100 people tweeting about how this guy is bad might be indicative of a general consensus or might just be 100 people out of a billion Twitter users. People then interpret it as general consensus and pile on.
We know the numerator but since we don’t know the denominator of people who didn’t comment, or disagree, or never saw, or don’t care. So we can’t figure out a ratio and many people assume the denominator is the numerator and the ratio is 1.
“The world won’t do business with this guy, I better fire him” doesn’t make sense if it’s just a very small ratio as who cares if 100 people are upset and 1,000,000 customers don’t care.
I wish Twitter had some ratio of who viewed vs who acted. Or had downvotes or something. Currently, people assuming that a few commenters is everyone is doing bad things.
This coupled with there’s always someone or a small group who holds an opinion so putting too much weight into a few commenters is not smart. Yet frequently done.
I think if Twitter had an easy way to show displeasure, it would be more common, and thus harder for internet mobs to form around them.
I used to think that no one had time to internet mob strangers so maybe I’m wrong that there’s not enough attention to mob every “meh” and dislike.
I think you can look at it this way:
* For normal people, Twitter is not real life.
* For journalists, Twitter is real life.
Journalists then become the vector by which BS Twitter drama becomes mainstreamed.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...
There are disproportionately loud participants on Twitter that push a toxic narrative.
If I have 10,000 followers and post something with 100 likes, that might mean 100 people saw it and everyone liked it. It might mean 10,000 saw it and 9,900 hated it. It might mean 500 saw it, 100 liked, 100 hated, 300 didn’t care. Etc etc.
This would help understand if it’s just a few loud people or indicative of all the people.
It would be much harder to build a critical mass using more traditional methods of communication, even e-mail. As a result, people would spare their energy for serious incidents only.
But we have a variant of the tragedy of commons here: societal ostracism, an important but dangerous tool, is no longer used rationally, but milked to exhaustion. It has become too easy to get the ball of outrage rolling. Too many people are treated as if they commanded a genocidal death squad, when their transgression is often verbal only (not the case of this particular artist, I know).
As a result, we have a virtual Salem trial every day. I wonder when the inevitable reaction happens and people start ignoring the social networks altogether. This is not a stable, persistent state of things. Too unhinged.
Zhao Gao was contemplating treason but was afraid the other officials would not heed his commands, so he decided to test them first. He brought a deer and presented it to the Second Emperor but called it a horse. The Second Emperor laughed and said, "Is the chancellor perhaps mistaken, calling a deer a horse?" Then the emperor questioned those around him. Some remained silent, while some, hoping to ingratiate themselves with Zhao Gao, said it was a horse, and others said it was a deer. Zhao Gao secretly arranged for all those who said it was a deer to be brought before the law and had them executed instantly.”””
Seems even more appropriate - quoted from https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/e1diq2/three_men...
The problem with twitter is that it's 240 characters of 'whatever' and that's not enough to arrive at any truth.
It's usually an emotional loaded de-contextualized statement and that's that.
sane people dont have Twitter accounts
enjoy polling insane people
Nowadays small groups of coordinated people can cause a lot of chaos in internet.
https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-top-01-households-h...
A relatively small collection of people talking about one subject can trigger the trending analysis even though that group represents a fraction of a fraction of Twitter users. Once that happens, the topic becomes publicized to everyone using Twitter's UI.
Think how many platforms don't even give a path for negative feedback, or merge the positive and negative feedback into one and present it as if that was a consensus.
In this case, he admitted to being a sexual predator.
There are lots of exceptions, sure. But still. I lost count by orders of magnitude where the twitter mob-opinion was simply totally wrong (be it "masks are not useful" or whatever you name it). Thanks to the collective Alzheimer's, despite archive.org etc., this somehow doesn't hurt the mob mentality at all.
Twitter's database could show how many people were shown the tweet. It could guess at how many of their users would react in this way. And you could do some surveys to find out what fraction of our cultural spectrum/Overton window Twitter users occupy.
Twitter doesn’t have a dislike but they have signals like amount of time spent, skipped over, etc. I wish they would add a frown option.
If I tell a joke to a dinner table and get 6 frowns and 1 laughing person that means the joke isn’t very good. In the Twitter ecosystem, that’s a great joke.
From everything I've observed, the absolute worst thing you can do is apologize to the people attempting to cancel you. It's just pouring gasoline on the fire.
These people will never say "oh, you learned from your mistakes, I guess I'll back off". Most of them don't really care about the truth, they care about signaling. So an apology only vindicates them.
As far as I can tell, the thing to always keep in mind is if you wait a few days these things always pass pretty quickly. The internet has a very short attention span. As long as you never give those people a confirmation that you did something you regret, you're much better off in the future.
Of course you should privately apologize and make amends for things you've done wrong; but those things are always more effective privately and personally done anyway.
Of course, most these internet based outrages and boilerplate apologies are ridiculous anyway. Sincerity is nowhere to be found.
They want to look good on Twitter (with added outrage) for playing the hero and cancelling the 'villain of the week' with their insults and libellous accusations until the target is deleted everywhere; including their livelihood.
By not apologising, ignoring or saying anything (I mean anything), they get bored quickly and the whole story falls apart with the heat dying out. You have to waste their time enough for them to give up to move on to the next victim.
It is in your favour if you don't apologise in public. Otherwise it is in on the record that you are finished and the mob will make ridiculous demands such as: 'If you're truly sorry, do xyz...'.
