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Sheluyang Peng's avatar

When people say that cancel culture doesn't exist by naming famous figures like Louis C.K. or Dave Chappelle, they are engaging in survivorship bias. The people that were successfully cancelled simply disappeared from the public eye. So you only get to hear about the ones that survived.

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Brad's avatar

I think that with "cancellation," the true target isn't the specific person being cancelled, but the broader public that’s being disciplined and conditioned to adopt a range of politically acceptable norms and behaviors. This is why a climate of cancellation is so pernicious. It can succeed in changing the way people talk and argue and behave even if it doesn’t succeed in destroying the careers of some of the more famous people who are targeted.

The attacks still serve to discourage other people from saying what they think. The goal isn’t just to punish someone, but to shame or scare just enough people to make the rest conform. When opening your mouth is liable to get you ruinously accused of committing a long list of -isms, this obviously has a chilling effect on speech. People self-censor. Wrote about this here:

https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-and-the-renormalization

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