Ah, cancel culture: The phrase that brings together the twin pleasures of alliteration, and your own failures somehow being someone else’s fault. That latter part is one of the takeaways from a new Katt Williams interview that’s circulating on the internet this week, after the veteran comic was asked about the topic on The Joe Budden Podcast, and spent the next few minutes carefully disassembling the entire concept.
In his response (which begins at 9:29 or so in the above video), Williams quickly points out the central logical fallacy of the whole “cancel culture” premise, i.e., that it’s really just a way of saying that you’re allowed to say whatever you like, and people are then allowed to not like those things that you said. He also notes that calls for more sensitive language have much of their roots in minority culture, since, historically, it’s generally been people of color who’ve been the ones getting slurs and insults hurled at them from people in positions of privilege and power. And, ultimately, Williams—after a concise and clear analysis of the various angles of the topic—brings it back to a simple question of whether the people complaining about this stuff understand the ways that restrictions and boundaries can help shape and supplement art. Or, to put it in his words: “If you want to offend somebody, nobody took those words away from you… Look, if these are the confines that keep you from doing the craft God put you to, then it probably ain’t for you.”
All of which carries some extra weight in light of the fact that this is, well, Katt Williams saying it, one of the most notoriously filthy and contentious comics of the last several decades. Between his stand-up sets, his love of calling-out rivals in interviews, and his extensive troubles with the police, Williams is not, for lack of a better word, a guy you would automatically assume to have put a lot of thought into minimizing harm with his work. But, as the man himself says: “Growth is part of being an adult.”
328 Comments
Okay. Let’s see what he thinks if a tweet from 2011 costs him a job.
You write for a website (and family of websites) that just tried to paint someone as a racist because in 1999 at age 19 her parents made her go to a ball that had started allowing Black people to join an insufficient amount of time (20 years) prior to that.Maybe take a couple days off from pretending that the right-wing boogeyman version of “cancel culture” is the only one that exists.
What the fuck are you actually talking about
Ellie Kemper was crowned in a ball that had semi-well known KKK roots when she was 19. It came out again this week (since it was previously known), a couple of GMG sites tried to make a thing out of it,but it blew over because people recognize it’s not the story we’re being told it is.So, yeah, ultimately CaNcEl CuLtUrE isn’t the big scary boogeyman it’s made out to be because enough people are perfectly rational and can figure out if someone did something that deserves consequences.
So, yeah, ultimately CaNcEl CuLtUrE isn’t the big scary boogeyman it’s
made out to be because enough people are perfectly rational and can
figure out if someone did something that deserves consequences. I dunno. This keeps returning to the seeming fallacy that “Cancel Culture” doesn’t exist because it’s largely impotent and ineffective while many of the rest of us are saying “Cancel Culture” exists because people keep trying. That whether it works or not, people and sites (especially the old Gawker sites like AV Club) keep trying to stoke the fires of hatred and change the narrative of certain people.
Like this whole Kemper story. The Root declared her a “Klan Princess” and AV Club declared that Kemper had a “racist past” and there were plenty of people in both discussions now labeling Kemper a racist.
Does it matter that it wasn’t the majority? Does it matter that AV Club is no longer a leading pop culture site and no longer has any pull or influence in the culture at large? Does it matter that it only changed some people’s minds and not all? I’m not being argumentative, I’m really interested in people’s answers on this and why.
It matters to me. It ain’t the site it used to be. It’s become a social justice lifestyle blog, not an entertainment site. Bring back Nathan Rabin, in all his perverted glory.
I could not agree more. I don’t even know why I come to this site anymore. Habit I suppose.
You’re just waiting on some of that sweet, sweet Laurel Canyon Dawes discussions…
I feel the same way and yet, for all the stupid and irresponsible articles the A.V. Club regularly publishes, it is often canceled out by intelligent discussions right below, like this one here. The comments of the Kempler article were pretty much unanimous at calling it BS. That has some value.
You get auto-greyed if you use your google account to comment on a breitbart article. Doesn’t matter if it’s to yell at BB commentators. So, that’s fun. Seriously, screw this site.
I often reprimand myself for coming here at all anymore. I used to come here for new pop culture news that I can’t find anywhere else (and also tv/film reviews) but now the pop culture news posted here seems designed to make me actively hate this site and hate myself for coming here. Maybe if the AV club could cancel me, I could start sleeping at night again.
Amazing facts: Entertainment intersects with politics! Social justice is entertwined with art! It was always political all along!
True.Also true: The AV Club’s Newswire writers have nothing interesting, informed, or intelligent to say about that intersection.
Have you, or any of the people recommending your post, read anything Nathan Rabin has written lately?, because let me tell you, he is not right wing, he’s really, as yoy dumbf*cks like to call it, SJW and he would not agree with you.
This narrative that websites or magazines lose their pull because they go too hard on their leftist leanings is ludicruous, not to mention Av Club was never an old Gawker site, it was absorved into the family only after Univision bought the gawker sites and The Onion. Just stfu.
Exactly. I used to read this site for the journalism, now I read it out of morbid curiosity of wokeness.
Oh, it’s never coming back! You, me and everyone else who was here 5 years ago are staring desperately into the hollowed-out shell of a place where real cultural criticism used to get done
into the mirror, wondering if the mirror universe’s AV Club is betterinto this safe, synergized content hub, refreshing often because it generates more ad impressions because we love that fresh content.
Don’t drag Nathan Rabin into your tired, right wing crap. I miss his columns too but guess what? He also cares about social justice. His writing for this site was in a different political era, an era which you clearly miss but one that is not coming back.
Bring back Nathan Rabin because he’s an excellent writer with interesting things to say. 🙂
This site has always been progressive, fuck off back to Breitbart.
This site has always been progressive, fuck off back to Breitbart.Hey, it’s the guy nobody knows telling us what this site is about!It’s an honour to meet you, your Majesty.
Imagine thinking “social justice” is a bad thing and thinking you have moral high ground at the same time.
Was he perverted? Is that why he’s not here anymore? Yeah, to me that was the point of this site — to do deep dives into dumb movies. At least, that’s what I was for. Now it’s like somekinda celebrity shaming scandal sheet.
As somebody who still reads and supports everything Nathan Rabin writes, I’m quite confident he would tell you to go fuck your sensitive self. The man aligns quite extensively with social justice and if he were writing for the av club today, you’d probably be bitching about him. The world moves forward man. If you can’t handle it, go somewhere else. But don’t think for a second this is about who instead of when. Times change.
That is kind of the thing about these “cancel culture doesn’t exist” things… usually when people say that what they actually seem to mean is either “cancel culture does exist but it’s good actually” or “cancel culture should exist but it isn’t as effective as I want it to be.” I think a lot of them are kind of missing the “culture” part of it, things like that AV Club story about Kemper might not actually successfully “cancel” her but they’re still engaging in a “culture” where people try to do that.
The way I see it… The right wing echo chamber has created a myth about “cancel culture” being some organized conspiracy all the liberal elites in the media and universities are engaged in. That’s what I think of when I hear “cancel culture doesn’t exist.” Because there’s no “conspiracy”, it’s a social trend. But then there are sites like this or social media mobs going after people, something with very valid reasons and sometimes on very flimsy pretenses, which could also be called a culture of canceling and which does fuel the above because it’s not always done for altruistic reasons.So basically it’s a big mess. Lots of good has certainly come of bringing really shitty behavior to light and letting certain people know they can’t get away with what they used to. But no one is steering the ship so it goes in some nasty directions some times.
I’m not one to watch Fox News or read Breitbart, so the version of “cancel culture” that looms largest in my orbit is the kind of cancel culture that the Harper’s Letter was talking about; namely people being driven out or marginalized by liberal institutions like Universities or Newspapers for holding heterodox views or for very slight improprieties. Things like that editor getting driven out from Teen Vogue over very old tweets or stuff like that the Donald McNeil saga at the NYT. Maybe I’m wrong, but I do feel like when most people use the term they’re describing something more akin to those examples than some weird rightwing strawman version of the term where it’s a literal premeditated conspiracy.
To me, it’s very similar to the evolution of the term “fake news”. The fact that Trump and co. realized the term could be used as a catchall defense against any legitimate news articles they didn’t like, doesn’t mean that the intentional spread of disinformation, the reason the term exists in the first place, isn’t a real issue.
The left creates a term to discuss a real issue.The right hears the term and attempts to bastardize it, to obfuscate the discussion.The left runs from the term like it’s a live grenade and the original issue becomes abandoned as a worthwhile topic of discussion.~sunrise, sunset~
Yep – same story with “SJW.”Every time we try to find a way to criticize neckbeards who cloak themselves in Progressive politics to harass people online, the Right appropriates the term.
I think that, at best, when someone genuinely has issues with “cancel culture” they’re just talking about their fear of being harassed en masse. That’s always been a problem even before the internet.
Yes, but it’s never been easier before the internet, and the rise of social media in particular. Mass harassment is now something you can do while waiting in line at a store or taking a shit at work, assisted by helpful notifications on various social platforms letting you know who today’s main character is in the fewest number of words possible.
No one asked you or cares fuck face
I think that’s true of the right, and hell, maybe even some “normies” who’ve bought into the right-driven discourse, but I don’t think that’s fair towards someone like Mark Fisher, who’s excellent and sensitive essay “Exiting the Vampire’s Castle” seems to have been forgotten in recent discussions about “cancel culture” who’s chief concern was that purity tests and very online power struggles were contrary to the project of leftist unity and where people who might have good progressive, populist ideas were cast out because they didn’t meet ideal and often contradictory standards of Twitter obsessed PMC academics and journalists. Of course, Fisher was “dragged” on Twitter by liberal professional/managerial class academics whose power solidarity would threaten – liberals *need* this discourse to continue to justify themselves.
I don’t care what happens to racists and misogynists and homophobes and various stripes of bigots. They can (and hopefully will) fuck off. But I do care when a figure who makes an excellent point that help us towards social justice is discounted because they’ve had a bad take or misjudged joke or two.
You are wrong. I’ve seen it used by conservative dicks aplenty. Not just Republicans but also, as often if not more often, Libertarians.It’s just a more *theoretically* actionable “PC Police”. I say “theoretically” because the action never actually seems to happen. Gina Carano still has an acting career despite some people whining that she was “cancelled”. No, she wasn’t. Nobody is. It’s a bullshit boogeyman word.
