Have you ever been "cancelled"?

I had a sitcom on NBC in the summer of '77 that wasn't renewed, so yes.

Real answer, no. Definitely try to watch my words a more carefully than I did even five years ago.

But often not carefully enough--subtract that "a."

No, but should have been a few times over

People have called me an asshole, and lots of other things, as a consequence of opinions I have expressed, here and elsewhere. (My current username was a gift from Brad, and probably deserved.) But to me "cancelled" means losing a job or a book contract or something real-worldish like that, so no.

While both canceled{/b] and [b]cancelled are acceptable for the past tense of cancel, the version with one L is more common in American English, while the version with two L's is more common in British English.

fuck you, bbcode

I'm a relative newcomer here, I've seen a few people get shouted down, often though maybe not always deservedly, and there seems to be a healthy number of (usually temporary) bans. Not sure any of that counts as "cancellation."

^ not really, no.

thought about this and concluded i'm uncancelable. been living in a kind of self-imposed exile for almost 15 years. how do you cancel someone who has withdrawn into himself?

Feel like there was a moment in 6th grade where I went through something similar to Harriet the Spy, where all of a sudden I was untouchable and bullied and not exactly sure why

It didn't last terribly long, and I'm not scarred by it, but I remember feeling like a pile of dogshit and not knowing what I did wrong... but that might be more Lord of the Flies shit than actual cancellation

No but it is a clear and present danger

this is one of those scenarios in which phil can hide his bullshit and everyone will be like 'cool; he can't possibly be that shitty!'

I recently got cancelled by a dental practise. Turned up for an appointment a day late and the usually friendly receptionist was looking at me with an embarrassed to be making eye contact with a non-person look, so I knew I'd fucked up before she spoke. This was the 2nd appointment you've missed this year, you low value non-paying NHS scum, goodbye.

clemenza cancelled by outraged Italian community

I'm a relative newcomer here, I've seen a few people get shouted down, often though maybe not always deservedly, and there seems to be a healthy number of (usually temporary) bans. Not sure any of that counts as "cancellation."

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 2 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes I've been cancelled (twice).

I’ve been no platformed… by these bleedin train strikes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2er9d5hb_Fc

great work wins

I've been cancelled and cancelled people multiple times on ilx

the ol' canhammer eh

ilx cancelled me once, just for merely spitting truth to power and they couldn't handle it!

those louche landfill days when 102 sugcans would get ye permacanned

keep reading this thread title to Olivia Newton John's "Have You Never Been Mellow"

I was thinking patsy cline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mih9xvo7a8

keep reading this thread title to Olivia Newton John's "Have You Never Been Mellow"

lol i'm sorry it glided off my frontal lobe

possible grounds for cancellation, mon cher

I earned it, I'll take it on the chain

I'm mellow

On the chin, what the hell is wrong with you spellcheck?

Spellchecker cancelled.

the time i was in a cell, i was only 18 years old and was unfamiliar with such jams as "Yoo Do Right" ... though in later years I did book performances by Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki so the "Can" and the "Celled" were not contemporaneous, so ... yes and no?

I have been know to say “I’ve cancelled that in my area”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asAlBgHoqjI

I endure the continual and silent cancellation of the never famous

do it for the cancel culture

i wish i was cool enough to say i have no fear of getting cancelled, but it's not true. i worry about it.

what's your worry, or i guess what's the worry anyone would have if you're being a decent human being?

I’m pretty sure I have “been cancelled” (experienced professional or social consequences of my own behaviour and speech) but as I never did or said anything that bad it really hasn’t mattered much

In my early 20s I lost my job because I stopped coming into work

Most common social cancellation has to be when a couple breaks up and their mutual friends take sides, cancelling one if they were an outright asshole.

Have you ever been mellow?

Insane clown posse

Cancelled due to poor sales ;_;

not so much HERE per se, but there are large pockets of internet where you can be fairly eviscerated and de-platformed for complete nonsense. i.e. YA Twitter.

that and pile-ons don't always have social justice in mind. some people just enjoy finding an excuse to eviscerate someone and look for the next one to pop up.

that being said, most cancellations do happen for a reason.

other thing is the only people cancellation ever works on = everyday people, like a struggling author, low-visibility musicians, Deacons at churches. celebrities and businesses usually wind up stronger than they were before. which isn't to say they shouldn't be 'cancelled' anyway because absolutely call those fuckers out but they never see any real consequences.

YA Twitter feels like a uh special case

I don't think most of us are going to wind up before ILX tribunals tho, unless we like the wrong Bob Dylan album

ryan adams seems to have been somewhat successfully cancelled (good, he's a true POS) but at the same time he had peaked twenty years ago so there wasn't much left to cancel.

i think it does ding celebs to an extent, even someone like aziz ansari is probably still dealing with the fallout of his possibly misguided cancellation in terms of how his career momentum just completely stalled.

I see that Ryan Adams is playing ten shows this month. I don't know how cancelled that is. No more Pitchfork reviews, I guess.

i'm sure he'll make enough money on performing shows to survive but as far as anyone outside his cult caring, that's over i'm guessing.

His comeback was solidified with a Carnegie Hall show that sold out within hours after going on sale in 2022. Since, Adams has embarked on North American and European tours.

They don't seem like small venues either! Who the fuck is going to Ryan Adams shows? Cancelation completely aside.

Oh wait.

https://preview.redd.it/pxgzqdazp73b1.jpg?width=432&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=1fc6d65888d9fdd58679ff4173d567f993bb8504

Still seems like a lot.

i would believe there are 800 ryan adams fans in the charlotte region, considering he's from the area.

or from the state at least

I think part of the fear of being cancelled is the resurgence of Puritanical, binary ideas like being obsessed over whether you're a "good" or "bad" person.

These are meaningless ideals to aspire to because life is much more complicated than that, nobody is one or the other, they're fluid. Ascribing such a tag to oneself or others imply the work is done, but also confers an infallibility on the 'good' folk that they can't live up to.

The Fundie church I went to, for example, gave us a workbook that contained this infamous logical fallacy - "Good people could not have invented the Bible as they're lying, ergo not good people. Bad people couldn't have invented it because they'd be condemning themselves. Therefore, God wrote it."

It's more important to me to focus actively trying to help people, avoid hurting people, and help fix things when i do hurt them (or at least stop hurting them again). A lot easier to navigate thinking "are my actions helping or hurting right now" vs "OMG DOES THIS MEAN I'M NOW A BAD PERSON"

xpost He also still has 1.35 million monthly Spotify listeners--not Phoebe Bridgers numbers, but up there with a lot of non-cancelled singer-songwriters (Lucy Dacus 1.5 million, Soccer Mommy 1.17 million, Julien Baker 407 thousand)

i suspect his cancellation has hit him harder in the sense of cultural impact than his fanbase (who would always stick by him, he had a rabid cult) and wonder if that 1.35 wouldn't be a lot, lot higher without what happened. of course i'm happy to believe that's the case, he offered to collaborate with an excellent musician i know and then when she wouldn't fuck him, he cut off all contact with her and talked shit.

Great thread

I can't imagine being a rabid fan of an asshole phony like Ryan Adams.

The French call the moment after Ryan Adams enters a thread "la petite annulation" because it feels for a moment like we've all been cancelled

KNCL - All Cancelled, All the Time

We got Ryan Adams & Gary Glitter coming up in the noon hour!

i don't think i have, but would like to be. give me all the solitude.

The higher you build your barrier
The taller I become
The farther you take my rights away
The faster I will run
You can deny me
You can decide to turn your face away
No matter 'cause there's
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Something inside so strong

The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing
You hide behind Walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place and time
You squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine
So brightly it will blind you
Because there's

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Something inside so strong

Brothers and sisters
When they insist we're just not good enough
Well we know better
Just look 'em in the eye and say
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
There's something inside so strong
There's something inside so strong

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You're doing me wrong so wrong

Something inside so strong
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You're doing me wrong so wrong

Something inside so strong
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong so wrong
You're doing me wrong so wrong

Something inside so strong
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it

Which artists that your peers or colleagues really like have you ever refrained from shitting on? Basically, who getting cancelled would actually free you up from the fear of getting demi-cancelled yourself, having the reverse of this chilling effect the cancel culture worrywarts keep harping on?

it's a very long story that I'm not gonna go into fully but a subgroup of the local anarchist scene tried to ostracize and boycott myself and my co-homeowner for a while, it took years for their charismatic leader to be fully discredited but it was rough for a while, like having ppl tell prospective roommates/renters that our house was "unsafe"

this was part of larger fallout in the scene between feminist-identified folks and the largely-male "leader figures". The feminist folx were (justifiably) sick of what they called "manarchists" and the toxic atmosphere around that.

anyway, yeah, there were outright lies being spread and pretty vicious stuff, all cloaked in politics, but this was 20 years ago so the term "cancelled" didn't exist

Doris Lessing's great book 'Prisons We Choose To Live Inside' gets at some of these issues

what's your worry, or i guess what's the worry anyone would have if you're being a decent human being?

― omar little, Friday, June 2, 2023 12:33 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I’m afraid of something I say being taken out of context or interpreted uncharitably and then becoming the subject of a pile on. I don’t really anticipate ever losing my job or anything. But being tarred as morally bad in some way, having that albatross around my neck within some social milieu, like ilx or something, would be painful. I think people really care about their reputations and having one’s reputation trashed is something a lot of people dread, I think.

Should i fear this? Probably not. Has this new environment of harsh social censure had some really good effects, causing people like Ryan Adams to face consequences for the first time ever? Absolutely. But do bad actors sometimes capitalize on some kind of ambient moral fervor for bullshit reasons? As sleeve’s anecdote shows, yes.

my take on it, even as someone who was affected by it, is that it is overall a necessary corrective to profound power imbalances.

we had a recent thing here in Oakland where the on-air announcer for the Atletics dropped the N-bomb (ON AIR!) when describing a visit to the Negro League Museum in Kansas City

I'm sure it was an 'accident' on some level (and he had in fact gone to visit the museum that day), but the fact that word was somehow on the tip of his tongue kinda makes you wonder

Anyway, he's cancelled - I think there must've been more than that single incident for them deciding to part ways

I still feel icky about the Athletics commentator getting sacked. I’m not convinced he said the bad word. Admittedly I am Australian and thankfully don’t have to hear the word so much so I might be off about how it is actually pronounced, but there was no hard “er” sound to it. It finished with an “o”, seems like he just rushed over the “r” before the “o”. Obviously if there was other things besides that specific incident then yeah, fair enough, but nothing has been revealed so just seems a bit…. Tough? It might just be the price you pay for being on that kind of stage and making that mistake and that might be fair…. I can just imagine myself slipping my words when rushing through a sentence as someone who has never dropped an N-bomb. I can accept firing him might have been the right response, but it’s not an enjoyable moral victory like other events of cancelling (aforementioned Ryan Adams)

I feel like “Don’t say racial slurs on air” is like the very first thing on page 1 in the big book of broadcasting. Wouldn’t be my hill to die on.

Someone otm earlier about how “cancelling” affects celebrities/non-celebrities differently. Thinking of Louis C.K and Ricky Gervais “intentionally” dropping N-bombs a decade ago (before Louis C.K. Was outed for his other rubbish), South Parks “naggers” joke, etc.

Intentionality vs. unintentionality. Power v no-power. Changes how satisfying these things can be

I’ll try not to die on it

@AndyTheGrasshopper

That wasn't the first time Kuiper attempted "Negro" with the "hard-r" equivalent so that's why it was a bigger deal than it should've been (ie, an honest slip of the tongue). It's like "do it once, it's a mistake" but any more than that perhaps it's not a mistake?

OP asked:

also, has ilx ever "cancelled" anyone?

jaycee d. bilked me for ~500 BTC for an AI-enhanced NFT of shereads.jpg

not sure if that counts...

yes i fucking have and i just posted a long thing about it on 77. the word gets misapplied by fucking DARVO assholes but "cancellation" absolutely is a thing.

i mean personally i think ostracism and social death are better ways of putting it, i guess you can argue semantics about it.

xp i listened to the clip. The pronunciation didn’t seem ambiguous to me. It was a “slip” but unfortunately for him that word is taboo and for good reason. I think the firing is justified but i hope he finds other opportunities in sports media. I don’t support throwing people in the trash can.

Have you ever been "cankled"?

Those are better and more precise terms kate, i agree.

I think ostracism and social death is appropriate for certain cases, perhaps most cases of cancellation if we’re talking metoo etc. the only thing that really bothers me is how this is discussed—people act like having one’s reputation trashed is no big deal, that they should suck it up. When really being an outcast is painful at a core level. Exile was a worse punishment than death in ancient greece

ah shit just ignore my last post if you can please? my bpd went off again. i try to keep it in check but i didn't manage just now.

if we want to talk about those things we might do better not folding them into a right wing moral panic about great men being censored by people pointing out their behaviour

just in general I mean because the conflation with actual harm done to non rich and famous people is part of what gives the panic any plausibility at all among the non rich and famous

OTM. This thread is just risible when people are asked to fill a poll about their 'experience' of cancellation when actually it's been used about people in power in industries like Entertainment.

"Exile was a worse punishment than death in ancient greece" absolutely does not cut it.

Sometimes it's important to worry about the consequences of being a dick

I've never come across this kind of experience. I think the only way I could really imagine anything consequential happening would be if I were in a viral situation like the Citibike nurse and my employer decided it was no longer appropriate for me to remain

It's bad as well because cancelled people are completely unable to apologise for their actions

Just dead, silenced, lost in limbo for eternity for simply accidentally doing a vile bigotry

You might not necessarily have been in the wrong though

Either way, if you're a regular person rather than someone with a nationally syndicated newspaper column a gofundme makes more sense than an apology, regardless of whether you're in the right or wrong

i got cancelled by my employer for having poor mental health so maybe i'm not objective on this

I got called out at work one time for being insensitive and talking over people who were junior to me and it was very uncomfortable for me and it took frankly longer than it should have for me to lose my initial “gosh they’re blowing this out of proportion” reaction but yes as xyzzz says no one here really has any experience of what is meant by being cancelled

As sleeve’s anecdote shows, yes.

But sleeve's anecdote is stated as predating "cancel culture" by 20 years so it's not really about an ambient moral fervour as much as interpersonal dynamics that are old as time?

