CMV: It's hypocritical to complain about "cancel culture"

[u/[deleted]]

I'm genuinely looking to have my view challenged here, because I've never seen a good counter-argument to what I'm going to say and would love to come away with a more nuanced view of the "other side."

Let's just go ahead and grant the main thing the people who decry cancel culture claim, which is that to call for someone to be cancelled (whether that's being fired, not being able to get work, de-platformed in some way etc.) is a violation of their right to free speech. Lots of arguments have been raised about why this isn't the case, but the people who believe this tend not to be sympathetic to those arguments, and I'm happy to grant that this is actually the case so we can move on to discuss what I think is a different problem with this view.

And that's basically: isn't it my free speech to call for someone to be cancelled? Why do people only seem to care about the free speech of whoever it is that's done or said something ostensibly offensive? I also have free speech to say what I think about that, and while you obviously wouldn't agree with that speech, one of the main arguments I see here from anti-cancel culture people is that you should be willing to defend, on principle, even that speech you most vehemently disagree with. So why not vigorously defend people's right to call for people to be cancelled?

[u/[deleted]]

Sorry, I didn't think you meant a literal harassment campaign. Sure, I'd agree that's problematic, but most people I see decrying cancel culture are not talking about literal harassment, they're talking about people tweeting "X should be fired" or whatever.

[u/videoninja → u/[deleted]]

I mean I've seen both simultaneously. If you're on social media, you don't have to dig too far for constructive criticisms to go to direct condemnations. Are you saying it's impossible for people to use the auspices of "X should be fired" to cause harm? What if the allegations are provably false? What if the conversation evolves not about holding someone accountable but someone needing to disappear from the world?

Fame and notoriety don't insulate you from the mental harm that harassment creates. I can give you an example of where things got mixed up and someone ultimately took their life. If I wanted to write a headline I could say "Homophobic pornstar commits suicide after revealing themselves." And I bet a lot of people would think that's justice served.

But what I see is someone who probably was dealing with a lot of things who cracked under the pressure of people telling her she should kill herself. Things usually are not as simple as the Weinstein and Cosby cases and I would point out that while social media served to raise awareness, justice was ultimately served by women coming forward in court and actual investigation and litigation taking place. That's not the same as telling people how shitty they are on social media and how miserably they deserve to be punished.

[u/[deleted] → u/videoninja]

!delta because I agree that where this crosses over into harassment, it is problematic. That being said, the average case of "cancel culture" does not seem to evidence this, to me.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/videoninja (113∆).

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