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If Twitter were to close down suddenly, what would happen to cancel culture?
We're used to thinking of it as an internet phenomenon, but it's mostly just Twitter. Even when the person targeted is a YouTuber, you won't see the cancel mob form on YouTube. All the outrage, all the angry calls for blood, still Twitter territory.
I can only assume it turned out like this because of how massively hypocritical Twitter has been in enforcing their rules. After all, what is cancel culture if not harassment on a wide scale, but harassment is supposedly not allowed on Twitter.
@alyx
Unless the groups are either unable to do it, due to some technical/social innovation, or are forced to stop doing it by some centralized authority, it won't go away. Cancel culture has been proven as a viable tactic in an online culture war.
Unless the groups are either unable to do it, due to some technical/social innovation, or are forced to stop doing it by some centralized authority, it won't go away. Cancel culture has been proven as a viable tactic in an online culture war.
@alyx
>It will have to be a societal change from bottom up.
Well, yeah just outlawing canceling just won't do it. But any government, not just authoritarian, can affect societal structure and in many different ways.
From some light legislation banning aspects of cancelling and/or protecting digital privacy, to incentivizing bottoms up social change and definitely by stopping any kind of ideological cancelling from the centralized power itself.
I think the overall increase in this behavior is due the regime using ideological cancelling for its own interests. Everyone else is trying to use this state backed mechanism for their own ends. And of course the underlings have the easiest access to this sort of power.
The inquisition was a part of the Catholic church made to combat "heresy". People were using this state mechanism for their own gain by accusing their enemies/competitors of "witchcraft" even as the church tried to stop it realizing it undermined their own power to get rid of people. Same thing happened in communist states where people would accuse others of "bourgeois tendencies" or "anti-communist actions", in an effort to get rid of them. People would send their neighbors to a gulag for things as petty as being jealous of them.
>It will have to be a societal change from bottom up.
Well, yeah just outlawing canceling just won't do it. But any government, not just authoritarian, can affect societal structure and in many different ways.
From some light legislation banning aspects of cancelling and/or protecting digital privacy, to incentivizing bottoms up social change and definitely by stopping any kind of ideological cancelling from the centralized power itself.
I think the overall increase in this behavior is due the regime using ideological cancelling for its own interests. Everyone else is trying to use this state backed mechanism for their own ends. And of course the underlings have the easiest access to this sort of power.
The inquisition was a part of the Catholic church made to combat "heresy". People were using this state mechanism for their own gain by accusing their enemies/competitors of "witchcraft" even as the church tried to stop it realizing it undermined their own power to get rid of people. Same thing happened in communist states where people would accuse others of "bourgeois tendencies" or "anti-communist actions", in an effort to get rid of them. People would send their neighbors to a gulag for things as petty as being jealous of them.
@alyx
Hard agree. Like many other instances of authoritarian measures being taken, it will just become an underground phenomemnon with more extremes and more -dedicated- members. All of a sudden, the problem became harder to uproot.
You shut down twitter today, and you'll wake up to public executions.
When it's so clear to see who's in the wrong, a counter-culture is formed against it that is equal or greater in power. However, this requires playing the waiting game, as it will take at least a generation before the earth expels the roots by itself.
@laurel