Ok. Strap in. I'm gonna need you all to put on your nuance caps because I've had something on my mind for a while & I think we need to talk about it given recent... circumstances.

Because I think we need to more deeply consider the aim & long term goal of people being canceled.
This is a rough subject to approach, especially given how on edge the world is right now, so I want to be explicit as possible with a few disclaimers.

1. Believe victims. People who out enablers & abusers often risk of their livelihoods & lives. Be there for them if they do.
2. This is not a conversation in any way meant to minimize the harm that people do. When people hurt others, they should be held accountable. I think a lot of people get that part. It's why hashtags & movements rise in the first place: they're valid expressions of community pain.
3. It is alright to be angry. Anger is an identifier, it is a reaction to hurt, to injustice, & any attempt to tone police anger only ever supports those who committed the hurtful actions in the first place.

Ok. I can't think of more disclaimers right now, but let's get into it.
So.

Someone hurt someone else.

Maybe it was a player put in an extremely bad position during a game by a GM. Maybe it's someone who defended abuse. Maybe that person is even worse: they're a stalker, an abuser, maybe violent.

And finally someone has called them out on it.
The community is rightfully upset. That person's history is scrutinized. Long threads are made detailing specific instances of how their behavior has led to this moment, how they always were capable of inflicting this pain.

The anger grows, & the hurtful person is canceled.
It may take only a minute for them to leave. They may go out in a defensive blaze. It may take hours, even days. It may take longer, as they're worked out of the community like a bad splinter. And sometimes, they may never leave.

But this is about the ones who do get pushed out.
When that happens, when the cancellation is a success, people celebrate. I have been one of them, publicly & privately. When a prominent YouTuber got canceled, I was posting screenshots of how far his subs to his channel fell.

It is treated as a triumph when the people leave.
But therein is the issue.

They don't.

They can delete their Twitter, their YouTube, they can go offline completely.

But they're still alive. They're still out there, living a life.

They still exist as a human being.

And not everyone really leaves after being canceled.
Some people just lock their account for a bit. Some change their username. They hole up, wait for the storm to pass, wait for the triumph to be held, & wait until it's safe to poke their heads back out again & go back to normal.

They're still there, still here in the community.
Think about Louis CK. After rightfully being called out for his bullshit, he "apologized" & then went away. He was persona non grata for a while, still widely is.

But he started touring again.

He started packing stadiums again.

And he started telling bad, bad jokes about it.
It's easy to look at a mob of people as just that: a mob.

Not a collective of acquaintances, friends, fans, individuals who are rightfully mad.

But as an overwhelming, incoherent mass group of antagonizers.

When that's coming at you, it's very easy to feel like the victim.
It's clear from his comedy that Louis CK felt he was the victim. Even though he didn't physically violate anyone, his particular hurt had been coded into his comedy in such a way for him as to seem weird, but manageable.

And if you listen to his comedy now, he leans into that.
But here's the thing:

Not everyone who gets cancelled is Louis CK.

Some people see the so-called mob for what it is: a lot of people saying "what you did is messed up!"

And they learn from it.

They don't spend time stewing on how much a victim they are. They seek to improve.
Now, this is - admittedly - uncommon. The hurtful person who gets called out in the majority of instances will just chalk it up to being a victim of cancel culture & go on being a big old piece of shit. That's true about actually abusers as well.

But it's not 100% of the time.
There's a Ted Talk that if you haven't seen it you should do so right now because it serves as when the idea for this thread first came to me.

It's a video about how one of the founders of the Neo-Nazi movement broke free & now helps others to do so.
TL;DR Christian Picciolini merged 2 of the largest skinhead groups, founded the first white power band to perform in Europe, lost all of his family, truly worked on himself, & now heads Free Radicals Project, a global, multidisciplinary extremism & violence platform & practice.
1 key component to FRP is disengagement. Christian talks in detail about how he approaches extremists still in their movements & how he tries to get them out.

He freely admits he deserves his life falling apart, that he committed violence, & he's doing his best to prevent more.
He also says that this work shouldn't be the work of victims, they have no reason they should help rehabilitate their abusers. He has people he has lost forever in his life. He accepts the cost of his actions & what it took from him. He says the work he does is taxing but needed.
Christian is an extreme example of a hurtful person, but he illustrates exactly what I'm talking about.

And so I'd like to bring it back to two questions:

1) What do you want from the person you're canceling?

2) If they do exactly what you wish, are you able to accept them?
This is the point at which I'll mention that I am asking nuance to this discussion. There's valid reasons people get canceled & those are exactly the situations I'm talking about.

But here's the thing: Mike Mearls isn't Christian Picciolini.

Which is to say, a former skinhead.
Now this isn't a conversation about him, just as I don't want this to become a conversation about Christian Picciolini. He's simply the most relevant example to the largest amount of my followers that I can think of right now. This isn't about either of them.

It's about process.
Many people, including myself just so it's clear, hope that MM is fired. It's clear that D&D needs a vastly greater amount of diversity in the teams who head it. There's an argument to be made that D&D will never shed the issues baked into by its very white cismale founders.
But what do we want from MM? I don't mean what we want from his removal or the people around him, though I'll touch on that soon.

I mean from him, the man himself.

Because he won't go away after this. And his crimes are that of having enabled doxxing.

