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Cancel culture is really just an extension or reestablishment of the ages-old ability of any community to use social shaming, ostracisation, and even outright shunning/exile, to enforce community standards. That social mechanism is itself morally neutral, at least with respect to what standards are enforced: it can be things that we'd today consider "good", like: we will not accept your nazi behavior in our group, get lost forever... but also things that we'd consider "bad", like, your homosexuality is unacceptable to us, get lost forever. Where the modern cancel culture is maybe different is in its pervasive, potentially global reach. If my stone-age tribe exiles you, that's devastating and potentially lethal, but perhaps you can find a new home with a neighboring tribe who doesn't know about the thing that got you thrown out. But if your cancellation is on Twitter or Facebook, there may be no community you can flee to that won't immediately discover your reputation. In this respect, reputational damage can be more severe. Regardless, we are hardwired in our evolved-in-extended-social-groups brains, to take the threat and the reality of social punishment including anything from the most minor (you feel shame when your perceived peers get upset about something you did) to the most severe (you are tossed out of our group, and left to survive on your own, which you probably won't). It's not surprising that there are a lot of people who are very alarmed at the perception that groups of people they don't particularly understand, have seized defacto, extralegal, seemingly chaotic and unpredictable, but near total control over our social destinies, in that they can decide in a matter of hours to destroy us. We can smugly dismiss the people whose fear seems to derive from their previous repugnant behavior: nazis and the alt-right whining about cancel culture doesn't really bother us at all, because you know, gently caress those guys. But online social ostracization can and has also basically killed other vulnerable people, including for example transgendered youth, in recent memory. So while we don't have to take the whining of gamergaters seriously, we do have to take seriously the problem of the unregulated mob. Until and unless government and/or legal process catches up to the technology and allows us to impose rules like evidentiary standards and due process onto the processes that lead to global, pervasive online social media public shaming, we have to somehow try to self-regulate, and bear in mind that whatever process applies to the worst of us also applies to the innocent among us.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:13
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I don't know if it's fair to associate cancel culture with a mob, which is the imagery frequently brought up against it. Like boo hoo you can't go on Twitter without your sex pest antics following you? That's a world away from swinging from a phone pole.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:28
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Edit: Never mind - not my linguistic bone to pick.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:33
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At the same time, the connotation is that Milkshake Duck is being unfairly, disproportionally dropped for its racism. My individual rejection of Milkshake Duck is somehow less valid because a thousand other people had the same reaction? This is somehow unfair to the poor racist now that enough individuals are incited to claim a mob. E: Leperflesh posted:So while we don't have to take the whining of gamergaters seriously, we do have to take seriously the problem of the unregulated mob. This is the gamer gators' and nazi's argument, and one problem with it is that it brands individual outrage as mindless mass action based on scope. It robs their critics of autonomy, while playing themselves as victims, and relies on decent-folks' disdain for mob action. But it's a mistake to equate canceling to mob "justice" based on the say-so of its recipients. moths fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 19:38
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Yeah my problem here is likely that I don't have a strong grasp of which specific words have been problematically claimed by the gamergaters and chuds et. al. I'm sorry if I'm using words they've already tainted. When I say "the mob" I literally just mean that tendency of crowds to sort of spontaneously choose a direction and then go that direction really really hard, without much capacity to carefully regulate exactly how hard to go. I do not intend to express either sympathy nor solidarity with the whining from the right. I do not think that the left has like, already swung too hard in that direction or something. I really don't. I do think that the wild west situation with social media, in which the private companies in control are flagrantly failing to effectively moderate, creates a landscape that has serious hazards scattered in it, and that all of us ought to be clearly aware of those hazards when we engage with those platforms. Some of the hazards include the proliferation of lies and propaganda, the ability of grotesque and horrible ideas to propagate, and the inherent emotional hazard to the vulnerable from having essentially publicly advertised metrics of popularity. And one other one is that it's possible for an individual to be destroyed reputationally based on evidence that is not fact checked or validated by competent trustworthy parties.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:58
