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Notes -
A public cancellation works a lot like a public execution: everyone viewing it becomes afraid of committing the same infraction. This occurs whether or not you think the person did the crime or deserved to be punished. It changes psychology mechanically, according to the number of trials / iterations of one stimuli paired with a feared stimuli. It works best when the exposure is random, and in this case it works best when the cancelleé is capriciously chosen and otherwise unworthy of attention. (“If even she can be cancelled, I can too.”) There’s a reason that when we write online, we feel some fear at fully writing the N-Word, and some people feel fear writing faggot and retard, not because of some ethical position everyone developed over decades, but because they have experienced trials that paired this formerly neutral word with a punishment. So when we talk about canceling blameless old ladies, we do have to consider that there are significant social consequences to the act of public consequences, making prominent progressives and liberals on Twitter a little afraid of doing similar things.
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