(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. The whole Cancel Culture debate continues to confuse me.

This is an anthropologist's take on it via Twitter - the only problem is, he tries to address it via an anthropology lens. And well, if you aren't looking through that lens...

Also he's arguing semantics, and not really what it is about. The concept still is there, he's just nitpicking at the terminology.

I see people doing this a lot in debate - they nitpick on word choice or semantics, distracting from the actual issue at hand. It drives me nuts.

OTOH - maybe I'm just not quite understanding him...I'm willing to be convinced. I honestly have not figured it out yet. Just that the concept of "cancel culture" squeaks of bullying to me.

2. 15 Illogical Fallacies or Bad Argument Techniques

How many of these have you done? I think I've done all of them. I blame law school. My favorite has to be the "slippery slope" argument.

Comments

[mefisto]

There's no such thing as "cancel culture". It's a term invented by right-wingers to make it appear that the left is intolerant. If there were such a thing, then the right is much more guilty of it (think The Dixie Chicks).

[shadowkat]

I'm not so sure I agree with that view.

I'm willing to be convinced. But telling me there's no such thing as "cancel culture" - when I've seen it happen with my own eyes and yes by both sides (the far right and the far left) - makes me wonder if we are arguing semantics? Because I watched people do it on social media. And then justifying it because they did it to a "person" who wasn't disadvantaged, or was privileged, as if that person doesn't matter because they happen to be white, cisgendered, male, straight? How does this change minds? How does this win arguments? How does bullying some asshole into submission fix things? I mean I get it - I'd like to cancel some of these assholes too, but it solves nothing, and people aren't just one thing, everyone has value. To "cancel" them out just because they are being an ass about something on social media seems...counterproductive.

[mefisto]

I'm going to leave it alone because the discussion is too wide-ranging and there are too many nuances. It's a better conversation in person.

[shadowkat]

I just read an article in Slate that kind of supports "It's a better conversation in person view".

Illiberalism cancel culture free speech internet - ugh

"They especially should know better than to act as if the death of good-faith debate—which I agree is a problem—came out of nowhere, or out of identity politics run amok. You can’t cut the far-right out of the picture, as if “censorious” rhetorical strategies emerged out of a void. And you can’t separate the platforms on which political speech is happening from the effects you’re condemning. Anyone weighing in on the state of political discussion should know, and factor into their analysis, that social media has made an internet public square where good-faith debate happens a thing of the past, if it ever existed at all. (I came closest to experiencing such a thing back when there were blogs.) The fact is that on Twitter, where much political news gets generated and disseminated and discussed, disagreement is usually expressed through trolling, sea-lioning, ratios, and dunks. Bad faith is the condition of the modern internet, and shitposting is its lingua franca. On—yes—both sides. Look: A professional Twitter troll is president. Trolling won. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that despite their centrality, online platforms aren’t suited to the earnest exchange of big ideas."

I'd agree unfortunately. I see so much taken out of context. I watched the James Marsters interview with Michael Rosenbloom - and the Whedon quote is taken out of context. If you watch all of it - Marsters states that Whedon is a great and kind guy, but he was scared of him at first, and that Whedon's reaction to his popularity - made sense. If he'd been in Whedon's shoes, he'd have killed off the character that was threatening his theme.
It's not what the writer of the article linked to above states it is, that writer twisted it out of context.

The internet does that rapidly. It's not that it didn't happen before, but social media is kind of like a game of gossip or telephone, where people pull things out of context and attack. It makes for very bad debate or discussion.

[mefisto]

Yeah, I completely agree with this. IMO, we need to re-think the way "free speech" functions in order to make it work as it's supposed to. After all, every legislative body in the world has rules of order, and most successful blogs need monitors. The easy ones to monitor are:

1. False or misleading statements.
2. Personal attacks or threats.
3. Bots.
4. Trying to occupy all the space.
5. Bad faith arguments (e.g., repeating points endlessly; relying on disprovable claims, etc.)
6. Racism and misogyny.

There are probably more.

And yeah, those reports about Joss were very unfair.

[shadowkat]

Agreed.

I kind of miss the monitored discussion boards on VOY forums. Masq did a good job of keeping that balance. As did many of the boards that I was on.
Also, I liked the format of Voy forums - you could easily avoid painful threads and posters. It's harder to do on FB, Twitter and even here. Here, we're all our own moderators.

It's really all about who is moderating the forum. And the forums do require moderating. People aren't always mindful when posting and can be total jerks in the heat of the moment. Also, there's a lot of hackers and trolls. Twitter got hacked again, apparently.

[mefisto]

AtPo was remarkable for its self-discipline and fair discussion. Mostly; there were a few trolls. That was early in the internet, relatively speaking, so maybe it couldn't work that way today.

[shadowkat]

The Board moderated itself well. Apparently before I arrived, it was even harsher - with the First and Second Evils reigning people in. Then it kind of changed for some reason, either before or when I arrived - because I never saw what she was talking about.

I know from talking to D'H at a meetup once, that they did remove a lot of people, and there were a few trolls. They had troubles removing a few...but most they got rid of fairly quickly or the board did.