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There is no one to "regulate" those who are acting in service of social justice. The structures of power in our society overwhelmingly support the privileged and abusers, while leaving the marginalized and survivors powerless. And whenever these people us the channels available to them, people start wringing their hands about the slippery slope and how people should act with more compassion and how this is online violence. "Cancel culture" is the only tool we have to combat rapists and serial harassers and others who abuse their social capital to cause harm. So, I'm not going to be upset about people shouting at a sexual harasser until he gets sad and has to go away. Let him be ashamed and let him carry that shame and let him leave vulnerable people the gently caress alone.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:12
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Leperflesh posted:When I say "the mob" I literally just mean that tendency of crowds to sort of spontaneously choose a direction and then go that direction really really hard, without much capacity to carefully regulate exactly how hard to go. I do not intend to express either sympathy nor solidarity with the whining from the right. Again, you're falling into their trap. Suppose you see me punch a lady on the street. That's wrong and you're mad! Now suppose you and ten friends see me. You all get mad, but I say "hold up, this is the action of a mob! What's wrong with you all?" You haven't lost your sense of right and wrong - but I've diminished the value of your assessment. The deliberate choice to use the word "mob" invokes the unthinking rage and violence of mobs but applies it to rational people having a normal reaction. The only difference is that there are a lot of them. Because of the economy of scale, it's easy to believe that a lot of online people are being mean and unjust rather than reacting appropriately to someone who is deserving of scorn. And that's their shield. When a thousand people see something wrong, the villain can say "look at this mob!" and a thousand rational critics and justified criticisms become an "unregulated mob" to everyone else. That's the whole point of decrying cancel culture. It works, and assholes hate that. moths fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 20:29
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I think this is an issue where is easy for people to talk past each other due to different experiences. I've seen times in relatively small communities where something from someone's past is dug up, declared problematic, and a two minutes hate begins. I've seen this in writing communities for instance where a short story someone wrote as a teen is used in an attempt to destroy them. If that is what some people have seen and are referring too as cancel culture then I agree it is abhorrent. On the other hand gently caress Zack S that fast food pooping rapist, I don't want him to get any work in the RPG industry ever again, so if that is what you are thinking about with cancel culture then let's cancel the hell out of him.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:39
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That's true. Part of what makes it so goddamn frustrating is how easily bad actors can portray the second scenario as the first.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:44
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The problem isn't the case where it's ten (or ten thousand) people all seeing someone punch an old woman and, because they are all decent people, coming to the same conclusion that hey, that guy punched an old woman, what an rear end in a top hat, maybe let's not listen to his podcast anymore. Those aren't problematic. The trouble is, as the previous posters said, bad actors can misrepresent one case as the other: canceling as mob justice, and vice versa.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:55
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Yeah. Like, the metaphor of the people who actually witness someone beating up a lady isn't right here, because we're talking about online social media, where instead it's a report in a tweet or something that people are reacting to. Which could in turn be totally legit, like, video of a cop murdering a black man, or could be misleading or even an outright lie, as tweets sometimes are. I'm talking about poo poo like this. Huge numbers of teens are experiencing cyberbullying, and part of what makes it so damaging is that the teens (correctly) understand that their online reputation is exposed to the entire world. We here can trust that our community isn't going to unjustly bully people, but "everyone online" can't and shouldn't have that same confidence. Being the unpopular person online isn't only restricted to, alternately: people credibly accused of rape, vs. women decrying bad treatment by the videogames industry. There's a wider scope. I suppose I need to reiterate, again, that I am not condemning "cancel culture." It's fundamental to who we are as human beings and completely unavoidable. I think I'm more promoting the idea that we owe it to ourselves and to the most vulnerable people, to insist on a high standard of evidence before cooperating in a mutual, rapid, self-reinforcing flood of social ostracisation. Without government or corporate responsibility for fact-checking in place (and perhaps even with it), we have to fact-check ourselves. e. ugh and I want to also point out that "insist on a high standard of evidence" absolutely does not mean that we doubt victims. We have to believe victims. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 20:57
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Leperflesh posted:I suppose I need to reiterate, again, that I am not condemning "cancel culture." It's fundamental to who we are as human beings and completely unavoidable. I think I'm more promoting the idea that we owe it to ourselves and to the most vulnerable people, to insist on a high standard of evidence before cooperating in a mutual, rapid, self-reinforcing flood of social ostracisation. Without government or corporate responsibility for fact-checking in place (and perhaps even with it), we have to fact-check ourselves. For better or for worse, I think that "cancel culture" as a term is already starting to connote the sort of mindset that doesn't insist on that sort of evidence, as opposed to just canceling as a tactic. "High standard of evidence" doesn't mean you immediately dismiss allegations, of course. It means you take them seriously enough to follow up on and become informed about that evidence. This is another concept that's vulnerable to misuse by bad actors, and again there's not a solution that doesn't involve people having and employing their discernment.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:13
