Social Media Outrage/Cancel Culture

[old_gregg]

do you understand what cancel culture is? nobody would blame cancel culture if a news outlet refused to run a story about a bigfoot sighting or the rothschilds being lizard people and the editor threw a hissy fit and quit.

[swampfrog]

Another resignation. Cancel culture in the regular media also continues its march.

Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.

But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.

The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.

Making all of this worse, The Intercept — while gradually excluding the co-founders from any role in its editorial mission or direction, and making one choice after the next to which I vocally objected as a betrayal of our core mission — continued publicly to trade on my name in order to raise funds for journalism it knew I did not support. It purposely allowed the perception to fester that I was the person responsible for its journalistic mistakes in order to ensure that blame for those mistakes was heaped on me rather than the editors who were consolidating control and were responsible for them.

[swampfrog]

I don’t know if we have any real idea what will happen to society 10-15 years down the road because I don’t know if any of us truly appreciate what FB/twitter/reddit/cougarstadium have become today. Is it the modern day town square or something much more insidious? We as a society are figuring that out and hopefully our better angels will prevail.

Reflexively I give little time and effort to the Twittersphere arguments you seem so worried about. Do some people lose their jobs? Are some folks doxxed? Is that bad? Yes, yes and sometimes yes. Do I worry about Chris Pratt being bullied online? No.

Your comprehension of meme-complex is a misunderstanding. Meme-complex is a reference to groups of memes as described by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, and others. Also called a Memeplex.

Social media opinions come from somewhere, there is a link to the real world. That memeplexes propagate through social media at an accelerated pace is self-evident. A set of ideas (a Memeplex) is being transmitted through the population that rejects the enlightenment project entirely. Reason, logic, science, the rule of law, all of it. It shuts down debate as a tool of the oppressor. Free speech as a concept is a tool of the oppressor.

This is noted by multiple free speech advocates. Noam Chomsky recently commented on it:

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[originalsocal]

Were the Romans taken down by sick burn memes that were perpetuated by Russian and Chinese bot farms?

Neither the Chinese nor the Russians, a trace of IP addresses shows it all coming from ROME itself!! Many of those memes containing viruses delivered by A TROJAN HORSE!!

Thanks!! I'll be here all week!

[fusnik]

Have you ever examined the influence that a relatively small group of committed activists can have on a society? Should attention on the biggest political snake oil salesman in US history preclude any and all exploration of meme-complexes that may prove very harmful to society in the future--where similar meme-complexes have indeed taken down previous cultures?

Were the Romans taken down by sick burn memes that were perpetuated by Russian and Chinese bot farms?

I don’t know if we have any real idea what will happen to society 10-15 years down the road because I don’t know if any of us truly appreciate what FB/twitter/reddit/cougarstadium have become today. Is it the modern day town square or something much more insidious? We as a society are figuring that out and hopefully our better angels will prevail.

Reflexively I give little time and effort to the Twittersphere arguments you seem so worried about. Do some people lose their jobs? Are some folks doxxed? Is that bad? Yes, yes and sometimes yes. Do I worry about Chris Pratt being bullied online? No.

Now I try to slog through some of your thoughts. They honestly read like a white dude worried that he can’t say colored anymore and the implications that will have on his well being.

[swampfrog]

Actually that is ridiculous.

Have you never perused the replies of POTUS’ tweets?

Yes.

Have you ever read the comment sections of anything Ben Shapiro writes/comments on?

Also yes.

Absolute cesspool. But let’s focus on this and give the Tim Pools of the world the ‘excuse’ to vote for Trump.

Have you ever examined the influence that a relatively small group of committed activists can have on a society? Should attention on the biggest political snake oil salesman in US history preclude any and all exploration of meme-complexes that may prove very harmful to society in the future--where similar meme-complexes have indeed taken down previous cultures?

[Applejack]

****Anonymous internet posters fight about anonymous internet posters' fights****

[fusnik]

Even more shocking is that every major news outlet ran a story on it. Ridiculous.

Actually that is ridiculous.

Have you never perused the replies of POTUS’ tweets?

Have you ever read the comment sections of anything Ben Shapiro writes/comments on?

Absolute cesspool. But let’s focus on this and give the Tim Pools of the world the ‘excuse’ to vote for Trump.

[swampfrog]

A bunch of anonymous twitter handles starting internet fights?

Shocker.

Even more shocking is that every major news outlet ran a story on it. Ridiculous.

[falafel]

I think he was the only MCU actor to not appear in a Biden commercial?

He wasn't even the only one, not the biggest star. Robert Downey Jr. didn't appear, but no one gave him any crap. Crap is coming at Pratt, in part, because of his church affiliation.

[Northwestcoug]

If cancel culture ends up destroying the TV careers of 2 obnoxious lawyers by the end of this year, can it be all that bad?

[fusnik]

Twitter going after anyone who vouches for Chris Pratt.

Embedded Tweet

A bunch of anonymous twitter handles starting internet fights?

Shocker.

[UVACoug]

I think he was the only MCU actor to not appear in a Biden commercial?

Oh, well ... he certainly deserves to be cancelled for that then. What a jerk.

[Katy Lied]

I think he was the only MCU actor to not appear in a Biden commercial?

[UVACoug]

Twitter going after anyone who vouches for Chris Pratt.

Embedded Tweet

Wait ... what did Chris Pratt do?