Does Gina Carano still have an acting career? I mean, someone somewhere will presumably hire her to make some kind of shitty Kevin Sorbo movie or something, but she’s presumably been deemed unemployable by Disney (who are kind of a big deal these days) and the stink of the scanadal will likely make most movie studios think twice about working with her. “Literally not being able to so much as work at a 7/11 anymore” is not and never has been the standard for what “true cancellation” is… that’s a total strawman.
Yes, the lady who got famous and made a career out of beating up other ladies made and will continue to make more money than most of us discussing her. The idea that megacorp Disney won’t back up a truck of money to her house and she’ll have to “slum it” in profitable DTV fare for a while and somehow that’s even fucking remotely “working at a 7-11” is absurd. Have some perspective. Nobody has a right to be a rich and famous celebrity. Jesus…
The problem here is semantics. The cancel culture you lot are talking about is not the cancel culture being discussed in the article. The one you’re talking about is as ancient a social phenomenon as it can get, given a new dimension in the information age. The discussion shouldn’t be about whether it’s right or wrong as a totality, but in terms of how it functions and how it can do so more ethically.
I still don’t really understand why, in a climate where Asian people are attacked in broad daylight in on a regular basis, people are surprised when expressions of anti-Asian racism cost someone a high-profile gig. Particularly when it was her own co-workers who expressed concerns about working with her. Are their opinions not relevant?
Because those “expressions of anti-Asian racism” were in obscure tweets from a decade ago, weren’t ideological in nature, were plainly dug up in a bad faith attempt to smear them, she had already apologized for them before and apologized for them after and clearly didn’t still harbor the same feelings, and because if everyone was judged based on mistakes they made in college no one would be employed. Social norms change over time and no one is their best self when they’re young and declaring everyone whose ever written a bad tweet in their life unemployable is ridiculous.
Where’s your evidence that it was in bad faith? The person who first called attention to them was Asian. Do Asian people not have the right to express concern about people who have been racist towards them getting high-profile gigs in media? What about her co-workers, were their objections in bad faith too? Howcome the feelings of actual Asians and people who were going to have to work directly with her don’t count?
And please stop with this straw man of saying people were trying make her “unemployable.” McCammond had never even had any editorial experience before being hired at Teen Vogue. Meanwhile, Conde Nast and Vogue in particular are trying hard to rebrand themselves as an organization that prizes diversity and inclusion. Maybe, just maybe, this was an example of one specific person being wrong for this particular job?
These tweets were first surfaced by (non-Asian) misogynists trying to call her a hypocrite for having called out Charles Barkley after he literally threatened violence against her in a “joke.” It was extremely bad faith, and that hate campaign was the only reason people knew about this in the first place. Several insiders said that her co-workers were mainly angry about her hiring because she was believed to be too strongly tied to the Biden administration (who they want to criticize from the left) so they manufactured this bullshit about tweets as an excuse to drive her out. And no, I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this an attempt to make her unemployable. If these tweets make her too unacceptably racist to be in the same room as Asian co-workers at that magazine would they not also make her unacceptably racist at other magazines? Or other workplaces in general? And now that they’ve made it so she’s mainly known as “that woman who was deemed to racist to be an editor” is it not going to be incredibly awkward to employ her at pretty much any other publication? It’s an entire career trajectory ruined over a dumb thing said online as a nineteen year old.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/media/alexi-mccammond-teen-vogue-out/index.html“The weekend after the news broke, Diana Tsui, editorial director of recommendations at The Infatuation, posted on Instagram a series of text-based photos calling attention to the McCammond’s old tweets and said she was a “questionable hire.”
????https://news.yahoo.com/alexi-mccammond-returns-msnbc-teen-125816215.html“Alexi McCammond Returns to MSNBC After Teen Vogue Exit”???????
They weren’t discovered by the Teen Vogue people, they were discovered two years earlier (and apologized for two years earlier), by non-Asians looking to bring her down a peg for questioning a man who threatened her.https://www.crossingbroad.com/2019/11/laugh-or-cry-people-dug-up-racist-tweets-from-woman-whom-charles-barkley-apologized-to.htmlAs for the second thing… did you even read the story? She wasn’t hired by MSNBC, she was just interviewed on the Morning Joe Show. The third fucking paragraph even reads “A source with knowledge of the situation said Thursday ‘there are no plans’ to reinstate McCammond’s full position at the network, where she was a contributor before being named editor in chief of Teen Vogue in March.”
Except when she was hired for Teen Vogue, it was actual Asian people who were objecting to the hiring. Why are you so intent on erasing them?Except they still paid her to write for them, so clearly she’s not unemployable.
They didn’t pay her to write for them… or write at all. It was an unpaid TV appearance.
“Alexi, it’s great to have you back on ‘Morning Joe,’” said co-host Mika Brzezinski, who introduced McCammond simply as a writer and reporter before plugging the former Axios journalist’s new piece for NBC News’ Know Your Value vertical.
Not sure you’re doing a great job reading yourself there, sport.
Don’t engage, he’s a troll.
????https://news.yahoo.com/alexi-mccammond-returns-msnbc-teen-125816215.html“Alexi McCammond Returns to MSNBC After Teen Vogue Exit”???????
I’m sorry, did you have a question?
No, because they’re in bad faith. Case in point – one of the dumbasses at Vogue calling for her firing was fired shortly thereafter for posting the exact same type of shit (also a long-ass time ago). It’s all performance and if you could be honest with yourself for half a second you’d realize it.
It’s extremely telling how you think everyone who cares about being antiracist must be engaging in “performance.” All you’re really doing is telling us more about yourself.
Well, I very specifically cited an example of the snake eating itself on this stupid bullshit, where the woman calling for the firing was guilty of the exact same shit herself. It’s complete nonsense. I know this might hurt to hear, but digging up tweets made by somebody as a teenager, a decade prior, doesn’t equal “caring about being antiracist.” Get a grip.
Yes, you threw out some random unsourced claim that totally invalidated all the other people who were uncomfortable working with someone who previously posted racist “jokes”. Oh wait, it actually didn’t. Maybe you should get a grip and stop pearlclutching over the idea that people of color don’t want to work with racists?
I left it unsourced because you know exactly what I was talking about, but here:https://www.newsweek.com/teen-vogue-staffer-urged-alexi-mccammond-firing-also-made-racist-tweet-1577727What we have here is a ‘filipinx’ woman calling for a black woman’s firing for using anti-Asian slurs a decade prior and then celebrating when that black woman was forced to resign. Then, inevitably, the filipinx woman has her tweets scoured and has similarly offensive tweets (with the n word no less!), also from a decade prior, and she herself is subsequently fired. Cool, congrats. A black woman and a filipino woman were both fired for saying dumb shit online as teenagers while yuppie dorks like you pretend to be freedom fighters online, trading hashtags. Good work.
Okay? And this invalidates the other people who were concerned about working with McCammond how? Imagine believing that we’re too harsh on racism as a culture with the current state of the country. Just say you want to preserve the status quo and go
Stop being so dishonest. It really isn’t necessary. You must know, deep down, getting somebody fired for a decade old tweet they made as a teenager does nothing to combat racism whatsoever. Nobody was ‘concerned’ about working with McCammond – they understood, just as Davitt did, that you can gain some quick social capital with these pile-ons. It didn’t matter or occur to Davitt that she had done the exactly same things at roughly the exact same time because it was never about the principle of it, it was simply about being part of the mob. And yes, I’m terrible person who wants to preserve the status quo where a young black woman is allowed to remain employed despite saying dumb things as a teenager. You got me.
Again, you’re only proving your own blithe dismissal of how racism actually affects people and the level of discomfort Asians in particular might have about someone who’s posted anti-Asian tweets. Characterizing that as a “mob” bespeaks your own deep discomfort with people of color speaking out about how racism makes them feel unsafe. You claim to care so much about this young black women, but why are the feelings of the Asian people who were affected by her tweets, and who live in an atmosphere where attitudes and comments like McCammond’s normalize an environment where they’re at physical risk of violence every day, not of interest to you? Maybe, just maybe, we should all be working towards an environment where any form of racism is unacceptable and has enough consequences to make people think twice before posting. Instead you’re just mad that people affected by racism dared to speak up about it.
So well put. Thank you!
Pretty much this. There’s no filter. It’s just casting a wide net and if some benign dirt from 20 years ago gets scooped up for the sake of a juicy story and industry representatives on social media take notice, what’s a few casualties in service of rooting out and exposing real and current threats to acceptable social behavior?
No but literally, what casualties?
“But no one is steering the ship so it goes in some nasty directions some times.”Even worse, Twitter seems to be steering the ship. And as with all things Twitter, its occasionally good, occasionally bad, and often just stupid. I think this might be a side effect of the staff and cost cutting across the digital media landscape. So many sites have moved away from having more thoughtful or at least slightly more in depth articles from experienced writers to hiring whoever’s willing to take the lowest bid to crank out a couple paragraphs about the latest Twitter hot take, regardless of whether the article writer knows or cares about the subject. And those Ellie Kemper articles probably got more “engagement” than the well-written article series here, and that’s all the corporate overlords care about. A hate click is a still a click, a negative comment is still a comment.
occasionally good, occasionally bad, and often just stupidThe A.V. Club
Thank you for being so clear and concise and correct. All the C’s!
It goes in nasty directions very, very often. You just don’t hear about it because 99% of the time the people who get hurt are just regular people that nobody cares about.
But then there are sites like this or social media mobs going after people, something with very valid reasons and sometimes on very flimsy pretensesI think that points to the original use of the term “cancel culture” (although the term has been overused and misused so much as to be essentially meaningless) – the idea that the internet outrage mob was incapable of viewing an issue with any nuance or perspective. There was no differentiation between genuinely shitty behavior, an action that was inappropriate but forgivable, or something trivial/non-existent. Every offense required a zero-tolerance, scorched earth response.
Cancelling, imo, is endemic to human nature and has probably existed as long as culture and society. What’s changed is that technology is expediting the phenomenon, but that’s happened before too. Radio got people to cancel disco. Scandal mags in the ‘50s ended careers of people who were in the closet or had a secret, mixed race love child. Cancelling, whether for reasons good, bad, fair or unfair is not at all unique.
“they can’t get away with what they used to.”It’s fine to call out shitty people now, in 2021, for shit they do in 2021, cause their actions can be set up against current informational needs and zeitgeist (jokes about gay people for example were way more acceptable 20 years back, we may not like that, but it’s just fucking true)I fucking hate digging up tweets from 15 years ago or some old prom pic and then retroactively going at a person. It’s just ridiculous, they aren’t even the same people anymore, like Kat said, people grow but not if there’s a fucking tweet we can use t get rid of them first.Sites like these saying cancel culture does not exist is like republicans saying systematic racism doesn’t exist, they are the fucking main culprit in keeping it alive.