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Yeah, like, long before we found out what he did to his girlfriend, the pantsshitter was abusing social media to create mobs and socially destroy his enemies: and part of his ability to do that was because those social media platforms lacked tools to prevent it, and part of it was because many of his followers were far too credulous and ready to accept his judgement as to who deserved to be attacked. We need those tools, and we ("we" meaning global and american society, not "we" the TG subforum) need to be less easily manipulated and credulous. While, somehow, still believing victims, because disbelieving victims is obviously a huge and longstanding problem too. We need to be aware that we're acting in a powerful capacity as arbiters of human being's social status, that doing so can inflict significant consequences, and act accordingly to that responsibility. I don't think I necessarily have a call to action here. Maybe the points I'm trying to articulate are already well understood here and I'm just bloviating. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 21:27
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Cancellation, call-outs, and deplatforming are important tools in protecting communities from predators and shitheads. It's important to be critical when you see them, of course. It's important to make sure they're not exploited by bad actors or the overzealous. And it's important to make sure that the response is reasonable compared to the actions of the person. But that isn't a reason not to use the tools, just to be careful in how they're used.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:48
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah, like, long before we found out what he did to his girlfriend, the pantsshitter was abusing social media to create mobs and socially destroy his enemies: and part of his ability to do that was because those social media platforms lacked tools to prevent it, and part of it was because many of his followers were far too credulous and ready to accept his judgement as to who deserved to be attacked.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:48
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Leperflesh posted:I don't think I necessarily have a call to action here. Maybe the points I'm trying to articulate are already well understood here and I'm just bloviating. I think a lot of people have some degree of belief or experience or intuitive understanding of these points, but The Discourse is bad at the kind of nuance that you're talking about. I think there's value in reinforcing the idea of going slow and being careful in where we collectively point the hate machine while also acknowledging that some people need to be on the receiving end. There's probably particular value in having that discussion without it being in the context of a specific accusation, because it's easier to weaponize either side of the argument when there's a specific case being considered.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:48
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I don't think it's wrong to call what happens with Twitter sometimes a mob mentality. For good or for ill, hundreds or thousand of voices coming your way all at once can be extremely overwhelming. It's one reason why social media managers are a thing to begin with. Even someone being barraged by good vibe messages on the daily can find it difficult to process, or they might be of the type that despite so many good messages can't help but zero in on the negative ones and it hits them hard enough to negate the good. Like others are saying. This isn't something used by only one group of people. And to be very honest, despite who is targeted you still get some really heinous poo poo being thrown into the mass of words.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:22
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Nessus posted:I think what you're saying is that the instinct to throw out shitheads is good (if perhaps rooted in something neither good nor bad) but we need to keep an eye out to make sure shitheads don't use this instinct to hurt the innocent, because to the perspective of a professional shithead, you would be killing two birds with one stone. Pretty much, but also adding that we need to self-police to make sure we don't accidentally assist the shitheads. And I'd like the entire society to catch up to the idea that tweets aren't the same thing as fact-checked media reports from reputable news outlets, if there is such a thing. Even if the person making the tweets is someone we really like.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:30
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Who gets to decide the punishment in twitter justice though. Like remember when that lady made a joke about getting aids in Africa. She was fired, I think before the plane even landed, and most people would be okay with that, but what about everything else. Were the death threats justified, or the rape threats, or being doxxed and having people show up at the airport as she landed. honestly in the end i don't think a lot of people even cared about what she did, it was just really fun to dogpile on someone who did 100 percent gently caress up and now cant defend themselves. and when I say defend themselves I'm not referring to her actions, I mean from the deluge of terrifying rape threats by people who showed up to the airport to confront her .