See where this goes?
> Liss said Cuomo called her "sweetheart," touched her on her lower back while they were at a reception, and also once kissed her hand after she stood up from her desk.
There are worse accusations too, but surely this is closer to light flirting than to lewd behavior? Compared to this, a certain recent US ex-president should have been cancelled a dozen times over.
But I'm not convinced that waiting silently for things to blow over actually works. Are there any examples of this?
None of which is illegal. It's not even a matter for civil litigation. He was not accused of doing this as a boss in an organization. Or in a workplace context. There were apparently no criminal charges. No EEOC complaints filed.[1] No abusive workplace charges.[2]
So he acted like a jerk in social situations. It's grounds for being, say, thrown out of a nightclub. But not fired.
[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual-harassment
[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-sexual-ha...
Citing that no one officially lodged a criminal complaint isn't a counterpoint. Most sexual assault isn't pursued. Serial creeps are plying their trade right now.
But yeah, if he's associated with a brand and he's going to important trade events for that brand and being a despicable creep, in every dimension that is grounds for being fired.
Mob mentality and so-called cancel culture are deeply unfortunate, often doing more damage than the things they are angered about. However creeps have negative consequences when they come under scrutiny, especially when it encourages others to note other creepy incidents.
Actually it is a counterpoint. If someone accuses me of a crime, then refuses to pursue any prosecution of that crime, and then expects me to suffer consequences for that crime, that's a gross injustice.
That's why we have a justice system.
When the cancellation was in full swing I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were piling on to settle scores or because they just hated seeing him and his fanboys spamming up his stuff all the time, regardless of whether they actually knew him to be a creep or not.
Your argument here is that he's guilty until proven innocent.
He might be worse than Prince Andrew at PR.
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/06/noah-bradley-admi...
That runs contrary to most companies I've worked at.
There is a specific set of things for which you cannot be legally fired - "wrongful terminations" - because terminations are by default rightful. And there are a specific set of things for which you effectively must be fired if the organization doesn't want to be seen as approving of your behavior, which is what the abusive workplace stuff is about. Note that the links you provide are about laws that apply to companies, not to individuals.
Between those two extremes, there's a whole lot of stuff for which you can be fired. Reflecting badly on the company and making their customers unhappy, while breaking no laws and exposing the company to no legal risk, is an extremely common case.
It is pretty unfair that people lose their livelihoods because of their employers' whims, and it happens to a whole lot of people who have not even done anything worth apologizing for, and I think our society needs to address this problem in general.
In the US this broadly isn't true, employers can fire someone even if they haven't done anything illegal
She claimed sexual harassment and he was immediately fired. No investigation, no support from the union.
There was no third party witness, just he said-she said. Don’t think unions are there to protect you.
His mother also works at the same store in a different department. Didn’t matter.
The mob had judged him expeditiously. The poor kid has never even kissed a girl.
He could start by not posting a long diatribe about how he's the victim here?
"pressuring" isn't a word used in legal texts anyway.
She did not explain what she saw as problematic. Maybe that a couple in a relationship situation was shown or that an attractive woman was in the foreground, or that the man openly expressed his attraction towards the other woman. I apologized profusley and tried to explain that I'm not an insensitive or sexist person, which she seemed to imply with her remark though.
I have been thinking about this incident for several days now, as I really can't make up my mind if I did something wrong or not by including the meme. If anyone want to add his/her opinion I'd be grateful therefore. The lecture was directed at B.Sc. students at a university in Europe BTW.
Personally I can say it feels quite bad being called out like that, especially as someone who has never (consciously) done anything discriminatory against women or minorities. And as someone who's quite sensitive I can say that it definitely has a chilling effect on me.
[1] https://twitter.com/annaegalite/status/1166446645204213760
Still, I'm a woman and I see absolutely nothing wrong with using that meme in that context. The teacher who shared that meme, who is also a woman, also saw nothing wrong. The student who created the meme, who is also a woman, also saw nothing wrong.
It's an amusing and memorable way to teach a concept, which is great.
I wonder if the "women's representative" on the hiring committee just felt like she had to find something to say to justify her presence there.
Did you give a source citation on that meme? It's not guaranteed, but I do wonder if you would have been left alone if it had been readily apparent that this meme was created and shared by women scholars.
my question to those who read this comment is: given all that has happened regarding canceling disgusting people (i.e weinstein) and potentially more controversial ones that maybe didn't deserve it (e.g aziz ansari) is it a net negative or a positive for society?
Also, keep in mind that context is important. That meme may come off very differently coming from a popular, well-established female professor who is passing along a student creation after class than dropped into a formal lecture, especially if they don’t know you well yet.
If you've been strongly sensitized to feelings of actual or potential distress due to unwanted sexual attraction, or the sexualization of the (in this case) female body, or whatever the problem might have been, it's probably seen as wrong or at least problematic. The sensitization might have happened due to personal experiences, or due to hearing a lot about such experiences from other people, or, well... *looks around on the Internet*.
If you haven't been strongly sensitized that way, there probably isn't anything particularly wrong with that. Most people would probably have some kind of a middle ground perspective where e.g. physical attraction, and its expression (and humour about it) is part of normal human experience. The same people might see it as lewd or inappropriate in other contexts, or if expressed in other ways, or when it's too much. It might sometimes feel uncomfortable, and the extent to which people tolerate (and want to tolerate) that varies, as does the line where people begin to deem it "not right".
