronize you so long as you are doing this thing.
e.g. people boycotting Chick-fil-A until they stopped contributing to anti-LGBTQ organizations. “cancel culture” is “we will erase you if you have ever done anything we don’t approve of, no matter how long ago it was or how young you were.”
But isn’t a boycott potentially a part of an “erasure” strategy? What are the tactics that “cancel culture” uses that don’t include boycotts?
Specifically, do boycotts work?
What does it mean to be “erased” and to whom has it happened?
In my view, losing out on a job while keeping every other part of your privileged life is not “erasure.”