Bad but not skinhead bad.
Let's give it the best case scenario. Today, MM is removed from D&D. He's fired. And D&D in his place hires a wonderful creator who isn't just a white guy.

But what do we want from him? There's no right answer, but there is certainly a less harmful solution to his situation.
I would argue that the best outcome from him is that he learns, like Christian. And he seeks to address & undo the specific harm he caused. He seeks to fix it & prevent others from doing so in the future.

But here's the thing: I think a lot of folks don't want that for him.
And that's fair. There's many people in Christian's life who have never forgiven him, never will, no matter what he does. For some people, the fact he was even once a skinhead will mean that they never want to trust him or be near him.

It'll be the same for MM as well. But also.
There will be many who hope for the worst. Who hope that the exact same pain, if not ten times worse, will befall the hurtful person.

I get it. There's a part of me that legit hopes that every single person acting like Covid is normal catches it. Believe me: I get that anger.
But... is that for the best?

If all the people who flagrantly violate quarantine right now actually do catch covid & most of them succumb who does that help?

Not all of them would have just continued to live their lives so recklessly. Some may have learned & grown to do better.
I have to stress again: MM has earned the cancellation. There is so much validity to this one, it's painfully obvious.

And if your answer to "What do you want from the person you're canceling?" is "die in a ditch," I get it.

I understand.

You're not wrong to feel that way.
But the likelihood of that happening? Is low.

Not everyone who hurts others gets their comeuppance. There's a lot of Louis CKs out there.

And so, assuming that person does all the work, if they come back as the best possible version of themselves, will you accept them?
Again, if you don't, that's fine. That isn't wrong.

But they won't go away. That person still will exist, whether you distance them or not.

And so I want to ask another question & this one is about you, I want to again say "nuance."

It's not meant as an attack, but reflection.
3. What do you want out of canceling them?

You, personally, the person reading this. The person who is part of the "mob," who has written the thread, RTed the hashtag, changed your profile picture or username.

What do you get out of it personally?

Because here's the truth.
There are some of us for whom the answer is "It makes me feel good and superior."

Deep down you know it's true. I know you know it because I knew it once. There is a part of me that genuinely delights in being part of the mob. The high you get from viciously taking someone down.
I think that most of us have felt that rush at one point. It's the reason the phrase mob mentality exists.

It's the reason I took like 20 screenshots of some YouTuber I've never met having their subscriber count plummet by the hundreds of thousands.

But eventually, it fades.
And that rush, that moment, goes away.

And that person comes back.

That YouTuber? His channel's almost at a million subs again. It's been a slow climb back up, but a steady one. He's back to regular content uploads, back to his schedule.

He survived & went back to normal.
Do I think he's taken the time to grow as a person?

No clue. I don't know him, I don't know what he's done. To me, he could be dead in a ditch for all I care.

But he isn't.

He exists.

And I have to ask myself: what did I get out of my gleeful screenshots?

A momentary rush.
And so much of what we do in cancel culture not only affects the person we're trying to cancel, but it hurts other people as well sometimes.

There's an example of a guy who complained about getting a message about unfollowing MM. He's a follower, least he was. He got called out.
He got called out by many & frankly I was close to being ready to get mad at him too.

And then I hesitated, because I saw @MC_Etching reply to him with composure. Still, admonishment, but asking him to reconsider what he was saying here in complaining.

And I followed suit.
And I don't know if that follower will learn or is even following me anymore. But I hope he did. Because the worst outcome is he unfollows, goes away & joins the part of our community that gatekeeps & doxes & abuses. This isn't to say that follower didn't deserve anger. They did.
But it speaks to the core tenant of what I'm talking about here:

What do we do with the people after the fallout?

With the ones who learn? Who try? Who take time & ask for help?

I occupy an interesting intersection in this community that I'm very aware of. I'm an intersection.
I try my absolute hardest these days to be a person of trust & good confidence specifically because it has fucked me over being otherwise for years. And more importantly, it's fucked others over. And I wish I could go back & apologize.

But all I can do is be a better me.
And in pursuit of that, I accidentally became something to some people: a confidant.

There have been more than a dozen people who have approached me either asking for advice or seeking a way to be better.

Some of them got canceled. Some of them you know. I didn't intend for it.
But it happened.

And so I've done my best to give advice where I can & respect confidentiality & try to help.

Because I know what it's like messing up, not in a big way, but still a hurtful way. Of hurting your community somehow.

And I so very tired of being that person.
A lot of you have told me I'm wise, calm, caring, patient.

I was not born that way. The me that was was a fiery, impatient, arrogant son of a bitch who actually hated the world at one point, truly hated it.

I am not the me I am today without that. I needed to move past it.
And I am still moving past it & will always have to.

And there is a chance, however small, for every person who gets rightfully kicked out of a community to become a better them.

I know that because I am that.

Be angry. Call out hurt. Stand for victims. Do all of that, always.
The only thing I am asking is for you to check your motivation, for you to genuinely ask: if the best version of someone you hated comes back to you apologizing, will you accept it?

It's ok if you don't.

Just know why you don't.

Examine that.

Because here's the final thing:
I think a lot of people haven't examined why they wouldn't. I didn't for a long time.

And it hurt me in a lot of ways. It still does. I am still overcoming it.

All I can hope is for the best for the rest of you.

Stay safe, stay strong, stay mad, and lastly?

Stay hopeful.
You can follow @RileyGryc.
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