Which part of the spectrum is right or wrong is not an objective question. Right now lots of people (at least in social media) seem to be rather preoccupied with the former, perhaps because legitimate problems have often been overlooked. Some people who are in the former end of the spectrum are being rather aggressive. The anger is often understandable, although that doesn't mean they're objectively right or that you're wrong if you don't follow the same line.
With that said, people who were already sensitive about not causing ill feelings were probably not the actual problem in the first place.
This is just my random view, of course.
In a situation like that it's fair to ask what in particular was a problem. If they can't give a reasonable response you should ignore them.
As others have said, you did absolutely nothing wrong.
Feel free to point the hiring commission to The New York Times (<https://twitter.com/AlecMacGillis/status/1133724550871560192>).
but on the other hand - holy **, you better get thick skin quick enough, because life's gonna be way harsher than this.
Maybe sorry that you mistakenly upset her. But be careful about apologizing for something when you didn't do anything wrong.
So far, we have very few examples of them actually working. On the contrary, any amount of admission seems to show weakness. The "controversy" around Lin-Manuel Miranda seems to have come nearly entirely from his apology to a very small group of disappointed fans.
There are even more examples of very publicly terrible people who have skirted worse controversies simply by ignoring them! There is no reward for being self-aware or apologetic. But there are rewards for unyielding self-righteousness.
That sounds like a lawsuit in the making, even if he wasn't a formal employee.
It may be the case that cancellations are too circumstance-specific to say what works and what doesn't.
That's not the purpose of an apology. An apology is something you do to help the victims move forward, not something you do to minimize consequences.
Public apologies are just emotional porn for the Twitter masses. They serve no purpose, and are a desperate attempt to satiate the insatiable.
In either case, a good apology should show some sincere character development on your part.
The proper behavior is not much different than dealing with an angry bear. Showing weakness doesn’t work, ever.
Sad but true.
Public apologies should never be done. If you want to apologize, do it in private to the alleged victim - do not do it in public.
Let me ask you - did you feel like the hate thrown at you on Twitter was completely organic? Was there anything that made you question the motives of the involved Twits?
I ask because the whole smear job vs Stallman felt quite manufactured to me; from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this and Reddit.
What you are mentioning regarding the case of Stallman’s cancelling is the same pattern I have seen applied against every other voice that has a dissenting opinion of the current culture that dominates social media.
In fairness those are both very common features of cancellations. Another that comes to mind is Damore, who never wrote what most people attributed to him. I've had perfectly clear for a long time that even smart people will misunderstand the clearest statement if it's what it's socially expected from them.
Likewise if you are publishing to Vice or some other moderately popular publication, you're directly motivated to stir up drama both for clickbait and as a form of a personal power trip against those you don't like for whatever reason.
The main issue is that our internet culture is extremely primitive. We're basically animals online, most of us. And it's very easy to spur a stampede and destroy someone, whether intentionally or not.
Be very careful with that outlook. When I think of cancel culture I always come back to Justine Sacco[0]. She was a nobody with 170 twitter followers before the mob destroyed her life.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...
But yeah, the railroading that he got was wrong.
He should have been removed simply because he has become an obstacle. The FSF does a lot of good things, but occasionally they do dumb things, and it seems (I could be wrong) that the dumb things come down to assuaging Stallman's ego.
Reminds me of a great ST:TNG episode "The Drumhead" with Jean Simmons as an admiral, who goes on a conspiracy witchhunt. Not until the proceedings go off the rails does anyone have the confidence to resist.
It is a bit of a different category since it is regarding organizations or government, but I believe the angry, obsessive mob angle is the same.
e.g in cases like Derek's Chauvin (police officer / G. Floyd)
I tried to talk to the NZ civil liberties association about freedom of speech. As it turns out they are against free speech and pro hate speech laws. I didn't know that going in. Then some people put me on a hate speech list. After that I was blocked by a large group of people I'd never encountered.
It's a weird place and I'm glad to be off the platform.
-Cardinal Richelieu
If some people want to use the internet to destroy your reputation, they will, and there's very little that you can do about it. You can't prove anything to anyone, and once people smell blood, they frenzy on you, regardless of the truth.
Maybe if he wasn't so self-loathing in it the consequences wouldn't have been as extreme. When the mob comes for you its best to just ignore it rather than give in to their demands. He called himself a sexual predator, what kind of impression does that give?
A sidenote, this happened at the same time as the Smash bros community was experiencing a "metoo"-ish moment, and it dragged a lot of nerdy hobbies into the mix. Many innocent people were cancelled last June, and not all of them managed to get out from the hole like Noah sadly.
In conclusion, kudos to the way you bounced back but I really wish there was a bit more introspection into how you see your past behaviour in the light of being cancelled.
I don't get this comment. The author says explicitly that he was an asshole in the past, that he changed who he was, and that he apologized privately to the people he had hurt. What more do you want?
>I don’t think I can fully describe the heart-wrenching pain of seeing your life & career crumbling around you and feeling utterly powerless to stop it. I thought I was fast approaching my inevitable and permanent end. I don’t cry often, but I cried a lot that night.
The author has harsh words for his previous behavior, but the question I have is about the sentiment at the center of his reflection on the experience: if he had agency in the attacks on him. I certainly believe that he does not think he does.
