Escaping the Echo Chamber

[Alatar]

I'm really loth to open up a can of worms here, but I've been thinking a lot about cancel culture lately. While a lot of it is coming from very good place, I worry that it's turning into a witch hunt and that someday we will look back on this period the same way we look back as the McCarthy era search for Commies under the bed. For example, after the Salman Rushdie attack, there were posts online calling for J.K. Rowling to be "next". I find this horrifying. Whether or not people agree with her "TERF" stance, when people start calling for a Fatwah on a novelist for stating what she believes to be a simple fact (which has already been discussed in another thread here) there is something seriously wrong. What ever happened to that whole "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"?

(I realise this may be a bit close to the bone for you Eldy, but I use this merely as an example, not a lynch pin of the argument)

[Túrin Turambar]

This tendency to excommunicate, judge and condemn has always been around, but I think social media exacerbates it. It's asymmetric warfare - you can make death threats under a pseudonym directed towards a named public figure. The really big names like JKR aren't the biggest concern, though, it's much smaller people with day jobs to lose who are most vulnerable.

Ironically, of course, it often backfires. Few people knew or cared who Milo Yiannopolous was until a mob shut down his speech at Berkeley, after which he made a comfortable living from provoking outrage. It's like a bizarre ecosystem.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

For example, after the Salman Rushdie attack, there were posts online calling for J.K. Rowling to be "next". I find this horrifying.

I can see no possible justification for NOT finding this horrifying.

[elengil]

I think it's entirely possible to find a person's rhetoric unconscionable without resorting to threatening or engaging in violence against them.

That's not "cancel culture". (IMO)

[Alatar]

Sorry if I created a strawman there. We don't need to go to those extremes. However, lets look at a more recent issue. After Metallica's "Master of Puppets" was used in "Stranger Things" Season 4, they had a huge resurgence and many new fans. Then, just as quickly, those fans found objectionable material in the groups 30+ year history and called for them to be cancelled. Why do we (aimed at nobody in particular) judge people for their actions in the past based on the mores of today (which are incidentally decided by the loudest mob).

There are plenty things in my past which would not flatter me today. Luckily I'm not famous enough for anyone to care.

[elengil]

I think to Túrin's point:

This tendency to excommunicate, judge and condemn has always been around, but I think social media exacerbates it.

Cancel culture is a term that has been applied more recently to mean (as far as I can tell) the right specifically angry that the left has chosen to not spend their money in certain places. Basically: the exact same thing as boycotts.

I agree that there should be some reason applied that something from thirty years ago may very well reflect the prejudices and problematic attitudes of thirty years ago. I agree that we should allow people to grow past old mistakes when it is clear they no longer hold the same views or values they once did.

I disagree that saying "I disagree with X therefore I won't give my money to X" is some kind of strange new leftist phenomena called "cancel culture" (somehow when the right does it, it's never 'cancel culture').

I even disagree that saying "I disagree with X and I do not believe they should be given a public platform" is "cancel culture."

I *do* agree that the way in which large numbers of the public will race to not be last to be "on the right side" can end in extremely problematic consequences when a great number of people do not think for themselves but rely on being told what to think. And that extends far, far, far beyond the phenomena called "cancel culture" and applies very equally across the social and political spectrums.

[RoseMorninStar]

There are plenty things in my past which would not flatter me today. Luckily I'm not famous enough for anyone to care.

I've thought this more than few times.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"?

I've heard this said more than a few times lately. For me, that ends when what someone has to say becomes a life or death threat.

**Edited to add. I think one has to be careful what they hear/read and consider the source especially on social media. There are people who don't necessarily believe what they say but the outrage generates clicks/likes which generates money and greed will make them say anything.

[N.E. Brigand]

Oliver Willis of the American Independent today wrote:

Most liberals do not understand the extent to which Fox News viewers seriously believe that multiple U.S. cities were burned to the ground in summer 2020. Literally burned to the ground.

"They don't really believe that though."

They do. They absolutely 100% do. I don't know how else to say this. They believe it completely.

Now obviously while there were some buildings destroyed, and even more damaged, during the racial justice protests two years ago (mind you, some of the damage was done by agent provocateurs like the "Umbrella Man" in Minneapolis -- even Fox News reported on that one), no American city was burned to the ground. My impression is that the damage in any given city in 2020 was much less than that in 1992 in Los Angeles alone ($1.75 billion in 2020 dollars) or in any number of riots of the late 1960s (there were 150 riots just in 1967, of which the most costly was Detroit at $350 million in damages in 2022 dollars; similarly the Watts riot in 1965 cost $327 million in 2020 dollars). The 2020 riots are estimated to have resulted in roughly $2 billion nationally. That's a lot, but it's mostly the accumulated small destruction, not whole neighborhoods much less entire cities razed.