The thing with the whole mess is that Twitter is this weird game of telephone where something minor can get blown out of proportion as things bounce around and people go overboard. But people often put a bit too much stock in it, most of the time the person in question just does an apology video and gets a “controversy” tag on their Wikipedia page after being the main character on Twitter for a couple days. The right-wing echo chamber is also prone to projecting however. So they’ll have a temper tantrum about cancel culture, and then literally cancel a Coke contract because they dared to make a vague criticism about a shitty voting law. Not to defend a major corporation that has its own skeletons, but you do find that the right-wing uses the buzzwords of “cancel culture” to justify their own attempts at “cancelling” someone.
“where people try to do that.”How? Boycotts? I don’t see a call for boycotting Kemper. What *actual* effort is this supposed culture *actually* making?You seem to be missing the “cancel” part of it.
Yes. No. Yes.Because “cancel culture” is made-up bullshit. Cancel culture is just plain ol’ societal judgement brought to bear on people who, historically, have not been judged. It is similar to, but so much better than, HUAC, or Salem.
Nailed it.So-called “cancel culture” is just the emergence of voices which had historically been voiceless. Is it sometimes messy? Sure. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the people who fret the most about “cancel culture” tend to reflect a pretty narrow set of demographics and sociocultural viewpoints. They’re just not used to hearing people talk back.
It’s… not bullshit, though?Like… you literally called it made-up bullshit, and the described exactly what it is, claimed that it has ALWAYS existed, and called it better than Salem or HUAC.So… you object to… names, then? Names for social phenomena are pretty important to modern communication.Perhaps you’re not understand the definition of CULTURE: “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.” Cancel Culture is just the modern name for a behavior phenomenon that is WELL DOCUMENTED in psychological and group behavioral studies for centuries: A group (culture) seeking to strengthen and reaffirms its bonds picks out a common enemy against which all members can ‘other’ and rally, then seek to engage with and destroy that enemy in a show of public unity which hopefully draws new, likeminded members into the group (culture). The reasons for choosing this enemy can be rational and well reasoned, or they can be utterly arbitrary and without just cause, and it actually has very little bearing on whether or not the group will go along with it. The vast majority will, in fact, follow the leadership of their group if told something is true. Humans are tribal. That’s how our brains are wired to work.Cue the internet, and it’s thousands of anonymous culture members, massive tribes, and numeroussocial media platforms upon which these behaviors can be disseminated world-wide and you have a recipe for distaster. Tens of thousands of unflinching people, casually believing half-truths and disinformation intended to defame and destroy whatever soul has run afoul of the often faceless, nameless thought leaders at the center of these cultural movements.You can call it whatever you want. Cyberbullying. Harassment. Dogpiling. Cancel Culture.It’s still happening, and causing people to lose their homes and jobs and breaking up families and destroying lives isn’t any better just because you’re not actively dragging them out of their homes and burning them at the stake or beheading them in the street. If anything it’s worse… because anyone can do it from behind a screen, their face and name hidden, and never have to worry about facing judgement of their own when the public finally stops hunting witches long enough to recognize they’ve been duped by liars and cons just looking to use the Court of Public Opinion to execute their personal vendettas.
Perpetual motion doesn’t exist either. But people keep trying!You know what plenty of people believe? That the election was stolen from Trump. That the world is flat. That Wawas is better than Sheetz. A bunch of people believing a thing doesn’t make it any more true. What you insist on calling “cancel culture” here is just lying.That’s the difference. AV Club made some shady, not entirely fair statements about Kemper. The Root went harder at it. Neither called for her to lose work. But they were misrepresentations. Something like Disney fans threatening to boycott over Gina Carano’s *actual statements* got called “cancel culture” by like-minded dipshits. But no, those were just the *consequences* of her actions. Neither are this mythical “cancel culture”.
“Neither called for her to lose work”So that’s the metric? With both pieces the incredibly strong subtext that you’d have to be intentionally ignorant to miss is “this person is a racist and should face consequences”. But I guess unless the article says in plain text “Do Not Support Any Upcoming Projects” it doesn’t count? Just because it’s dumb clickbait/ Twitter outrage that got called out on being dumb does not mean the article didn’t happen. Because she didn’t actually get canceled doesn’t mean a concerted effort to make that happen didn’t happen. You can say that the people who complain about cancel culture the most are the right wingers/racists/etc who deserve it, and you’d almost definitely be right, but that doesn’t make Twitter mobs trawling celebrities’ past for stuff to get mad at nonexistent.Cancel culture exists, but it is a weapon for justice… unless it’s all based on Twitter and then it’s a weapon for stupid.
HHHHOOOOOWWWWW???You don’t know what anyone else’s intentions are. What is concerted? What effort? Make WHAT happen? For all the uproar over this supposed cancellation effort I’ve seen NO ACTUAL CALL TO ACTION. I point to Carano, where Disney and Star Wars fans *actually called for her to be removed from an actual project*. Show me that in Kemper’s case and I will agree that it’s bullshit because she did nothing wrong. Until then? Not. Fucking. Cancelled.
They weren’t “unfair.”They were deliberate misrepresentations, designed to drive people to harass a woman online.The fact that Tucker Carlson has appropriated the term “Cancel Culture” doesn’t actually change the fact that people like Hughes and Barsanti and Tenreyro are fucking shitbirds trying to monetize online harassment.
Cool. I didn’t know you were psychic.
Don’t need to be psychic to laugh at a guy who spends hours defending the right of shitty white dudes to harass women on the internet.I don’t actually care whether whiney incels who harass people online are wearing fedoras and talking about Ethics in Journalism or “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts and talking about Praxis.All of them suck. Anyone who defends them also sucks.
Don’t need to be psychic to laugh at a guy who spends hours defending the right of shitty white dudes to harass women on the internet.#NOTALLSHITTYWHITEDUDES
Like boycotts, it works if there are enough people going with it. If not? Then it’s not much to worry about.If you’re a Kemper fan, you don’t have to bow to cancel pressure. It’s still your choice who you like.
I found that to be maybe the most disgustingly misleading headline I’ve ever read on this site.
Who has been cancelled that didn’t deserve it?Even if someone has been cancelled, how is cancel culture different from the free market allowing people to make their own choice? (The free market, of course, being a thing that almost everyone in America agrees is good)
The goal of any respectable news article is not to sway the minds of its readers but to open up a dialogue surrounding the topic. Considering what we’re doing at this very moment… I say, “Mission: Accomplished”.
It’s somewhat ironic that, in trying to defend cancel culture, you’ve provided an example of one of its more insidious effects on the discourse.The ball that Kemper went to had absolutely nothing to do with the KKK. The organization’s history is still sketchy as hell, but there was no klan association.
Fair enough, and I can’t be arsed to figure out how much is misrepresentation in the original articles (okay, the Root went pretty heavy on the Klan angle) and how much is just me misinterpreting which Confederate-founded organization with stupid costumes and titles,and a penchant for upholding their idealized class order had a hand in organizing the thing.That said, is this an example of cancel culture, or how vulture capitalists have figured out how to wield the internet as outrage-doling Skinner boxes because facts are secondary to keeping content and clicks churning? I’ll buy cancel culture as a real, pervasive force the day Mel Gibson (or really, pick from a long list of walking pond scum) either is finally forced to stop working, or shows real contrition.
I’ll buy cancel culture as a real, pervasive force the day Mel Gibson (or really, pick from a long list of walking pond scum) either is finally forced to stop working, or shows real contrition.I mean, Mel Gibson went from being one of the biggest movie stars on the planet *and* a very financially successful Oscar-winning director… to doing shitty direct-to-video movies.Saying “Mel Gibson wasn’t cancelled, he’s still making low-budget movies that nobody sees!” is such a bizarre argument, it borders on bad faith. Does he need to do dinner theater in Opalocka for you to acknowledge that his career was completely derailed? (And rightfully so)
Welp.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/mel-gibson-controversies-career-1234696080/
That’s true – in the 15 years since 2006 Mel Gibson has directed one movie. It was reasonably well received by critics, moderately financially successful*, and left little-to-no cultural footprint. I’m not sure that supports whatever argument you’re making.Meanwhile, his acting career has been just as stellar. Bonus AVClub points to anyone who has seen these movies:Boss Level Fatman Force of Nature The Professor and the Madman Dragged Across Concrete Daddy’s Home 2 Blood FatherThe Expendables 3 Machete Kills Get the Gringo The Brain Storm (Short) The Beaver Edge of Darkness
I would argue that in the case of an actor like Mel Gibson, whose acting career was largely based around being a likable and charming screen presence, there is a certain logic to them being more affected by being exposed as a decidedly terrible person in their real lives and that such “cancellations” are less a matter of judgmental pearl clutching and more just someone kind of sabotaging their own mystique. If he was something more akin to a method actor who blends into parts or someone who sort of specialized in playing unpleasant people (like, I don’t know, Sean Penn) he probably would have fared better.
I would argue that in the case of an actor like Mel Gibson, whose acting career was largely based around being a likable and charming screen presence, there is a certain logic to them being more affected by being exposed as a decidedly terrible person in their real livesIt’s tough, because Martin Riggs is just so fucking charming. Or Brett Maverick. Hell, Porter from Payback is an irredeemable thug, but for some reason you want him to win.Movie stars are movie stars for a reason. It isn’t entirely about looks or talentThere’s a good discussion to be had about *why* we root for whatever character Mel Gibson/Tom Cruise/Nicolas Cage is playing, regardeless of their personal life.
Lol the idea that notorious woman-beater, anti-semite, homophobe and racist Mel Gibson doesn’t have a good enough career to satisfy you is not the winning argument you think it is
Your responses are fewer and slower these days – is being an asshole troll wearing you down?I’m confused, is Mel Gibson’s career too good or not bad enough to pass your purity test?
What a surprise that you completely failed to explain why you’re defending a woman-beater, anti-semite, homophobe and racist.
How could I explain something I never did?But keep making those bad faith arguments, troll. Let everyone know how full of shit you are.
You’re literally in here whining that a woman-beater, anti-semite, homophobe and racist doesn’t have as good a career as you think he deserves to have
Boss Level was entertaining, and Gibson wasn’t even the star. Frank Grillo was the star. Michelle Yeoh had a cameo as a sword fighting instructor. Will Sasso technically had a bigger role as a villainous security guard in the film than Mel Gibson did as the guard’s boss, which was kinda funny.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those movies were good. I kind of want to see Dragged Across Concrete.Fred Melamed 7th lead, bitches!
yeah im totally gonna stan for the dude who starred in “get the gringo”. GTFO mel sucks and it wasn’t cancel culture that got him. It was consequences.