A lot of this comes down to deeply personal questions about how to address misbehavior and what we expect from other people. I do not know the details of what Noah did or what the people he mistreated want, but in his incomplete account I can certainly think of things that jump out to me.
- He says that no one has accused him of raping them. I personally know people who were raped and never accused their rapists. It was not worth the trouble or they did not have the social capital or they did not want to pursue law enforcement. How much introspection Noah should have depends a lot on the specifics but is it certainly not clearly enough to say that you didn't do something because no one accused you. That's not reflection.
- At the end of the day no one has an obligation to like you. It is not up to the perpetrator to decide what the appropriate restorative process is. We do not need a legal system to give us permission to dislike someone.
- He says, towards the end "If you’ve been cancelled and want someone to talk with who won’t shame or judge you, shoot me a message." I mean...I suppose I get what he means, but it seems hard to simultaneously put forth that your previous behavior was wrong and should be judged harshly and also that you will not judge others for their previous behavior. I am all for a path to restoration, but if I am to believe in reform I would like to see a more complex understanding than I get from this essay. I believe any real path to restoration must include judgement about past misdeeds.
I think about the Dan Harmon apology for the sexual harassment her perpetrated against a coworker[1]. It has its own flaws and, to a degree, I think it overly-centers Harmon, but one thing I think it gets very right is that Harmon made sure to apologize in a way that was accepted by his victims and was detailed about his misbehavior. He is clear-eyed about the way that he took advantage of his power, how selfish and small his motivations were, and how much damage he did to his victims. His apology feels merciless to his past self in a way that I do not see in Noah's account.
Now maybe Noah has fully satisfied his victims and they simply do not want to go public and ofc that changes my understanding of this situation. But I do not get the same unceasingly unsympathetic treatment of Noah's past behavior. He seems like he wants it to go away rather than make it part of his story and, I think, that approach feels less fully-engaged than others that I've seen.
Ultimately accounts like this, where we are all judging behavior of strangers we haven't meet in past events we did not experience, are always questionable. I don't feel certain at all about Noah. I also think it is easy to read this account of his experience and be uncertain about how he has changed. He mentions, at the start, that cancelling "those who are attempting to grow is such a counterproductive and potentially dangerous trend" - but I do not understand from this article how he is attempting to grow. Instead, I see a disagreement about how to deal with his past behavior.
Put simply, there's a lot to cover here. There's a lot of history, context, perspective, etc. and covering it all would take, well, probably a book. I couldn't get it all in this article, but maybe I should have included a little more on the lessons I learned before and why I had already changed. Next time.
What happened is quickly glossed over in vague terms with a half hearted apology and treated as a mere unimportant sideshow to the real problem: I faced consequences. Ignoring the pushback or saying 'well I could have provided more detail about what I learned as a person' isn't actually explaining what you did wrong. There is a big gap between 'acting like an asshole' (to use your language) and 'being a sexual predator' (to use another headline). Those details matter - because they frame the rest of the description of what happened. It's the head nod to 'I'm sorry if anyone was offended' so we can get to the real topic...
The real topic is claiming victimhood when the consequences of one's behavior come out. No challenge of facts, of what others are saying, simply an acclimation that you are put upon based on your evaluation of the consequences. By bypassing all of that, you are starting from the idea that you (and your wife) are really the victim here and building that narrative very intentionally. These types of articles are basically an argument by assertion that accountability is not important.
Cancel culture is not real - the term 'cancel culture' is an attempt to recuperate[0] the language of equal rights and justice to protect people from the consequences of their actions. You're sitting here writing a blog post about this. It's on the front page of HN, you posted about it on your twitter. Please...
So far anything I have seen that directly or indirectly argues against cancelling invites a vortex of political bullshit to descend upon the writer, and you are already tainted so you are seen as a legitimate target for more abuse.
I can easily see how I could be falsely accused, and how difficult I would find to recover from that, so I can empathise with your decision to open the wound again.
This is literally the first I've heard of Bradley, and I have no knowledge of him outside of this HN post. That's a pretty self-damning quote, though.
That's the mob mentality speaking. Just because a bunch of assholes on the internet took something they said out of context, and refused to acknowledge that people other than themselves are not objects and are capable of changing over time, that doesn't mean the person they targeted needs to "learn" anything except that people on the internet are assholes.
Here's an example of that learning: he obviously has turned from some sort of jerk into someone whose wife didn't want to leave him after all of this happened.
Seems like a big change to me.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800...
1. Oversexualizing everything. Imagery, video, Tinder, clothing styles, everything is in your face sex all the time.
2. Remnants of a Puritan approach to sex. Absolutely nothing is okay unless explicit consent is given repeatedly. Even hugs are considered sexual harassment if not explicitly approved.
I’m not casting judgment and saying X approach to sex is the right one. But this tension is bound to result in events like the one in the link. It mostly just sounds like this guy got drunk and hit on girls with a little too much fervor. Not a great thing, but probably not something one should obsess over years later.
Everyone needs to lighten up, frankly.
And when the chilling effect is strong enough, it atomizes and isolates individuals, makes them feel powerless, and creates a false sense of consensus around a particular issue.
Domination and coercion over genuine persuasion -- that's the point.
[edit: btw I'm just making a general comment. I'm not saying anything in particular about RMS's or Noah Bradley's cancellation/re-emergence, and not just because of your advice. I haven't been following these events and don't know who said what or what actually happened. I don't want to be one of those uninformed voices in any direction.]
