Talk:Cancel culture

What about persons canceled posthumously?
I was thinking the recent argument over the status of Doctor Seuss might fit on this page somehow, or maybe some of the more contentious sate removals/building renamings.-Flandres (talk) 07:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah I agree, the Seuss manufactroversy could fit in here; feel free to add it in. -- Goatspeed. 20:41, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * And so it is done! And as a reminder to future editors, we just want some of the more notable/popularly remembered examples here, not every freaking one.-Flandres (talk) 21:10, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

The list of 'cancelled people' might become a problem in the future
I'm not saying that we should nuke it right now. Just remembering what happenened to the BreadTube, Stopped Clock and Reversed stopped clock lists, so I believe it shouldn't be bloated. Maybe a category would be better? GeeJayK (talk) 03:06, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, we need a few examples just to show what we mean and discuss how the phenomena affects individual people. I already addressed your objection in the thread above-I said this list was not to be expanded too much, keeping it to very high profile examples.-Flandres (talk) 03:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, now that I give this more thought, a category for canceled people could be useful. I'm just worried it would become a source of endless edit wars as people defend their favored celebrities or something.-Flandres (talk) 05:22, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe a useful guideline would not be to keep a list of 'cancelled people' when we move this to mainspace. I understand the need for a few examples, but I think it'd be more useful to express that through the main body. Basically, make sure that the examples are used to explain certain parts of the concept, not just "this is something a bad person said". It's fine in draft imo for now but I think we should remove it once it enters namespace.
 * Linehan and Rowling in particular show a few examples on how 'cancelling' can affect someone and the people around them. Linehan became a raving lunatic at the slightest amount of criticism back in the 90s and seems to never have stopped digging his own grave. Rowling meanwhile isn't so much interesting because of what she said or the actual criticism (yes she's a TERF), but because of the seeming "snapback" effect that it appears to have caused. It suddenly wasn't enough to just hate Rowling, no you had to hate Harry Potter as well, resulting in reaching for complaints about representation in a book series from the early 2000s and doing the classic "reinterpret the themes of a children's novel to have adult themes" thing. On the other end, you'd find people who otherwise really aren't bigots who say that they stand with Rowling, because from their end, they basically saw a social media mob overnight tell them that their favorite stories are completely awful and written by an awful person. If you want people to understand where the criticism is coming from, you need some common ground, but the criticism mob basically opted to burn the easiest way to find common ground in order to find themselves justified in hating Rowling. 14:35, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The Seuss manufactroversy was IMHO a useful gateway to a general discussion of "cancel culture" and historic sensitivity over children's media (and to note how the fundies and right wing trolls sure don't have a problem "cancelling" media with morals they don't like :) ) so I added a nice long section there. Rowling definitely might be a good gateway to explore the mob mentality of Twitter... no matter what you think about her transphobic remarks, left-wing mob vigilantism isn't any better than right-wing mob vigilantism, and Twitter culture sure encourages a lot of that crap on both sides. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 15:01, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe not interesting for most of the visitors on this site. But we had this case here in Brazil last year that I find very symbolic and illustrates this point very well. Basically, this actress, was cancelled last year by the Twitter mob because her great-grandfather burned a pack of documents regarding the slaves that were freed in the XIX. According to the mob, these documents prevented the slave-owners from being punished. The truth was, in fact, that he burned these documents in order to prevent the Brazilian state to compensate these very slave-owners.
 * Two other cases that I find interesting and relevant enough (yeah, I'm the one bloating the list right now) are Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein. Also, this one is a must IMO. GeeJayK (talk) 15:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow! I actually know who that person is!
 * Also, I agree with the recommendation Sirius made. It does not have to be a list per se. However, since cancel culture is a term whose definition varies depending on who you are talking to I thought it would be best to have concrete examples.-Flandres (talk) 15:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's a very broad concept. Maybe one case per "kind" of cancellation? GeeJayK (talk) 15:50, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's a very broad concept. Maybe one case per "kind" of cancellation? GeeJayK (talk) 15:50, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

There are...
... literally no depths to which you lot will not sink. Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Additions to the Leftist Infighting subheading
I think ContraPoints would be a good one to add to this section, but I am too lazy to do a whole writeup on that particular controversy. She has talked pretty extensively about her cancellation so it shouldn't be hard to get her perspective. Really the difficult perspective to attain is that of the alleged cancellation mob, since it is inherently a formless group of angry people on twitter. Milea Lyles

Stanford University
Does this belong here?

The 'rule of thumb' is a concoction - no actual details are provided and 'a thumb' is roughly an inch wide (though 'rough and ready' would be a reasonable substitute). Anna Livia (talk) 00:18, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * This morning, a certain news website popular with Silicon Valley VC / IT types posted what appears to be the genesis of this story, this archived link recording some Stanford IT "harmful language initiative" list. It blew up pretty quickly, because having run out of ideas I guess, Woke Derangement Syndrome has taken over the Valley VC crowd (as evidenced by the Elon Musk). The popularization appears to be this story in the conservative/libertarian student news letter The Stanford Review. I will say that from my perspective, the Stanford list in the archive is very, very cringe and actually rather laughable, like someone had an assignment to make this, was really, really stretching to make a word / term quota, and added a lot of things no one would dream thinking of as harmful. But this is a case where outrage culture is really making it difficult for me to figure out the true notability and context of this. The Stanford Review article is a perfect demonstration; that article itself is pretty cringe with its use of snarl words, misuse of 1984 analogies, and "woe is me white male" grievance-begging. So cringe all around I guess, not much to do until something less cringe-y comes along. The story has not spread to too many other news sites so far, so we'll see if anyone else cares. BobJohnson (talk) 03:53, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * If there was a law it would have a 'monarch, regnal year or date, and number'. And 'nitty-gritty' which is also sometimes slated as being racist probably has some connection with 'nit-nurse' and similar terms.
 * How come Mecca/Makkah, 'whitewash' and 'blackguard' have not been put on the list (only some of which words will be missed); along with Madame Butterfly and The Mikado? Anna Livia (talk) 20:28, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Don't give them ideas. :)
 * I haven't heard Mikado, but Madame Butterfly (along with Turandot) really is early 20th century Orientalism quaint in its plotline. From my perspective the "solution" for that is less "THE BAN" or "THAT'S RACIST" vs IMHO just to take it for what it is (the excellent music for a start), and chalk any cheese up to the time period, the initial things you get with "civilization x discovers foreign culture y", in a time where culture was separated by slow boats and trains and people had, er, certain "paradigms". A similar phenom happened in the 1960s with "Rock music discovers India" (insert unnecessary sitar sound here) and "Oh those natives are more than just 'bad guys' for John Wayne to shoot" (insert noble savage style Native American cedar flutes in New Age music). Even the world that brought about 1980s New Age wasn't as connected as it is now, where the hip Western kids are listening to K-Pop and watching anime (and I'm sure vice versa). New opera productions are, of course, welcome to smooth out the "early 20th century warts" a bit. At least Madame Butterfly isn't completely serious colonialist cringe like, say, the narration of a rightfully obscure Edward Elgar masque called "Crown of India". BobJohnson (talk) 20:54, 22 December 2022 (UTC)