Cancel Culture

[altered]

I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.



Next!



Cancelling is, as mentioned, a group thing. I know there are people here who consume media I can't support. With a very few exceptions, this doesn't bother me even when it's about me, because it is a personal decision to boycott something.

That said, regarding those exceptions: I hope no one here listens to Burzum?

Good.

Cancelling someone is about that person being a threat. The fact they are known and notable makes them a threat. They are horrible beyond mere human failings, they have chosen a damaging path and are actively seeking to use their platform to cause extreme harm.

J. K. Rowling has passed that level. (I'll come back to this.)

Graham Linehan has passed that level. (But give me a moment here)

Varg Vikernes has always been above that level. (If you need an explanation after googling the name, consider high velocity auto-trepanation, and fuck you.)

I trust that this list makes sense, so far? Good. Here's the thing.

With works involving a large number of people, the only time it's worth cancelling the work with the creator is when the work itself is beyond redemption. Varg's work is about killing untermenschen, and Linehan's later work is about calling social workers and emergency shelters pedophiles to destroy the safety of the people relying on those.

But Father Ted, while fantastically awful in a number of ways, is not Linehan's later work. It isn't urgently, unforgivably bad, it isn't a danger to the world.

Rowling is a special case. She's fantastically racist in Harry Potter, and her latest work is transphobic to the point of using a pen name associated with the invention of conversion therapy and having whole sections devoted to the torture of a trans woman who is depicted as a drug addicted homeless sexual deviant who needs to be destroyed for the good of society.

There is no morally defensible (morally ambiguous, perhaps) way to enjoy Harry Potter in the current political climate, and enjoying her latest works is absolutely despicable.

That said:

If you like Harry Potter, we can still talk. The racism is a step or two removed from the undeniable, it's conceivable to see people missing it.

If you like her work as Robert Galbraith, I will twist you into a knot and kick you off a cliff, because that work is transparently, blatantly, entirely about my very own death (and that of those like me) and has literally nothing else to it.

If a movie gets made and someone I know watches it, they are dead to me, because that movie would like to see me dead.

This goes for any person at all whose media, regardless of popularity or influence or quality, is based in whole or in part on tormenting or murdering innocent people. (But note: murder is more than just a knife or a gun, torture is more than thumbscrews and breaking on the wheel.) Before that point is reached, we can settle for loudly telling them to fuck off when they open their face in public.

I hope this has made my positions on cancelling people and media (which are different things!) clear.

[Doktor Howl]

Varg asshole needs a brick.  In the brains.

I am less than surprised at Rowling's new descent into bigotry, and I have purged my library and videos of her stuff the same as I did with Orson Scott Card:  Even if it weren't a moral issue, I can't enjoy their work anymore.

For me, with Card, it was before I was even aware on a conscious level of his horrible homophobia.  It was the Book Empire, in which he patiently explained that left of center people are not mentally capable of loving their country, or of serving in the military (it should be mentioned that he himself couldn't be bothered to enlist).

The fact that I later realized what a bigot he is in other ways didn't cause me any work, because I'd already destroyed every copy of his work that I owned.

I have never heard of Graham Linehan.  Off to look him up.

[Doktor Howl]

Oh, shit.  He wrote Black Books.

Bye, Graham.

[Faust]

And The IT crowd and Father Ted.
Father ted is fantastic, there is no truer depiction of rural ireland and it doesnt belong to him, it belongs to the cast and everyone involved.
Never liked black books, but each person involved has had a good comic career

[Doktor Howl]

And The IT crowd and Father Ted.
Father ted is fantastic, there is no truer depiction of rural ireland and it doesnt belong to him, it belongs to the cast and everyone involved.
Never liked black books, but each person involved has had a good comic career

I only saw eps 1 & 2, and I laughed myself sick.

But now I have no interest in seeing any more.  I don't demand this of anyone else, I just lost interest.

[Cain]

Father Ted is indeed outstanding.

Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

[altered]

Father Ted is indeed outstanding.

Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

All of this.

[Faust]

I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.

I've watched the transtrenders video, the first ten minutes is her opening with a character embodying those stereotypes, and if you never watched any more than that it would be the take away, the rest of the video is not only dismantling that, but pointing out any exclusionary dialog in the transgender community undermines it as a whole, she explicitly calls truscum people a problem.

On the Buck Angel thing, I watched her response on this too, its close to three hours, it wasn't her suggestion, she knew there was something that people disliked him for but not the exact details but thought it was safe because all he was doing was reading a two line quote of Roger Waters.