And it really bothers me because sometimes I see something really unfair, and it is hard to not say anything, but it is not real life and you only need a handful of anonymous people with enough time on their hands to make your life hell. Just because you're not anonymous.
I almost regret being my real me online. We always had trolls, but this is something else.
I almost deleted this comment before sending it. That's the level of self-censorship because what for? What's the point of sharing my opinion here? Is it worth it? Probably not!
I agree that it's overboard on a lot of things, especially in the past couple years, but I think it's important to remember the "cancel culture" started as a way to hold certain people to account who were exhibiting socially unacceptable behavior, but were not being socially punished.
All societies have social norms, and all societies have informal (i.e. not through the legal system) means of enforcing those norms. There was a pretty significant gap in U.S. society's ability to enforce social norms against certain types of people, and social media filled that gap.
Now some people have taken that tool farther than can reasonably be justified, but the best way to fight back against that excess is not to say "cancel culture is oppression!" because it DID fill a need in our society, it DID punish people who deserved to be punished, and I don't think we can get the cat back in the bag. So, don't fight the tool, fight the people using it where it isn't justified.
(Who gets to decide when it's "justified" you ask? Well, we do. As a society. Together, online. We're going to have to figure it out. But if we go into a discussion about cancel culture assuming the other side is only interested in opression, repression, and censorship, it's not going to go well.)
There are quite a few topics where any appeal to logic is not condoned or appreciated. To the extent that mere mention is enough for the mob to turn. For example, any time a woman or child may have been mistreated. There are others of course, but too charged to list.
Steer clear of these subjects, especially if on the autism spectrum and can't read that the discussion has changed to emotion-only mode.
I don't think it's self-censorship so much as a thing humans do to maintain the fragile network of relationships that holds society together. There are all kinds of things we want to do but refrain from doing in order to be polite: is not picking your nose in public self-censorship?
When removed from consequences to our actions, we’re free to say pretty much anything we want.
If everyone actually cared about the impact our words had on others, we wouldn’t have to resort to the using the same response that caused the problem in the first place.
Because nowadays there are too many fake accounts, even paid trolls, and talking to them (or even listening to them) is just waste of time, not a meaningful conversation.
My twitter account is anonymous and I sometimes get replies like why would I want to talk to nobody. And they are right, they probably shouldn't.
Yeah... but the world would be a better place if we didn't have to.
The social liberals are the 3rd political group who used it, i'd say at least as efficiently as the far right (first group that used internet to shift the Overton window) and more efficiently than the libertarian/fiscal liberals (second group).
But as social liberals are far more numerous than the far right, the impact is magnified. I find it hypocrite that members of the first two group trying to open the overton window are calling them out on this.
I don't think this is why, or at least all of why. If I'm Wizards, and I'm promoting your art, organizing conventions and events with you as a guest, etc., I would feel some amount of moral responsibility for predatory behavior that enables. I would want my game and my community to be safe for women, and I think it would be hard to say that was the case if I were still working with someone who had been predatory. Especially because it was exactly the success of working with big-name clients like Wizards that had enabled that predatory behavior. I don't think I'd be entirely satisfied with "I used to be a predator but I'm not anymore".
I do love a lot of your artwork, but summarizing the reason Wizards stopped working with you as "Nobody wants to invite a shitstorm." is not the sort of statement that makes me want to see you return to the Magic community.
Turning that around into his own personal trauma narrative from the consequences of those actions is really hitting the wrong nerve for me here. Sure, apologize, learn and grow, people can change, but maybe don't write a post what you learned from a large public backlash, is that the backlash was the problem.
This seems like a very interesting branding approach on his part. Play up allegations and subsequent firing as being "cancelled" and come back as a victim of mob rule. Certainly a blog post that said "What it's like to feel the consequences of your actions" wouldn't have been as effective. (I suppose you could argue it's unfair to be fired for his behavior since it wasn't work related but I assume he was representing his employer at these art shows and it's bad for their brand to have him on staff.)
The are a lot of scary things about cancel culture, one being that it is remarkably like of witch hunts or the purges of the middle ages. More closer to home, the most vile of facist regimes would be licking their lips in approval of how a mere toy, a trinket, can be used to such great effect with little no due process. The reason why the law exists and why it is essential in protecting the rights of indviduals and the whole idea of democracy probably doesnt register, at least in an academic sense, with our twitter warriors. But I cant blame them. They're child-like. We are unfortunately a generation that refuses to grow up and caught in some weird disney loop, pseudo-adult, stage still waiting for the day we actually get to be adults.
My gripe is with the people who have to make decisions and take it upon themselves to include schoolyard gossip as part of their process.
It's beyond reckoning at this point.
That said, I draw a line at defamation. When someone is accusing someone online of having committed a crime, I think that the proper reaction would be to stay quiet and let it play out in a court, if it ever gets there. I also don’t think that companies should be allowed to fire employees based on accusations that have not yet been proven to be true, though, of course, it is justifiable once they are proven.
Proving/disproving isn’t even on the table. This is an irrational mob gaining moral superiority over others.
And it makes discourse online as a whole worse as more people start to realize this and we stop having conversations and instead just start talking over one another online.
Natalie Wynn talks about this on Contrapoints, worth watching as well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
There is such an asymmetry between how it feels to get piled on and watching someone else piled on.