It was a “slip” but unfortunately for him that word is taboo and for good reason. I think the firing is justified but i hope he finds other opportunities in sports media. I don’t support throwing people in the trash can.

― treeship., Saturday, 3 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Just to go back up to this. Before welcoming back this guy with open arms on a similar position at another org how about asking whether this was truly a one-off or a pattern of behaviour? Is there something else behind it? And yes, has this person apologised?

Ultimately if any of the answers point to a pattern, or if this person in power is often abusing it he should be cast out of the industry, reflect on what he's done and find something else to do. It's only a job, after all.

Yeah if this person is a white supremacist who uses that word normally, especially while in the workplace, then fuck him. But a linguistic slip doesn’t prove that.

@AndyTheGrasshopper

That wasn't the first time Kuiper attempted "Negro" with the "hard-r" equivalent so that's why it was a bigger deal than it should've been (ie, an honest slip of the tongue). It's like "do it once, it's a mistake" but any more than that perhaps it's not a mistake?

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 3 June 2023 02:32 (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

🤔 jury’s out on this one lads

Yeah if this person is a white supremacist who uses that word normally, especially while in the workplace, then fuck him. But a linguistic slip doesn’t prove that.

Fuck off

“Won’t someone think of the white guys who say nigger for once, they have it so hard”

Fuck off so hard your face melts

I said he should be fired based on that alone.

I would have fired him.

You then said you hope he gets another equivalent job which pretty much negates any consequences from getting fired in the first place

Take the faux-naive bullshit to someone who’s buying it

And since now it appears it was not a slip, but part of a pattern, I *do* support maximal ostracization and no second chance in media. Of course I do. hp presented this situation differently upthread.

I wasn’t aware of any pattern? Anyone have a link?

Not doubting, just want to know. Sorry if I mischaracterised it

The reason people pile on slips is that nobody who isn't racist makes that kind of slip in the first place

there is no such thing as a slip; you utter this obscenity because that's how you're wired to think about POC.

If I found myself using the N word during a work zoom meeting for some perfectly understandable reason that had nothing to do with racism — like, I guess, a wizard’s spell? I’m still unclear on the non-racist mechanism behind these “slips of the tongue” — I would expect to be fired and hope to find another job in my chosen field

If I did this in fucking public and my job were fucking broadcasting there would be evidence in my drastic incompetence in my chosen field and it would be a lot more difficult to find another job

This is cancel culture. Concerning

evidence *of, obv

I found the second clip.

I knew I wasn’t trippin but this was from the 2020 season https://t.co/2bQRwrvKgp pic.twitter.com/m3yE8ikav2

— Nai (@_Nai_Roy) May 6, 2023

I believe words can be flubbed. A slip to me means a word coming that is part of a speakers vocabulary when they didn’t want to. In which case, agreed with you noodle vague and Alfred. But sometimes you just flub a consonant/vowel? In the clip linked above he says the word three times, and the middle one sounds like the bad version but also sounds like him saying what he said the first and last time just slightly faster? If your job is literally to talk professionally for a living and you mess it up in that particular way….. yeah, fair enough to the firing. I just feel awkward getting definitive about someone’s character, completely ostracizing/exiling over a potential mispronunciation.

shut the fuck up

Okay

Freudian slip is like saying "bulging dicks" instead of "bulging discs", or maybe accidentally swearing.

And the latter happens to people who swear a lot, so ....by that extension...

I’m afraid of something I say being taken out of context or interpreted uncharitably and then becoming the subject of a pile on. I don’t really anticipate ever losing my job or anything. But being tarred as morally bad in some way, having that albatross around my neck within some social milieu, like ilx or something, would be painful. I think people really care about their reputations and having one’s reputation trashed is something a lot of people dread, I think.

― treeship., Friday, June 2, 2023 5:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Should i fear this? Probably not. Has this new environment of harsh social censure had some really good effects, causing people like Ryan Adams to face consequences for the first time ever? Absolutely. But do bad actors sometimes capitalize on some kind of ambient moral fervor for bullshit reasons? As sleeve’s anecdote shows, yes.

― treeship., Friday, June 2, 2023 5:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I mean what do you actually think you might possibly say, what kind of thoughts could you conceivably utter that would get you cancelled? Are there things you don't say because you fear you might get cancelled? Or I guess what topics do you fear you might discuss that could cause you to blunder your way into accidental cancellation?

There's also the idea that sometimes we're just wrong when we say things and we have to face the consequences for it and not feel it was undeserved, the hit that we take socially or publicly, however big the stage were on and however big our audience may be. We have to accept that it's our fault.

Maybe i’ll get canceled for appearing to take a soft line on someone else who was canceled

Like who knows?

That is indeed theoretically possible and in an infinite multiverse might actually be happening! Fuuuuck

Into the cancelverse

once agsin treesh do you think the fear of being "accidentally" cancelled is a) real and/or b) worse than living in a world where being constantly subjected to consequence-free hate speech is okay

and also b2) would you acknowledge that the "fear of cancel culture" is an ongoing strategic position of right wing bigots that needs to be either mocked or ignored?

maybe i'm still skirting around my main question which is "why would echoing fascist discourse be a thing worth doing?"

Just want to point out in the ‘accidental’ racist clip in question that his copresenter Dallas Braden doesn’t even blink an eye at it.

Insane there’s a fucking thread circulating around defending a man’s right to drop racial slurs on a live mic. Can’t wait for the thread to move on to “What if I had to say the word because my family were being held at gunpoint or win’s racist wizard hypnotised me, WHAT THEN.”

i haven't even watched but "he meant to say 'negro'" doesn't feel like a save

he absolutely says it and very clearly

I wonder in what kind of work environment you might not blink at that kind of accidental slip

i haven't even watched but "he meant to say 'negro'" doesn't feel like a save

I mean fuck this guy that isn’t the point of the thread

I wanted to see if anyone has experience being unfairly “canceled.” If not, perhaps it’s not a prevalent issue.

you have to be famous to get cancelled

In grad school everyone piled on one student and mischaracterized her positions, I felt, as being rooted in hatred when I felt they weren’t. I would say she was canceled. Not invited to parties and things. This did not happen to me though—at that time I mostly stayed silent, only sheepishly defending her for fear of cancelation.

No one lost a job or anything.

if a treeship is cancelled in the forest, does it make a sound?

It wasn’t called cancel culture then it was “call out” culture. People were “calling out” her opinions because they were not conservative but sort of heterodox? I never actually agreed with her but didn’t believe she was a bigot.

what sorts of things did she say

She was not in favor of abolishing the magnet school system in new york

If we're down to "not being invited to parties" as a criterion sure I knew plenty of ppl in uni who were cancelled for being annoying, not good at small talk, always insisting on that one song being played, etc

And she called other kids in our cohort hypocrites because they avoided having to go to failing inner city schools by living in the suburbs. She didn’t—she had resentment for middle class white progressives. She was an eastern european immigrant who grew up in a neighborhood that experienced crime and things like this.

There was something reactionary about all of this but idk—felt ppl attacked her to assuage their own guilt about their privilege

People were “calling out” her opinions because they were not conservative but sort of heterodox?

"Heterodox" is what right-wingers call their bullshit when they think there's someone in the room naïve enough to be suckered in.

She didn’t—she had resentment for middle class white progressives. She was an eastern european immigrant who grew up in a neighborhood that experienced crime and things like this.

So she was a right-wing knuckle-walker, not a right-wing snob. Got it.

Maybe it's because she called the other people hypocrites?

again it seems to come back to what the right have decided to call "virtue signalling" which is just a way of saying "don't call out hate speech"

^^^

a highly charged take on magnets (apols) is not the same thing as Big Ron style racism on television - but also, yeah, there is always going to be cliques that disinvite/dislike others on a social level wherever there are people. Not really the same thing as "cancelled".

I got cancelled by my teachers for not doing my homework

my cat cancelled me last night just for having an opinion on where she should shit

outrageous, cancel culture is clearly out of control

I think my dog would be cancelling me rn if he knew or could even understand that I'm currently planning to get him castrated in the next week

From here:

The only reasonable way to discuss cancel culture is not “Why are kids these days canceling people?”— it is “Why is this objectively unimportant niche phenomenon suddenly such a large part of mainstream discourse?” The most basic answer is “Because so much of mainstream discourse is produced by a narrow demographic of upper middle class middle aged uncool people who have never worked outside of media or politics or academia or nonprofits and whose nightmare is getting made fun of by college kids.”

tbf calz your dog would have a point

sure there's a double entendre in there somewhere

I'm cancelling his double entendres alright!

irl lol

hahaha

thread was worth it

It was.

---

No one lost a job or anything.

― treeship., Saturday, 3 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

This person sounds terrible, but as you say it was grad school. But in any case how did she turn out, was she damaged for good in her life or something? I am not getting how you are bringing this person up many years later (?) to make some unclear point about cancellation.

I am not getting how you are bringing this person up many years later (?) to make some unclear point about cancellation.

The burning desire to become a contributor to The Atlantic can take one down some dark (and stupid) paths.

I wanted to see if anyone has experience being unfairly “canceled.” If not, perhaps it’s not a prevalent issue.

can we please come to some agreement on not dropping an l fromm ancelled thanks

I mean what do you actually think you might possibly say, what kind of thoughts could you conceivably utter that would get you cancelled? Are there things you don't say because you fear you might get cancelled? Or I guess what topics do you fear you might discuss that could cause you to blunder your way into accidental cancellation?

― omar little, Saturday, June 3, 2023 8:18 AM (five hours ago)

if you haven't actually thought about how people can be vindictive or traumatized and mis-represent things that are actually not problematic and that you could be caught up in something like this, then you must lead a charmed life or just have a bunch of other shit going on so that this isn't something that crosses your mind ... idk. It's not neat and tidy. A lot of the movement towards actually holding powerful people accountable for doing/saying fucked up shit, as sleeve and others have mentioned, is good. But I've seen some fucked up situations where people make shit up or take stuff out of context to take someone down for revenge or power/monetary gain, or, what is actually fairly common, being so used to people doing/saying fucked up shit, they view a lot things through that lens that aren't that, and it's informed by trauma and expectations, and then things blow up, and the actual thing that led to the "cancellation" was not worthy of that. And most of the time, it's not famous people. But it still has impact.

RIP l0u1s jagg3r.

Weren’t people mad at Max for something?

lol forgot about the code to google-proof his name

basically as i see it, people who historically didn't have to "walk on eggshells" due to their hierarchical position are now having to do so. Other people who are lower in the hierarchy who have had to "code switch" between walking on eggshells and being comfortable are still walking on eggshells but for different reasons and in different contexts. And the "backlash" is coming from both categories of people but for different reasons, or maybe, the emotions are different, is a better way to put it.

i’m walkin’ on eggshells
woah-oh-ohh
and it don’t feel good

Lol

I don't really lead a charmed life, never really have, and it's been a rough several years. My question was genuine, I was addressing the initial post which seemed to less be about being wrongly cancelled and more about being worried one might say something that would lead to it. Someone purposely twisting your words in a vindictive manner is more akin to slander, which seems like a somewhat separate issue. Maybe a distant cousin to the issue idk.

I guess the thing is… you can say things that aren’t clear cut fuck that guy things, but the context and interpretation of it does result in harmful impact… unintended harm … and then … ?

"if you haven't actually thought about how people can be vindictive or traumatized and mis-represent things that are actually not problematic and that you could be caught up in something like this"

Treeship came out with the fear that he might get cancelled by the way the current environment is seen to operate. When pressed on it after a day or so this seems to stem from a sometime colleague who was excluded from parties.

It's a separate issue xps

Also on ilx i have seem homies like the aforementioned rolling stones frontman be treated poorly in my view.

My fear likely stems from an over-investment, or need, for people to see me as a “good guy.” And I am sure my expectation of that is conditioned by privilege, I mean of course it is.

This thread was, like all my threads, a bad idea, borne of curiosity about what people woukd day.

I do tend to empathize more with people like that woman from grad school than I do her righteous inquisitors, even if my beliefs were more aligned with the latter. This makes me fear I will be cancelled someday. Maybe today.

honestly, the righteous inquisitors are hypocrites and it's possible she handled herself badly, and the issue of magnet schools is totally fraught in US cities where there are a lot of underprivileged people ... and it sounds like your grad school was a bunch of privileged young people doing a bunch of progressive oneupsmanship, and hopefully they will have graduated and gone on to do important work that serves marginalized communities and they use their privilege to uplift the less privileged, or at least, not make shit worse, if that's the persona that they were adopting at the time of this outrage

For sure. True on all counts honestly

are you people still here?!

more people should worry about being cancelled, not less, is my view

I kind of expected this thread to be about the way the far right have just done a 180-degree turn on "cancel culture" and are now doing all they can do boycott & sabotage anyone joining in with pride this month.

The right wing will capitalize on anything that makes the left look bad. Doesn’t mean people who call themselves “left” are always perfect.

Left, your response?

I think the only way it feels like "walking on eggshells" is if you're otherwise inclined to be an asshole.

Eternal damnation isn’t a scary concept unless deep down you’re a bad person

i've done a number of things i'm ashamed of and/or would not want to become spread widely. but, you know, like, not that bad. especially compared to ppl like ryan adams or whomever. and also i do not take gigs as a commencement speaker in which i pretend to offer sage advice to the youth

anyway good luck canceling me; i'm already unemployed and barely get out of bed

i co-ran a punk house/art space in 2014-15 along with a group of queer artists who were constantly at war with each other and attempting to cancel each other (mostly via writing extremely long posts on social media detailing the abuse they had suffered and by banning and un-banning each others friends’ bands from playing shows there). many of them were roommates and it seemed like things started as petty quotidian co-living frustrations and exploded. i never lived in the house and mostly got along with everyone. at some point one of the rifts grew into an open civil war and i had to pick sides between two factions. at one meeting i voted, along with the faction i’d sided with, to ban all members of the other faction permanently from the space. for a while i was worried about getting “canceled”, i remember i would ctrl+F my name anytime i saw a new screed posted online. but i basically emerged entirely unscathed

flopson! you too have experienced a circular firing squad community!!!

many of them were roommates and it seemed like things started as petty quotidian co-living frustrations and exploded.

in my work-life, which sometimes deals with handling the bureaucratic results of these explosions, many are like that. I can count a half dozen spaces here that fell apart due to escalations of arguments about other roommates' pet parenting

honestly, the righteous inquisitors are hypocrites and it's possible she handled herself badly, and the issue of magnet schools is totally fraught in US cities where there are a lot of underprivileged people ... and it sounds like your grad school was a bunch of privileged young people doing a bunch of progressive oneupsmanship, and hopefully they will have graduated and gone on to do important work that serves marginalized communities and they use their privilege to uplift the less privileged, or at least, not make shit worse, if that's the persona that they were adopting at the time of this outrage

― sarahell, Saturday, 3 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

For sure. True on all counts honestly

― treeship., Saturday, 3 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Honestly honestly

That's a lot of honesty..

such a lonely word imo

If I enrolled in an economics course at a right wing university and was highly vocal about my beliefs I wouldn't expect to get invited to their parties either.

some people seem to enjoy arguing ... so ... maybe?

like from everything in these posts it seems to me treesh's co-student would have had a miserable time hanging out with these ppl anyway, doesn't sound like she was partic invested in becoming their bestie

Reckon she was just as bad as they were but played her cards badly.