“I mean, Mel Gibson went from being one of the biggest movie stars on the
planet *and* a very financially successful Oscar-winning director… to
doing shitty direct-to-video movies.”
So did Bruce Willis (apart from the director part). I don’t think he’s been cancelled… has he?
So did Bruce Willis (apart from the director part). I don’t think he’s been cancelled… has he?Not unless you count his 90s hairpiece.It’s an interesting comparison. Bruce Willis has definitely made a lot of shitty (probably DTV) movies over the last 15 years.But he has also starred in several big budget franchises (2 Die Hards, 2 RED movies, and an Unbreakable sequel), along with some prestigious character roles (Moonrise Kingdom, Motherless Brooklyn).
It’s like that AVClub article that tried to say that Kevin Spacey having a cameo in an Italian movie was “proof” that cancel culture wasn’t real when it would seem to me that him being reduced to such a meager role and it being a newsworthy event is in fact proof that (in that case probably rightly) people absolutely can be cancelled.
Basically, until Mel Gibson, Kevin Spacey, et al (a depressingly long list) are on a street corner begging for change, that’s proof that cancel culture doesn’t exist.It a disengenous argument that intentionally misses the point: If these people who absolutely deserve to be cancelled haven’t been appropriately punished, then I guess it’s ok to pile on Ellie Kemper. “She’ll move on from this and be fine”
It’s not disingenuous for people to ask you to define “cancel”. If you’re going to clutch pearls because Ellie Kemper has been “cancelled”, I need to know what the fuck YOU mean when YOU say that. Otherwise you’re talking out your ass.
Quit pretending to be so fired up over this, you massive dork.
Remember that one time Rhoda got cancelled but then the next season there was a random new episode?I used to have cable but then I cancelled it. Which is weird because 6 months later I was watching Burn Notice on USA.I cancelled my subscription to Alfred Hitchcock Magazine but yesterday I received a new issue!
He got an Oscar nomination for directing just a couple of years ago.
In the past five years, Mel Gibson has been nominated for the Best Director Oscar (“Hacksaw Ridge”), and while he’s been focusing on smaller budget films, some of them (“Boss Level,” “Dragged Across Concrete”) are better than whatever big budget crap he was pumping out in the 00s. This isn’t a defense of Mel the man, but Mel the artist is doing just fine.
I just want to say: I’m a little disappointed that no one acknowledged Kevin Kline’s amazing performance as Willy Loman.
But if you acknowledge that his career was “rightfully” derailed (but not, as you also acknowledge,, completely over), then how is that cancel culture? His career wasn’t derailed by mobs and pitchforks. His career was derailed by his own actions, and people rightfully decided that 1) they don’t want to work with him and 2) they don’t want to consume his products. That’s not “cancel culture.” That’s the free market.
Yep. The only two people I can think of who have been irrevocably cancelled are Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, and it’s possible the only reason they’ll never work again is because both are past retirement age *and* in prison. Everyone else who was “cancelled” is getting at least some work. Louis CK is doing standup (or was before the pandemic started). Kevin Spacey is shooting a film in Italy. Aziz Ansari is in new Master of None episodes (albeit with significantly less screen time than before). And we’ll see if in a few years’ time these men are doing better yet.
I’d argue that Kevin Spacey was successfully cancelled. Yes, he’s shooting a movie abroad at the moment, but in the past five years, his name has become synonymous with “un-hirable creep,” a pariah on level underneath only Weinstein and Cosby. I still don’t understand the Aziz Ansari thing; what he was accused of sounds shitty and childish, but nothing worth bulldozing a career over. As for Louis CK — yep, gross, and nope, not worth defending. But that guy might be one of the most talented stand-up comedians of all time, and for me personally, I think it’s a situation where the talent eclipses the crime. If he went on a national tour tomorrow, I’d be first in line for tickets (and I don’t think I’m the only one). If that makes me a sexist pig, well… it is what it is, I suppose.
That said, is this an example of cancel culture, or how vulture
capitalists have figured out how to wield the internet as outrage-doling
Skinner boxes because facts are secondary to keeping content and clicks
churning?It’s both – the capitalists are simply ladling out what was cooked up by Twitter idiots – but, frankly, I think most people would consider both of these things to be part of cancel culture.I’ll buy cancel culture as a real, pervasive force the day Mel Gibson
(or really, pick from a long list of walking pond scum) either is
finally forced to stop working, or shows real contrition.If this is your criteria, then you must also not believe that rape culture is real, right? Not unless everyone who contributes to it is shown to actually rape? Do you see how that works?
If you want to argue for the merits of cancel culture, there’s a discussion to be had there. But I really, really wish that the left would stop playing these bullshit word games like this. It makes us look disingenuous and/or insane, and it’s counterproductive to garnering support. When someone talks about cancel culture in response to the Ellie Kemper article, you and everyone else knows exactly what they’re talking about, so when you or others on the left go: ‘But cancel culture isn’t real!’ you just sound like the ‘acktchually’ meme. It’s the political-rhetoric equivalent of
sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending you can’t hear
someone.
Cancel culture is a misnomer. That’s why it shouldn’t be entertained.
I really, really wish that the left
would stop playing these bullshit word games like this.
Ain’t no way to derail a leftist discussion quicker than Jargon Discourse.
“If this is your criteria, then you must also not believe that rape
culture is real, right? Not unless everyone who contributes to it is
shown to actually rape? Do you see how that works?”What the fucking hell.
“What the fucking hell.”If the one exists, then clearly the other does too. It’s called a good point.
“If Tom Hanks exists, then clearly Ronald McDonald does too!”Or, one thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Sorry how about this then: ‘If cancel culture isn’t real because it hasn’t resulted in optimal levels of cancellation, then recognitions isn’t real because he’s incapable of actual cognition.’ Is that better?
Not really, sorry. Try again?
In another life, necgray definitely has strong opinions about Ethics in Journalism
Alright, simple question – who do you think has unfairly been canceled? Who has been cast out of society with no recourse? There’s a lot of people who’ve been asked to contend with shitty things they’ve done or said, and even the worst people who show zero growth manage to slink back in (often into the arms of some other very awful people awaiting them).Other than that, there’s toothless social media outrage (probably the most prominent Cancel Culture that gets right-wing media types worked up into a lather), and the same tabloid muckracking we’ve always had. Oh, and douchebags whining because traditionally disenfranchised voices have more outlets to call them on their douchbaggery now.
I didn’t know much about these Southern balls and there historic racist roots though until the Bachelorette scandal and Ellie Kemper, idk I think it’ll make some people with a little more agency than Kemper(at her age when it happened) think twice about attend some of these shitty events.
You hit on something valuable here with Gibson, in that you can’t cancel someone who doesn’t give a shit. You can’t meaningfully cancel Jeff Bezos or even Donald Trump. Is Mel Gibson even on Twitter? Are they audience who would give a shit going to see Mel Gibson movies? Does Mel Gibson still make movies or is he just off somewhere being old, unpleasant and obscenely wealthy?
Outrage doling Skinner boxes is a perfect description of what’s happening.
The problem is that everyone tried to paint this as overt racism which it’s obviously not. A very wealthy person on break from Princeton received an award for being pretty from a weirdo in a lace mask during an annual gala for wealthy families in St Louis. That’s all very, very mockable. Obscene wealth has it coming. The fact that the prettiness award used to be handed out by a klansman is just the sauce, it’s not the steak.
Point of order, the Veiled Prophet stuff was not rooted in the KKK. White supremacy and class warfare, sure. But not explicitly the KKK.
“But not explicitly the KKK” – The GOP’s new slogan.
I didn’t see anything that said it had “KKK roots.”
I didn’t see anything that said it had “KKK roots.”
do a search for “Ellie KKKemper” and see who Tweeted that. Gawker-folk. And you’re correct, it’s nothing so studied as a researched allegation, it was an abortie attempt at a smear KKKampaign.
If its KKK roots were that prominent then there’s no way Kemper, a Roman Catholic, would be winning anything.(not to say that the club doesn’t seem sketchy & weird & probably racist, but words matter)
If its KKK roots were that prominent then there’s no way Kemper, a Roman Catholic, would be winning anything.People tend to forget the good old days of the KKK, when they mainly killed papists.
You’re an idiot
/Spike Lee angrily tweets Werner Klemperer’s home address
it’s mainly a problem because people get very defensive, and then paint themselves as the victim instead of taking any accountability for the actual victims they harmed. Kemper will be fine, her career will be fine, her finances will be fine. She seems like a caring and empathetic individual who will grow from this and continue being mindful about her participation in things in her future, it’s the people that don’t grow and then scream ‘cancel culture’ that are the concern.
“it’s mainly a problem because people get very defensive, and then paint themselves as the victim instead of taking any accountability for the actual victims they harmed.” Except that — as in the very case under discussion (Kemper) — the notion that there even was any harm is self-serving bullshit.
i.e. it’s often safe to read “I got offended” where you see “people were harmed.”
yes, it’s a loose connection with Kemper and it was intentionally click baity since she was being called a KKK princess so it gained traction fast. But she’ll move on from this and be fine, it’s just weird everyone being terrified that cancel culture is going too far lol, it’s like this weird moral panic that really just limits people from saying shitty things or explores some shit from their past.
she’ll move on from this and be fine
This is such a weird metric for acceptability to me. There’s plenty of things you can do to someone that they’ll be able to move on from which we nevertheless still don’t consider acceptable behavior from rational adults.
I guess because the main people that claim cancel culture not to be real are a lot of the time the people that are rarely going to be on the receiving end of the harm. Kemper is done dirty, people flock to defend white lady, stay silent on most other things. It’s the same again and again.
Kemper is done dirty, people flock to defend white lady, stay silent on most other things.
I mean, if your point is “the left tends to remain silent on too many things that matter, while speaking up in fairly minor cases where the victim is around to speak for themselves and won’t be materially harmed in the medium-or-long term” then that’s a fair point, but it’s also a different point.Leftist silence in the face of grave injustice (whether due to apathy or assuming support is taken as granted) is a real issue that needs to be tackled. Also, digging up decades-old low-information misrepresented non-dirt to fuel mass harassment of the latest random target is creepy bullshit that needs to stop. It’s not a zero-sum game, both things can be true.
Kemper is done dirty, people flock to defend white lady, stay silent on most other things.
Acceptable behavior like………. ? Expecting someone to address something from their past? I don’t think the aggro tone from some parties towards her has been fair but just bringing it up is perfectly reasonable.