If I was watching a stranger get their teeth pulled I can almost physically feel the pain. Watching someone harassed online is more like, "the internet sure can be mean" and then I move on.
My hunch here is this illustrates how our social systems aren't designed for a world the size of the internet.
I follow a lot of interesting people - as a result my information on Covid was more accurate and months earlier than anything in the main stream press. Sometimes not just 'more accurate', but the main stream press was actively and entirely wrong and a handful of smart people on Twitter were right. [0]
You also can interact with other interesting people, make friends that you can meet in real life (many live in the bay area), learn new things, etc. You can get an accurate sense of where some trends are going.
It can be a great place, but requires a lot of manual curation. Don't engage in culture war, block people often and immediately if they comment in bad faith, curate your feed with friendly people. Don't get drawn into petty emotional arguments. Try to be nice.
[0]: For a recent high quality example: https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1404151502864883713
One of my friends was not cancelled but shunned by a lot of people. Not sure exactly why; it was probably a lot of minor stuff that added up.
I just asked him straight: "did you do anything bad enough that I shouldn't be friends with you?". He said "no" and we moved on.
Cancelling or shunning is usually not the right punishment even if someone does something pretty bad. Unless someone who is a cultural model (e.g. CEO), and just can't do their job any more, cancelling doesn't really solve a problem. It just makes people hypersensitive, politically-correct, and quiet. That's not a healthy environment.
It is probably more complicated than that.
Like if you know for sure that a friend of yours did something completely incompatible with your norms (for me that would be for example stealing money from poor old people), perhaps you don't want to have them as your friend anymore.
But if there's doubt and uncertainty and pressure from the community, it's better to support your friends.
I got canceled in the group I founded. 12 years ago I started a reddit community based on my relationships and attractions. After building to 28k subs 10 years later, fb groups and meetups around the country. Animosity toward leadership and mods began to form. A small group of users formed resistance and started a scuffle in a post, then threats toward meetup attendees directed at mods started appearing on the discord. Complaints started appearing on the facebook group. There was no reasoning or logic to their complaints and they almost seemed incorrigible... like a bloodlust. In the end, I was forced out and exiled. I would later learn that the resistance was mostly unstable crazed users who fed on drama. Since the event their reddit and facebook profiles document a life in chaos for each of them.
It's weird not being able to speak in a community you designed and built over a decade. Even as your face/likeness and artwork is still in use in all the published materials. Thankfully things have mostly calmed down now.
> I was terrible to women.
> I preyed on them. I ceaselessly hit on them. I pressured them into sex. I got too drunk and did all manner of dumb things. Yes, I was one of those shitty, creepy sexual predators you hear about.
I work in a fairly established industry, and that would be completely unacceptable. Even if it happened decades ago. I’ve seen people be fired for much less inappropriate behavior.
In the article, Noah writes:
> I had changed my behavior long before my apology was written last year. I had figured out why I had done what I had, why it was unhealthy, and how to change.
I’d love to read more about that process. His past behaviors and the similar behaviors of many other men - drunkenly pressuring women into sex - negatively affect far more people than cancelling does.
Well, if the "victims" don't move on after the apology, then the apology didn't work, did it? :-)
Who wrote this post then? I know you go on much later to say that not everyone gets a chance to start over again but I have, so do you have some perspective. At a high level, you got fired from your job, lost some friends, got depressed, but found light at the end of the tunnel and are working again, a year later (a year where a lot of people found themselves out of work for many reasons, mind you). I've got some news for you, like the chairman of the board says, that's life.
But to say your life ended for mistakes you admit to making when so many people's lives are actually ended in situations that have nothing to do with them (Matthew Shepard, George Floyd, etc.), you have the temerity to say your life ended? This shows you have a lot of perspective to gain.
I'd like to think that this cruelty is backed up by a good motivation. Maybe the author hurt you or someone you know. Maybe you sympathize greatly with the victims and you're motivated by righteous indignation. But no matter what, I'd really ask you to reflect on whether this kind of unempathetic approach makes the world better or worse. Because this is exactly the sort of incredibly tasteless comment a bully would write.
-- Dad's Rule #1 of the internet
If you want to see some of his Magic: The Gathering illustrations
Look how this damaged this community though. All the broken friendships, lost jobs. At the end of the day, the people who didn't come to his defense I think will in many ways be the losers. They are the ones left in the weakened community.
I think this is the essence of any legitimate criticism of cancel culture. The lack of nuance and the lack of room.
Do I ever want to see Bill Cosby or OJ Simpson in a new role? No. Some levels of horrible are unforgivable. Cancel away.
Woody Allen. Same.
Louis C.K.? Maybe? Unlikely. Certainly not until he makes some kind of real effort/apology/reparations.
Noah Bradley? Assuming this article is accurate and sincere? There are a lot of Noah Bradley's in the world, do they deserve a second chance?
A second chance to make art? Absolutely. A second chance to be in a position where they have any influence whatsoever over other artists and their careers? I'd have a tough time getting onboard with that.
> I woke up to several people tagging me in a twitter thread for my sleezy behavior at some art events many years ago. I wasn’t that person any more and I wanted to apologize for being an asshole in the past. I had apologized privately for everything, but I hoped it might show my sincerity and commitment to being better to address it publicly.
That smells more like PR damage control than sincerity.
The Twitter mob is bad. On that we can agree. And I cannot plumb the depths of his heart.