I'm avoiding passing judgement on either her or the other students, just pointing out that maybe it's ok not to integrate ppl you dislike and who dislike you in your social agenda.

When 'cancellation' is a win, sometimes.

flopson! you too have experienced a circular firing squad community!!!

I was only ever peripheral to these sorts of living/art spaces or whatever—would see a show now and then, would have friends in the scene, but was never part of it—but what I heard convinced me I would never last in a place like that. For instance I had an ex who I was friendly with who ended being, in her words, hated by a whole city for what sounded like nothing to me, some dispute with an individual. What is it about these sorts of environments that attracts people who frame interpersonal conflicts as abuse and whip up a posse?

To be charitable, I think part of it is that people, mostly queer people with precarious finances, come into these spaces with a lot of trauma, so conflict really does seem like abuse. But I also think there is something about people who see themselves as revolutionaries in some sense, some kind of fervor that takes over where they mix up their politics with their life. I saw this even in my grad school, in a smaller way. With her, I really don’t think having your whole cohort think you are a racist who no one should associate with was a small price to pay for questioning equity as the ultimate aim of public education. It seemed like a big price so I felt bad but I am soft.

And yeah, conservatives are taking advantage of all this by presenting all progressives as like maoist cultural revolutionaries whipping their parents in the streets or whatever. That’s not happening, but the caricature has a germ of reality—it’s marginal, maybe, but also something people have seen.

And yeah, right wingers are eager for examples of unfair cancellation so this thread is playing into their hands. (Ben shapiro reads ilx iirc). But does everything have to be strategic?

Talking of which...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ken-loach-daniel-blake-labour-mayor-north-east-b2351147.html

Ben shapiro reads ilx iirc).

really?

I also think there is something about people who see themselves as revolutionaries in some sense, some kind of fervor that takes over where they mix up their politics with their life

this is expertly pitched imo i cant wait

Politics and life, huh?

it's more that the entire concept of "unfair cancellation" is a right wing construction

it's like, let's start a thread about people whose lives were turned upside down by unfounded rape claims

that'll be productive

"does everything have to be productive, tracer??"

gosh no, go for it

i don't think fear of "cancellation" and the ambiguity around what "cancelling" really is are entirely right-wing constructions. it's normal for people who experience certain kinds of social anxiety to vaguely perceive an angry mob and fear that it will turn on them, even if there's no rational basis for that fear. ILX is 100% not a healthy place to have that discussion though.

Whatever a healthy discussion about the irrational fear of a vaguely perceived mob looks like I’m sure it can be done without regurgitating reactionary memes, which is the sticking point

xp as someone with OCD reassurance is the absolutely worst thing you can do for such a person.

Reassurances in the sense “Yeah that’s a legitimate worry”.

right - i'm just saying the worry is not always the result of right-wing brainworms

I had a stamp that was cancelled

my haemorrhoids might have caused me to lose some sleep occasionally, but I never had a moment's worry about cancelling them

right - i'm just saying the worry is not always the result of right-wing brainworms

― c u (crüt), Sunday, June 4, 2023 7:54 AM (nineteen minutes ago)

otm -- and the thing is, communities have been practicing this "cancellation" for way longer than it has been termed as such, and longer than there have been Right Wing brainworms about it because the Right Wing has a history of doing the same thing. So, you can have someone who was blacklisted (i.e. cancelled) by the Right Wing for being a Communist and then they could be cancelled by a faction on the Left for something else ...

I guess there is a strong tendency here and now to only think about this practice in the context of current Right Reactionary outrage ... because maybe that's the most relevant to those of you are focusing on that.

Like a dozen ppl itt have made the point that this is describing social dynamics that have existed forever and it’s only the framing that this is unique to the current moment that feeds in to reactionary thought — that and the actual term “cancel culture” itself which is used by the right to mean “me too is bad because it has made life difficult for men of achievement” and it’s stupid to pretend that context doesn’t exist

I don’t think the current makeup of ilx would object to a thread “have you experienced certain kinds of social anxiety” (lol have you met us) nor do I think any similarly vaguely leftish space wouldn’t push back against this specific framing because tracer otm

Yes, I think a thread that properly came out with that angle -- and with words other than cancellation -- wouldn't cause questions and discussion away from these other scenarios.

i agree that "cancelled" is way too loaded of a term for a thread like this to succeed

Yes, I think a thread that properly came out with that angle -- and with words other than cancellation -- wouldn't cause questions and discussion away from these other scenarios.

Ultimately, and I don't want this to be a pile-on, I think this thread failed because the poster who started the thread has a fairly long history of guilelessly (and presumably with good intentions) adopting right-wing frames and granting right-wing ideas too much credit, in some weird attempt at Prince Myshkin-esque generosity of spirit.

wins & Tracer otm ofc

treeship are you still worried about the career prospects of the baseball announcer who said the n-word on air? hope you've checked in on him

I just hired him as a personal assistant

In re the thread title would like to cancel the double-L spelling of "cancelled," I much prefer "canceled." (I realize this is one of those British vs. American things, I just like the cleanness of the single L.)

It reads v oddly to me, a Brit

The one-l spelling that is

I consider myself British

You'd be at home here.

xp why has your face not melted yet

i too like the double - l spelling, but I mean ... that's a pvmic

Yes, I think a thread that properly came out with that angle -- and with words other than cancellation -- wouldn't cause questions and discussion away from these other scenarios.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, June 4, 2023 8:50 AM (fifty-six minutes ago)

okay, that makes total sense to me now.

There are other words. You all sound like creative people, please use them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OalJFhabulE

João

So the word “cancel” is the problem not “unfairly mischaracterized as a bad person with immoral political beliefs that you do not actually hold”?

Well like I said it’s the framing that has determined the response so I’m not sure just rewording the talking point would do the trick

I like the a24 horror feel of the word "shunning" as a general replacement.

Sending them to Coventry

is this like when guys worry about dudes who were falsely accused of rape or something. wtaf.

James wood announced his “retirement” saying it was because he was “cancelled” but it’s like, PEOPLE DONT LIKE WORKING WITH ASSHOLES JAMES

I came close to crossing a red line when I declared on ILM that country music was my least favorite of a short list of maligned genres.

hysterical realism itt

The "has anyone been cancelled on ilx?" part of this thread is admitidely prob the most entertaining part because it allows one to see who's still angry about which threads.

James Woods had a pretty remarkable run in the 80s, but that was a long time ago. Also, wasn't there some sort of controversy with Sean Young? IIRC, he claimed she had stalked him.

There was some discussion of Ryan Adams upthread, I think this is pretty funny. This show is tomorrow night in a 2,500-seat venue. Gonna be sparse. (I don't think he could have filled this place even at whatever his peak was. There's speculation in town that he ended up there because he's been blackballed from a much smaller venue for past bad behavior.)

https://i.imgur.com/zNMiYtq.png

wait -- the actor or the book critic? Now I'm imagining the latter with Sean Young on his arm.

The "has anyone been cancelled on ilx?" part of this thread is admitidely prob the most entertaining part because it allows one to see who's still angry about which threads.

xp The actor lol

xp tipsy - Pilot Light?

Bijou. Tho I’m sure Pilot Light would turn him down too.

ch*ki was famously cancelled from ILX for reasons I can no longer even remember and yet he has been welcomed back here by reasonable folk

super hot chick was waiting for him in his bed iirc

chaki was there for me when I got very into oingo boingo after eveyone else in the world was over it. I will never forget.

I came close to crossing a red line when I declared on ILM that country music was my least favorite of a short list of maligned genres.

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:08 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

iirc We finally decided not to cancel you and just bless your heart instead

God is good, I shall repent

I don't remember chaki getting canceled or cancelled, he's a good dude iirc. There was an infamous exchange with one ilxor which got that ilxor justifiably banned though.

The "has anyone been cancelled on ilx?" part of this thread is admitidely prob the most entertaining part because it allows one to see who's still angry about which threads.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 4 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I'll be there when the US election come around I've learnt NOTHING

The media or conservatives didn’t invent “cancel culture.” Message boards did! After re-reading this thread I’m surprised people, myself included, didn’t bring up obvious examples of “cancelling” (e.g., the drama around Sasha Frere-Jones attempting to “cancel” Stephin Merritt was covered by The New York Times, Viet Cong, hell, every rockism and poptimism thread for years and years, endless debate about the politics of Gawker, etc.). Maybe we collectively realized our mistakes!

lol not sure how firmly your tongue is planted in cheek here but no I don't think message boards invented the polemic no

america has never really recovered from getting cancelled by the viet cong

lol not sure how firmly your tongue is planted in cheek here but no I don't think message boards invented the polemic no

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, June 6, 2023 9:48 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Very :)

enjoy!

it's incredibly hard to be cancellled in some social media spaces where there are different groups that intersect only for antagonistic reasons. ilx is probably small enough to form a majority group consensus, but on, say, twitter, there are some people who keep popping up despite being toxic because they have fans that revel in the toxicity

I've done things that were hurtful to others, but I think it's the things I didn't understand were hurtful or could be perceived as negative, some of which only became clear to me years after the fact, that bug me. However, some of these things I've brought up and they meant little to nothing to the people who were involved, if they remembered them at all, so I'm not going to dwell on them and lose sleep.

I think the thing people owe the world in most cases isn't some way of making amends, but just... not doing the bad thing again.

oh, apparently after a bad breakup there was restroom graffiti at a place I used to frequent that said something about me. it was almost immediately removed. for me, it ended up being an incredibly good breakup after a brief period and likely many people's lives were improved by severing that social tie. I think I may have been a mitigating factor keeping that ex from being canceled!

i only get annoyed lately when there are assumptions made on someone's qualifications to speak on an issue, like - I'm a big proponent of not taking up space in a conversation when you're not the one affected, rather than listening to those that are. but when I see people assuming a respondent isn't an affected person themselves for no good reason it kinda drives me nuts (the one huge example of this I can remember on ILX, though, was fortunately handled permanently by the mods).

i.e. a friend of mine actually a victim of emotional abuse by their spouse who has been shouted down to be quiet and let "actual victims speak".

sonned by restroom graffiti in a breakup beef

breakup beef to prevent male hurt reaction

The only ilxors that I recall getting "Cancelled" were Marissa (it was kindness really), Nude Spock (before my time) and Luna (self-cancelled)

Others did get cancelled, but I'd regard them as unqualified ilxors, if you see what I mean.

Unless there were others I've forgotten or never knew...

the art of pretend forgetfulness

the late great OTM. If the mods were to present a list of permanently banned posters, I imagine it would be rather long.

Yeah is there some distinction btw cancelled and permabanned I'm missing? "Big" Don Abernathy was definitely cancelled.

Dom P
Branwell
Racunuki
Burt stanton and various aliases

I haven’t been invited to any parties by ilx recently which I gather is a type of cancelled

That guy that got me banned for a while.

Or yellow carded or something.

Turrican! How could I forget?

Dom?

Calum Robert
pipecock

We cancelled Dave Matthews

banning and cancelling def not the same thing. it can be argued that the only people ever 'cancelled' by ilx were those whose irl names when googlesearched would paint them in an immediately negative light, regardless of the extent to which they brought it on themselves

this is a small but select group

but in general, ilx isn't big enough or irl enough (especially now) to 'cancel' anyone on its own. that said i can think of at least one current ilxor who has withstood attempts on social media to deeply tarnish them; not coincidentally, one of the few of us to have emerged above the parapet into wider notoriety

my feelings on the matter of cancellation are generally that the good will out, and in the above case i'd say it did; no lasting damage was done. but as others have said itt, it can cause an awful lot of anguish in the moment, and i am naturally suspicious of online pileons for the reason that i've been at the bottom of quite a few (again, not excusing my own fault in causing them)

pretty sure several of the ppl mentioned were permabanned due to repeated temp bans. if that's not "consensus disapproval leading to social exile" idk what is. except it's just exile from ilx, not real exile

the premise of this thread is dumb. nobody has ever been "canceled" for political speech. the only person that comes to mind when i think of actual cancellation is like, oj simpson! or maybe the loser that killed trayvon martin, except he became a cause celebre for the right wing, for a moment anyway. see also that prep school kid who had the weird face-off with the native american drummer at the us capitol. he got rich (even richer?) thanks to a fairly brief media pile-on!

that's your safety valve right there, treeship - if you get canceled for saying something dumb at work, you can always farm your sob story out to partisan media for fame and profit. maybe even write a self-help bestseller: "i survived being canceled, and you can too"

as famous portrait painter and obama family friend george w. bush once said, "america is the land of second chances, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.”

The only time I remember people being upset with me on ilxor was in an end of year album poll where it was determined that it was my lurker ballot that put Destroyer's Kaputt over what should have been the rightful winner (PJ Harvey I think?). Since then people have barely paid attention to my boring and subversive posts.

I mean treesh was fretting about being cancelled for not cancelling someone else hard enough, which if not just concern trolling or making a lame joke about the woke mob is, in the nicest way possible, not the sort of worry that can be assuaged by any rational objections

generally being "cancelled" means "I made a bad post on the Internet and people are disagreeing with me and this sucks"

Or getting banned from using a website, like how twitter.com cancelled the former president

"So you got put on a Hollywood blacklist? Big deal. Oh what, you can't work in your field of expertise anymore. Boo hoo. Woody Allen will probably make a film about you someday."

