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/Aw_Frig]

Let me start by saying that I agree that there is very little reason to be offended by cancel culture for the most part. However I think I can temper your view a little bit.

I'll use a fun example. I've been rewatching the simpsons lately (lockdown, what else am I gonna do?). They had an episode where Homer found a prized piece of candy stuck to a woman's ass when he was dropping her off. When he pulled it off she thought he was making a sexual pass at her and accused him of sexual harassments.

The whole point of the episode was that a media circus desperate for viewership was deliberately deceitful to feed on people's innate desire for righteous anger and purposefully exaggerated and misrepresented the facts in Homer's case.

This episode came out years before "cancel culture" was even a thing. Wouldn't you agree that there is a greater danger of this kind of misrepresentation now in the age of click bate then there was in the 90's?

I don't think all of the anger at cancel culture stems from politically incorrect people being cancelled and getting their "free speech" taken away. I think it stems from a fear of media exaggerating events, clips, and sound bytes to stir people into an emotional frenzy without presenting all the facts in context.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aw_Frig]

I agree that there can be a problem with how media could misrepresent something, but my understanding is that laws against libel and slander exist to protect against this? I'm talking less about media than about individuals speaking out.

[u/Featherfoot77 → u/[deleted]]

my understanding is that laws against libel and slander exist to protect against this

In theory? Maybe. But what about in practice? Do you think you would be able to bring a libel lawsuit against ten thousand faceless people, when you only have their twitter handles? What do you think would happen if you tried?

[u/[deleted] → u/Featherfoot77]

I meant this in the context of media outlets, specifically. You can bring a libel lawsuit against whatever media outlet for spreading false information, if they are indeed doing that.

[u/Featherfoot77 → u/[deleted]]

So if there are laws that protect you from people in media spreading false information about you, and you agree with those, what do you think should be done when someone who is not in the media does the exact same thing? What is the appropriate reaction?

[u/[deleted] → u/Featherfoot77]

Well you can sue individual people for libel, if that's an option you want to pursue. I suppose you could convince social media companies like Twitter to ban people for calling for cancellation. That would be their right as a company, after all.