But apologizing doesn’t absolve you of bad behavior. And if someone doesn’t accept your apology (possibly believing it’s insincere) and brings up your “sleezy behavior at some art events many years ago”, calling them out and saying I’m not that guy anymore is not really owning his behavior.
> I made some desktop wallpapers to remind myself of those various laws because I have a poor memory and wanted to remind myself of them while I was reading a bunch of history books.
Come. On. “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
What would absolve him of that behavior? Should we live in a society where every single mistake follows you forever, no matter how much you change and try to make it right with the other party?
I was on the receiving end of smaller versions of this back when Twitter rage mobs were new and no one knew what to make of them. It was impossible to sort good faith criticism from people blasting their generally poor disposition at you even when it was only hundreds of people screaming. I can't imagine how it feels with a modern swarm.
It's ok to expect from a friend in 1-on-1 to ask you "what do you mean a "sexual predator"?" in a maybe surprised, but genuinely interested manner...
But expecting nuance and curiosity from random people on the internet after you label yourself "sexual predator" publicly without much context? That's quite a lapse in judgement, imo.
I remember a public radio personality who publicly revealed that he served a sentence for murder when he was younger, and it was handled much better, with much better result. It was all arranged with the other people in the radio show, it was introduced in detail and context, etc. He didn't just one day wake up and decide to surprise everyone with a big reveal and apologize to society. I guess not a great comparison, but "sexual predator" has some legal/criminal connotations, too.
Which isn't to say that your advice is poor advice!
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...
Instead you must harden. Deny everything. Gaslight. You will know you have won when the mob grows tired and cynical from their inability to destroy you.
When the dust has settled, all that will matter is that no one came forward with hard evidence, only he-said-she-said bullshit.
You can downvote me all you want, it does not change the truth.
Human beings are still barely-evolved monkeys, with a keen sense for, and penchant to exploit, perceived weakness.
Apologies to third parties never make things better. Rather, they signal weakness to the mob, which emboldens them to pile on harder.
Absolutely, you should apologize to the specific people you've hurt, as I gather the original poster did. NEVER apologize to random unaffiliated people looking for outrage fuel. It always ends badly.
Perhaps they were playing too much Wolfenstein VR and they see Nazis in everything.
As you can see with the OP and the comments in this thread, it seems there is little to no redemption anyway. So apology is not an option. Especially on your own Twitter account.
Couple that with an actually dangerous president (that is not a political statement), and a cop who murders someone in plain daylight, with an underlying pandemic and you have 3 of the dark horsemen right there.
I believe Dorsey revels in this part of it and I don't like him for that. Zuck seems to be more interested in just getting people to watch ads, which is bad, but not the same thing.
I grew up respecting journalism, and I think it's an important industry, like the invisible 5th pillar of government ... but I just assume everything I read is hugely biased to the point of lacking in credibility.
Cancel culture is a fight by one group to gain moral superiority over others. When you do that, there is no way anyone can defend including the author. Instead of criticizing the argument, they doubt people’s souls, intent, and motivation, their core values - without a second thought. That’s toxic. Our culture and heritage is built upon trust and respect.
For some reason, cancel culture is dominated by Progressives which is profoundly hypocritical: Progressive causes are about acceptance, forgiveness, inclusion and equality.
My company has a huge diversity of nationalities, religions, and every type of individual working here. If my employees launched a cancellation crusade every time they saw something they didn’t like in someone else, our company would crash and burn fast. We have employees from Pakistan and India, which have a lot of hostility to each other. We have employees who are Christian, Hindus, Islamic, among others. We have employees who are straight, gay, trans, etc. To protect everyone, we keep all of our focus on work rather than trying to browbeat people about politics or religion or anything else. All we care about is the performance of our company towards our goals.
The way to solve societal issues like systemic discrimination is to eliminate all traces of it and focus on a pure meritocracy. Attempts to use reverse discrimination are extraordinarily misguided and dangerous, and will lead to the worst kinds of backlash. We already saw that happen following world war I when the Germans were discriminated against and developed so much anger that Hitler was able to rise and bring on world war II.
But boy, cancel culture and this whole social justice warrior crap makes me so glad that I moved away from the U.S. many years ago to saner parts of the world.
Obviously that is going to get me downvoted to oblivion here on HN. But hey.
Never been a problem for me.
I don't have a "-ist" bone in my body. When I review code, I only see the code and not the person that wrote it. When I pick a team, I look at engineering ability and nothing else. I abhor discriminatory behavior and would be the first to put my career on the line to defend someone getting discriminated against. And of course I keep anything sexual FAR FAR FAAAR outside of work.
Sometimes I write "guys" in chat (out of habit) and get a rush of anxiety. Did I offend someone? Should I correct it? If I correct it, will it make it more obvious? What if I get called out for using that word? How should I respond without making myself look like a goon?
I've stopped giving negative feedback. It started when I needed to give negative feedback to a female engineer who wasn't doing well. I was terrified of being perceived as sexist so I just gave neutral/positive feedback to protect myself. I didn't want it to look bad so I did the same for male coworkers. Now I just give everyone positive feedback all the time. Yea, it looks like I'm a doormat or just dumb but it's worth the sense of safety I feel.
I never EVER make jokes at work. I don't tell stories about my life. I certainly don't share political opinions. I don't talk about my hobbies because those might (at some point, not now) be correlated with something "-ist". Not worth the risk.