Probably need to add “for raping someone/being an open bigot” to the above hilarious paragraph and even then there are several ppl it applies to who are still getting work in their field of expertise. Including, uh, woody Allen

I didn't think of that! Ironic.

Oh if you’re pro blacklisting of creeps then that is a very confusing use of quotation marks sorry!

you have to have some amount of default or residual goodwill in order to be cancelled, cancelling someone who’s never not sucked is like killing someone’s who’s dead

like wasn’t that big don dude pissing people off from the get go?

who in the 21st century has been put on a hollywood blacklist? mel gibson made six movies last year!

in america there's no law anywhere that says you can't hire someone (to work at, say, starbucks) who's an avowed nazi, even if they've served a prison sentence for hate crimes. there's also no law that says you have to hire somebody who shows up to the interview with a swastika tattooed on their forehead. cuts both ways, right?

i know a guy that got banned from shows for mansplaining the sound system once

I know this guy who opened a fancy gourmet pizzareia in the 00s and kicked out a customer for trying to order a regular pepperoni pizza

xp did he get a chance to show improvement?

i know a guy that got banned from shows for mansplaining the sound system once

― kurt schwitterz, Wednesday, June 7, 2023 10:08 AM (thirty-six minutes ago)

he didn't actually get banned. he was told he was not welcome, and he pretty much just avoided the people who said that to him, because he didn't want to escalate the situation. then a few years later the handful of people who "banned" him did the circular firing squad thing and banned each other ... like they banned their bandmates, as in there were four of them, and two were in a band together, and then the other two were in another band together, and those two were actually a couple. The non-couple bandmates had a falling out over something, and one banned the other. And the couple that were in a band together broke up and each accused the other of being abusive. ... and in typical kurt parlance, the best response to this is "Oy Vey"

sounds like the system worked

All of those people who didn’t actually get banned, along with all the other ppl from anecdotes itt, should register for ilx just to truthfully vote no in this poll

Well, the one on the right was on the left
And the one in the middle was on the right
And the one on the left was in the middle
And the guy in the rear got cancelled

Trying to remember whose blog title used to be some kind of spoonerism on “classes are cancelled.” It’s been a whirl.

And a while too, even.

Most of the cases of actual/successful cancellation I've seen or been close to have involved individuals with mid-level fame, i.e. musicians who often have put themselves out there as some sort of upstanding figure but are still closely tied to a local community.

branwell finally removed from ILX? that was news to me.

Trying to remember whose blog title used to be some kind of spoonerism on “classes are cancelled.” It’s been a whirl.

― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, June 7, 2023 1:12 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Eric H.

NEW: Jay Johnston — of Mr. Show, Arrested Development, The Sarah Silverman Show, Bob's Burger's, and Anchorman fame — has been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/HdHbVwISOk

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 7, 2023

I'm going to guess this guy isn't going to get a lot of network jobs

Damn. Cancel culture (getting arrested for crimes) is real

Well, getting arrested for crimes doesn't mean you won't keep starring in tv shows (see Kiefer)

We have received responses (below) from both @michaelgove and @Keir_Starmer expressing their grave concerns regarding Roger Waters’ current tour. We thank all politicians, across party lines, who have stood with the wider Jewish community on this issue.https://t.co/rRxX4Fmq3w pic.twitter.com/BOqwJUbdfJ

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) June 7, 2023

you could argue that this is not cancel culture in that the shows are still going ahead, but it's still pretty wild to see the guy who is probably going to be prime minister in the near future arguing that Roger Waters should not be "allowed" to perform in public.

More commentators fucking up.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/07/sky-suspends-italian-f1-commentators-after-sexist-remarks-on-air

In terms of 'successful' cancellations of properly famous people (for stuff like having controversial opinions and not committing serious crimes) - isn't this what happened to Sinead O'Connor after tearing up the photo of the Pope on snl in 1992, my understanding was that her career in the US was pretty much snuffed out by the backlash (obviously that's evidence against any argument that posits cancel culture as a new phenomenon)

that was pretty fucked up in that Joe Pesci came on the next week and said he taped the pic back together and he woulda given her "such a smack" if he'd been there

https://playadelnacho.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/machofemea.jpg

The only time I remember people being upset with me on ilxor was in an end of year album poll where it was determined that it was my lurker ballot that put Destroyer's Kaputt over what should have been the rightful winner (PJ Harvey I think?). Since then people have barely paid attention to my boring and subversive posts.

fwiw silverfish i still feel terrible about that whole affair and would like to apologise. i don't know what got into me exactly but i behaved like a total dick. i'm glad you stuck around though!

Kaputt rules!

eh

just remembered: a handful of young women spoke up online about a somewhat beloved local musician being a total creep. he attempted to post on social media a week or so later with the usual fallbacks about mental state, substances, stress, etc and the feedback was so bad the band facebook page got deleted

he didn’t lose his job, but to my knowledge he’s never played a show since then. his platform that gave him the social capital to continue being a creep evaporated. I wasn’t harmed by this person and I can’t speak for those that were, but I think that’s kind of the best you can hope for. if a specific platform is giving you the ability to harm others, you lose that

Most of the cases of actual/successful cancellation I've seen or been close to have involved individuals with mid-level fame, i.e. musicians who often have put themselves out there as some sort of upstanding figure but are still closely tied to a local community.

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan), Wednesday, 7 June 2023 19:14 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think actually-properly-famous people are mostly cancel-proof, but people who are not 'famous' but have some sort of position within a particular scene or subculture can be cancelled

We had a Republican county commissioner who got arrested for 69ing with another guy on a picnic table in a park. He promptly got fired from the job that he was supposed to be doing when this happened — he worked for Comcast and had parked his Comcast van in the parking lot by the picnic table lol. He was charged with whatever misdemeanor you get for public fornication and didn't have to resign his public office. But he finished third in the Republican primary the next time around — kind of amazing he even ran, but the story was that he hadn't been able to get another job and needed the health insurance. His wife stuck by him, he made some kind of public statement about demons he was wrestling with. I don't know if all of that adds to up to being canceled, but he still lives here and that is still the first thing everyone thinks of when they hear his name. (He was a hard-right dipshit idiot on Commission, so he was no great loss to the deliberative body.)

was he actually arguing that he thought yerman was a demon or

Satan comes in many forms, some of them hunky.

I think actually-properly-famous people are mostly cancel-proof, but people who are not 'famous' but have some sort of position within a particular scene or subculture can be cancelled

― he thinks it's chinese money (soref), Wednesday, June 7, 2023 3:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think of a case like those two dudes who ran that coffee shop in Asheville, who were subsequently discovered to be running an online journal discussing all the local women they'd hooked up with in p vile ways. I think their lives were over after that, lost all their business and moved outta town.

There is someone I knew personally, a former acquaintance, a guy with zero fame who got caught up in a very public mess in L.A. involving the TV show he was working on. He was being a total creep basically. I think his life has been utterly destroyed.

If you're famous there are always people who will want to defend and redeem you. Bc fame lures people to your cause.

yeah, it’s one of those things where hitting rock bottom is a function of your means. I think of the cheap rubber bouncy balls you’d buy as a kid from the 25/50 cent gumball machines. you drop one from a great height, it’s still going to get pretty high on the rebound, but each successive bounce still has diminishing potential. but occasionally you’d get one that was obviously fucked up and it’d crack open if you tried to bounce it more than a little

brings to mind Charlie Sheen, he was an infamously out of control trainwreck and genuinely dangerous person and it somehow made him famous enough to do a national speaking tour and land another big sitcom contract. but I guess in the end people just got really sick of him.

One thing that came out of this thread is that people should be given 2nd chances. If I go by what treeship is saying -- unless you are Hitler basically -- you shouldn't be cast out of town, or you shouldn't lose your livelihood.

I don't know, I 'cancelled' (i.e. ghosted) someone I used to know well because he revealed himself to be a narcissistic dick. People like that don't change, so why should you give them another chance? I've seen enough people slip back into spending time with someone who's pissed them off only for the same pattern to play itself out all over again. Same thing goes for someone who's part of a local circle and has behaved abominably. Hoy these fuckers into the bin! Shame the same thing won't happen to the likes of Mel Gibson I guess.

xp Hitler when tho?

When he was an angry young man.

If I go by what treeship is saying -- unless you are Hitler basically -- you shouldn't be cast out of town, or you shouldn't lose your livelihood.

I pretty much believe this! Within a framework of restorative justice and prison abolition. Tbc even within that framework I don't think victims should feel obliged to be in a room with their abusers, and the human righ to be invited to parties isn't part of my utopia, but yeah ideally there'd be ways for ppl to make amends without being cast out by the community. But the world we currently live in has a justice system that is a) punitive and b) heavily weighed in favour of abusers so as it stands it's moot.

Yes I am very much for a community-based system of justice. I didn't think treeship was framing it in those terms though.

in my example from graduate school, there wasn't any wrongdoing to repair because someone was being maliciously misrepresented. she would say x -- something people didn't agree with, but wasn't hateful -- and it would be recast as if she said y, something awful.

not being invited to parties was the least of it. there was a sense that this was a *bad person* and people even used the language of restorative justice to say that she should be "accountable" for the "harm" she caused.

it seemed very ridiculous and there was a palpable jouissance among the cancelers in excluding. that was the issue. it wasn't "we don't like her and don't want to hang around her," which would be fine, it was more "she really has hurt a lot of people and i am uncomfortable being near her." it was just lying, basically. and i felt bad for her because i would hate if someone felt that way about me.

I mean that does sound ridiculous but it also sounds like it didn't actually affect the person in any way.

so yes, if someone is a sexual harasser, an abuser, someone who abuses their power, there must be consequences. the problem is more like the language of social justice being used to justify what is in effect snobbery -- demonizing someone who doesn't know where the progressive trip wires are.

I mean that does sound ridiculous but it also sounds like it didn't actually affect the person in any way.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, June 8, 2023 8:11 AM (twenty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

it didn't. she didn't care. would have impacted me though if it had happened to me.

well yeah but as a person who as you yourself say has some stake in being seen as a good person you're also less likely to say stuff that would be misconstrued as inflammatory by these ppl! like you say she openly resented these ppl, ofc she's going to be more likely to antagonize them. at any rate yeah snobbery dressed up as virtousness is a thing, mixing it up with cancel culture and racist sports announcers tho you're kinda guaranteeing not to have a convo about that.

Is this really a thread about an offline beef that didn’t amount to anything, what are we doing here

btw my headcanon of this is I picture all your classmates as Pod Save America hosts and the ostracized girl as a Red Scare.

Calzino did remind me to see my dentist though so thanks for that

it didn't. she didn't care. would have impacted me though if it had happened to me.

― treeship., Thursday, 8 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Maybe the 'snobs' might have had a point.

Is this really a thread about an offline beef that didn’t amount to anything, what are we doing here

new board description

See also: the on-air editorials of a certain SCTV anchorman.

xxxp

one good thing about getting cancelled by your dentist is that it inspires you to improve your brushing technique and general dental hygiene, with the knowledge that you are screwed if you have any problems now. Obviously the bad thing is when your teeth are already old and fucked then the next problem is never going to be that far away!

Time to cancel your teeth and replace them with the inevitable dentures

you just need to win the Euromillions jackpot and then you can have a whole new set of artificial teeth planted into your jawbone

gyac you can cancel this thread with the "remove bookmark" link

Until there’s a way for zing to hide threads from SNA I’ll post where I like, thanks!

i'm all abt posting in threads i don't like, iykwim

I'm all abt posting.

I like having fun online.

treeship is the heel of ilx. The preamble is repulsive, but when he comes off that top rope nobody can look away.

my question for treeship is this: are you objecting to social justice principles & language being abused or misappropriated by opportunistic jerks? or do you think those principles & language have an inherent tendency to result in over-application and therefore need to be rethought or reformed in some way (and if so, what do you suggest)?

and fwiw having gotten involved in some ~lefty politics~ this year myself, I can see how well-intended people's political zeal and idealism could lead them to holding their allies to overly, maybe impossibly, strict standards. But I've yet to hear a remedy for this dynamic that doesn't sound wildly reactionary. I also agree with everyone who's already said that agreeing to the term "cancellation" is, at this point, a gift to the right

treeship is the heel of ilx. The preamble is repulsive, but when he comes off that top rope nobody can look away.

― Enumerated funks of Walsh, Joe. (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, June 8, 2023 12:06 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

What does this mean? It feels like an insult.

It's wrestling terminology. I don't think it was meant as an insult but fwiw I don't think it's accurate at all.

I don’t have answers about what can be done except maybe not assuming that the people hurling stones are the most righteous. Moralistic posturing and pile ons are observable dynamics. The reason this is “left” coded now is that the current right wing are gleefully malicious and do not assume any kind of high ground. (Observe the trollishness, not just of Trump, but DeSantis. Right wingers have moral panics—often psychotic ones—but the tenor is really different than like with the “moral majority” types of the 90s).

Not completely. It's still all about the liberals coming after your kids.

tbf that anecdote is not breaking the stereotype of liberal arts grad school as circular firing squad

among other circular firing squads in the thread

it seemed very ridiculous and there was a palpable jouissance among the cancelers in excluding. that was the issue. it wasn't "we don't like her and don't want to hang around her," which would be fine, it was more "she really has hurt a lot of people and i am uncomfortable being near her." it was just lying, basically. and i felt bad for her because i would hate if someone felt that way about me.

― treeship., Thursday, June 8, 2023 8:08 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol, incredible, sounds like a revelry from Masque of the Red Death

tbf that anecdote is not breaking the stereotype of liberal arts grad school as circular firing squad

I don't think you can have a circular firing squad where everyone's firing at the same person, how would that even work.

sounds like people who were projecting their own discomfort on someone bucking an unearned consensus

and fair enough, not exactly circular here

"being annoying, not good at small talk, always insisting on that one song being played, etc"

hahah

good reasons imo

I wrote about this on the UK politics thread a few weeks ago, but the problem is that the right have now taken “moral posturing” and “mob mentality” and used it to describe ANY and ALL calling to account of bad behavior.

