Thursday, September 19, 2019

Cancel culture

As explained by the Washington Post, "cancel culture" is in large part a result of the nature of social media:
Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it.

But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen.
I have also noticed some people on Twitter pointing out that people so upset with it tend to only think of the attacks run by those on the Left, not about those run by the wingnuts of the Right:



(I see someone in the thread says Chapelle mentioned Kaepernick in his special.  I wonder how briefly?)




1 comment:

  1. I guess you could always walk out of a person's show if you didn't like it, or turn off the television. Social media exaggerated that sort of response. You can block other bloggers, of course. You can lock your own blog and make it exclusive between yourself and friends. (Twitter does the same in its own silly little way). On Facebook you can 'unfriend' someone (sounding creepy yet?) or even more extreme, block them - a blocking on Facebook is very disturbing; not only does the person who blocked you disappear from your wall (and you from theirs), but you will find no trace of the blocking online, or the person who blocked you: it's like a complete unpersoning. (It also leads to some absurd situations - say you'd been having a discussion with them on your wall a few days prior: suddenly their comments vanish completely, so you look like you're having a conversation with no-one).

    I can't remember the Kaepernick discussion on Chappelle's show. I've seen it once in full and then rewatched a good deal of it, as what Chappelle was doing so intrigued me. I don't think he mentioned it much - maybe as a back up to his discussion of Kevin Hart and Anthony Bourdain?

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