What's going on?! White People, Black People
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Outrage culture is a very real thing. “Cancel culture” is not. People paying a price for things they say is nothing new, it has happened always and will always happen. It is not “cultural”, it is a natural part of human interaction. People paying a notable public price for things they said used to be mostly conservative reactions to people not towing a nationalist line or a narrative that supported the status quo. Recently, people are paying a price for saying stupid shit, more than just for things that disturb the establishment or way things have always been, but for also assaulting the dignity of others for something they cannot help or making vulnerable people’s lives more dangerous. Cancelling is not just woke, but everywhere (ahem…recent multiple beer companies sponsoring inclusion). You engage in cancelling all the time yourself, at various social levels, and tacitly agree with it at work, in organisations you are a part of, in your family and with friends/partners.
I simply do not see the point in trying to control this. People have every right to boycott, disassociate, not engage with or lose favour with something they do be it an actual crime, something that betrays their trust, assaults their dignity, disagrees with their core values, as long as it does not break laws (like discriminate, libel or break contracts). It may be unfair in some cases, it may be unjust in some moral systems, but it is hard to imagine how we could stop it without fundamentally encroaching on personal autonomy or basic rights.
Outrage culture is a whole other ball game, something that can easily be regulated, at least with large online companies that bring it into overdrive. While there is little you can do about tabloids and television, social media, artists, algorithms have turned it into such overdrive, that it is increasing radicalisation, sectarianism and I am sure strain on mental health systems and to a small extent policing and the courts. Simple, an non-overly intrusive regulation of the largest social media companies to not be consistently jamming content (we never asked to see) that gets us to react (and outrage) would be easy to do, at no meaningful cost to society (if not benefit) or our rights/dignity. It is one thing to ban content, it is another thing to regulate large social media companies from purposefully targeting individuals with content aimed at provoking reaction despite its pointless social cost. Why the government doesn’t regulate social media is beyond me (actually no it isn’t, it has little incentive to do so and will face a false “free speech” backlash driven by the companies themselves).
I agree with Autumn. This group seems to be cashing in on outrage culture. It’s lazy artistry. Will likely sell and set off a whole sub market of outrage commentary.
It all sort of makes sense Pope. The rest of the civilised world is extremely puzzled by the flag waving exceptionalism (along with other exceptional American things like gun lunacy, allowing the vulnerable to go fuck themselves, the uniform worshipping and bootlicking and the social regression (though that last one is not exceptional, its happening a little bit in some other countries and more than a little in Hungary and Poland). I imagine it would only make sense if I lived there, at least understand how people came to have such a point of view. I don’t know how well you can fight such narratives, but spread your own narrative, and focus on younger generations who hopefully already find the nonsense of those videos mostly outdated.
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