For background, my friends run a small poetry press, and they were to publish a book by Poet E. A day before the book was to go to press, they were informed that Poet E has collaborated with Nina Power and another racist transphobic reactionary named Adam Lehrer. They asked Poet E about these associations, Poet E responded with indignation and some BS of “purity politics,” so they pulled the book. Then Poet E wrote a vague and illogical essay on Nina Power’s website about the ordeal, and my friends wrote a statement that said they had no responsibility to publish someone who collaborates with fascists and those who engage in transphobic, violent rhetoric.

So my friends have been targeted by right wing trolls but they are the ones who are leftists that are “morally posturing”? Please.

So many of these incidents can be described as someone fucking up royally and then lashing out when called to account, full stop. Many who engage in atrocious behavior in subcultural communities even become part of a burgeoning group of “cancelled” people who engage with and for the reactionary right— see the best-selling poet on Amazon, Joseph Massey, a former leftist poet who was called to account for multiple verifiable sexual assaults and then went fascist trad-Cath and has his books hawked by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

Sure, there are isolated incidents of people whose lives are ruined when they have done little to nothing wrong, but in most cases, people who are “cancelled” deserve it— that is, they deserve to be held accountable for their actions and associations just like the rest of us.

The only reason they are “cancelled “ is because that is what they seek, often— it can be good for business.

many xp. Not meant as an insult, treeship. You are definitely not a heel.

my question for treeship is this: are you objecting to social justice principles & language being abused or misappropriated by opportunistic jerks? or do you think those principles & language have an inherent tendency to result in over-application and therefore need to be rethought or reformed in some way (and if so, what do you suggest)?

― rob, Thursday, 8 June 2023 20:29 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and fwiw having gotten involved in some ~lefty politics~ this year myself, I can see how well-intended people's political zeal and idealism could lead them to holding their allies to overly, maybe impossibly, strict standards. But I've yet to hear a remedy for this dynamic that doesn't sound wildly reactionary. I also agree with everyone who's already said that agreeing to the term "cancellation" is, at this point, a gift to the right

― rob, Thursday, 8 June 2023 20:35 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this seems really well asked to me

It’s not “being cancelled” but a press pulling a book because the poet “collaborated” with some people who are deemed bad (i don’t know who they are and googling does not bring up much) is kind of the thing people are concerned about. Like if you’re going to do any public facing work, you have to go through your rolodex and apologize for any associations that might upset someone.

do you tho?

not seeing a lot of examples of people who've been cancelled for their association with toxic ideas and who've vehemently repudiated those ideas

If you're a left wing press, why should you feel obliged to publish right wing authors? Freedom of expression cuts both ways.

seems like it only cuts one way in practice

Yeah, but was he a right wing poet?

Poet E kept all associations with these right wingers out of view— they only became known because a friend of the press brought them to the attention of the press.

Fwiw, just look up Compact Mag, which Nina Power began because no one else would publish her transphobic and nationalist drivel, and you’ll get the idea. These people are fascists— Adam Lehrer publicly applauds Daniel Penny on Twitter, uses slurs with abandon, and put a photo of Dylan Roof on his band’s newest EP, approvingly.

Ok i see. His band has a song called “Dylan Roof should have gotten Buccal Fat Removal”

Also I know we don’t get along but trust me when I say Nina Power is a TERF and a fascist, she’s just from the UK so a lot of US folks don’t know who she is if they’re not queer or don’t follow this kind of thing, which, fair enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWz0JC7afNQ

I checked out Compact Mag oof not good

that story is confusing to me. ok so they pulled the poet’s book, fine. they’re allowed to do that, for reasons as arbitrary as “we think the poetry is bad”. and now, they’ve been “targeted”. but … targeted how? with a boycott? negative reviews? cruise missiles? and how are these things on an equivalent level as “verifiable sexual assaults”??

fwiw silverfish i still feel terrible about that whole affair and would like to apologise. i don't know what got into me exactly but i behaved like a total dick. i'm glad you stuck around though!

that story is confusing to me. ok so they pulled the poet’s book, fine. they’re allowed to do that, for reasons as arbitrary as “we think the poetry is bad”. and now, they’ve been “targeted”. but … targeted how? with a boycott? negative reviews? cruise missiles? and how are these things on an equivalent level as “verifiable sexual assaults”??

These seem like shitty people, but it also look likes the poet’s collaborations with them were writing a piece on Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde for Power’s website and talking about Tarantino films on the other guy’s Substack.

xp thanks for clarifying!

also did a discussion with Power on Simone Weil for a podcast and is scheduled to appear this weekend at Icarus Fest, which you can look up here https://www.icarusfest.com/about

also Poet E refuses to repudiate or disavow the views of the fascists she is choosing to work with. people die because of the hatred that these people bring to the world and you’re saying “but working with them on several creative projects doesn’t mean they are collaborators” my friend, you are wrong. this is clear cut collaboration. kind of surprised at your pushback tbh, it’s not like she’s losing anything— she’s actually gaining followers and subscribers because of this shit.

I guess the question I'm left with is why were the publishers looking to work with Poet E to begin with? It seems like she would have had the equivalent of cartoon stink waves coming off her from the moment they first met.

she only started working with the fash types after the press had accepted the book as a submission, and she never publicized any of the collaborations she did with them. even now, she won’t write their names or speak of their politics in her statements, because she knows (and knew) that the association looks bad for her in the community to which she belonged.

this would be like me writing about poems or ambient music from a slightly right-wing perspective for Quillette or The Federalist after my kooky book on astrology was accepted by a leftist experimental poetry press, but i never told anyone about my extrapoetic activities anywhere on social media or my substack.

(also ftr, in poetry at least, people will publish books by writers they’ve never met, and it’s not like my friends don’t do any vetting— it’s just that Poet E’s associations and collaborations only came to light long after they had thought they’d done their due diligence)

It seems kind of confusing. E doesn't write their names or speak of their politics, but also refuses to disavow? I guess both could come under a non-committal umbrella of not commenting

But then after going to the lengths of hiding these associations when called out on it, responds with indignation instead of saying "really? weird, let me look into it"

what a weird festival ... esp. the film choices? If I were to curate film screenings that were "poignant" in the context of that "ethos" ... the recent doc that got cancelled makes sense, but, the other three? Super weak.

it seemed very ridiculous and there was a palpable jouissance among the cancelers in excluding. that was the issue. it wasn't "we don't like her and don't want to hang around her," which would be fine, it was more "she really has hurt a lot of people and i am uncomfortable being near her." it was just lying, basically. and i felt bad for her because i would hate if someone felt that way about me.
― treeship., Thursday, June 8, 2023 8:08 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, your reaction to a recording of a broadcaster saying the N word was to go "I hope he gets another job, unless it turns out he is a white supremacist", so why would anyone trust your version of events?

that’s an unfair read of what treeship actually said

He thought he should get another job contingent on it being a linguistic slip

Oh you’re back on this again are you? I don’t know why “Don’t say racial slurs on air” is such an ask, I’ve never done it irl, probably because it’s not a word that tends to fall out of my mouth, like, at all. Cue some dipshit going “Well not everyone’s as perfect as you”. The bar is in hell.

That doesn't sound v different from what I said.

And pushing this story, again and again, when there is no other version of events is really shitty xp

He’s been sympathising with this prick for over a month now 😩

Okay all. Seems disingenuous to not even acknowledge the possibility of a linguistic slip if you’ve viewed the clip, but go ahead and throw all your weight behind there being “no other version of events”.

Fwiw, I’m in agreement with the general mind of this thread re: cancelling as a word giving too much ground to the right, pro-hold people to account etc. etc.

How are you acting like the wronged party when you’ve been defending this shit as a mistake for weeks now?!

Xp gyac I agree with you, but I (not I expect you) have had to say “negroe”. I try make a habit of not swearing, but I’ve still said “shit” when I meant to say “ship”.

I’m not acting like the wronged party, I’m pushing back on there being no other possible way of viewing the events

…

I just showed my wife these clips and she said “yeah, I think he’s a racist” which is my queue to admit I’m probably wrong on this one and I’ll stop arguing for a small potentiality. Sorry to kick the bucket down the road again

I managed to watch 42 and hold a conversation with my sister about segregation and the Negro Leagues without ever once experiencing this kind of apparently all too common slip, maybe it’s because it’s not a word I say often and also the words aren’t remotely similar.

“Honey, can you come here a minute? I need your opinion on something?”
“Yes sweetie, what is it?”
“Is this man being racist in this clip where he clearly says the N word? I need to know for my internet argument”
🫣🫣🫣

H.P. - pass on my thanks to your wife.

I mean, your reaction to a recording of a broadcaster saying the N word was to go "I hope he gets another job, unless it turns out he is a white supremacist", so why would anyone trust your version of events?

It's kind of a rosarch test imo. My own prejudices run towards believing treesh about his classmates, an American grad school does sound like the kind of place that produces YA authors who go to work for Lockheed Martin. I also think that from the description given the girl was, if not a bigot, probably one of those tiresome ppl who gets off on showing how she's bucking the groupthink consensus. So really everyone in the story is in a mutually benefitial situation, the classmates get to feel Attacked by Toxic People and the girl gets her own prejudices confirmed, perhaps can write a memoir about illiberal thought somewhere down the line.

It seems kind of confusing. E doesn't write their names or speak of their politics, but also refuses to disavow? I guess both could come under a non-committal umbrella of not commenting

But then after going to the lengths of hiding these associations when called out on it, responds with indignation instead of saying "really? weird, let me look into it"

I understand that, but in that case why get all indignant and taking a position when it first came up when the path of least resistance was just to say she didn't know anything about it and would look into it.

Its like she's trying to have her cake, eat it, and throw it on the floor, all at once

she’s an independently wealthy astrologer poet into the occult and simone weil, i don’t pretend to know her motivations but i am not surprised at her fashy turn given what i know about her otherwise.

she’s an independently wealthy astrologer poet into the occult and simone weil

lol she sounds like a parody of what 2023 was like written for a comedy show 20 years from now

“Honey, can you come here a minute? I need your opinion on something?”
“Yes sweetie, what is it?”
“Is this man being racist in this clip where he clearly says the N word? I need to know for my internet argument”
🫣🫣🫣

This, minus the vitriol and plus a sense of humour. Lighten up

Also agree with Anvil, seems like this person took the most confusing approach to this situation possible. Makes sense the publisher doing what they’re doing and sorry to hear about the right wing free speech losers doing their thing

You’re lucky. My wife does not support my cherished hobby of posting opinions to the internet.

Absolutely spectacular you are still replying on this. Wow!

she’s an independently wealthy astrologer poet into the occult and simone weil

This person almost definitely has what they call “trad” leanings, which is a euphemism for hard right antiliberalism. Weil was a fascinating person but all of her modern fans seem to be like this. A left wing press is under no obligation to publish a poet who is aligned with this kind of thought. She can find other publishers.

There is a lot of *this* kind of thought out there, pulling people who feel disillusioned with “the left” but also don’t align with the economic program of republicans. It is funded by peter thiel and other silicon valley types—basically an astroturfed “dissident intellectual” scene. This kind of thing definitely needs to be “cancelled.” Fascism *began* in a similar way, drawing people from the left by preying on their aversion to liberalism, in particular the disruptiveness of the market.

DJP otm upthread. This is a fucking embarrassment.

Do you not want to cancel fascists now? I am agreeing with table.

cancel this thread

all of this appears to boil down to whether one allows it may be possible for people to be wrong in good faith

i believe it is, but clearly this is a case-by-case thing. feels like table's woo-woo poet doesn't have an excuse; we're well beyond the point where collaborating with politically-charged individuals is taken as read to be a political act, and regardless of your feelings on how art is tarnished by its artist, refusing to publish an artist is a strike against that artist rather than the art; as treesh says, it can still be published somewhere else, and it still exists in some form (on their hard-drive, on their self-printed pamphlets etc)

otoh i believe H.P. was wrong in good faith itt

i say this as someone who has been wrong a lot. hell maybe i'm even wrong about this lol

"Weil was a fascinating person but all of her modern fans seem to be like this."

That's not really true in the UK. I get how the contours in Weil's thought on politics could get all sorts in but there are one-time Trotskyists who went full right-wing too.

xp

in the U.S. most of those public Trotskyists turned into Irving Kristol-esque neocons.

it feels relevant to the conversation that when Nina Power embarked on her heel turn the majority of her left friends and colleagues were desperate to hear that it wasn't what it looked like, far from a jouissance-fuelled cancellation spree at the first sign of deviance from the party line. Which of course didn't stop NP acting like that's just what happened.

Agree with you Imago. But it is definitely a ver veryy small subsection of “cancellations” that “wrong in good faith” can be granted too, which is what the right gets wrong about their anti cancel culture push. Not much good faith discussion to be had about sexual assault. While it’s important to not forget the nuance case by case, it’s not the write-off of “cancel culture” wholesale that some disingenuously make it out to be

it feels relevant to the conversation that when Nina Power embarked on her heel turn the majority of her left friends and colleagues were desperate to hear that it wasn't what it looked like, far from a jouissance-fuelled cancellation spree at the first sign of deviance from the party line. Which of course didn't stop NP acting like that's just what happened.

― lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living (Merdeyeux), Friday, 9 June 2023 10:15 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Previous good standing will always buy you time, supreme case in point Bill Cosby

I like Adam Lehrer’s work. I was surprised to see his name so I looked at his Twitter. Yikes. It’s entirely brain worm garbage. I’d usually write something like “COVID hasn’t been kind to people with mental health issues” but I get the impression he’s been harboring this bullshit for much, much longer.

Cancelled.

Important announcement about THE SNOW FOREST. Please note that if you were charged for your pre-order, you will be fully refunded. Thank you so much. pic.twitter.com/OAEmrjtfJx

— Elizabeth Gilbert (@GilbertLiz) June 12, 2023

This is what happens when things are reduced to the level of a "project".

See, THAT is ludicrous, imho.

lol totally deranged

Just using the war in Ukraine for publicity.

this is on the level of "I choose not to walk so as not to crush microscopic entities"

There is one book released later this year by a deceased Russian writer and if that's pulled I'll go crazy.

By Monday, the book had amassed hundreds of one-star reviews on the website Goodreads, with commenters on that website and on Instagram condemning the book’s Russian setting and characters.

Big Nazi contingent on Goodreads I guess

Looking at the reaction to this I see there are people out there who think reading Dostoevsky right now is tone deaf.

There are!

