Cancel culture or consequences?
After a wonderful period of relative silence, the “cancel culture” speech has returned with a vengeance.
The old debate was rekindled by a now infamous letter published by Harper’s Magazine, proposing that teachers, editors, writers, and others, are in danger of being silenced by … someone.
The most surprising thing about the letter is its ambiguous nebula; the letter does not cite a single specific example, only vague allusions to events that the reader may or may not be aware of. It does not say exactly who is being silenced or what opinions are being silenced. It doesn’t say who is silencing, but it implies that social media could have something to do with it. Perhaps.
The letter was signed by free expression warriors like Bari Weiss, JK Rowling and David “Axis of Evil” Frum, along with sincere free expression absolutists like Noam Chomsky and Margaret Atwood.
Responses to the letter ranged from enthusiasm, condemnation, and utter contempt; after all, many of the people who signed the letter hold positions of tremendous power and influence, their opinions being regularly broadcast around the world.
Rather than endlessly debating the dangers of canceling the culture, the folks at Harper’s Magazine might consider the huge job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which is significantly more important than its perceived victimization.
It’s hard not to conclude that the vague, nameless threat could be “petty Twitter comments,” as opposed to the praise they prefer. Freedom of expression does not mean exemption from criticism.
Bari Weiss, famous for trying to silence teachers during her college years, responsible for the most terrible moment in Joe Rogan’s podcast history, recently stepped down from her position in the New York Times due to perceived harassment and alleged newspaper self-censorship. . , apparently because of Twitter.
Whatever your opinion of Weiss, you are likely to land on your feet; There is a very lucrative market for stubborn people who loudly claim to have been “canceled.”
But what does it really mean to “cancel” someone? What is really “cancel culture”? It is difficult to say, because there is no shared definition; everyone seems to have their own idea of what it means.
For example, JK Rowling jokingly claims to have been “on my fourth or fifth cancellation” in his recent essay. But it is impossible to silence the world’s most successful children’s author; her influence is being muffled by her terrible opinions, to some extent, but she certainly will not evaporate entirely. A billionaire with 14.3 million Twitter followers cannot “cancel”. Or a successful comedian with a lucrative Netflix special titled “Activated.”
But you can “cancel” a small and relatively unknown creator through online bullying campaigns; It happens all the time, and it’s something that still affects social media. YouTuber Lindsay Ellis has talked about being on the receiving end of hate group bullying campaigns, while YouTuber Contrapoints has discussed the same phenomenon, having been hunted down by both fans and their own “fans”.
But there is a difference between a bullying campaign and suffering the consequences of hateful behavior. For example, no one cites the firing of Blake Neff, the former writer of Tucker Carlson, as an example of “canceling the culture.” Neff was unceremoniously dismissed from Tucker Carlson tonight after a CNN story reported that Neff had been posting horribly racist and sexist comments online, anonymously, for several years.
Clearly, we all understand that there is a line that should not be crossed, a point at which a person should no longer be in a position of power and influence.
The problem is that we don’t agree on exactly where that line is.
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