Acceptable behavior like………. ? Expecting someone to address something from their past?
When the thing being addressed is “attending an event as a teenager that was integrated before she was born” the question is already straining credulity a bit (you can’t swing a dead cat in America without hitting some long-standing institution with a segregationist past, so I’m a bit unclear on what makes this one any more notable than just about any other rich person activity or local tradition, including Mardi Gras which didn’t officially desegregate until 1992), but ignoring that,
I don’t think the aggro tone from some parties towards her has been fair
You can’t separate the question being asked from how it was asked, and the “KKK Princess” treatment of it was there from the very beginning. The entire reason it got any sort of traction at all was due to intentional bad-faith misrepresentation flowing directly into outrage, because sensationalism is what trends.If this were just a question in an interview that was researched, posed and answered, it wouldn’t be an issue.
What was “done to” her, though? What actual damage do you perceive as having been done here?
she’ll move on from this and be fineSure, dude. I imagine Ellie Kemper will take the last three days of harassment from assholes like you and use them as a learning experience. She’ll be the better for it.You’re doing god’s work, really.
I assume you have a screenshot of ohnoray sending her a harassing text message.No? Then stfu.
I assume you have a screenshot of ohnoray sending her a harassing text message.No? Then stfu.The phrase I used was “harassment from assholes like you”I’m sorry, did that touch a nerve?
You have no proof that she was harassed. When? How? By whom? Someone’s name trending on social media isn’t harassment. Did she have to spend a day fielding harassing questions from reporters? I hope not! But did she, though?
This is it exactly. It was clickbait. Shame on the AVClub for this. It is a crappy website now.
It’s more “Harassment is fucking harassment, even if the neckbeards doing it are wearing ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’ shirts rather than fedoras.”
You defended Louis CK
“Cancel culture is made up, you guys. Now let me continue to insist that there are some commenters you should ignore forever because of my interpretation of things they’ve said in the past. Have I mentioned lately that cancel culture isn’t real? Because it totally isn’t. PS, cancel this commenter I don’t like. Recognitions out!”
It’s not my fault you keep showing up in these posts acting like some disinterested bystander when you’ve already made it clear that you’re heavily invested in the idea that a sexual predator should encounter no consequences for his actions
There are probably AI programs nowadays with enough self-awareness not to simultaneously cast scarlet letters at people who’ve previously expressed opinions you can’t accept *and* simultaneously deny the existence of that very behavior.
You still defended Louis CK
If it’d make you go away I’d let that motherfucker cum all over me.
Please continue to mock and trivialize sexual assault as it only proves my point further
Yeah, she was just labeled a “another rich celebrity racist” and a “KKK queen” across the internet for a day. What’s the big deal?
*“She seems like a caring and empathetic individual who will grow from this and continue being mindful about blahahah…”*Go fuck yourself.
Kemper will be fine, her career will be fine, her finances will be fine.That’s very enlightened of you to let Ellie Kemper know how to feel. I’m sure she appreciates it.
The point, though, is that there’s exactly zero “this” for Kemper to grow from.It was all idiotic, bad faith bullshit from clout-seeking morons.
How the hell do you know she will be fine? Do you know her? Did you ask her? Would you be able to stomach this if people brought up some incident from your past and blew it up beyond all sense of proportion just to use it as an excuse to pile upon you? A Japanese reality star recently killed herself after widespread online harassment due to a scene where she acted nasty towards another reality star wherein it was revealed later that it was a scripted scene. Receiving widespread hatred online is somethinh even hardenef celebrities struggle with and something most ordinary people wouldn’t be at all equipped to handle. Let’s call ‘cancel culture’ for what it is, a culture of bullying, harassment and even at times mob violence.
What mob violence?
that’s celebrity. and that’s a part of the toxicity of celebrity.This isn’t cancelling Kemper though, that’s not what is happening. Her career isn’t threatened and nobody here is saying it should be. The harassment sucks, like any online harassment. What is happening is click bait, no different than previous scandals and used as some topsy turvy thing to make people both click and believe that cancel culture is coming for them.
The point is that the right wing only trots out the term “cancel culture” when that negativity, rightly or wrongly, is in response to something bigoted. It’s not brought out when that negativity is the bigotry itself, such as when marginalizd groups speak up for themselves and get harrassed as a result. It’s the rebranding of “political correctness,” a term used to silence people speaking out against oppression.
I think “silence” is often used just as spuriously as “cancel.”
I agree with everything you said in terms of what the right thinks cancel culture is, and by extension what the William Hughes’s of the world think they’re arguing against when they say cancel culture doesn’t exist.But there is also a version of cancel culture that the William Hughes’s of the world are more than happy to participate in, which is scouring people’s pasts until you find one thing that’s even modestly questionable, and then amplifying it over and over again until people generally accept that “this person is bad now”. And the fact that they’re not always successful does not mean that this version of cancel culture doesn’t exist.
What jobs has Kemper lost over this? The fact that there’s been plenty of pushback against this non-story should demonstrate how little cancel culture actually exists.It’s consequences for malfeasance. She didn’t do anything wrong, so there’s nothing to act on.
What jobs has Kemper lost over this? The fact that there’s been plenty of pushback against this non-story should demonstrate how little cancel culture actually exists.I always love this bizarro world argument.The fact that we’re talking about this thing that happened is proof that it didn’t happen!
No, YOU are talking about a thing that YOU insisted happened. Except it didn’t. This site talked shit about an old dumb non-story and people got pissy. A bunch of other sites also brought up the same dumb shit. She got a bunch of social media attention. Did any of them call her agent to ACTUALLY “cancel” her contract? Or whatever studio she’s working for at the moment to “cancel” her TV show/movie/stage play/Zoom meeting?Then no “cancel” was attempted.
This is honestly cracking me up.“Cancel culture doesn’t exist” folks are genuinely the other end of the horseshoe from the ones with strong feelings about “Ethics in Gaming Journalism.”
“Cancel culture doesn’t exist” folks are genuinely the other end of the horseshoe from the ones with strong feelings about “Ethics in Gaming Journalism.”There’s always a “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” vibe to those people.
What? That’s not remotely the argument there.
People seem to lack the ability to account for the “gray areas” in things anymore. Everything must either be perfectly good and righteous or imperfect, evil and bad, there is no room for nuance.Saying “hey this tool that can be used for good also has the potential to be used disingenuously” blows people’s minds.An easy example of someone actually having negative consequences from this was when Gunn got fired from GotG2 because of a bad faith campaign by right-wing shitheads who didn’t like his outspoken opinions about their politics. It took a concerted effort for people to push back against Disney and get him re-hired. The fact that he ended up getting the job back doesn’t undo the fact that he shouldn’t have lost it in the first place. IT STILL HAPPENED, PEOPLE.
It’s almost like “right-wing shitheads” are the actual problem
Dismissed, recognitions, I don’t have to respond to a virulent racist and sexist like you. Keep that shit out of here.
How exactly is it racist to point out that the example you gave of the “cancel culture” left-wing bogeyman was actually purported by right-wingers? It’s almost like they’re a far bigger problem than whatever you guys think you’re whining about.
I’m glad you admit that those right-wingers are a problem, but you still label yourself one of them, and hate progressivism. Maybe next you’ll be talking about how people can just “pray the gay away,” you make me SICK.
But instead of taking responsibility in mal reporting, we’re doubling down on shit “not existing” to get into the green again.“or UnbreaKKKable KKKimmy Schmidt”Maybe the whole thing would have been better to swallow if the the writer wasn’t trying to be a judge and high horse at the same time and just report some fucking facts, instead of smearing her “KKKemper” style before people even have time to repsond
Point is, they tried. Thankfully, the people stood up against this one.
I think you’re greatly overestimating the effort. I highly doubt this site would have bothered if it weren’t already trending. Hughes scoured nothing. You’re seeing cancel culture where clickbait exists.
They ARE cancel culture. Their sights are locked on anyone, anyone, they could destroy, at any moment.
BOOM got em
Lol you’re goofy
They posted that a celebrity was in a weird white-supremacist ball when
she was young. You know we can still go read the article and see that
you’re lying, right? Is there a job opportunity Ellie Kemper lost over
this that you’re mad about, or are you just making shit up like you’re accusing other people of?“Even
mentioning something possibly questionable is not allowed because
that’s calling someone RACIST and I’m offended!” overreacting is literally exactly the right-wing boogeyman version of it. Thanks for proving them correct.
Even mentioning something possibly questionable is not allowed
Ah, the impenetrable “just asking questions” technique, where nobody can understand implications or the concept of leading questions, the method of how the question is raised makes absolutely no difference, and no actual research needs to be done ahead of time. A favorite of the Ben Shapiros of the world, and a classic way to get a message out there or whip up a narrative against someone without bothering to take any personal responsibility.If someone just asked Ellie Kemper about the damn ball in an interview, this wouldn’t be an issue. If Twitter didn’t immediately leap to KKK PRINCESS like a goddamn crowdsourced tabloid, this wouldn’t be an issue. If the outlets that reported on this did the slightest amount of research rather than rushing to reiterate what they heard on Twitter as fast as possible, this wouldn’t be an issue. It wasn’t just “mentioning something possibly questionable,” it was an avalanche of tabloid-y gossip, and the fact that it didn’t leave a lasting mark on her career doesn’t excuse how stupid the whole thing was from the beginning and how nobody involved seems to think their behavior was anything less than sterling.
It’s funny… when someone calls me a racist I don’t get offended because deep down I know I’m not a racist.Why are you so hurt by the accusation, I wonder?
You are speaking specifically about a post on The Root, where even the comments point this out. And you know what, that actress has not been “canceled” by anyone. People who get canceled, usually deserve it. You actually kind of prove the point.
So, What Katt is saying- AND I AGREE WITH – is that what was done way in the past can be attributed to immaturity and ignorance. One should be allowed to grow, and learn and change. So the person that went to a plantation party in 1989 should not have to be reminded of that now, so long as they recognize this behavior is no longer tolerated. My POV is that actions more then ~20 years old are ‘cemented in’. They cannot be undone, but are there to be a reminder of how things were. Grow, and move on and be better now and onward.
Eat shit, Bill Maher!
What’s Bill Maher got to do with this???
It doesn’t matter (he is a frequent critic of “cancel culture”) because that is a sentiment good for all occasions.
Yep. I have an otherwise-reasonable buddy who worships this dude, and I’m like, “Okay, but being a smarmy dick isn’t a solution. To anything.”
– Everyone, anytime Bill Maher comes up
There’s never an incorrect time to tell Bill Maher to eat shit.