Elif Batuman (kind of) wrestled with this in a recent New Yorker article:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/rereading-russian-classics-in-the-shadow-of-the-ukraine-war

My friend is a US-born scholar of Russian literature, with an appointment at a tony and high-ranked liberal arts school in the Northeast, and the stories she tells me about the bullshit she’s had to go
through are incredible. People really are dumb enough to believe that even scholarly interest in a subject is the same as full-throated support of that subject’s ideological bent. It’s fucking wild.

US high school students were reading Russian classics during the height of the Cold War. Did people get stupider?

I teach Gogol and Chekhov

And will continue to! Gogol is Ukrainian so he should be ok

xxp or that Dostoevsky or Tolstoy would have supported Putin.

OK, Solzhenitsyn, maaaaybe.

Gogol would have but he was also insane

sometimes in trying to show sensitivity, some allies overcorrect a lot.

Gilbert's purported book was about ppl rejecting the Soviet system and going off to live in the woods...so even if you don't differentiate between Putin and the Soviet Union, it would still be a book about ppl going against the supposed Enemy. The notion that this is still offensive because the characters involved are Russian...can't call that logic anything but ethno-nationalist.

Not that I think her book would gave given Tolstoy a run for his money or anything.

Were the negative goodreads reviews from ukrainians? I can understand it then, even if I don’t agree. But if it was mostly “liberal” Americans I just don’t know

Dumbest thing I ever heard of

this is about the eighth dumbest goodreads dramatic flameout

amazon really needs to just shut that site down if they're not going to moderate or update it

more like badreads

It's pretty sad that somehow the book logging site turned out considerably lamer than the movie logging site and even the music logging sites.

I feel like the propensity for readers to completely misunderstand books is much higher than movies

best for everyone that John Rzeznik has not been pictured with dreads

most of the goodreads toxicity is genre-specific and oddly parochial.
“you can’t have a book that takes place in historical russia” is just a weird take that makes no sense until you realize it’s a hive mind of busybodies that think crafting the boundaries of online spaces is a useful endeavor in itself and not in the purpose of community

kind of wild that it’s become enough of a known phenomena that the writer of EAT PRAY LOVE who is probably going to sell a ton of books regardless of the topic is doing this, but internet discourse is what it is

Did people get stupider?

FTR the answer to this question, regardless of context, is almost always “yes”

I guess literature is just too vast a field. Letterboxd feels more like a shared conversation because film is a younger art, there's that 20th century canon and most of the ppl on there have some relationship to it, even if they're all about 90's erotic thrillers or taiwanese wuxia or kollywood.

Goodreads lacked that center and yeah afaict the most active corners of it ended up being about smarmy ya-adjacent stuff. Maybe there are cool communities there for, like, experimental fiction or crime fiction but I've not come across them.

Did people get stupider?

FTR the answer to this question, regardless of context, is almost always “yes”

― Marvel Puzzle Quest is my favorite gasm (DJP), Monday, 12 June 2023 22:35 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^

Sorry to hear that Rog

https://i.ibb.co/DzZ320P/Screenshot-20230612-224225-Chrome.jpg

Have you ever been cancered?

Enjoying how many people are saying this book self-cancelling is stupid

So apparently: Wherever you set your novel, you'd better hope to hell that by publication date (usually about a year after you turned it in) that place isn't up to bad things, or you are personally complicit in them.

— Rebecca Makkai (@rebeccamakkai) June 12, 2023

letterboxd could get infested with brigading weirdos but it’s an independent site that, to my knowledge, does have active moderation

the worst it gets is people forming a weird consensus on twitter and tilting reviews/comments on the site

I think the goodreads corollary, which isn’t as active these days, would be imdb comments and ratings. and that’s another amazon-owned thing

US high school students were reading Russian classics during the height of the Cold War. Did people get stupider?

yes, high school students today don't read anything even slightly this challenging, IME. I read Anna Karenina when I was a junior. I can't imagine my kid or his classmates reading that doorstop.

Agreed.

what are you even talking about? I looked up the AP Lit books for 2023 and Crime and Punishment is on it

it was The Brothers Karamazov when I was in high school and I have to say that Priest’s Tale is up there with interminable tangential screeds

nice to see The Invisible Man got put up to the required tier. I still laugh at the fact I did a book report essay on that one and just said “the narrator” when referring to the unnamed protagonist, but my classmate took “you can call me Jack the Bear” in the intro literally

That's all well and good but based on some quick math, fewer than 15% of high school students took the AP English exam last year. Most kids are NOT reading these books, and given literacy rates, it's not like many adults are reading them either. I'm not saying this as a snob, but because it's a fucking tragedy and whenever I think about it I become hot with rage.

I mean…

Russians wage wars and commit atrocities over the last centuries. However all that time they were very successful in promoting their culture to the world. I hope in 20 years from now people will look at Russian culture through decolonizing lenses and will stop romanticizing it.

— Darya Zorka (@daryazorka) June 12, 2023

AP classes have definitely gotten much easier because you just can't get the kids to do the same amount of reading, and they can't understand it at the same level. As far as I can tell from talking to the AP teachers at my school, it's a shorter reading list, a lot of excerpts, a lot of emphasis on basic decoding of the text rather than higher-level analysis, and most of the reading done in-class.

It's an open secret among teachers, at least the ones I talk to, that academic ability in general has fallen pretty steeply since the advent of the smartphone. It gets blamed on the pandemic but it seems like more than just a gap in schooling; it's a general struggle with learning and engagement.

oh hey this awful thread based on unexamined privilege has gotten decent again, thanks to everyone except treeship

15% of high school students is a lot of students!

probably some larger number of high school students posting on fandom communities and engaging with people broadening their horizons

the number of students engaged and doing walk-outs, feeling empowered to speak up about things in their schools, etc. seems higher than when I was a kid

agreed

I'm not disputing that, just pointing out that most of those 15% are probably not actually reading Crime and Punishment. Excerpts, at best.

what are you even talking about? I looked up the AP Lit books for 2023 and Crime and Punishment is on it

for what year? I mean, I dunno; my kid was in AP english in 11th grade and the only books they read were brave new world and the great gatsby. I did recommend he do AP English next year as well. They absolutely emphasize essays, non fiction, and writing more than reading novels.

Not just the kids fwiw. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx

Not convinced this isn’t a disguised marketing play. Controversy sells and this book was only announced a week ago. Not a big sacrifice to have your name all over the news

11th grade is AP Lang; 12th grade is AP Lit. But for both classes the reading list is very short these days.

kids are reading less, this is indisputable

If you dispute it you get cancelled :(

except for the cool nerdy ones reading homestuck

Kids are surely reading more than ever just not novels.

they are watching videos and playing videogames, their parents often have to struggle to get them to read books

Maybe that's just where I went to school (way before smartphones) but a tiny % would've cared to read long novels, nevermind Dosto.

They were into sports or videogames

xp

And those were crappy blowing people's heads off videogames. The offerings you get now (from what I see via twitter) sound really immersive and interesting, with amazing graphics and you can connect with more people than ever.

Not something I am going to know a lot about as I just read books and watch old films and post on old websites like ilx and twitter dot com

And those were crappy blowing people's heads off videogames. The offerings you get now (from what I see via twitter) sound really immersive and interesting, with amazing graphics and you can connect with get called a slur by more people than ever.

Fixed.

I've been teaching 11-16 yr olds for 8 years now so not an expert yet but, pandemic or no, the idea of teaching even the brightest of those kids *The Brothers Karamazov*, in full, even without the current curriculum demands, is baffling. With the current state of learning behaviours and curriculum demands, it's borderline insane.

Trying to remember what we read in high school. We read the entirety of Silas Marner and Wuthering Heights. They were both fucking slogs. I'm sure there are great English teachers out there who can make these books come alive but my experience was that we were all essentially taught to hate great literature

In my professional life I need to be very aware that when I'm communicating via email the people who are receiving it need to know everything within the first 3-5 lines: 1) state the problem and tell them that 2) it's being taken care of, with detail below which they do not read and don't care abt. Otherwise these people can't fucking cope. All 45+ yo.

There is no way they are parenting kids to read LITERATURE either.

Well yeah everyone hates assigned reading, always has afaict - no doubt those midcentury kids resented having to read some old Russian novel when they could be home watching their cowboy shows too. It probably was bordeline insane to give 'em The Brothers Karamazov then too! But kids are resourceful and they prob did the same thing most of my classmates did when we tackled a big 19th century doorstop - check out cliffsnotes, memorize plot points via older brother's papers w/o having to read the book, that kind of stuff. Of course today they'd also have wikipedia.

Still think it's important that kids be exposed to a wide curriculum nonetheless - only 1 in 50 will find anything rewarding in it probably but it's still good for them to know all the stuff that's out there.

Anyway it's not like Russian lit is all epics, can easily read some Chekov and Gogol short stories. I'm guessing during the Cold War the ideological spin would've been "look what a great culture this country had before it fell to communism".

kids these days they dont do real stuff like what i did when i was a kid which was better because i did it

I will say I do worry about media literacy. Some kids right now only know Sonic The Hedgehog as "that guy Shrek impregnated".

We read Crime and Punishment at my high school. Karamazov has too much religious stuff for a public school I think

There was an infamous incident where someone posted a The Communist Manifesto on ao3 and the comments on the site were all stuff like “this is so short, I’m going to read this???” and it got taken off after racking up thousands of views and downloads, but it illustrated something interesting to me. It keeps being reposted and taken down because it’s not actually a fanwork, so current numbers aren’t really accurate.

Ao3 is probably one of the sites where young people voluntarily read hundreds of thousands of words and the accessible formats are a big part of that. It was interesting (to me anyway) that people were like, it’s only 11k (words)? I’ll read this when presented with this in a familiar format in places where they do read.

Do young ppl go on ao3? I associate it with big millenial touchstones like Supernatural and Sherlock but that is prob out of date.

Wattpad is more popular among actual younger people, but yeah they do. The actual numbers are difficult to know but there are certainly some on there, just like there were on fanfiction.net (✋🏻 young me bitd) and livejournal.

The dismissive element of this conversation is weird to me— 50% of adults in the US can’t read at an 8th grade level. That’s not great! Teenagers not being able to read and analyze books isn’t good!

My high school had very good standards for its general English classes (a lot of you have mentioned texts given to you in AP - Gatsby, Brave New World - that were standard for 10th and 11th graders taking non-advanced classes). Our AP English included To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, Persuasion and Dubliners (plus a load of other books I can’t remember). If we wanted European literature after 10th grade there was a World Lit elective, and there was a strong literature component in the USSR elective (Solzhenitsyn, Chekhov etc) where it was the mid-1980s and the vibe was more like ‘look at all this stuff, no wonder they got angry and went Communist!’).

50% of adults in the US can’t read at an 8th grade level. That’s not great!

Agreed it's not great, not entirely convinced by the jumping to conclusions itt tho. Literacy much more monitored in our era than it was in the past - I think it's quite likely these numbers bear out not some recent decline but rather highlight problems of inequality that have been integral to the US forever.

Yes I suspect strongly there's a lot of truth to that. In first grade my parents were told that I 'read at an 8th grade level' and in retrospect I think that probably said more about inequality and low standards than any kind of innate reading genius I had

ofc having supportive parents who encourage reading will generally lead to higher literacy rates and maybe this is likelier in certain socioeconomic circumstances but you're talking about literacy 40-50 years ago, this age of technological addiction and attention capture is something new, something we are unequipped to handle and something that does not discriminate between demographics. it also is not restricted to the US

it is also something for which you've supplied zero data

just the qualitative experience of twelve years working directly with children, all i got, sorry

Yeah, perhaps I'd take it more seriously if your rhetoric wasn't as undistinguishable from my teachers in the 90's worried about the mega drive.

i'll add that ime, it is absolutely not a child's circumstances that determine their reading. have taught numerous lower-income single-parent kids who are voracious readers and numerous rich kids who are web-frazzled influencer wannabes. there are a lot of factors but the common one is that kids are reading less now, and less sophisticatedly, than they were ten years ago. at least before i roll out The Recommendation List to their parents :D

the most annoying thing is that when they are a keen reader, it's always bloody harry potter

A child's circumstances do not define whether they enjoy reading.

A child's circumstances do affect the time they have available to read and the resources at their disposal to deal with any difficulties reading.

The latter is going to be substantially more relevant to arriving at statistics like the one in table's post.

Public Libraries being shut over the last decade the UK could be having as much of an impact as the dreaded phones.

Just putting down some potential other impacts to consider and for imago to choose to ignore

good friend of mine grew up extremely poor. she had a lot of time to read books. loads of it. sorry to once again supply qualitative evidence

'resources to deal with any difficulties reading' - yes, indeed, and classroom situations in this country are pretty desperate a lot of the time. but it is a mistake to essentialise those who grew up poor in this or any country as being cast adrift in the big nasty world of words. low literacy rates in any demographic come from the fact they weren't exposed to books, not that they couldn't have been. i actually very much agree with comrade slphie there re: libraries

thart said, books aren't inaccessible either; rn they're some of the cheapest entertainment going. you can grab 3 for 50p in some secondhand places, or pick them up for free at the railway station. but ofc not everyone lives near a secondhand bookshop or a railway station

Statistics do not work in a way that every individual's life experience is accurately reflected in them. If you wanna argue that statistically wealth is not a factor in terms of available leisure time well that's...certainly a theory?

but it is a mistake to essentialise those who grew up poor in this or any country as being cast adrift in the big nasty world of words.

Weird non sequitor, no one itt suggested anything remotley resembling this.

i'm talking about young children though! they're not all sweeping chimneys the moment they get back from school

ime the biggest impact that lower socioeconomic backgrounds is having on children reading is that the tablet is often used to pacify the (very young) child for hours on end while the parent works/cleans/cooks etc, and so the child becomes addicted to the screen at an early age, rather than playing with tactile objects, learning manual creative skills or, hell, reading. parents with more time to be with their children are able to read, although trust me, many of them are still giving their child electronic devices anyway. i'm just glad i was 20+ before i fell to screen addiction

"ime the biggest impact that lower socioeconomic backgrounds is having on children reading is that the tablet is often used to pacify the (very young) child for hours on end while the parent works/cleans/cooks etc, and so the child becomes addicted to the screen"

How is this different from sitting a child in front of the TV?

