Cancel Culture

[Pergamos]

Unfortunately I don't know him any longer.  I did ask him back when we hung out but he was kind of evasive about it all.  His wife is Hispanic, so the romantic part of me likes to imagine it was love, but I have no evidence.

[altered]

I have nothing to go on either, but I tend to feel like disgust is a motivator.

It’s powerful enough to cause LGBT folks to permanently damage themselves pretending to be “normal”, or the whole thing where a trans person transitions in complete privacy, moves far away, changes their name, moves again to a third location and pretends they have no connection to their old life at all.

These are things we have evidence for, and they’re things outside of people’s control. Disgust about beliefs can be changed, though, so why would someone confronted with widespread disgust /not/ change their beliefs if people try to take control of shit that is baked into them over it?

That’s my thinking. So I feel like disgust is an important part of stopping people from being shitty.



Edited to put scare quotes where they belong.

[Don Coyote]

I mean, I'm totally fine with throwing the whole ass living celeb, content creator, or other, into the bin over 'minor differences of opinion, shit like bodily autonomy or transphobia. The world has more than enough other folks making shit that don't think it's their or the state's place to tell those who have an unwanted pregnancy they are murderers, other shit like not allowing folks to marry, or the audacity of wanting respect for their gender identity.

If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

[Al Qədic]

If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

Agreed. Since that got mentioned, I'm reminded of how some people, when that bigoted shit does resurface, and they do denounce it, still get utterly shat on by morons who don't think with the head that's on their shoulders. And then someone who only just tuned in because of the new ruckus, turns the conversation into, "Well what did you do to get this kind of negative attention in the first place?"

[altered]

Everyone has done some bigoted shit in their past, I think, and if it resurfaced and people denounce it, that’s when you can move on. It might still be too much for some people to handle, and that’s okay, but there’s no point in burning the witch when they’re not a witch anymore.*

I used to listen to Whitehouse. As of about 2010, William Bennett is not in my musical diet because he is a wretched creature. Holding my 2010 self to the standards of my 2019 self is silly.


* I do not condone burning anyone except in effigy.

[Al Qədic]

Holding my 2010 self to the standards of my 2019 self is silly.

"Whaaaat, you mean people and their opinions change over time?! How am I supposed to ruin your life now?! I thought personalities were set in stone. That's why I'm constantly an asshole."--The Collective Assholes of The World 

Also yeah, don't burn people. Burnt people probably don't smell very good.

[altered]

Unfortunately, I can confirm burnt people smell terrible. An ex burnt their hand very badly on a stovetop. They were okay, but it was kind of horrifying, as you’d likely expect.

[Don Coyote]

If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

Agreed. Since that got mentioned, I'm reminded of how some people, when that bigoted shit does resurface, and they do denounce it, still get utterly shat on by morons who don't think with the head that's on their shoulders. And then someone who only just tuned in because of the new ruckus, turns the conversation into, "Well what did you do to get this kind of negative attention in the first place?"

AND THAT'S cancel culture. Which shouldn't be getting twisted up with "pedos and other sexual abusers can get fucking dumpstered"

And as far as this whole bigot outreach shit? Im not going to spend my time sifting through their bigot programming to unfuck them unless they have a direct and personal involvement in my life. Someone comes seigheiling in it's just into the trash if I don't need to bother with them.

It's not like there is such a shortage of people that anyone should be fucking quilted into trying save all these poor fucking incels and wannabe kid fuckers or High school rapists.

[The Johnny]

I heard some repetition in bits and pieces on what some people said in this thread - something about content creators as not being irreplaceable, and i think thats important.

Be it intentional or not, theres a certain demographic each creator is speaking and appealing to, and if i feel alienated or excluded or not identified with its message then its my time to move on... either out of lack of interest or out of self respect.

It makes me think a bit about JK Rowling and how theres all these memeing how retroactively shes making each and every innocent character a deviant... the thing about making Dumbledore retroactively more explicitly homosexual instead of the ambivalence of it in the novels... her message is fantasy and inclusiveness, so all the rednecks that were already on the fence in a profound debate about if her work promotes witchcraft and demon worshipping will now simply jump out of the ship, which is ok.