No one needs a specific reason to tell Bill Maher to eat shit.
Bill Maher has become the grumpy grandpa living next door to you. He’s smug as ever. You must live by his rules and if you don’t then you’re a pathetic loser. He pretends to be so superior to everyone.
He would do well to listen to a German idiom that basically translates to: “If you don’t have a clue, just keep your damn mouth shut.”
I can’t decide if I should curse you or thank you for making me go down the “Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal Fresse halten” rabbit hole
To be perfectly honest, I’d had no idea where that saying even came from. I just looked it up myself and I regret bringing it up now. The person, who shall remain nameless, who said that first is possibly even more disagreeable than Bill Maher.
His increasingly pathological relationship with his audiences is also cringeworthy.
Kinky
Sir, this is an Arby’s
Of course it is, that’s a number 6 on the menu now.
You know what really doesn’t help to prove a point? Citing Katt Williams as a source.
that was really good coming from the man who figured he disproved evolution by asking why there are still monkeys
Yeah, thank God for the clear-eyed musings of fucking Katt Williams.
we KNOW you’re not from NYC, Paul!
Katt Williams said something dumb about a topic which he is unqualified to opine about, so let’s dismiss his musings on the one topic which he is perhaps best qualified to opine about.Makes perfect sense!
The only topic Katt Williams has a valid opinion on is getting his ass handed to him by a 7th grader.
but that’s not what i’m saying? i’m saying i’m pleasantly surprised. go tell your parents you love them
Right?That doesn’t mean what he’s saying is necessarily wrong, but “Because Katt Williams says so!” seems like a dubious way to support your argument.
Ben Carson understands brain surgery, Richard Dawkins understands evolutionary biology, Katt Williams understands comedy.That doesn’t mean you should go to any of them for insight on absolutely anything else, but they understand their own subjects very well.
Personally, I’ll get my info on brain surgery from someone who is also rational in other areas.
What do you disagree with about what Katt Williams said.All your sophistry my confuse and distract other people away from his point. But not me. So…. What is incorrect about what Williams said on their own merits.I expect no response. Or more obfuscation.
I’m not a fan of PhonyPope but I have to lol at “sophistry”.Fucking *really*? SOPHISTRY?Go polish the patches on the elbows of your jacket, man.
hmm.. is brother Katt still getting into street fights with teenagers?One of the most perversely hilarious things about him, and this actually has nothing to do with his stand-up or acting performances, is the way that he has been adopted as this icon of black-culture conspiracy theorists: supposedly, Mr. Williams is the one black celebrity who has managed to avoid being corrupted by The Elites (TM), and supposedly operates “freely” from harm. In comparison, pretty much every black celeb is assumed to be under the thumb of permanently anonymous puppet-masters (the roll call of victims includes Jay-Z, Beyonce, Will Smith, and various deceased folks like Prince, Michael Jackson, etc.). It’s all so very tawdry, but particularly among folks who are otherwise intelligent, this notion is extremely widespread.
Someone from ESPN literally got fired for something she tweeted 10 years ago, but hey, you found one person who agrees with you, good job.
There’s a troubling, or maybe absurd tendency in a lot of these comments, perfectly encapsulated in this sentence:
“Does it matter that AV Club is no longer a leading pop culture site and no longer has any pull or influence in the culture at large?”This narrative that websites, corporations and other pop culture Institutions somehow lose their power for going too hard on their “SJW” leanings is completely absurd, specially about this site that has never, ever had any significant pull or influence in the culture at large. It has been mentionen in SNL a couple of times, yeah, but The A.V. Club has always being pretty niche (thankfully) and as left leaning as it is today. (If the-avocado.org is anything to go by, it can even be said that it was even more left leaning before)
To think there’s somehow a karmic retribution for calling out racism says a lot about yourself, about what you wish and specially, about how you, not really deep down, think calling out hate should be punished. It should not, get it through your head, stop being racist and you’ll stop fearing getting cancelled or losing your job over it.
They’re not losing their power by going too “woke” or “SJW”. They’re losing their power because of an infinitely segmented media market. This results in more outlets fighting over an increasingly smaller slice of the audience (and making much less money in the process). They’re desperate, and they’re going with what has worked to get eyeballs since the turn of the 20th century – outrage, division, and demonization. I’m sure many of the writers here are true believers, but make no mistake that either consciously or unconsciously, they also know that appealing to the worst in our nature is just good business.
Which aptly and succinctly sums up the internet and its effect on traditional media over the last decade.
He said it great, cancel culture is a myth. A bunch of whiny people that are mad cause they can’t say what they want and not get called out for it. THey were the cool kids in the 90s who could intimidate those that called them out or something and made fun of people who spent time on the Internet. Now that they’re online and making money, thanks YouTube, they think they should be able to say what they want and “Freedom of speech” and have no consequences, Thanks Trump for making that seem okay. Cancel culture doesn’t exist…people just need to grow up and have respect for EVERYONE and realize what you say has CONSEQUENCES even if you THINK you have freedom of speech…you don’t have freedom from consequences.
Says the website that just tried to cancel Ellie Kemper. Seriously, AV Club can talk about how Cancel Culture doesn’t exist when you get off your high horse and issue a retraction, okay?
It was a dumb story and they should feel dumb.But what exactly were they trying to “cancel”? Did anyone suggest that she should be denied acting roles?Some people don’t understand that “cancel” has an action-taking connotation. Like you can’t say “Barilla pasta brand supports homophobic laws!”, walk away, then say you’ve engaged in boycotting. You need to say ” Don’t buy Barilla pasta!” That is ACTUALLY boycotting.
Did anyone suggest that she should be denied acting roles?Why is that the only metric? The article was pretty clearly trying to stir up shit and paint her as an evil racist based on something she did 22 years ago; whether or not you want to call it “cancel culture” is immaterial to the fact that there is a problem with progressives (or people who think they’re progressive but are actually just idiots) subjecting people to stupid, harmful, context-free purity tests.
Because without actual consequences then it’s just shit-talking, which doesn’t require a boogeyman term. You want to excoriate AV Club for needless shit talk? Okay! Totally fair and I agree! It’s not “cancel culture”, though.Even by your own argument it doesn’t pass muster. What “context-free purity test” was Kemper supposedly subjected to? “Ooh, we don’t like her now.” And?
It’s not “cancel culture”, though.I didn’t say it is, because I don’t use that term, mainly because it inevitably leads to clown fiestas like this one, with people yelling at each other about “cancel culture” even though nobody has taken five seconds to describe what they mean by it (because there are several different common usages). Like, it’s hilarious how this inevitably happens in every single one of these threads. The term is so overloaded that anyone using it (either to say that some version of it does or doesn’t exist) is a fool.What “context-free purity test” was Kemper supposedly subjected to?“She was involved with a racist organization!!” You even agreed that it was needless shit-talk! I don’t think you disagree with me at all. I think you’re assuming that I believe things I haven’t said.
There’s a difference, to me, between “Ellie Kemper is a racist!!!” and “Ellie Kemper was involved in a weird, formerly overtly racist organization and we’d like to know more about that.” Like…. It sounds to me like you don’t think it’s a topic worth exploring. The shit talk was jumping straight to “She’s a secret Nazi!”. But I think it’s fine to give her side-eye. She’s a comedic actress, not a social worker. What progressive purity test is she being given? I’m a lefty, I don’t particularly give a shit about Ellie Kemper’s personal history. I mean…. I didn’t know she was from a rich family so some of my class warrior instincts flared up. Her family has local sway and I don’t love that. But unless she pulls a McConaghey and starts talking about running for office I don’t see what test a progressive would give her.I’m not saying those tests don’t happen, btw. I think they do. But this? This doesn’t feel like that.
We both agree that the article was stupid; if you don’t want to agree with my characterization of it as a stupid context-free purity test, that’s fine with me, you can use whatever label you like.But I still think the thing that article did, whatever you want to label it, is still a pervasive problem among progressives.
You dont make the rules. You can be entitled af about it, being on your high moral horse, but in the end its not YOU who makes the rules.
Calling someone racist or homophobic is really not different from calling for a boycott of them.
It is. Because words exist. Mel Gibson is an anti-Semitic misogynist douche. I’m not going to tell you to not watch Mad Max.
Nope, a boycott is something you could do after calling someone out. It’s an escalation, but it’s still a separate action. You can call someone out and not boycott them. Most of us manage to understand that.
Did anyone suggest that she should be denied acting roles?Perhaps not denial of acting roles specifically (though it’s equally hard to think of any meaningful alternatives), but surely the suggestion that she should face some kind of punitive response to the situation can be read as implicit even if it wasn’t outright stated? After all, “ELLIE KEMPER HAS HISTORICAL TIES TO WHITE-SUPREMACIST ORGANISATIONS AND WAS VOTED QUEEN OF THEIR RACIST BEAUTY PAGEANT… yet should totally be allowed to continue to receive high-profile acting work with no punitive repercussions whatsoever, carry on with your day and give this no further thought” does not seem like an entirely likely logical argument in this case.
You’re completely ignoring the “And what does she have to say about it?” aspect, which is imo entirely reasonable. It doesn’t seem like she has ever addressed it. I’ll agree that some of the takes on it have been very aggressive but none have struck me as definitively “FUCK THIS WHITE LADY FOREVER!!!” (Except maybe the creep who nominated her…)I can’t know what is in everyone’s heart. Do some of these people jump straight to torches and pitchforks? Probably. But as I’ve said elsewhere, that’s nothing new. It doesn’t need a scare word like “cancel culture”. Especially when I believe a significant percentage aren’t looking to punish her as much as they are wanting an answer to the question of “What was that about?”Even when applied to more obviously heinous subjects I don’t think punishment is the default endgame for everyone pressing. A LOT of people wanted to give Louis CK a chance to explain himself (he didn’t) and atone (he didn’t). Even then the LEAST they asked was that he not be allowed to show up *unannounced* at whatever comedy club he wanted. And that tiniest ask was denied. How many MeToo women have said “I don’t want Man X to lose work, I just want him to be aware that he did wrong and for women to feel okay taking a stand.”?People act like these supposed “cancels” are punishment but they aren’t.
