Hello all,

I was musing in the shower this morning about the aforementioned topic and wanted to share some thoughts on the matter with you guys. It's clear to me that there is an online mob culture today that is savage in focusing and destroying the reputation, credibility and livelihood of those targeted by it. In fact, we could argue there's more than one such mob. Some would call it Cancel Culture, but many liberals argue that such a thing doesn't exist and it's just a boogeyman created by conservatives to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Personally, my political, societal, and economical views oscillate between left-wing and left-centre depending on the topic, so while I have seen the effects of the so-called Cancel Culture myself, I try to meditate on this notion.

Here's what I'm thinking:

  • Cancel culture is real and it is not new.
  • It's basically a coordinated Ad Hominem attack by a group of people trying to discredit a person's work or point of view by attacking their person.
  • The only new thing about it is that it is based on liberal morals, rather than on conservative ones (e.g. How can you trust what that guy says if he's not even an LGBTQ+ ally).
  • Conservatives have done it for centuries but based on conservative values, and it was simply called a smear attack (e.g. How can you believe her accusations when everyone knows she's a whore).

Now, assuming my points above are somewhat correct, I see a problem with how Cancel Culture is referenced by people. For instance, let's say you have a shitty take on some subject and tweet it. This is met by people questioning your position, disproving it with arguments, evidence, and data, and finishes with insults when you refuse to stand corrected. At this point, son, you have not been cancelled, you have been schooled!

An instance of Cancel Culture I can think about (although not a successful one) is Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments. Dan has made some waves in many circles by creating a company in which minimum wage is $70k a year and breaking the model of CEO's making millions at the expense of their employees. As you might imagine, most other CEO and Wall Street goons don't look kindly on Dan. But weirdly enough, I've seen some tweets as well by females attacking him as being fake. Perhaps they don't like the notion of a man who doesn't fit the greedy predator role and is still wildly successful, who knows.

Regardless, Dan has been the receiver of the attention of the Cancel mob online when the details emerged that he had an accusation of domestic violence from years ago. All of a sudden, hundreds of people were calling for his head and completely disregarding the amazing work he has done to disrupt the abusive capitalist model of corporations in the US, and this is exactly what I believe cancelling is. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a Dan Price apologist. His good work doesn't make me believe he is innocent of the accusations. But his previous actions don't mean he is without worth as a person, or that his work is suddenly not good. Cancelling means arguing that his work is not good because of his DV charges (true or not).

So while I think Cancel Culture is most certainly real, I do believe people are using it as an excuse to shield themselves from criticism of their words and actions.

What do you guys think?

Edit: Grammar and format.