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Scott posted Lukianoff And Defining Cancel Culture. He takes one of the given definitions of cancel culture and tries to see how it applies to edge cases, and whether it makes sense as a definition. I thought the comments on the slatestarcodex reddit thread were pretty good. I tried to post a synthesis of the ideas I got while reading the comments:
Cancel culture is speaking about and coordinating your disassociation with a person.
You have the right to not associate with people. You should feel free to exercise that right when you personally notice them doing something you don't like.
To avoid being a part of cancel culture:
Supplemental section.
Applying these to Scott's examples:
A1-A6 are not cancel culture. The actor is taking personal steps to change their association with someone they don't like.
A7-A12 are cancel culture. The actor is trying to coordinate and spread their disassociation with someone.
The other ones are a bit more complex.
B1-B2 The university admin isn't really the prime source of "cancel culture" in this example. It is the newspaper that is trying to publish a juicy story. I think the university admin is fine to resist as much as they feel comfortable resisting, but is not obligated to resist at all. The newspaper is bad, and you should cancel your subscription from that newspaper (and only tell the newspaper why you are cancelling).
B3-B5 It is cancel culture to write the article and focus it on the grad student or any particular person as the problem. If you are able to anonymize the grad student and others involved then it is not very cancel culture. If others then dig deeper and de-anonymize the grad student, they are cancel culture. If you wish to be part of the anti-cancel-culture alliance, probably don't write it at all. If you just wish to follow politeness norms anonymize the people involved to the best of your ability. If you want to be a part of cancel culture make the article entirely about the grad student.
C1 The New York Times was doing cancel culture against Scott. His friends did cancel culture against the New York Times. Scott in his articles about the situation did not encourage cancel culture. Tit-for-tat strategy can be good for getting people to not do things. But it needs to be handled carefully. Retaliate for specific instances against exact people. Do not retaliate for general attacks by generally attacking the other direction.
C2 Scott can personally cancel his subscription and never associate with the Atlantic again. That is not cancel culture. Telling us about it is cancel culture.
The key is that it's cancel culture. It's not a specific definable process, it's just the general cultural trend, suddenly much more prevalent, where if someone says something naughty it's appropriate not only to take it personally, not only to tell everyone how upset you are, but to try to visit consequences on them for it. There's no precise definition, it's just a vibe shift.
I don't see why cultural things are undefinable. The edges might be fuzzy, and the definition may shift in the future, but it doesn't mean we can't generally point out where those edges are in a specific time period.
"Indefinable" might be too strong a word, but he has a point. Cancel Culture isn't about a specific set if behaviors, the behaviors are a means to an end. With changing conditions the behaviors might change, bit Cancel Culture will remain the same.
There are some things in culture that are a little pointless to define because they shift so much with sentiment.
"anti-left" would be a very nebulous concept, because the views of "leftists" and those who oppose them can change drastically based on time and place.
But there are social tactics that are mostly not going to change over time. Killing political opponents is a constant through much of history, and the stated reasons for why have changed many times. But killing is killing and there is no reason to mark it as undefinable.
If there is a spectrum from "pointless to define" things like "anti-left" to easily definable things like "killing" then I believe "cancel-culture" is closer to "killing". The reasons for doing it might change, the targets might change, and the methods might change. But it is still the same underlying strategy/tactic.
The ancient equivalent of "cancel culture" is probably exile which has also been pretty popular throughout history.
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