Maybe, but the thing is, the “what does she have to say about it?” part still contains an implicit suggestion of “she’s on some level obligated to deliver a public explanation/apology for her actions or else face some kind of negative consequences”. There’s still clearly at least a hint of some kind of punishment, for want of a better word, if she doesn’t respond in a way that people — most of whom appear to have appointed themselves to a position of judgement — deem appropriate.Which, I dunno, just seems kind of excessive in this case. Because this isn’t Louis CK engaging in sexual misconduct or Mark Wahlberg beating up a Vietnamese man while shouting racial abuse at him. This is a young woman participating in a glorified beauty pageant with a sketchy history twenty-odd years ago at a time and place where racial questions like this weren’t really interrogated that deeply and, through her later roles and actions, has arguably done at least something to suggest that she’s probably not a secret Klanswoman or anything, and is likely no more racist than any white woman from a position of privilege is. It just seems kind of self-righteous; sure, Ellie Kemper made some bad decisions and had some associations with an institution with a dodgy history when she was nineteen, I mean, I don’t know about you but I’m pretty sure that describes most of us in the western world, myself almost certainly included.And as for people just asking “what’s that all about”, even assuming that the baying hordes on Twitter are entitled to an explanation of/apology for what Ellie Kemper did with her evenings twenty years ago, I can’t help but feel that this is part of the problem, whatsoever it may be. Because it seems at least 95% likely that, getting past all the noise, we can all pretty much guess “what it was all about” and “what she has to say about it” — it’s that she was young and privileged, wasn’t really thinking that deeply about these kind of issues at the time, wasn’t fully aware of the situation beyond maybe thinking “well, they used to be racist but they let POC in now, I guess racism’s fixed,” and now regrets participating in it (if only because if she hadn’t she wouldn’t now be dealing with people yelling at her about it on Twitter). Which maybe doesn’t reflect awesomely on her, but isn’t really egregiously awful enough to be that worthy of public condemnation either. I suspect that if and when Ellie Kemper actually does publicly address this, any statement she makes will probably include those things (since, let’s face it, she’s hardly gonna come out and say “well honestly guys, I actually am a secret Klanswoman, ya got me!”). It seems like deep down we all already know what the situation is yet are going through some kind of motions involving loudly expressed outrage about it regardless. And I don’t know if that’s cancel culture or whatever, but it still seems kind of weird, honestly.
That’s all mostly fair.I suppose I just don’t see AV Club as having really publicly condemned her. The story was trending and they wanted clicks. Even the harsher version from The Root was basically click bait. People are acting like AV Club dug this shit up. They didn’t. They just cynically capitalized on it. If people want to be mad at that I say go for it.
For one, she doesn’t have to say a thing about it. She was in a pageant at 19 that had shed its “no blacks” bylaw 20 years before she’d entered it. Hell, some of us patronize colleges and businesses more recently racist than that.Secondly, you can’t ignore that original headline that stayed up for 2 days before alteration. “Oh great, Ellie Kemper has a racist past” was inex-fucking-cusable.
They weren’t trying to cancel her at all, except maybe implicitly. They were just laying out her weird ass cult ballroom shit.
“…But what exactly were they trying to “cancel”? Did anyone suggest that she should be denied acting roles?”So your argument is basically, “SURE, A MOB WAS CHANTING HANG MIKE PENCE, BUT NOBODY HANGED MIKE PENCE, SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?”
Nobody had to tell me to boycott. Barilla sucked way before the homophobia broke the surface.
Foodies can go to Hell. But this was funny so take a star.
It’s exactly what cancel culture is, as the term was coined originally by Black Twitter. Digging into someone’s past and try to make some “gotcha” moment, no matter how stretched, spreading it around.
The loudest people about cancel culture not existing are always white dudes who like to harass women online.
AV Club didn’t do any digging. Even the original Tweet didn’t “dig” into anything. Apparently this is something that has been known about Kemper for fucking ever. It just didn’t get traction back then. At most what happened was bored people making a mountain out of a molehill and it sticking because we’re post-lockdown and racial tension is in the air. (Especially for a woman whose prior TV show caught shit for some Asian representation weirdness and we just went through some anti-Asian hate shit.)
See, you’re too focused on the “digging” part and conveniently ignored the “try to make some “gotcha” moment, no matter how stretched, spreading it around” part, which is crucial.
They were trying to paint a scarlet letter on her with that shit blog post. This is what happens when you have hack bloggers posting on a site and not actual writers.
Ok, I’ll give you that one. But, just because it doesn’t meet the criteria of “cancel culture”, doesn’t mean that that wasn’t a shitty thing to do. Calling it “dumb” implies a certain naivete, innocence, or a momentary lapse of judgement on the site’s part. But this family of blogs is constantly churning out needlessly negative takes because that’s what sells. Wrong wording on someone’s part doesn’t make their entire point moot. What they are saying is still true. And their anger is warranted. And it is still relevant to what’s being said.
If the facts are right, they don’t have to retract anything.
I also made light of this on Tatiana’s article immediately after the Ellie Kemper one, and mysteriously I was relegated to the grays (and likely blocked) after that. These people are really struggling with the lightest criticism now too.
Putting aside all the hot takes of “is cancel culture real or not,” Katt’s analysis is dead-on. Comedy is an artform that relies on the sensibilities of the audience as much as it does on the sensibilities of the comedian, and if you can’t cultivate an audience then maybe it’s just not the gig for you. There are plenty of comedians saying offensive shit and making a living, there’s plenty operating within the reasonable confines of “don’t be an asshole” who are making a living, and there’s plenty who knowingly poke at the borders of what’s widely considered acceptable who are making a living.More often than not, it feels like the complaints come from comedians who don’t like the audience they’ve cultivated, tending to think they’re owed a younger and hipper one.
I had a row with a friend a few weeks ago about this kind of thing. Granted, I kind of baited with him with a “white men whining about things!” line… but I find a lot of “comedy defenders” get right up on the high horse with COMEDY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO SAY ANYTHING. NOTHING OFF LIMITS. I suppose I agree. On a broad scale I agree. The catch is: You’re not owed an audience, or a gig, or anything. If, like you say, you can’t “cultivate an audience,” then complaining that “you can’t make the same jokes you used to” is such a cop-out. When you’ve got generally rich, wealthy, or well-known comedians who came up 20-30 years ago whining about college crowds, like… maybe it’s a you problem? If the audiences aren’t interested in your material, or outright calling you out on it, maybe it’s you.
Comedy is all about observing and reporting on culture, in ways mundane and profound. If you don’t understand that culture, or refuse to engage with it, what the fuck are you doing as a comedian?Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t want college campuses to care about him because he has any real interest in them as a group of people with shared experiences, he just wants to still be young and vital and thinks younger crowds prove he still is. But no part of him wants to figure out why milquetoast observations about being rich in NYC, or how you park in the driveway and drive in the parkway, fail to resonate with young people today like they did 30 years ago. He doesn’t actually give a shit about them, and cannot stand the fact that the feeling’s mutual.
Funny how so many people who get upset at “cancel culture” are fiscal conservatives who worship at the altar of The Free Market. Guess what, jagoff? The market decided they think you’re an asshole. Still think it’s so great?
* Aziz Ansari stares at a quiet telephone *
FrEe mARkEt No, not like that
Well said. My response to “comedians should be allowed to say anything” has always been “what if they’re talking about smashing a watermelon with a hammer?”
I like when he talks about smashing a watermelon with a hammer.
Yup. You can say whatever you want, but the audience has the right to think its unfunny, offensive, gross, whatever. So many comedians seem to think they are entitled to a laugh for their jokes, and if they don’t get one they blame the audience. I’ve laughed at jokes where I found the idea or content of the joke offensive or questionable because it was actually funny. I have not laughed at jokes that completely agree with or reinforce my viewpoints because the joke wasn’t funny. Know your audience, and if a joke doesn’t work then fucking own it.
I like dark, fucked up humour. I don’t like lazy, boring, dumb humour and people complaining about the audience if it gets booed, criticized, or bombs.
Basically, if Lenny Bruce was able to figure out how to sell his material in 1959, it’s your own goddamn fault if you can’t sell yours in 2021.
YUP.I dig comics that can pivot.
I’ve said this before around here, but there is a great Dan Harmon quote where he says “You don’t get in trouble for being hilarious”, which I think is a pretty safe rule to play by. You can say some fucked up stuff but it better be pretty damn funny.
Yep.Like, there’s a reason why Wimmin be SHOPPIN’! jokes aren’t really in the zeitgeist anymore, and the reason is only partially due to “PC” culture or whatever shit. The larger reason is because they’re hacky, they’re easy, and they aren’t funny. And that isn’t a “they’re not funny because they’re misogynist” kind of thing. They just ain’t fucking funny.
More often than not, it feels like the complaints come from comedians who don’t like the audience they’ve cultivated, tending to think they’re owed a younger and hipper one.Sometimes it’s an act of audience cultivation. Complaining that “you’re not allowed to even tell jokes anymore” is a way of cutting out out a chunk of your audience and strengthening your connection with another.
Cancel culture deniers are every bit as stupid and oblivious as global warming deniers.
Nah.
Stop it, you’re gonna ruin it for Grifters lol
Random question: Has anyone else noticed a problem with Kinja (aside from..)? The links in the notifications don’t actually load to the comments. Been like that for the last few days.
Yep, same here. Kinja’s finding new and exciting ways to get worse.
I get the ‘Kinja sucks’ thing, but it really is just a terrible platform.
I blame Hulk Hogan.
That one took me a minute. Also, yay, it’s working again.
I wish we still had Ernie from Kinja here, to tell us how these are actually exciting improvements we’ll grow to love.
Totally. It’s super annoying. Just started this week.
Yup. Not the first time it’s happened, probably won’t be the last. Kinja is the worst.
Yup, it sucks.
Kinja has been a shit-show since the transition from Disqus.
Good luck finding this comment when you see that I’ve replied to it!
A few months ago I noticed the article tags were no longer displayed above the articles. Luckily, there’s a way to search by tags, which is to type https://www.avclub.com/tag/followed by the tag with hyphens between words. For Katt Williams it’d behttps://www.avclub.com/tag/katt-williams
oh,good, it’s not just me.
Ooh, are we complaining about Kinja? Yeah, you now have to scroll all the way through the comments to find the comment you’re being notified about, which is obviously really efficient.In conclusion, Kinja sucks. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
Yep. Annoying.
I’m wondering what happened to the top comment on this article. Hmmmm….
I’ve had that issue with kinja on iPhone for ages.
Comment links from one’s profile aren’t working either.
Yes.
It’s almost as annoying as when you’re typing a reply to someone and a popup ad opens up and blocks the window you were typing in AS YOU’RE TYPING.
The amazing this is that Kinja is so bad we now pine for the days of disqus.
Yes. As a grey it’s particularly frustrating.
What’s it like to target people for cancellation multiple times a week while at the same time saying there is no such thing, as What you’re doing?
