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In the interests of discussion I’ll say I think A7 is not cancel culture. I’m not even sure A8 is.
Is it cancel culture to post that I simply think an inoffensive podcast, say, has declined in quality and I don’t think it’s worth people’s time?
I think the line is crossed at A9 where I start imposing sanctions on people who disagree. Forcing people to pick a side is how you get people who don’t actually care that much to join a mob.
There is some ambiguity and gray area in A7 and A8 that partly depends on your normal behavior. If it is normal behavior for you to review stuff then it is probably not cancel culture. Or if you are a journalist of some type that typically reviews video games, then your absence of opinion would be more notable than the presence of a bad opinion. Or finally if someone directly asks you for your opinion. Going out of your way to say 'fuck you in particular' seems more cancel culturish.
To post the review as a comment on the podcast I don't think it is cancel culture. To go back and edit an old post that recommends the podcast with some more recent review of "this now sucks" is not cancel culture.
But to draw attention to something that people might not have naturally noticed, and to draw attention to you disassociating with it is cancel culture. Its just the tiniest bit of cancel culture. But when millions of people do it then it is clearly recognized as cancel culture.
And we probably wouldn't have an issue with "cancel culture" if that is all people did. But sometimes correcting a problem requires swinging back hard in the opposite direction.
I’m not sure how to resolve the disagreement. Publicly disavowing something seems categorically different from drawing a line in the sand and saying “join me or I block you” or whatever. Drawing the line is what creates sides out of people with different opinions.
I don’t like when the left “swings too hard in the opposite direction” and over corrects and I don’t like that approach here. I think it’s short sighted and self-defeating.
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Intent is the difference IMO, did you write your review because you wanted to share your opinion, or because you wanted to spark action against the thing. You can usually tell from the outside which it is because the person sharing their opinion will usually genuinely state it as such, whereas the person trying to drum up a cancel mob will not. Also, the person trying to cancel will either directly call to action, or do it indirectly: they will hint at the pressure point the mob should target ("We've contacted the chair of the psych department at the university to ask them if they endorse this grad student's side papers and they declined to comment").
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