1) New Thread Time (Warning VERY long)
Cancel Culture vs Imbalanced Power Structures
So this discussion brings me to clarify a few things, because twitter SUCKS for nuanced debate, but hey, at least the debate is happening.
So a few thoughts:

2) “Cancelling” someone so that their liveliehood , hopes, plans, ambitions, hobbies and friendships are affected is pretty bullshit. As a society we believe in “innocent until proven guilty”, and “beyond reasonable doubt”.

3) Twitter cancel culture bypasses just about all of these checks and balances. So most rational people hate the capricious and harmful nature of it, as it can make lasting mistakes that hurt people very easily.

4) So yes the extreme of “cancel culture” is pretty easy to characterise as villainous, and in many cases the potential for abuse in its own process is too high, that allowing “cancel culture” to be a thing is a net harm to society. But that reading is surface level.

5) Why does cancel culture exist? What is its aims? If you think its purely a power play by “influencers” to control and manipulate others, you are taking a specific example of extreme abuse of this phenomena and extrapolating it to the whole. Shit happens, but it is not the norm

6) The genesis of this strategy was a reaction to the lack of power people felt within existing entrenched power structures, and of those structures in answerability for their actions. People of celebrity or power could do reprehensible actions, seemingly with no consequences,

7) purely because of wealth, position, race, alignment or history. Strangely enough the general public online community found this to be bullshit.

8) At this point of our civilisation, we have a weird position were celebrity for celebrity sake **EXISTS**, and has birthed influence to people who didn’t have it before,

9) and who aren’t within existing power structures. So key social media influencers, or even people just able to tap into the “viral” machinery can tilt public perceptions in way not seen before in modern public society.

10) So now an extremely loose alliance of social media types, can start up #cancelNAME, and then social media engine can amplify it to a point that that person can be seen as “publicly unacceptable” and the purchasers and hirers of this world,

11) not wanting to be the target of mass public ire, disengage from the ‘cancelled’ target. Cancellation as been to some degree then, a success.
Remember though this was in response to the targets actions. And here we get to the crux of the matter.

12) What actions are worthy of this cancelling (if any)? Apparently holding political or moral views differing from the zeitgeist of the current trends is a clear problem, but in other cases it has been people with a clear suspicion of actual criminal behaviour.

13) In England we find ‘beloved’ figures were actual pedophiles, and a typical police investigation proceeded, but only after multiple decades of the issue being hushed, and “known” but not talked about.

14) Would social media magicaly EXISTING in the 70’s and 80’s, have meant that these hushed up abuses would have been formally and judicially investigated sooner? A Historical What If with no way to answer it.

15) In Hollywood we find powerful industry figures have been using that power to extract ‘compliance’ to inappropriate intimate actions from aspiring entrants to the scene, something that was almost implicitly seen as normal for their industry.

16) A strikingly brave movement by predominantly (but not exclusively) female actors brought to light that sexual abuse/assault had been the norm, and frankly they wanted it to stop. It was an “IRL Cancellation” of key power figures by people speaking in public.

17) It had some effect, and some well known figures, lost some influence and work, and some had only minor consequences and attempted to go back to work as normal. As socmed culture has the shortest of attention spans, some of these “back to work after being cancelled” worked.

18) But a taste for “at least some consequences happened” meant that this strategy was going to be re-used, where people could make it happen. Given the PR sensitivities of the industry or specific company, there was specific ability to leverage this strategy.

19) And so now its messy, as clear abuses, and clear wins of this strategy have occurred.

20) So I look to intent. For some, it is to use this social media power, and the targets (and their hirers) desire to avoid bad PR, to accomplish personal goals, be they good or bad, abusive, noble or greedy.

21) For others its an attempt to work inside or outside a system that holds all the power, and may, via various means, disadvantage the applicant. It’s an attempt to equalise power.

22) But how do you differentiate between the two? Is the person utilising the strategy grasping for revenge, or struggling for justice? Could it be boiled down to are they “bad” or “good”? For me I use a simple metric, that I only require to work for me.

23) Is the attempt to “go outside the process” done as a reaction to the process failing them, and a desire for the process to actually do “what it says on the label”. i.e. requests to HR previously not working, and the desire to get an official HR Process going, as the goal.

24) If Instead, the goal of the social media strategy is to avenge, or even “to hurt them because they hurt me”, then that falls into morally ‘bad’ for myself. Vigilantism is not something we accept as a general good of society, and the legal due process, for all of its flaws

25) is a preferable option.

26) So if you want to cancel someone as a “twitter/other social media” entity. That is you dont want them to have space, or opportunity, or air, and Your goal is not to trigger a process WITH CHECKS AND BALANCES, then I have an issue.

27) If your twitlonger, Facebook posts, or hashtag campaign is to provoke a formal police investigation, or HR process, or internal review, then it has the potential to be a worthy circuit breaker, if the normal attempts to trigger these processes has failed.

28) If its purely to be a smear campaign, or spiteful attempt at non-process retribution, then it is problematic to say the least.

29) BECAUSE (and finally my point)
EXISTING STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES SOMETIMES DONT WORK FOR REASONS THAT ALLOW BAD PEOPLE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES, BECAUSE HUMANS SUCK AT MAKING PERFECT PROCESSES

30) So I am actually fine with “circuit breakers” existing given they are not imbued with power that has no checks and balances, and the “mob” stays the HELL away from the punishment side of things.

31) In a specific localised instance, and again without names, the claim was “inappropriate use of managerial power, allegedly due to inappropriate personal expectations” but the twitter mob pitchforked straight to screams of “RAPIST”.

32) This is the bullshit writ large, but the maddened mob is not known for its nuance and subtlety. The only way we can enable circuit breakers, but not stray into lynching vigilantism, is by collective self control. Something EXTREMELY difficult to do in this current climate.

33) This doesn’t mean we try to stop people making twitlongers, it means we need to mature AS A CULTURE and as a COMMUNITY, in how we react to these. Less braying for blood, and more lobbying for correct process to happen.

34) Lets make civilization work LIKE IT SHOULD, and improve processes that work quite a large majority of the time, and have built in safe guards against abuse, that also work a majority of the time.

35) It will be painful with many failings, but working through the imperfections, is inherent to the process of improvement.

36) Also please accept that these imperfections mean that walking in the front door of “due process” is not always possible for quite a wide range of people for quite a wide range of reasons. Be open to assisting the weak and the hurt and the disenfranchised where it is needed.