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I can't say I understand what happened. I also don't think the actual culture could change so fast, but it feels like some rubber band snapped the moment Trump won.
It reminds me of one of the 1989 revolutions (am I thinking of Hungary?). The dictator was getting worried at the people's lack of enthusiasm and bleak countenance, so decided to hold a huge rally in the capital. The people got there, noticed that everyone else looked as miserable as they felt, and someone finally grumbled out loud. So it went from people cowed into submission to overthrowing the government fairly quickly and without coordination, because the culture had been quietly changing but everyone was so afraid to admit it that it took something big and public for everyone to realize it was safe to complain all at once.
It's kinda felt like it's been heading that way since 2014 or so. The Woke wave grew strong, scared people into compliance, but the more people got canceled, the more damage they did, and the more all that damage demonstrably failed in achieving their stated goals, the more people quietly slinked (slank?) off to the "I swear I'm liberal; it's just that the rest of the left went crazy!" hoarde. The media and SJWs' hold on the narrative™ grew increasingly obviously wispy, and then the election was everyone's signal that it was finally safe to breathe. Elon Musk's buying Twitter, the backfiring of the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, the utter destruction of culturual juggernauts like Star Wars and Marvel, and the Biden administration's utter failure to bring back even Obama era levels of seeming stability, probably all had a lot to do with it, but the election was the most public sign of all, with very straightforward numbers and everything. The Cancel mobs have always been a loud minority, but now everyone knows it to be so.
*slunk
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You're thinking of Romania, one of the last communist overthrows. Ceausescu's(?) speech is actually on youtube, minus his execution.
Hilariously the triggering incident was apparently the government prosecuting a priest for "hate speech"
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You’re thinking of the end of the Ceauşescu regime in Romania.
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The advertiser boycott depended on threatening the advertisers, not Twitter. And running even one successful boycott is a high bar to clear.
At the end of the day it doesn’t take a very big shift in culture against woke for boycotts to stop being a credible threat.
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