Other entertainment option have been available for a very long time now

TV doesn't offer any sort of interactive element, so doesn't provide the same kind of psychological satisfaction. I agree there are similarities, but the internet is capable of much more copious attention reward than even the most hyperactive of TV shows. Not even Playdays

Yeah obviously it helps when your parents both themselves read (mine do) but it also helped that I always had lots of time and encouragement from my parents and especially in my mother’s case she was at home to help me with homework and take me to the library and all that. I don’t think I’d have become a reader if both my parents worked multiple jobs and if I got stuck and stopped reading in frustration or something. Also, of all my siblings, I’m the only one who reads regularly. Always been that way despite the same parents and circumstances.

And I watched a ton of TV and had multiple games consoles as well, where is your God now

Plenty of children do have to help their parents out, take care of younger siblings, etc. But obviously the parent's leisure time is a pretty huge factor in whether the child gets introduced to reading at a young age, how much they get read to, how much help they get if struggling with homework, etc.

xpost gyac otm basically

TV clearly more damaging than the tablet, not less - less text, no keyboard, fostering passivity as opposed to active participation.

I hate to be all 'it were better back then' but I can think of loads of smart, imaginative, narratively interesting and deep kids' TV, MAYBE EVEN FROM RECENT YEARS [citation needed] that can stimulate creativity and introspection. I challenge anyone to suggest a mobile game or kids' influencer with similar capabilities. Obviously there are computer games for adults that do this in spadefuls, but they strike me as just as niche as literary fiction. or is Disco Elysium for the children

hey, I watched TV and played Worms Armageddon too

And not to put blame or whatever but me being my parents oldest child definitely did factor in because they had a lot more time to spend on this stuff with me

My cousins who are young all are really into YouTube and that shit to an insane degree but do you know what they really love? When I buy them books and read them to them (I am a+ at doing funny voices no lie). None this is intrinsic!

ofc it isn't! you're doing a great thing there and also showing that kids DO love books when they give them a go

books never lose their appeal, but they require just that tiny bit more mental effort to get into (unless someone is helping out, where i concede the time-available point), and the path of least resistance atm is screens, which is imo a shame

When I was helping a 8 year old with his reading comprehension we bonded over pokemon go. Encourages outside activity, social interaction, the collecting aspect is good for fostering future insufferable record collector impulses. Def more positive than any of the crap I was watching at that age (sorry tmnt u know I love u).

One day hopefully he will pokemon go to the polls.

pokemon go is the touching grass of videogames lol, it is gleefully psychogeographic and not like other games surely haha

xxp I owned 3/4 TMNT because I was a brat when I was six, the Donatello I didn’t get for my birthday still haunts me

I suspect some parents/teachers demonize "screen time" because it's a big handle one can grab and swing at uncertainty. "If I just manage their screen time, they'll turn out ok." Managing other parents' screen time prescriptions becomes the focus of any child socializing.

anyway, back to Gilbert 'cancelling' her own book: this is lunacy. If it's not just some savvy way to bring attention to the book, that is.

As a teacher, I demonize screen time because I'm almost certain it's making my students dumber. Even when I take away their phones, which is a huge battle now because they are so addicted that they refuse, put the phone away only to go get it again within minutes, or just get intensely anxious because they're never physically separated from the phone, their ability to focus on anything in depth is completely shot.

Sure, they're reading and sending a lot of texts, so they're familiar with the mechanics of reading words. But what they don't have is the experience of immersing themselves in anything longer than a few sentences without their attention being pulled in a million directions, which means they're never engaging with reading beyond the surface level. That's the concern - not that they don't read by choice, but that if you assign them a book to read, a lot of them genuinely won't be able to do it.

We're not just seeing this in reading; it's in all subjects. The constant refrain at my school is that the kids just don't get it in the same way they used to. They don't think things out for themselves, they can't work without someone standing over them, so assigning homework is a waste of time because over half won't do it at all, every year the classes get easier, and every year more of the students can't handle even the easy material. It's not just pandemic learning loss; they're more than a year or two years behind, and a lot of high schoolers can't handle work that used to be middle-school-level.

Obviously there are many, many exceptions, and I have plenty of students who could meet the old expectations, but overall the level of school in general has been vastly dumbed down to meet a general decline in academic ability, and imo our growing societal awareness of this is being camouflaged under "pandemic learning loss" when it's obvious that kids spending 6+ hours a day staring at a highly addictive device that scatters focus and distracts from every other way of engaging with the world is going to have some kind of effect on their brain development.

yeah but what evidence do you have of this

j/k lol. ty, good posting, etc

when it's obvious that kids spending 6+ hours a day staring at a highly addictive device that scatters focus and distracts from every other way of engaging with the world is going to have some kind of effect on their brain development.

fwiw me and most of my classmates absolutely did this in the 90's. not saying it was great for our brain development or anything but there were bosses to be beat.

also probably way more time than 6 hours tbf

i'll speak only for myself, but i know my phone has made me dumber, less able to pay attention, less able to read complicate text.

i think it's funny that people are questioning lily dale's observations as a teacher who spends 40-50 hours a day with kids in a learning environment with glib "well we played nintendo a lot" stuff

but ilx has always bristled at the idea that technology can have ill effects on people, but obv if you're here like me you probably have an unhealthy relationship to the internet.

at this stage in the argument we're going to need some sort of actual study distinguishing between different types of screen addiction rather than our own instincts and biases

all i know is that i, who grew up reading, playing on the computer, watching tv, making lego, playing with dinky cars, going birdwatching, am nowadays lamentably addicted to the internet at the expense of anything else, and i suspect i am not alone in this. the poor kids who've not known anything else!

it really feels like the tech has adapted to relentlessly seize and maintain attention, and create dependency, and it simply wasn't anything like this in the 90s

in other words, snap, ums

"That's the concern - not that they don't read by choice, but that if you assign them a book to read, a lot of them genuinely won't be able to do it."

Ok, don't see a major shift here.

I only attended school in England from 14 but I read maybe five books at most and a couple of plays by Shakespeare. If I hadn't started reading SF after I was 15 I wouldn't have any level of reading or engagement in it.

I think if you say none of the children can do any reading anymore then maybe that's an issue. But you are seeing exceptions. "Most of them" to me is as I've seen in school and life beyond - most people just don't read a book and don't see any value in it (they might see value for their children but they will not lead by example).

Which is why reading and writing sentences on phones at least is a bit better.

xps

Call it glib if you want, but discourse amongst the adults and teachers in my time was absolutely this also - that it was making us dumber, less capable of focusing, less patient. I'm not saying they were wrong!

i mean there's a wealth of research on this

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958821000622#sec5

also like yes did we watch a shitload of TV but also TV wasn't in our pockets every second of the day. to compare phones, the addictive qualities of social media (which is inarguable at this point), to pretend it's the same thing is not accurate.

exactly

I couldn't take my Nintendo to class or use it to pass time on the bus ride home. I was on a field trip to the aquarium recently and the kids were largely dead quiet. All on their phones.

i'll speak only for myself, but i know my phone has made me dumber, less able to pay attention, less able to read complicate text.

i think it's funny that people are questioning lily dale's observations as a teacher who spends 40-50 hours a day with kids in a learning environment with glib "well we played nintendo a lot" stuff

but ilx has always bristled at the idea that technology can have ill effects on people, but obv if you're here like me you probably have an unhealthy relationship to the internet.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 7:35 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Otm, I'm sure it's wrecked more of us than we'd care to admit. It's probably been a net negative for the world, all the very good outweighed by all the extremely bad and depressing and mercenary.

All the incentives are changing--the kids know that nearly everything in the future is going to be done online so they gravitate toward learning how to live online. My 8yo has spent the last few days making a bunch of very cool stop motion animation videos. Great, but his goal is not creative fulfillment but to start a Youtube channel with them and get subscribers.

how can we be sure your phones haven't made you dumber on this topic, though?

i'm sure it has!

I try not to demonise screen time largely because of what has been said in this thread - that there is little quantitative research to support the negative press, it feels of the 'kids, tchuh' school of criticism and because, well, I was a dick at school too and it was nothing to do with screens.

But all that said, all of what Lily said *feels* true, at the level of experience. My school has noticeably changed in numerous ways since 2020 and even if it can't be pinned on one thing, it shouldn't detract from the real challenges schools are facing - with erratic learning behaviours and inattention, sure, but also anxiety disorders and increasing neurodiversity (none of which we're equipped to cope with). It's not a dismissal of particular texts or particular kinds of texts, it's an acknowledgement that *teaching* is in and of itself absurdly hard at the moment; in this context, saying 'what they need is a bit of Dostoevsky' feels like a line out of Allan Bloom.

That study linked above recommends different levels of intervention in the classroom and that's absolutely fine. To say: if those kids weren't looking at TV on phone they'd be looking at books is something I am sceptical about

xps

Portable consoles absolutely existed but yeah I'll admit that wasn't where my particular addictions were at, technology prob not there yet either. Currently would giving a kid a switch be less detrimental than a phone? Not a rhetorical question.

i think it's funny that people are questioning lily dale's observations as a teacher who spends 40-50 hours a day with kids in a learning environment with glib "well we played nintendo a lot" stuff

xp
not equipped to answer that really, but I did think your example of spending 6+ hours beating a boss was interesting, because it attests to a high degree of focus on a single task, not like watching 5 min. videos while doing other tasks for 6 hours

anyway, I can tell you as a lol media scholar that there is no consensus on any of this

I don't mean to talk over what Lily and Chinaski face. Just looking at what they say from pre-smartphone experience and my current experience as someone who reads quite a lot now and see how little that activity is valued by the general population.

xp I said 6+ because some of them do have time scheduled up with things like sports and jobs, and some schools don't allow phones, but the upper range is definitely "every waking hour."

The difference is that in the 90s you had some genuine time off from screens. That's the huge difference I see between our generation and theirs. I also have a hard time focusing when there are screens around. I also read much, much less when I have the option of going on ILX or playing the stupid swipy Doctor Who game. But if I disconnect, and go somewhere with no internet, my brain resets more or less to normal. My focus improves, I can think again; I can read more than a page at a time. But for kids who have never truly disconnected, who get anxious if the phone is a few yards away from them, all that happens when you take away the phone is that they go into withdrawal. Their focus doesn't come back because it was never there to start with.

I particularly worry about the kids who get handed iPads as small children to keep them quiet. I'm starting to see all these kids who never learned how to regulate their behavior or emotions or anything else without the phone to hypnotize them, so I end up with a classroom of teenagers who want to do well in school and aren't trying to be disruptive but can't stop shouting and getting into each other's space. You end up making the choice between a quiet classroom with kids on phones and a shouty classroom where phones are away.

"That's the concern - not that they don't read by choice, but that if you assign them a book to read, a lot of them genuinely won't be able to do it."

Ok, don't see a major shift here.

Idk what to tell you; as a teacher I do see a major shift in what my students are able to handle. I've always taught a subject that a lot of people find difficult and don't particularly like. The level at which we're able to teach has been steadily going down.

I think what's hard to convey here is that it's not just a matter of "If they weren't on their phones they'd be reading." It's not just a matter of learning loss. It's that all the things that require extended focus and thought are less appealing, if not impossible, for attention spans trained on TikTok and social media and the constant presence of the phone. If students were watching movies and TV on their phones I wouldn't be as concerned; it's the constant flitting from one thing to another, never focusing, never thinking, hypnotizing yourself, fast-forwarding through hours of every day, that I think I'm seeing the results of in my classroom.

fast-forwarding through hours of every day

a bit like an ambien addiction iirc

there's probably something there but the world is so fucked up right now I'm puzzled by the focus on academic performance of all things

Well yeah everyone hates assigned reading, always has afaict

I’ve always found it strange that this is apparently a commonplace even among ppl who enjoyed reading, I loved a lot of the books I “had to” read for school! & even when the discussion/analysis was uninteresting it never killed my enjoyment of the books & I never got why it should. Nobody give me a wedgie

But if we’re talking about education in the uk books in translation just aren’t in it. Literature means English literature and that’s that

xp - ok Lily. I am also speaking as someone who can read within the proximity of my phone. I usually read a few chapters of a novel then can scroll on twitter for a while then back to the book.

And for me the internet is a very positive experience on the main. Very lucky to be living my life with it.

Well wins from what I've heard you do at least get the occasional US author included. Portuguese curriculum in my day had zero Brazilian authors! And no international lit whatsoever.

I enjoyed the books for assigned reading that I was always going to enjoy anyway but I was already litpilled; the ones I didn't like though were absolute torture and much worse than if I had read them on my own, takes up a lot more time if you're spending weeks on dissecting them.

But also I do think there's a slight "oh now this is work" aspect that makes reading stuff slightly less pleasurable, I know the books I read for book club are a bit like that to me because there's a contrarian "I am not reading exactly what I feel like reading right now" side to it.

xpost

also ones that were so-so became more leaning towards dislike with every class

obv if you're here like me you probably have an unhealthy relationship to the internet.

otm

the books we had to read were always about one thing and you had to get it right if it was about something else or about multiple things you were wrong and you failed the class no wonder I (and most of my generation) hate classic literature now

there's probably something there but the world is so fucked up right now I'm puzzled by the focus on academic performance of all things

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 4:08 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there is a bit of "old flavor of discipline" vs "new flavor of discipline" going on in this discussion but i do think that generally speaking the social media life is more disempowering on a personal level, for me at least.

of course it's terrible

I had time recently to think about that question a lot and I realized social media coaxed my development in positive ways I couldn't have foreseen in 2008 or whenever.

Academic performance is just the most convenient metric available to me since I'm a teacher. I'm less worried about grades or test scores than about this general sense of 'why can't they do this / retain this / understand things at this level, when they used to be able to?" that teachers talk about among themselves.

again I'm sure there's something there but it's so easy for this kind of thing to turn reactionary and moralistic and there are structural reasons why blah blah blah

why I can't even complete a thought for example

I had time recently to think about that question a lot and I realized social media coaxed my development in positive ways I couldn't have foreseen in 2008 or whenever.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 10:25 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would urge people - especially people who still post on something as archaic as a message board - to consider how different your entry to the internet and social media was as an adult as compared to say a 10 year old today who grew up completely in the post smartphone/app world.

i would even suggest many kids today aren't really on "the internet" at all in the way that we conceive it, rather a collection of apps.

again I'm sure there's something there but it's so easy for this kind of thing to turn reactionary and moralistic and there are structural reasons why blah blah blah

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Tuesday, 13 June 2023 15:34 (twelve minutes ago) link

why stop a thought just because you are afraid it will "turn reactionary"?

lol treeship that's not what they're saying and you know it

Do appreciate you trying to bring this thread full circle tho.

