Thread by @PeriAkman, The reason we see "cancel culture" as a culture of no forgiveness [...]

The reason we see "cancel culture" as a culture of no forgiveness amongst the privileged, is because we often don't see the scandals that never break out. Most privileged people can go "oh I see" and improve, and that's really all it takes.

I have been in enough online communities to see early cancel talk. It will often be brought up, kvetched, and go nowhere. It doesn't spread. It doesn't gain traction. It just doesn't last in the memory at all.

(This is, once again, talking about people with social power and positive influence, which is different from people with little to no platform being targeted)

As an example, I once saw a tv show runner make a bad tweet, and quickly deleted it. I saw some grumblings around it, a tumblr post back when tumblr was popular. And since then? Not a danged peep. No one tries to cancel him, no one holds the one offhand tweet as a crime

Remember that week when people rediscovered America's Next Top Model? And how many people went "wow that's messed up"

And yet it wasn't actually enough momentum to like, go and cancel tyra, for any number of reasons

The reason "cancel culture" keeps being unforgiving to those with large platforms, is because we only label it cancel culture when it reaches the unending fury storm that's been stoked for YEARS

If you're observing cancel culture and gathering data, it's not enough to look at the big names who get "cancelled". You also have to find the people who experience similar callouts that go utterly NOWHERE and figure out why or how.

And some times it's for unfair, bad reasons, that one person gets punished and the other doesn't. Wrong time wrong place. Not fitting our hegemony. Etc. Other times it's because one person has a reputation of not stopping the train of Bad Decisions.

As a fun example, Poehler and Fey, have made a LOT of insensitive television jokes in their years. I have never seen a huge upheaval to "cancel" them. And of note, neither are on twitter. We are not constantly being reminded of it, nor are they around blocking randos

and tbh, yeah, I think that's an issue of cancel culture towards large platforms. "Squeaky wheel gets the grease" as activism, which I talked about before. And that's worth unpacking and critiquing!

But this is not a "one strike you're out." scenario. This isn't even a "one public strike and you're out." In fact it's usually "one public strike after your last public strike was a few months ago, and before that, there's been constant lowgrade annoyance for ages"

Like, lets look at the author who shall not be named:

--had books, had some criticism around someone being gay(07)
--wrote extended stuff that had criticism around racism. Now on twitter (16)
--assorted, weird media choices both on plays and movies, with racism

And then we have the terf thing, which, fun fact, this is not the first time this even made news! This is at least the third time I've seen news on this, this was just the time it was undeniably huge.

AND THEN AFTER ALL THAT. IT KEEPS GOING. IT HAS NOT STOPPED YET. We now have a letter about free speech!

Cancel culture in regards to large platforms are never just One thing that kicks someone out, but a veritable storm of small complaints that eventually solidify with larger issues that do not go away, and not only do they not go away, the person actively Reminds you of it

Usually when something is a case of "one mistake and you're out" it's when people not involved in the media start to get involved. And this is both bad and also an unfortunately ingrained part of our society.

As an example, if you meet someone by them punching someone else in the face, you probably will not be inclined to like, want to see the best in them

That's the sensible version. The more distorted fact is that we do justify certain groups, and villify others, and create social media sites where it's easy to harass someone to the point that folks don't even register how conscious it is

But before cancel culture, we still did that. The roots of bullying people online for being Wrong is old. Public shaming as a concept, is old. And it makes sense when it's applied to "hey joe the murderer, stay away, don't murder us, you jerk." But it never was just that.

People have been excluded from society for centuries not just for being puppy kickers, but for the crime of not fitting in. And this is an issue in society we have to wrestle with regardless of whether "cancel culture" is trending or not

But we cannot fully unpack it or get rid of the kneejerk reactions until we realize that we use this kneejerk reaction both for good and for bad, and often the issue is what we define as "good" or "bad"

And I know the answer can seem like "get rid of the kneejerk reaction entirely! Learn everything and be accepting!" and that's great... except the privilege of privacy and nonjudgmentalness has been greatly afforded to sexual harassers in power

Cancel culture is not new. The only difference between now and then is now we have the internet to organize, and are rapidly revisiting our definitions of "good" and "bad"

That doesn't make it a non issue. It's a complex knot of ethics in a system that is not trained to deal with the ethics, so all we can do is yell and scream and get what victories we can, while the system resists change.

And at the end of the day, the situations where it's truly a case of no forgiveness, one strike you're out (or one strike and squander away in stress and sadness) are the ones that you probably never see.

Marginalized people who get quietly fired from jobs. Celebrities who speak out against corruption and then never appear in another movie again. Small creators who get piled on and mocked, with an audience too small for them to actually "benefit" from the hate

And the intersection of it, like, people with large platforms who were loudly "cancelled" due to one strike--it's often not exactly headed by cancel culture? The internet mob is not the reason why talkshows in the 90s made jokes about Lewinsky.

We have a harassment based culture baked into our comedy and system. We make jokes about it. We pass around bad art, we turn public breakdowns into memes and we dismiss any sort of over emotional reaction as unprofessional

And that is not cancel culture. That is the world in which "cancel culture" was born into. All cancel culture does is switch who "gets" to cancel people, and tbh, it's just as much of a crapshoot as any sort of public outcry

We never needed the internet to judge people, or end their careers. The internet just immortalized the words, made them easily accessible, undeniable, historical. Old forums and websites have faded, but now everyone is on the same three sites.

Memories of excluding someone in school will fade. The cruel things someone said on geocities got deleted. No one can even find this old forum where someone used to be a big name. But now we have twitter and streaming services. and maybe one day they will go away too--

But for now, tv and movies are permanent and easily accessible, and so is twitter.

And this is our new societal playground. Welcome to the american dream, where everyone gets a chance to be a gatekeeping asshole, instead of just the people in power

(ok END OF THREAD sorry for the ramble. This is not meant as an attack on anyone who has worries about being "cancelled" or being harassed, I just wanted to point out what I think is a better way to approach the concept as a problem, and what goes into it.)

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