I obviously don't post on social media. I do intend to start at some point, but everything I post will go through a heavy handed PR filter. I'm thinking it'll all be positive/supportive. No complaining, no calling anyone out, no responding to politicians or popular figures, and definitely never supporting anyone that I don't know personally.
It's exhausting but at least it's opt-in. I just want a calm day to day life.
If the people around me don't like it or my work won't accept it then I simply move to new friends/work where my "character" is understood or accepted.
I find similarities in this with some standup comedy I do & the group of friends I found there. They accept my "naughtier" funny side because we all talk shit about everything and about each other. We're constantly roasting each other and we all love it. Politics & drama is welcome here!
Surely I can't bring the same character into an office meeting but you'll easily see where the line is - no need to go completely all out as you are.
You wouldn't talk to your grandma about your sex life the same way you talk about it with your buddies.
Adapt and move on, but maybe no need to hide your true self.
If you're giving negative feedback because they did something wrong/substandard work, you document it and move on. If there are questions later, you refer back. I've literally never had this be a problem.
I'm not sure why talking about your personal life would be grounds for issues unless you decided to talk about your bedroom, politics, or religion. "I went hiking on X trail this weekend, it was pretty cool" isn't going to get you called into HR.
We could do with the inverse, too. One person could sue for small-ish claims hundreds of harassers. You called me a rapist on social media together with a mob of idiots? Good, that's libel for you and for the other thousand who did. It's going to cost you 10 grands and a reprimand- not enough for a single court case maybe, but put them together and they can be worth it :)
First mistake. You can’t give in to this stuff. It does not make it better. It makes it worse.
"I engaged in sexual misconduct with multiple women. This behavior may imply life long psychological consequence for them. Yes they are the victims but let's take a minute consider its made me feel."
I think we all know the answer...who cares.
The term misconduct is used usually in the work environment when one party is in a position of power, like a boss of another. This is not the case here.
> This behavior may imply life long psychological consequence for them.
Or may not. Or maybe refusal to engage with women could imply life long psychological consequence for them: women as well as men feel bad when they are rejected.
Don't decide for women what's best for them. They are grown up adults and engage in these relationships voluntarily.
> Yes they are the victims
Victims are those who were assaulted against their will. My understanding that there was no violations like that in this story.
Intimidation sadly works.
"Rainbow capitalism."
Instead of saying "He got cancelled by the Twitter mob", say "he got scapegoated by the Twitter mob"
In short, don't have the crowd be the first thing that tells you you're someone you don't want to be.
It’s much easier not trying for anything like that. You can live a comfortable life without ever trying to make waves. Leave politics to the psychopaths.
The next part I don't understand is the weak culture of profuse and repeated apologizing and contrition for a "microaggression." This is something Bill Maher harps about from time-to-time.
Finally, the culture of competitive, and sometimes crybully, victimhood is tedious and nauseating. Why does everyone have to outdo themselves to be the biggest victim? Are you "The Man" to be collectively punished and assaulted if you don't have enough victomology points?
It seems like the answer to this is yes? or at least enough to have serious life consequences for those that find themselves on the wrong side of it.
Losing your job, losing your spouse, losing your reputation, it's basically a form of ex-communication that can have serious consequences.
Mob justice is not a great thing independent of specific instances, there's a reason we moved as a society to courts - they're not perfect, but they're better.
Cancelling also conflates two things often, but the mob response is similar.
There are people 'cancelled' because they discuss ideas that others disagree with. I think this is the most objectionable. Then there are people cancelled for (often, but not always sexual) behavior - this is more nuanced in the sense that the action may be (but is not always) wrong, but the mob justice is wrong too. There is also a wide spectrum of behavior here that ranges from mild to actual crime, and in the public 'mob justice' sphere (rather than a court) often nuance is lost and the truth is lost too.
We have a criminal system, courts, and the presumption of innocence for a reason.
Society has dealt with how to deal with people spreading rumors and falsehoods about people, and one of the solutions was libel laws. It is not surprising as the. US Supreme Court gutted those laws, and Congress gave safe harbor with section 230 to tech companies, that we have seen a huge spike in these problems.
Hold Twitter, the posters, and any retweeters jointly and severally liable and watch the problem disappear.
Actually, given how defamation works in the US, even without Section 230, it's very hard to see how they'd be liable.
In the US, if the defamation is towards a public figure (which it is for every case you'll hear about), then it's not enough that the statement be demonstrably false, but it also has to be made with "actual malice." That means you need to demonstrate that the speaker either knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard as to its veracity.
Since Twitter basically publishes everything its users do, there's no way it can form sufficient mens rea to defame anybody merely by publishing a tweet.
Oh, and loosening up defamation law in the US would run afoul of this pesky thing called the First Amendment.
It's like the mob wants to find a new villain every week, because of a somewhat past 'crime' on Twitter or a mistake that we disavowed our younger-self online and they still force us to apologise for it.
Even when we begin to apologise, it is never enough and they go to great lengths to cancel anyone who either doesn't agree with them or basically just want to be part of pushing 'this game' too far. No point in apologising or reasoning with them if they aren't go to accept the apology. They'll just continue the witch-hunt and move on to the next villain to be thrown into the lost and banned.
This cancelling-cult has got to stop. It has gotten out of control.
Except he did not. He got burned for a blog post apology -- where he called himself a sexual predactor. No apology, no burning.