Man, this whole Cancel Culture lark, it’s not new. In the 80s and 90s we called it “Political Correctness Gone Mad” and it’s just the same dumb-dumb thing where people demand the right to say things they used to be allowed to say but they’re not allowed to say because the definition of politeness has expanded to include not-saying-those-things, and then once that is pointed out it turns into: it shouldn’t be my responsibility to worry about being polite to people because I’m just a comedian/entertainer/actor and that’s a really important job that requires me not to be constrained by politeness even though nobody is actually censoring me, I just want to be able to book the high-level gigs I used to and get TV appearances and stuff.
And even back then, “Political Correctness” wasn’t a real concept either. It was something that people attributed to the progressive left in much the same way as ‘woke’. It’s not a thing that people actually said to describe themselves seriously, it was a parodic term. Just like woke was, when it was used initially.
I don’t know what point I”m really trying to make here, save that “cancel culture” is just the latest iteration of a long-standing rhetorical device used by people who want to defend class privilege, wittingly or otherwise. It’s not some thing that’s arisen in the wake of the latest wave of neo-conservative (even “alt-right” is basically just “neocon for the internet age”).I don’t think we shouldn’t be talking about it, but I think that when we do talk about it we should probably couch it in the historical context that shows it’s an rhetorical device that’s been around for a while because if we wanna be sensible in addressing the nazis and nazi-adjacent boobs that advance this narrative, we need to recognise that it has less to do with whether a culture of “cancel” (?) factually actually exists or not, and more to do with an ideological position that demands the right to retain its privilege and power (which definitely exists).
I’m gonna be that guy. *Actually*, regarding woke:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
The terms “politically correct”, “woke”, “social justice warrior”, etc. can be a bit frustrating. They’re really just synonyms or plays on the concept of be kind, caring, and respectful.I’d hope that we could all agree that being kind, caring and respectful are good things that we should strive to do*… But attaching them to these “annoying” phrases permits those on the right to flip the script.int that it becomes overly restrictive? Sure. Lots of things are possible.But we have brains, we can draw lines and we can figure out when something has gone too far. However, we should never give up on striving to be kind, caring, and respectful to all.
Eh… I think there’s just slightly more complexity there. You’ll not find someone online who’s a bigger fan of being kind, caring and respectful than I am. Well, okay, I’m sure you’ll find a lot more, but I’m generally a price nice dude, I think.And most of the strangers you talk to who promote mutual respect and understanding are also really nice people, who genuinely care about other humans, no matter what background, and want the world to be a better place.But oh man, there’s that 5% of internet commenters on Kinja or Twitter on the far left who are the ones who come to mind when I hear the term “Social Justice Warrior”, and it’s mostly that they take the “warrior” part of it to heart, and they are out there to find fault and ‘destroy’ people who they don’t agree with.As a white cis male and overtalker and highly privileged dude who genuinely just wants to be a better person, I often ask questions and in my ignorance often ask the wrong thing or use the wrong words when asking it, and for this at times just get cremated by a certain type.And these people, usually from what I can tell middle-aged suburban white women living somewhere outside New York City or Chicago, have NO problem spending their time telling everyone who doesn’t use the perfectly correct modern vernacular what a horrible person they are and how racist they are and in general how they themselves are so superior.And when I see these people, I just think more than anything they’re hurting the cause and the ideals of creating respect and kindness, because they don’t seem to be out there for the forces of good, but rather to throw the term “racist” around so they can feel better about their own situation.Big believer in killing them with kindness is I guess what I’m saying.
That’s one definition of “Cancel Culture”, one that’s been co-opted by white people.“Cancel culture” was coined by Black Twitter, and is about people digging into someone’s past to create an outrage, a “gotcha” moment, no matter how stretched. Just because they don’t like the person, usually.Of course, it’s ironically another instance of white people erasing something black people came up with and pretending it doesn’t exist.
Love this perspective.
Love this overall point, but just want to add one thing: I don’t think we shouldn’t be talking about it, but I think that when we do talk about it we should probably couch it in the historical context that shows it’s an rhetorical device that’s been around for a while It has been around exactly as long as civilization has been around. Before televised media, it was books and pamphlets. Before books and pamphlets, it was stage plays. Before stage plays, it was ideas. It’s always been a thing.
If i remember, there were several articles about the up-and-coming Aziz Ansari every year, once upon a time… when was the last time anybody wrote a thoughtful piece about him, his career, what he’s up to, what he thinks?
Hey AV Club, please show us that Cancel Culture is not a thing by doing a 13 Questions with Aziz. I’m sure yu’ll only get positive feedback if you actually deign to write it.
He’s right, “Cancel Culture” doesn’t exist. As he said, artists just need to be mindful of the restrictions and boundaries over their speech, and that if someone doesn’t like what you say or do, they can agitate to take away your livelihood. If you can’t handle the confines imposed on you, you shouldn’t be an artist. I don’t see why this is so difficult for some people to understand?
Cancel culture accounts for half of the “content” that this website puts out every day. Launching self-righteous crusades is literally part of your business model. The level of cognitive dissonance in posts like this is incredible, but we are living in the most absurd timeline.
But dollars to donuts you guys already have your next “here’s who to start hating this week” article in the can.
Anything for those sweet, sweet clicks.
You defended Louis CK
You’re a goddamned nanny freak who follows folks across Kinja to go all Charlyne Yi and get reactions. Been doing it for months, maybe years. You MUST be pretty awesome.
You are an absolute creep who spends their life scrolling through everyone’s past comments in sad attempts at demonizing them. You, more than anyone else, set the tone for the AV Club’s comment sections these days. Comments that used to be so full of fun and joy and are now a toxic, miserable place to be.
If people who defend sexual predators find this site a “toxic, miserable place to be” because of my comments, I couldn’t be more proud.
It’s not so much what you do (although it’s creepy as hell), it’s how you do it. With the snide, self-righteous tone that’s come to define both the AV Club’s content and its commentariat.
Yes, pointing out that people are commenting in bad faith is far more creepy than defending sexual predators. And (alleged) “snide self-righteousness” is apparently also worse than defending sexual predators. It appears that defending sexual predators is fairly low on the list of offenses according to you!
It can be two things! You can be an humourless, obnoxious scold who takes (often, though not always) wokeness to weird, problematic places, and people defending sexual predators can creepy assholes who we’d all be better off ignoring.
I think it’s just your cyberstalking and weird sense of moral superiority that make everyone hate you.
And dollars to donuts you’ll click on it, read it, and subsequently engage in argument about it.Way to stick it to em!
Gimme some credit! I’ll comment without reading it.
I’ll comment without reading it.-The AVClub
I miss the old days of the Onion when it was actually funny, and the AV club when it was a great site for entertainment. This GO media group and Jim Spanfucker have trashed all of these sites. All the writers have left and what’s left is a cesspool of mediocre bloggers with click bait headlines and articles.
Way to take a stand against it by commenting in a click bait article!
Criticizing or debating is one thing, threatening or doing active harm is quite another. The former is part of a healthy society, the second should never be allowed. The practice of a person’s life, family, career, or property being destroyed by jabbering apes needs to be stamped out.There is also a difference between citizens vs. mega-corporations. For example, I don’t think Coke LLC should be throwing its massive corporate weight around, trying to force voting laws through brute economic force, though every one of Coke’s managers and employees have an absolute right to speak and act as citizens. That NC county has the right to kick Coke out of their county vending machines — if Coke thinks it has the right to interfere with NC legislative process. then Coke shouldn’t be protected from blowback, as long as the blowback is non-violent.
Of course those racist jerks have the right to ban Coke machines and stop poc from voting.
I wish cancel culture actually existed, then I wouldn’t have to read about Joe Rogan’s uneducated musings and Tucker Carlson wouldn’t be a thing. When people like Rogan, Carlson or Bill Maher complain about cancel culture what they’re really complaining about is that they are being held accountable for the first time in their lives for their bigotry and bullshit
You know the readers of AV Club don’t know shit about comedy when someone lumps Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, and Tucker Carlson into the same category. Seriously, what are you even talking about? Please explain how Rogan and Maher are being “held accountable” by this Democrat system of checks and balances that cancel culture supposedly provides? By being offered giant Spotify deals and having millions of devoted followers? Ya, great job holding these people accountable. How can all of you be weighing in on a topic (comedy in general, and stand-up specifically) when you are all clearly so ignorant of what it is and how it works?Every single one of you twitter jockeys who engages in cancel culture should be fully doxxed and forced to receive the same kind of online bullying and harassment that you revel in. People wouldn’t be so loud and arrogant if they had to stand by the things they say and open themselves up to the same attacks that they level against others.You people are sick and pathetic and you need to focus on your own lives and stop worrying about people who make JOKES for a living.
Love it.
Complaining is just too easy now with social media, and no one can be a bad boy anymore. Social media is drawing the world together, and people are starting to realize how whiny people are.
It’s all good until Katt says something this site doesn’t like and yall roll him under the bus like the rest of them. I mean yall act like you are so familiar with his past work and what he has said in the is gonna line up what he is saying about cancel culture.
The only people I know that are worried about “Cancle Culture” are the ones that want to either do or say something offensive and get away with it, like they have in the past. They don’t want to change their behavior and the world doesn’t want to put up with that BS anymore.
“Ah, cancel culture: The phrase that brings together the twin pleasures of alliteration, and your own failures somehow being someone else’s fault”
^ second half describes “social justice”, actually.
Hey Guys, we all hate the av club but for some reason can’t quit it, right? Well, based on the amount of comments on here they’re never gonna stop writing about cancel culture as long as we keep being obsessed with it.
I know, it’s super depressing. Personally, I comment in the hopes that an AV Club staffer might read what I have to say and question the direction this site has taken over the past few years. But no, the amount of clicks this article has gotten only ensures us a glorious future of endless outrage.
The way the actual phrase “cancel culture” has been co-opted by the right to describe some of the unhelpful lunatic fringes of the folks trying to do the cancelling seems to have rendered the entire concept toxic and meaningless.
Because sometimes it is a good thing. Sometimes it is not a good thing. No matter which, it seems to make anyone speaking about it fly into a either a primitive, pretty rage or an indulgent soapbox moment designed to school the other side. A silly little buzzphrase which will be forever loaded with partisanship. Meaningless.
last time I checked Katt was a huge anti-Semitic blowhard and even his co-workers in the comedy world find him problematic, not to mention his little habit of randomly screaming and physically attacking people he doesn’t like. maybe not the guy the AV Club wants to hang its hat with to validate it’s moral-of-the-day stance.