This is an interesting topic, but a clumsy article. "Canceling" takes a lot of shapes, and there's a big difference between people yelling loudly about Louis CK being a sexual predator and your friend circle calling you out for making a shitty joke. If you want thoughtful commentary on the relationship between public figures and the public, maybe start with Ollie Thorn. For the remainder of my time, I'd like to advance a preliminary thesis. The author identifies several aspects of "cancel culture": a dogmatic insistence on a very specific truth, inability to consider the context of words and actions, a crime-and-punishment approach to handling people who have done something wrong, and a resultant culture where people act based on fear. Think of the difference between "calling out" and "calling in". What are all these aspects reminiscent of? Where did they come from? Because I guarantee you folks on twitter did not invent these whole-cloth over the course of the 2010s. This particular way of seeing, to me, reeks of how Protestant American culture approaches "others". Think about how white society and the police "handle" black people. Think about how wealthy society "handles" the poor. Cancel culture is this same cultural heritage writ in the language of everyday people wielding their own power the way the powerful in our society wield theirs. That this happens in conservative/Christian circles is perhaps not surprising. That this happens among liberals and the left too shows that we have not thought through the implications of this way of thinking, that they still shape us in spite of our rejection of their overt values. The rise of modern-day fascism tells a similar story, c.f. All that said, it seems like the online communities I spend time in have, to some extent, matured out of cancel culture. I see a trend towards having a more constructive outlook and spending more energy on supporting people and having good-faith discussions than on being incensed at assholes being assholes. My hope is that Hubski follows this trend too.
On a different note, It's not a comfortable truth, but since we've all grown up in a racist, sexist, homophobic society, we have got parts of those ways of seeing stuck in our heads too. That's not to say that self-flagellation is the appropriate response or that canceling people for being racist is inherently right. But denying the problem, as the author does here, merely feeds the engine of cancellation. If someone says "You did X which is very wrong," reacting with "No I didn't!" is understandable, but prevents any further constructive dialogue on the topic.I don’t believe that anyone thinks Kevin Hart is a homophobe, or that Al Franken is a dangerous predator. And I definitely don’t believe they think Sarah Silverman is a racist.
Ethos rhetoric. I cannot attack your arguments so I will attack your character. It seems novel because the peanut gallery seldom has any power over the intelligentsia this side of a revolution but on Twitter, nobody knows you're a dog unless you have a blue check mark. I would go as far as to say that checkmark is the problem: Jack Dorsey created a caste system in a place where it can really only do harm.What are all these aspects reminiscent of? Where did they come from?