Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Whats the difference between having sex and being a sexual predator?

Do you just make things up as you go?

The frightening thing about "cancel culture" isnt that its new or eye-opening. Its has always existed, sandboxed, in places called school playgrounds. The world have adults has this annoying thing called due process. Filing cases, going to court, giving evidence etc etc.

Now that the playground rules are stating to proliferate into adult spaces, companies - surprisingly - have started to use playground platforms to make -what used to be - adult decisions about who to fire, who to buy from, whose services to use...from a 240 character platform. No due process, no due diligence, nothing. Just tweets.

God bless us all.




> Whats the difference between having sex and being a sexual predator?

I don't think it's necessary to answer this because "sexual predator" was literally Noah's description of himself and his behavior (in those words) in the apology post that led to Wizards no longer wanting to work with him.


I mean, "angry mobs" have always existed as you said yourself. They didn't seep into "adult spaces", they've always been there. We don't need to blame Twitter, the Internet as a whole, anonymous communication platforms or anything else for human nature.

The fight against cancel culture is a fight against people doing things. It's literally that. "Cancelling" is just a framing device for a myriad of behaviors and reasoning behind those behaviors. If this post gets downvotes, "cancel culture". If OP's post gets a bunch of negative comments, "cancel culture".

TL;dr- There's never been an egalitarian, logic-only meritocracy, in human history, and people getting upset that there isn't one is as reasonable a choice as other people deciding to "cancel" someone.


I recently had a mentally ill family member try to work up a mob to get another family member fired from their job over some perceived slight. This person was able to get attention from media figures on Facebook who were interested in writing a story. They attempted to make noise on Twitter using the employer's account.

I don't think anyone had tools like this at their disposal in the 1990s. You could call up someone's employer and lie about an employee saying something bad about immigrants at a birthday party and they'd probably just hang up on you or threaten to call the police for harassment.


I was commenting on the causal relationship. The fact that vigilante social pressure is easier today is technically true, but not really addressing my point about the fact that people wanted (and did) do this. Your example is a guess. I promise you, in 1990 if I wanted to ruin someone's life, I could have (go check out the movie Fear).

The Salem Witch Trials were cancel culture. Jim Crow lynch mobs were cancel culture. The Red Scare was cancel culture. Same idea, new execution.

(Edited for spelling error)




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: