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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34517 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Louis C.K. was trending on Twitter because his Madison Square Garden concert was sold out, which some on the left are interpreting to mean that cancel culture is not real, or that it does not hurt people's careers. (link: https://archive.is/ryKrI )

What does it mean to be sufficiently canceled? I think Louis C.K. qualifies as having been sufficiently cancelled. If you look at his Wikipedia page, his sexual misconduct scandal, in 2017, killed off his TV and movie career. His filmography abruptly ends in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K._filmography

Sure he's still able to sell out, but this reflects individual preferences for his comedy, not the approval of the media establishment, in which he is still damaged goods. Comedians are sorta like contractors in the sense that they have to hustle, not depend on a platform or the backing of a major media establishment. I think this is is what gives comedians an advantage over actors in regard to cancellation, because stand-up comedy can be inexpensively distributed at scale, such as digitally online, without needing the backing of an entire studio or publishing house.

Claims that "cancel culture doesn't exist because this particular, highly , highly talented and famous person escaped our wrath" are, imo, just obfuscation.

Akin to saying "homophobia doesn't exist cause this one rich gay Hollywood Jew in the 60s got away with it"; it changes absolutely nothing about the claim being made about society.

This is a common line of argument with JK Rowling and the bad faith is most evident there: trying and failing is not the same as not trying or being globally ineffective. They absolutely would have cancelled her if they could; she's simply a once-in-a-generation celebrity.

You think Louis CK is highly highly talented? Go check out his first comeback special after he got cancelled. It fucking sucks. The middle of the set joke sequence starts with a Pascals wager joke about how it would suck to be wrong about god existing, then to "jesus wasnt christian he was jewish how would he feel about the cross?' and then finishing up with 72 virgins. After that it's "I hate being the only person in a small restaurant/store" and then jokes about how words like Retard used to be more socially acceptable. These would all be hack bits in like 2008, but in 2020? You can find most of it on youtube if you want to confirm how bad it is: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q_TZWxihabc

Lots of people clearly like his comedy, see: his show selling out. There's no such thing as a comedian who's universally popular. The only fair way to measure how funny someone is is to look at some combined metric of a) the number of people that like them, and b) the amplitude(passion?) of how much people who like them like them. Being able to sell out a large venue is an objective measure they score decently on both metrics.

He's no doubt the biggest and most successful comedian of the past decade (top 3 at least), I just take issue with the suggestion that only highly highly talented and famous people can evade the wrath of cancellation. In my estimation moderately talented people can fare just fine.

I guess it depends on your definition of highly talented then? I'd call just about anyone who can get thousands of people to show up live just for them highly talented. I'd call someone moderately talented if they peaked when they placed top 3 in their high school talent show.

Ding ding ding.

People with talent have value that, from a purely economic point of view, is going to make it much easier for them to recover their position because, quite simply, a lot of people can make money off of them returning to action.

Another counter-example is Kanye West, who is a world-famous artist with massive following who currently cannot post to any social media site under his own identity. He's STILL got a decent chance of returning to former glory.

Meanwhile, a more average citizen who is inherently more replaceable is going to become potentially radioactive for a long time and this makes their position much more vulnerable.

The whole point of opposing cancel culture, to my view, is to protect persons who don't have the means to survive an attempt at mob justice, since mobs generally don't discriminate based on the wealth or prestige of their target.

People with talent have value that, from a purely economic point of view, is going to make it much easier for them to recover their position because, quite simply, a lot of people can make money off of them returning to action.

CK had also started, a few years before #metoo threatened him, running his own business and cutting out middle-men. He did direct-subscription online comedy shows, he produced his own independent movies (he still got hit by distribution issues on this), but he more-or-less transitioned to owning his own shit. He made himself less-cancelable by prematurely withdrawing himself from the dominion of the gatekeepers.

Interesting given last week's discussion of Brandon Sanderson seemingly transitioning to a self-funding and publishing model.

From a survival of the fittest perspective you convinced me cancel culture is actually good.

Not entirely sure that I'm kidding?

"Fitness" is an amoral sort of criteria. Don't need to bring 'good' or 'bad' into it.

Sure we can have a massive competition between everyone who operates in the social environment as to who is best at avoiding and/or surviving a cancellation attempt. Those who prosper get to pass on their 'genes' (i.e. tactics that work under heavy scrutiny) and everyone else just has to accept the status quo.

But what sort of people, do you think, will end up most successful and demonstrate the best 'fitness' for this environment?

Keep in mind this is basically already how it works in, e.g. the political sphere.

(Sociopaths, it's going to be sociopaths)

I would humbly suggest we don't want to create this sort of environment for ourselves if we can avoid it, there are so many things we could be optimizing for instead.

One thing I noted when I was very young, probably 2nd or 3rd grade, that has stuck with me is the observation that artists don't have to be all that popular to be successful. This seems counterintuitive because they make money by being "popular". My mom was a big Pearl Jam fan, and I noted that their best-selling album still only sold like 9 million copies. That meant something like 3% of people in America bought an album. Not really all that popular! Even fewer people go to concerts. At 21k seats sold, Louis C.K. has pulled in... 0.25% of New York City's populace.

My mom was a big Pearl Jam fan, and I noted that their best-selling album still only sold like 9 million copies. That meant something like 3% of people in America bought an album. Not really all that popular!

Albums have a high barrier; anyone who spends money is one of the more passionate fans (this gets worse the easier it is to acquire things without paying). Now consider how many people listened on the radio (or Youtube nowadays).

Of course! But the point really was that in music you make most of your money from those passionate fans. Like if you have 1 million zealots and no one else has heard of you (like that boogaloo band whos fans dress up) or really knows your music, thats still a banging career.

As a Pearl Jam fan of 31 years, I don't really have anything to add to your post except I'm looking at you the way a post apocalyptic government guard in a quarantine zone might look at someone who seems like a stranger and might at any moment pose a threat.

LMAO, what?

Power laws apply in industries like that.

And 21k seats sold out of how many who wanted seats? That would determine how much money he actually gets for his efforts.

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