I dont have good personal examples, i can only think of Nietzsche as an example... all of his retarded pompousness that boils down to some teenage edgy narcissism is what drives away so many people, and i find it obnoxious just as those people do, but i dont banish him from my library because i see the worth in his thought despite all of his flaws which is irreplaceable... now, if i had all the time in the world i would actively look for a better expositor of his good ideas, and if i found him id probably do away with him, but since i dont have all the time in the world, hell have to do for now, but his flaws will always motivate me to find a replacement.

Our contact with content creators is nothing more than a product of circumstance or hyping by others... if were basic enough to find no flaws in them, by all means embrace them... otherwise be prepared to either be tolerant of their flaws or have the energy to find more fitting replacements.

[altered]

I spend the time to find a replacement or — I believe you missed this — do without entirely.

Going back to Whitehouse, NO ONE does an aggressive, seething maniacal shout-down performance like William Bennett. He’s inimitable, and his flaws are horrid racism and fascist sympathies.

He’s been working on the racism, I admit. (We’ve gone from 1600s Britain to 1800s Britain! What a change! Such growth!) It’s still not enough.

But even if you can look past the racism (get out of my internet you piece of shit), he’s supporting outspoken Nazi content creators.

As I’ve said, NO ONE makes power electronics like William Bennett does. Why You Never Became A Dancer is a song no one else could make. Afro Noise I is an absolutely incredible album if you’re into that kind of thing (and I certainly am) — but its creator is such a horrible person that any sane person would not be caught dead listening.

I can not replace that music. I can, however, simply remove it from my life.

[The Johnny]

That's fine to, to do without entirely too... but one can get rid of Bennett and still like the noise/industrial or whatever its called, hes just but a mere voice within a genre.

I think i agree for the most part on how creative, entertainment and fiction enterprises are hard to dissociate with the creator, because the money and social leverage they get comes from it and gives power to their influence but i think one cannot make the same declarations for non-fiction and academics. And even though this thread has been more about fiction and entertainment than the latter, but i think its an important distinction after all.

[altered]

That’s pretty fair, honestly. Half of our knowledge of aerospace medicine (the aero- half to be specific) came from Nazi human experimentation, but totally throwing all of that information out would do everyone, victims included, a disservice. I’m uncomfortable as fuck with that, but I can’t see any argument that we’d be better off /ditching/ that knowledge. It’s going to be an uncomfortable, upsetting fact for eternity, and I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Burying our mistakes is how we repeat them.

[The Johnny]

Ok.

But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

Idk, for example, theres a strong case for Lewis Carrol being a pedophile... but his Alice books are a type of sublimation of those horrible impulses into something positive. I never forget about what his tendencies were, but i can still enjoy those works.

It would seem like people equate liking a work with financially supporting the author... or as if the point of origin needs to be pure and virtuous for the product to be any good. I still dont understand the rationale behind it. For some reason i get the mental image of someone that hates someones race trying to seduce them so it doesnt work out? Maybe in that sense art is a type of seduction of the audience by the author, and certain things "kill the mood" while others bolster it, and the end result of acceptance or rejection is the final balance of these forces.

Its hard for me to think of this, because i cant recall anyone i boycotted or blacklisted for more personal reasons that are beyond their creation itself which i didnt like beforehand anyways.

[Faust]

William Burroughs would be example for me: Shot his wife in a drunken game, slept with a teen male prostitute in Tangier, decades of heroin abuse.

In fact for me the interest in his work wasn't divorced from his horrible life, for me the interesting part was explicitly how his horrible life intertwined with his writing.

[Pergamos]

Aliester Crowley is another who was a horrible person, and whose art is better for it.  He fucked cats (and lots more, that's just the one that strikes me as worst), but he also explored, and explained, the mystical traditions of Europe in a way that gets at the heart of a lot that no other author does.