Is Willis right? Does anyone actually believe this? Do you know anyone who does?

[Sunsilver]

**Edited to add. I think one has to be careful what they hear/read and consider the source especially on social media. There are people who don't necessarily believe what they say but the outrage generates clicks/likes which generates money and greed will make them say anything.

Yes - Alex Jones, for one! When I found out during his trial how much money he was making from his radio show, the light finally went on as to just why he was claiming Sandy Hook was a 'false flag' operation!

[Frelga]

Jeremy David Hanson admits to making bomb threat of Merriam-Webster over gender definitions

A California man has pleaded guilty to threatening to bomb and shoot Merriam-Webster dictionary over its updated gender definitions, while also admitting to similarly-motivated threats against academics, politicians, religious figures and the Walt Disney Company.

[Eldy]

[Frelga]

The greatest sentence ever written by a newspaper. Huffpost, 2017.

These Are The Three Richard Spencer Fans Arrested For Attempted Homicide In Gainesville

“Basically, I’m just fed up with the fact that I’m cis-gendered, I’m a white male, and I lean right, towards the Republican side,” said Fears, 28, wearing a pin of the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS. “And I get demonized if I don’t accept certain things.”

[N.E. Brigand]

It's Pauline Kael all over again, except that (1) Kael didn't deny that Nixon got the most votes, and (2) Kael wasn't a candidate for office and particularly not for one whose responsibility is to certify elections, as Mark Finchem would be in Arizona. He was asked what he would do if Biden won his state in 2024:

[Dave_LF]

In a fantasy world, anything’s possible

And no one understands that better than MAGA.

With the possible exception of Russia.

[Frelga]

In the US, the right wing media expects their audience to believe their lies no matter how contradictory to reality they are.

Russian state media is not interested in persuading its audience, but in impressing upon them that they are helpless to do anything but swallow the lies, no matter how contradictory the lies are to each other.

Today, for example, they are issuing threats to NATO if they send troops to Ukraine in the same program that just said that the Ukrainian offensive has been conducted by uniformed NATO troops.

[Alatar]

Not sure why this is in the echo chamber? Do you agree with him?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was wondering why that was here as well.

[N.E. Brigand]

Do I agree with Marc Finchem that the fact he personally doesn't know any Joe Biden voters means that they can't possibly have voted in sufficient numbers to have defeated Donald Trump in Arizona and that the claim that Biden won is a "fantasy"?

I do not. I would suggest that no one in control of their mental faculties can believe such a thing.

And thus, I thought, the relevance to this thread. (And also the reference to Pauline Kael, who is frequently cited as the example of someone who was living in a bubble that didn't reflect reality because she said she only knew one Nixon voter.) Finchem thinks I'm crazy for believing that Joe Biden won Arizona. I suggest that he's crazy for believing that Donald Trump won Arizona. How do we resolve this? Are we both in our own echo chambers? Or is one of us dangerously wrong? Obviously if I'm wrong, then rampant voter fraud really does exist, and the wrong man is currently President of the United States.

[Alatar]

Ok, so (although this has never really worked) the challenge of "Escaping the Echo Chamber" is to try to see the other POV. Not just to surround ourselves with like minded people who agree with everything we think and echo it back to us.

So, for example, everyone here (for the most part) agrees that America needs stricter gun laws, but if I posted an article making a rational argument that, hey maybe the real issue is lack of enforcement of the current laws, then the challenge is to see if that's a supportable argument, and not to immediately jump to the liberal talking points and shoot it down (sorry about the pun).

[Inanna]

Here is my challenge for the day: I don’t have rational points but I have been thinking about it.

I get the Texans point of view of sending migrants to the sanctuary states. Their perspective is: “you have been demonizing us from afar. Let’s see how you do when you are facing the same problem.”

I would like to lay out a couple of rules: 1.let’s not drag the FL shenanigan into it. 2. Let’s not drag how TX would never have done it when Trump was the president, and 3. Let’s assume the poor folks were not lied to when being put on the bus. They were told “we are not a Sanctuary state, we are sending you to one that is”.