“You’re repurposed as fodder for content generation in a way that’s just so dehumanizing. I don’t really believe in cancel culture, I think it’s a platform failure.” https://warzel.substack.com/p/its-not-cancel-culture-its-a-platform?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta

One way I've been thinking about this is "cancel culture" is a less useful term than "cancel behavior."

There is a certain set of behaviors which, when combined the the problems of this (and other) platforms, lead to cancellation, harassment, and too many very bad days.

The key thing is the behaviors don't feel, to the people engaging in them, like a big deal. You're just dunking on someone! Or criticizing them! Or making fun of them!

You're just doing some tweets. Joining in on the game. You don't want anyone fired or harassed or swatted.

But those dunks algorithmically lead to more dunks, and then to the trending box, and then to more attention, and all of a sudden a company decides it has a PR problem on its hands, or actual neo-Nazis get involved, or someone takes this one bad tweet too seriously and...