What I find fascinating about the current debates about cancel culture is that it ignores, on both sides, the fact that it isn't new. The only thing that has changed is the balance of power.

From a US perspective - In the past, social shunning and ostracizing was used as a way to norm the culture for the predominately white, christian culture. Cancel culture was literally being run out of your town, and/or excluded from social and religious events. This had a huge chilling effect.

Now, the power belongs to a previously marginalized group (lgbtq/minority individuals) to 'cancel' people.

It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways.

> It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways.

I think this is an extremely skewed perspective on the whole issue.

It's not us vs. them - cancel culture was, and still is, driven by ignorance and sensationalism. People like the rush of a good story, regardless of whether it's true or not - that's what makes cancel culture so unjust.

Whether it's a gay person being called a Satan's spawn, or Richard Stallman being called a pedophile, or any other case - all cases have one thing in common: exaggeration for the sake of sensationalism, and punishment being completely out of proportion with the crime (note that by "crime" here I strictly mean "the act that is condemned by the group doing the cancellation", regardless of its actual criminality).

If you're a member of the previously-oppressed-now-powerful group, you may rejoice at the thought of retribution on those that caused you (your group) so much injustice in the past, but I hope you realize how hypocritical that makes the whole "tolerance" story that your group has been pushing for the last few decades. But I guess that power corrupts, no matter who's wielding it.

What on earth are you talking about. 7 years ago a woman made a joke before she jumped on a flight and landed to see it make the world news.

Are you seriously suggesting that could happen before social media?

Perhaps you're quite young and don't realise quite how different the world has become over the past 10 years.

I'm not quite young, and I do understand that the world is different. I have lived most of these changes as an adult, and believe that the world is worse today than it has been, if for no other reason than a complete inability to escape connection to society for any reason thanks to technology.

But.

Yes, these things could happen before social media. Like most things, social media has absolutely amped up the effects, but this existed before.

Hell, go all the way back to the Red Scare and the various black books that existed in the, what 1940's and 1950's? Say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you were immediately labeled a commie and shunned.

That's what I'm saying. It has always existed. I just think it's a "bigger problem" for people now and there is more push back on cancel culture today than in the past because it's the previous mainstream that is being cancelled instead of an already at-risk community.

"Cancel culture" was e.g. gays getting beaten up by random strangers just for existing, and now it's e.g. getting fired for telling a homophobic joke in public.