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Jun 9, 2020 22:49
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WaywardWoodwose posted:Who gets to decide the punishment in twitter justice though. Like remember when that lady made a joke about getting aids in Africa. She was fired, I think before the plane even landed, and most people would be okay with that, but what about everything else. Were the death threats justified, or the rape threats, or being doxxed and having people show up at the airport as she landed. honestly in the end i don't think a lot of people even cared about what she did, it was just really fun to dogpile on someone who did 100 percent gently caress up and now cant defend themselves. and when I say defend themselves I'm not referring to her actions, I mean from the deluge of terrifying rape threats by people who showed up to the airport to confront her . That's my thing. Like people online have no chill when it comes to unnecessary escalation. Like Adam is free to gently caress off and disappear into the exile of obscurity. Mention how lovely you think his apologies are, say you don't think he should be allowed to operate in this space anymore. And raise hell if someone hires him or has him doing something publicly. But some people always have to do the absolute most. What he did was garbage and lovely and pretty much disqualifying to participate in this space or whatever. But nowhere near the level of Death Threats and assertions that he should commit suicide. This isn't meant as like a defense of his statement because he included poo poo that is very much free game to critique and be angry at for what he did, and is still in general trying to minimize the harm he caused. But one of my pet peeves with the internet in general is some people have absolutely no gauge on escalation.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:01
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I'm not going to defend the people wishing death on him. However the idea that by denying him access to the industry we're going too far somehow is laughable. If he wants to earn a living he can loving flip burgers. Creatives don't get to be rapists just because they're creative.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:10
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theironjef posted:I didn't have the patience to do that, but I did spend a few minutes checking other memey numbers to see if anything shook out. And not, really. 666 is Lich, 420 is Siren's Call, which I guess is sort of a joke based on the art. But that's about it. 1138 is a hive, which I guess if you wanted to draw a tortured pointless line to a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" you could. 1138 works well as a reference to THX-1138, which was set in what amounts to a prototype Alpha Complex.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:43
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Leperflesh posted:Pretty much, but also adding that we need to self-police to make sure we don't accidentally assist the shitheads. Honestly a lot of this poo poo seems in many ways to come back to "the problem is Twitter, literally the design of the platform that is Twitter." Obviously you would have similar issues in other fields, I assume, but that particular platform's just got some bad poo poo going on.
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Jun 10, 2020 00:25
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and google+ which is gone thank goodness, but also very much facebook and even instagram. It's just that twitter is front and center. Like teens are harassing each other into suicide using instagram, we just don't see it in the TG as an Industry thread.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:17
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Kurieg posted:However the idea that by denying him access to the industry we're going too far somehow is laughable. If he wants to earn a living he can loving flip burgers. Creatives don't get to be rapists just because they're creative. He could compromise. Go to Subway and be a Sandwich Artist.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:30
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Subway's a bad fit since they respect the customer's wishes.
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Jun 10, 2020 02:26
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https://twitter.com/HavanaRama/status/1270489244402774016 It's a good thread from Vana who was one of the players (and note how Koebel was more concerned with 'content' over 'apology') and also links to a good document on just why his 'apology' was garbage.
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Jun 10, 2020 03:31
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Wow. that google doc is really good and spot on.
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Jun 10, 2020 03:56
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Yikes, that thread from Vana is pretty revealing, yeesh.