Maybe you are seeing something I'm not, because I cant substantiate what you are saying from her videos

[Cramulus]

Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

that's fair, I am relatively ignorant of twitter weather patterns

In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

Yeah, that's a good cleave -- I think I should probably distinguish between what's going on at the top of pop culture with influential people versus what's going on down at the personal level. Cause I think what I'm talking about is less about bigshot media figures and more about what's going on with regular people.

Like over in the Larp universe, I run a viking themed game, which draws alllll sorts of weird white-supremecist figures out of the woodwork. We have to be on guard for them all the time; also, our community has more PoC and trans people than any other larp community I've seen, BECAUSE we use a heavy hand to weed out problem figures. I would love to share some of the unhinged frothy responses we've got after banning people for saying racist shit. We also don't shy around telling people "listen, you probably shouldn't come to this game" if their personal politics are not a good fit for the community. (like if you make jokes about people's chosen pronouns.. you're not gonna get along with anybody here)

But with that power to cancel people comes the responsibility to do it fairly. We do make mistakes. Last season, we gave a warning to a guy because we thought he was dabbling in white supremacy but it turned out he was just a regular pagan weirdo, and him making people "uncomfortable" was more a function of their paranoia than his malice. We have to constantly on watch to not let the safety mechanisms become subsumed by regular social politics.

Likewise, sometimes we shove people out of the community... and they're genuinely sorry and make an attempt to learn from what they did wrong. We are trying to develop a community vibe where someone can eventualy come back. Where we can recognize growth and change. We leave room for, as roger put it, "a redemption arc".

There are people back-stage who have made mistakes in their life, and faced public backlash ... and now they are a trusted community leader. I think the turnaround story is beautiful. We don't see it enough.

[Cain]

Yeah, I'm a lot more sympathetic to the average person getting dragged up in some kind of storm. In fact, I'd argue that is very similar to what the bigshot names, like Rowling or Bret Stephens, routinely inflict on their relatively unknown critics. When you have someone like Bret Stephens who has, for example, an NYT column, threatening to get someone fired by falsely claiming they made a racist comment, that has a chilling effect on all criticism and mockery of that person. That Stephens routinely complains about "free speech" being threatened by students, and was himself threatening a University professor, that was just the icing on the cake.

Unfortuantely I'm convinced that at this point the phrase itself has been entirely hijacked by alt-right chuds and mainstream media gatekeepers.

As for the larp...with AC: Valhalla coming out later on, I wish you luck. I know there are people in Norse culture/historical and pagan communities doing good work to stamp out that particular element, but the combination of gaming and Norse history is going to bring out the worst in some people and I can only see that building as the game nears release (I'm not a fan of painting Alfred the Great - possibly the only king in this country who earned that title - as a potential villain either, but I'll wait to see the game plot, as I know AC writers are tricksy hobbitses sometimes).

[Doktor Howl]

(I'm not a fan of painting Alfred the Great - possibly the only king in this country who earned that title - as a potential villain either, but I'll wait to see the game plot, as I know AC writers are tricksy hobbitses sometimes).

Those biscuits, though.

[Cain]

Overbaking things to the point of tastelessness is probably an English tradition because of Alfred. It means he was an innovator.

I have to admit I'm very uncomfortable with a story which depicts blonde-haired, blue-eyed, tall Nordic invaders as the heroes, and the weird combination of Saxon, Celt and imported Roman culture as the enemy by contrast (Alfred was high-handed and no doubt aggravatingly pious...but that's searching the bottom of the barrel for "bad qualities"), but to their credit, the AC writers are usually more subtle than that and have had no problems depicting both sides as flawed in the past.

[Cramulus]

heh, someone was trying to take the piss out of viking larps

they were like "So uhhh... do you ever talk about how the vikings were slavers, or do you just white wash it?"

we were like "Yes. Literally every pre-game workshop. Vikings were not good people. Our game is not about becoming a hero. Even the 'innocent people' being raided by the vikings are total assholes by modern standards."

[altered]

I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.

I've watched the transtrenders video, the first ten minutes is her opening with a character embodying those stereotypes, and if you never watched any more than that it would be the take away, the rest of the video is not only dismantling that, but pointing out any exclusionary dialog in the transgender community undermines it as a whole, she explicitly calls truscum people a problem.

On the Buck Angel thing, I watched her response on this too, its close to three hours, it wasn't her suggestion, she knew there was something that people disliked him for but not the exact details but thought it was safe because all he was doing was reading a two line quote of Roger Waters.

Maybe you are seeing something I'm not, because I cant substantiate what you are saying from her videos

It's what she says on Twitter. The videos are for mass consumption, the Twitter is for being a piece of shit, just like with every other celebrity bigot.

[Faust]

Ah that explains it, will take a look