UKC

Somebody said I should keep up and now I've found out about this

youtube.com/watch?v=wg90GPCBocA&

However another search

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/07/cancel-culture-does-not-e...

No doubt some of the UKC heavyweights on here can give this a bit of a dusting. Myself the juries out although my particular 'reds under the bed' grump is when I detect the sophistry of post modernism trying to gain a toehold in science and technology. The lady from the New Statesman came to the conclusion that there's no such thing as bad publicity which was a half admission that cancel culture did exist. The lady on the Newspeak video was suggesting that attacks are coming from far left and far right although I wasn't quite clear from which direction who was pulling down or defacing the statues-ominously I expect I will be enlightened. 

This thread is cancelled and you are cancelled.

I don't go on twitter, but as far as I understand it, cancel culture is what twitter is all about. Jon Ronson wrote a book about it - he does a great talk on "Has Justine Landed?":

https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_when_online_shaming_goes_too_far/trans...

There's also a brilliant ContraPoints on cancelling, but it's 1h 40m long...

The left is full of people who hate cancel culture, as well as the idiots who indulge it, who I think it's fair to say probably are the generally the young "SJW" types but I don't have any evidence to support that.

I use Twitter a lot, but I've seen extremely little 'cancel culture'. Weird. Mind you, I block many political extremists, so most of the people I interact with seem to be sane, sensible types.

I think if you were exchanging views about racism with the general twittersphere, or trans rights, you'd see someone getting cancelled about every 4 or 5 seconds!

I still think that Twitter, all told, is about the best thing on the internet. An amazing, by the second, window on the world, with mostly intelligent people commenting interestingly. At the opposite end of the usefulness spectrum to the clunky Facebook, which is such a confused mixture of the very personal and completely public, of the egotistically parochial and the international.

You mean you're not on Tik Tok?

I didn't mean that, and no I'm not.

I could never get into twitter - I used to look at it on my way to work on the train, but for whatever reason it didn't grab me.

By light years the best thing about the internet is youtube. Being able to just watch an electrifying performance of pretty much any piece of music, ever, whenever you like. Completely changed my life.

I remember when I was a kid my Mum said to me "imagine if Mozart could see me listening to his music on this little plastic box with these bits of string going into my ears". And now I think "imagine if Schubert could sit on the sofa anywhere in the world and watch Brendel play his B flat Sonata". Or perhaps Bach and Smalin? The world is a pigsty, but youtube brings those glimmers of transcendent humanity into my front room while I'm sobbing into my whisky. I can't ask for more.

Well, I can't argue against the wonderful Youtube. I made a bad mistake using the very vague term 'internet' when actually I meant the social media. 

There's a nice tool you can use for Twitter called Tweepsmap that shows the reach of one's tweets around the world each week. Mine for this last week (in percentages):

https://bit.ly/2ODuFD5

You have to look at the bile and hate that Twitter are at last trying to control, way too late in the day. Anything Trump used as his main propaganda tool had to be suspect in its governance. Facebook are worse.

I saw 'cancel culture' early as I faced off extremists on the far right and the far left (especially in the SWP and their allies) throughout my academic trade unionism. Over the years the western far left have gained little extra power but the far right are merging into the popularist right who have gained massively in power, especially in the US, and European states. My main concern with cancel culture is, despite being opposed to it, how it is being weaponised by the popularist right, who are using it to bash social liberalism, and distracting from really important issues like tackling racism and poverty.

I started a thread with the same name as there was clear evidence some right-wing journalists in the US abused their columnist position on their papers to force their own dismissal, before they moved to another more lucrative position.  They became wealthy 'auto-martyrs'. Hateful opinion generates more clicks in support and opposition, clicks generate income; the system increases polarisation and hate. There have to be limits to the expression of hate, as are in place across most modern western democracy. We can't allow one important individual liberty to damage other important social liberties.

Some arguably do the same here in their obsession with defending freedom of speech above all else, whilst seemingly deliberately breaking explicit site rules, risking a ban. UKC forums have a lot of good content but also a lot of nastiness. I think the moderation is sensible, way better than Twitter, yet the social responsibility of our little outdoor community is disappointing at times. Some regulars are constantly pushing the edges of moderation...  in my view if you can't get your opinions across within the (hardly strict) rules you don't deserve a soapbox here. Yet on the social side of this, you and I know the expression of individual anger is putting off ordinary people who love the outdoors from contributing. They prefer smaller friendly social media bubbles. This partly broken social position on UKC forums is in stark contrast to the news and features which continue to improve.

The latest example... Biden is arguably centre to centre right in UK terms and this is the Trump plan. When tackling evidenced based racism becomes regarded as extremism in a two party system everyone needs to worry.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/trump-2020-joe-biden-extrem...

The overton window has been shifted by Trump, you've now got what was basically the republican party for many years represented by Biden and then Trump and rightwing nationalism as the other choice.

I think you'll be interested in this piece on why those on the left should beware of cancel culture:

https://arcdigital.media/the-whispered-left-wing-dissent-on-cancel-culture-...

Not really, it's re-stating the obvious for those of us who were dealing with the issue before it became a fashionable discussion point. I agree with pretty much all of what is said but threats to anything from discourse to jobs are much bigger elsewhere, especially from the popularists (and their accusations of cancel culture are not all true, and where they may be or are true, are almost always exaggerated).

How exactly were you dealing with the issue?

Have you run a poster campaign? Or a bake sale? Organised a fun run? Sold some of those future landfill wrist bands?