I have spent enough time with groups of kids who don't interact and instead just stare at their phones watching tiktok vids or playing first person shooter games to know it's a "thing", it's bad enough among adults obv, look at what it's all done to the world? So many positive things about the internet/being online but I'm not sure the scales aren't tipped in favor of the negative elements.

we need to institute thought reform to throw away the vulgar perspectives of individualism and liberalism and the cultural thought of European-American reactionary bourgeoisie

The internet has improved our lives in so many ways

Susan Sarandon retweeted a video, posted by Kim Dotcom, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explains to Jordan Peterson that Ukraine "provoked" Russia into invading Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/kNjNYoq1D2

— Post-Left Watch (@PostLeftWatch) June 13, 2023

all of those people are adults

I think lizard people don't reach full adulthood until age 80.

_Well yeah everyone hates assigned reading, always has afaict_

I’ve always found it strange that this is apparently a commonplace even among ppl who enjoyed reading, I loved a lot of the books I “had to” read for school! & even when the discussion/analysis was uninteresting it never killed my enjoyment of the books & I never got why it should. Nobody give me a wedgie

But if we’re talking about education in the uk books in translation just aren’t in it. Literature means English literature and that’s that

i would even suggest many kids today aren't really on "the internet" at all in the way that we conceive it, rather a collection of apps.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

this is OTM

I love that Malcolm book on Plath-Hughes.

This is a very good discussion, but doesn't really match the thread title. Guess too late to start another one. Just saying.

God, the 2023 curriculum texts are so much better than when I was in school, fucking hell.

I basically agree that capitalist incentives have totally derailed whatever "the internet" could have been and what it is now is destroying everyone's mental health while also inadvertently creating new relationships that are deeply threatening to the people who own shit which is why the cancel culture panic exists

ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi

Surprised to see her on the list. I thought she was cancelled.

This is a very good discussion, but doesn't really match the thread title.

I did talk a bit about console culture.

deeply threatening to the people who own shit

in what way?

have you ever been counselled

i would urge people - especially people who still post on something as archaic as a message board - to consider how different your entry to the internet and social media was as an adult as compared to say a 10 year old today who grew up completely in the post smartphone/app world.

i would even suggest many kids today aren't really on "the internet" at all in the way that we conceive it, rather a collection of apps.

le post qui boomed

an obvious example is a strongman government panicking about their crimes being openly discussed on forums they hoped would only stimulate investment or whatever

cancel culture is basically the liberal civil society version of this because forget the content for a minute and look at who owns what and which side they're on in the culture war and it's pretty stark xps

JKR is terrified of the trans kids taking her massive castle away

Surprised to see her on the list. I thought she was cancelled.

I think she mealy-mouthed her way out of that one or people just forgot.

Also saw Alice Walker listed on something recently; she seems to be skimming along ok despite her delving into anti-semitic nonsense in recent years. They're even re-making the Color Purple.

an obvious example is a strongman government panicking about their crimes being openly discussed on forums they hoped would only stimulate investment or whatever

cancel culture is basically the liberal civil society version of this because forget the content for a minute and look at who owns what and which side they're on in the culture war and it's pretty stark xps

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 12:25 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know what you are referring to in your first sentence, but I don't see the ability for technology/social media to assist grassroots organizing as outweighing the surveillance effects assisting authoritarian/capitalist regimes.

the dialectic bro

actually I don't either but both are real and cancel culture is one of the products of these contradictions

XPs

I've just come off a half-hour phone conversation with two parent desperate to get her 13yr old to read. It's the most common conversation I have these days. My answer was along the lines of 'fuck alone knows and if I had the answer you think I'd be slowly destroying myself doing this?'.

As a counterpoint though, and along the lines of what gyac said, we have the most extraordinary discussions in class, always prompted by a text. For instance, teaching Romeo & Juliet at the moment is like teaching a new text - and I mean that literally: like Pierre Menard has intervened and rewritten the thing. The discussions I've had in the last couple of years about consent, agency, sexuality etc, have all been led by kids willing to take on preconceived notions about a whole range of liberal ideals. It makes them better writers and thinkers without a doubt. It's magnificent.

And kids still hate big Ted Hughes, FWIW :)

I recall an English prof of mine in the late 90s matter-of-factly telling me that she assigned shorter books than she did when she began teaching 20 years earlier, because student attention spans had decreased during that time. It seems impossible to imagine that it hasn't gotten measurably worse in the 20+ years since.

I'm one of those guys who looks at the date stamps on those library cards in uni books to find out when the Penguin edition of Daniel Deronda was last checked out (answer: 2004).

I loved the first sketch of the new season of I Think You Should Leave (the TV pundit) because yeah yeah everyone is always on their phone, if not actually then at least potentially, and it's dragging society INTO THE GUTTER -- We talk plenty about these writ-large consequences, but not as much about the prosaic texture of the gutter, where the sights and sounds and smells are no bueno: Mumbled fragments, yawning faces, hunched and twisted bodies.

there's probably something there but the world is so fucked up right now I'm puzzled by the focus on academic performance of all things

I think it's more the other way round

The generation most accused of this lack of critical thinking skills is the one that is closest to your political values (and my own). The supposed existence of critical thinking skills in the past did not prevent ppl from voting in the likes of Nixon and Reagan. I really don't see how this argument could be made from the left.

And kids still hate big Ted Hughes, FWIW :)

Btw Chinaski in relation to your post (both halves), there must be something interesting in Romeo & Juliet to get past the vocabulary barrier. I studied that from when I was 13-15 and our teacher was seriously dry; we never discussed anything fun like that or were encouraged to look into it beyond surface level. Even now if I’m trying to get someone to read or engage with a book (see post above re my cousins, but also applies to friends I want to read something), I try to always meet them where they are. Not everyone will be a great reader but it’s possible to find a place for it in everyone’s lives. So why do the students engage so well with Shakespeare? Because you must be doing something right there, and there’s probably an answer there for your other student’s parents.

The generation most accused of this lack of critical thinking skills is the one that is closest to your political values (and my own). The supposed existence of critical thinking skills in the past did not prevent ppl from voting in the likes of Nixon and Reagan. I really don't see how this argument could be made from the left.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 13 June 2023 17:25 (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the planet is literally on fire. inequality is worse than it has ever been in modern times. the liberal consensus has been holed below the waterline. young people lean left because they're desperate, because the jig is up on capitalism, but that doesn't mean they're not suffering terrible mental health as a direct result of device addiction and social media

that said i'm not sure 'critical thinking skills' is the issue so much as concentration and ability to apply oneself to extended study - although for the legions of young andrew tate stans i gather deliberate, trollish abandonment of critical thought is part of the whole ghoulish rigmarole

Daniel, I know what you’re saying is true, but that doesn’t mean that the kids today know more than “take hormones and fuck the fascists.” Most of them get their politics from memes and such, and that’s fine, but when I was a 22 year old, I was absorbed in queer theory and all sorts of other related stuff. My students today can’t get through a short Halberstam or Puar article without absolutely losing their minds and giving up.

Again, I’d rather have memes create leftists and trans liberation folks and weird queer kids than drooling fashies, but it is also ludicrous ime to say that people like me, Lily, and imago are being alarmist and reactionary. Kids don’t read much and lack some of the skills in processing and synthesizing information that I used to take for granted. I recognize that there are structural reasons for this, but phones, appification, and the commodification of every hobby that kids might have has been absolutely detrimental to the way that they learn.

That so many here who aren’t teachers and aren’t dealing with many kids (beyond their own) are so up in arms about what we’re saying is simply evidence that we’re correct ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

also i will say that “critical thinking skills” isn’t the correct term, it’s very much about concentration, time, information processing, and information synthesis.

so yeah, my bad for bring the “critical thinking skills” canard into the discussion

I typed a long answer gyac that is out of step with the current convo but I'm going to post it anyway!

Eh, that's a tough one to answer but I think it's something to do with what you said: 'meeting where they are' - literally and metaphorically. And listening, listening. Attention as the purest form of generosity stuff. My lessons are probably a bit slower than most because I want to hear what people think and for them to feel valued. And I suspect my style is quite guileless, which is to say I don't fake being interested; conversations about texts aren't foreclosed, no matter how many times you've read them etc.

As for Shakespeare, the language is a barrier of course, but you sort of smuggle it in via lots of conversations around the themes and repetition. It's a miracle when it comes off. Also, it's 2.30 on a Tuesday afternoon, it's hot, kids are dicks and who gives a shit about Macbeth's hamartia.

All of which is to say kids can and do think critically, all the time, given the space to do so. It's also true that I've got two kids out of 25 going on to do A-Level English next year; 3 out of 50 last year. Nationally, numbers are down 35%. Degree-level study is similar. I don't know what the decline indicates, honestly, or how we measure its impact if there is any. No one ever gave a shit about poetry anyway and the novel is a bourgeois conceit that's had its day.

Macduff's hamartia (country over family) much more compelling, I agree

as characters,

lady macduff > witches > malcolm > macduff > lady macbeth >> banquo >>>>>>> ross >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> macbeth

macbeth is super cancelled

When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.

And I'll happily catastrophise about this stuff with the best of you but what's happening in classrooms with conversations about gender, sexuality and ethnicity (alongside the Tate bullshit, ofc) suggests there's something else happening that we're going to have let play out.

information moves so fast these days and social media conditions people to be seen as being on the 'right' side of a discussion, so lots of people seek the opinions of those more studied on the subject and just begin parroting them, rather than reading them as a jumping off point for more immersion on the topic.

i.e., jumping right to the result (a belief) while treating the 'discovery' process as something other people do for their benefit.

though that definitely doesn't just apply to young people, that I think has to do with social media/"internet" addiction as a whole.

xxposts

i have zilch of value to add to this convo but just wanted to note that this morning i met with a 20-something in a gov agency to consult on recordkeeping and lordy was the attention span hopeless on that one (and i'm married to a probably undiagnosed adhd case!). i'm still shocked by the lack of guardrails people have when they're trying to think through work. i have a coworker like that and every time she opens her mouth it's honestly breathtaking. and here i am, going even further off-topic in this very thread!

itt a consultant asks if you saw the attention span on that one

Inculcate love of reading by sending young people to ilxor.com.

i would even suggest many kids today aren't really on "the internet" at all in the way that we conceive it, rather a collection of apps

UMS is correct. kids nowadays mostly aren't reading and writing on message boards, they're mostly watching videos

but that doesn't mean they're not suffering terrible mental health as a direct result of device addiction and social media

there's also the effect of a year or more of lockdown, in which kids sat on devices just scrolling through bs or playing video games, instead of being in school learning things

like my evolution from somewhat of a barely left of center with no real unified ethos to a capitalism-hating, anti-religious, anti-capital punishment socialist was probably a 5 year journey that was rooted in college courses, group discussions, copious amounts of reading, and a constant need to apply what I learned to saw how it was playing out in society. and lots of stumbles and embarrassments along the way.

Also, we've been conditioned to think that every single discussion can be boiled down to a single link - "got a link?" seems to be a reply to anything that is asserted on a subject, when in reality, acquiring that level of knowledge may actually require reading a 300 page book, with any article only being a more palatable, cliff notes version. Like if I was in person discussing something I'd acquired years of knowledge on, I might mention where I learned it, but I'm not citing specific pages of the books I read.

but online, you're expected to find a corresponding link that says exactly what you just said, in a matter of seconds, which kind of implies to everyone that all knowledge can be contained within an article link that takes 5 minutes or less to read. and it affects me too because I find myself having less stomach for long reading of articles than I used to have 15 years ago.

xxxpost

table, I think what you're saying in your last post is quite different from what you said in the previous one! even if I were to accept everything in your post that still wouldn't mean that the ADD leftists are a REASON the world is fucked up right now, as opposed to a consequence.

I will say that the issue of leftists skim reading texts and going off half cocked on that really isn't unfamiliar to me for leftists in my generation, and indeed wasn't for my dad's memories of hanging out in leftist circles in 70's Hamburg either, I mean it's kind of an archetype! but I've made too many appeals to precedent here already.

But for kids who have never truly disconnected, who get anxious if the phone is a few yards away from them, all that happens when you take away the phone is that they go into withdrawal. Their focus doesn't come back because it was never there to start with.

I particularly worry about the kids who get handed iPads as small children to keep them quiet. I'm starting to see all these kids who never learned how to regulate their behavior or emotions or anything else without the phone to hypnotize them, so I end up with a classroom of teenagers who want to do well in school and aren't trying to be disruptive but can't stop shouting and getting into each other's space. You end up making the choice between a quiet classroom with kids on phones and a shouty classroom where phones are away.

― Lily Dale, Tuesday, 13 June 2023 15:03 (one hour ago)

I wonder if this is similar to how we react to drugs and alcohol? People who didn't venture into these worlds until our 20s will, in aggregate, have vastly different relationship with these inebriants than those who were introduced to them when they were in their early-teen years, or even earlier.

If you are over 35, you likely spent some part of your day-to-day existence without the internet; if you are over 25, same regarding smart-phones or tablets. Thus, in aggregate, these populations are going to have a relationship with these items that is wildly different (including the level of focus and dependence upon the objects) than those who basically were raised by phones/tablets.

The biggest difference I've encountered between '90s kids and this generation: we oldsters didn't have to devote a sizable chunk of our leisure time monitoring social media for negative messaging about us. Some of the stories I hear from my friends' junior-high-age kids make their lives sound like a hyper-intense political campaign, requiring constant vigilance of the online world to counter negative messaging, or rapid-response posts/videos with oppo research to counter what was thrown at you. People saying some bad words about you at a party is nothing compared to the entire school being exposed to the TikTok-equivalent of an attack ad aimed at you (with the implication that you need to hit back ASAP, as an unanswered attack is an accepted one).

which both confirms the trouble and makes the thread title relevant again

Thanks for that reply, Chinaski, and there’s been so much lazy trolling itt that you don’t need to apologise for this sincere reply.