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Jun 10, 2020 05:20
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Josef bugman posted:Like, did he pay no attention during the game itself? The player had told him to his face that they weren't comfortable and the big brain response to this is apparently "do the exact opposite of what makes people comfortable". Like... how do you do that? This is the thing which struck me when watching the video. He has several opportunities to turn away or even walk back, the players even say "I'm calling for help" and that was established as sort of a safe word/x card, but he not only plows on he says "let's end it right there." It's actively inconsiderate. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 08:08
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 13:51
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Absurd Alhazred posted:LaTorra's written a thread about this: what the gently caress are they even saying? "people hating Adam is too much, I just want justice, I'm not saying he's the victim here though"? I'm so sick of these online softbois hiding behind their loving infantile persona to avoid consequences, especially when it turns out they're abusive or some other kind of scumbag. All you have to do is dye your hair and make a few generic 1970s level "It's OKAY to CRY" statements and you get to victimize others and wind up with a pack of idiots eager to go 'don't you MONSTERS see? Being exposed as a scumbag and called an abusive rear end in a top hat HURT HIS FEELINGS, can't we all just stop?!'
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Jun 10, 2020 14:01
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Pretty sure he's talking about alleged death threats, not call-outs and boycotts.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:08
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Decent people want to stand up for victims. When canny abusers know how to reframe their comeuppance as victimization, good people have no recourse except shocked pikachu faces and backpedaling.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:10
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Also: I'd be amazed if Adam wasn't receiving at least some level of harassment before this. He's a queer coded man with a very online lifestyle. The issue it seems for these people is now the harassment is coming from I'm not excusing the behavior but "KILL UR SELF" is kind of the background radiation of the internet, choosing to focus on it now as a way to twist the narrative into yourself being the victim is an A+ scumbag move.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:14
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Poor Adam, he's the real victim here, how can we help???
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Jun 10, 2020 14:20
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It is hosed that death threats/wishing someone to kill themselves have become standard online discourse, and that there's no real way to stop that or even tell if it's coming from hurt people within a community or outside opportunists who just enjoy doing it for various reasons. It is also hosed to go "Man, what Adam did was wrong... but did he really have to be driven out by all these awful death threats? Where's the real justice?" When the main discourse around this was never about Adam doing anything besides acknowledging what he did was unequivocally wrong with no catches or weaseling out of the severity of it. I'm sure the players in his game who first spoke out about all this have been getting death threats, too, and anyone else willing to tie their name and face to this whole disaster. Focusing in on Adam's is distracting from the main issue that he's proven time and time again he isn't willing to fully own up to. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 14:34
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Kurieg posted:he's a queer coded man Real people can't be "coded" as queer. I don't know much of anything about Koebel's sexuality or gender but if you're talking about his hairstyle or nail polish, that's not "coding". Coding is a narrative technique where aesthetics like dress and voice and mannerisms are used to imply queerness in fictional characters. Is it possible, or even likely, that Koebel has been subject to homophobic slurs as a violent reaction to the way he presents himself? Yes, absolutely,. But Koebel is a real person and cannot be "coded" as anything... unless we take the cynical route and argue that Public Figure Adam Koebel is himself a fiction.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:36
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I ain’t know Sage LaTorra from Adam but that reads less like a defence and more like someone going, “Ah I just found out my friend is a shitbird gently caress! I can’t even.” Like there isn’t a clear thesis and they seem to be processing out loud. But idk I’m just an rear end in a top hat going by the quoted tweets with no context besides this thread.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:41
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Nuns with Guns posted:
Yea this is what really bugged me. I'm Sure Adam did get genuine lovely threats and comments that had nothing to do with him being an abusive piece of poo poo, and that's not cool, but I'm also pretty loving sure his players also did, including plenty for daring to speak up against the poor widdle sensitive boy (who was a gleefully abusive prick), so I just genuinely don't need to hear someone, especially an RPG designer, all 'but where's TRUE justice here' when he clearly only cares about his friend being made to feel bad.
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