Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Second rate reporter says what?

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

When I was faster i was always behind.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

We still have time to mess this up!

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Cancel Culture Is When You Tell Me to Shut Up, Not When I Tell You

Cancel Culture Is When You Tell Me to Shut Up, Not When I Tell You

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This post is in: 

Daniel Dale reviews the many, many people and things Trump wants to cancel, all the while bitching about “cancel culture”. Spoiler alert: it’s a big list.

This whole “cancel culture” horseshit whinefest makes me want to laugh — welcome to political power being exercised by people who you don’t want to respect, old white males and other formerly untouchable, entitled racists and discriminators. Fuck them all, I say.

While I’m on the subject of cancellation, different-church-lady mentioned in the thread on my last post that over 750 big companies have cancelled their Facebook ads. Zuck’s reaction, they’ll be back “soon enough” just shows how out of touch he is — he made that comment when the boycott count was 500. This afternoon, he and his senior staff met with boycott-organizing civil rights leaders and it didn’t go well:

The boycott organizers “didn’t hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action,” said Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González, who attended the virtual meeting, which lasted over an hour. “Instead of committing to a timeline to root out hate and disinformation on Facebook, the company’s leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands.”

Here’s the deal: when you get 750 big brands together to shit on an advertising platform, there’s something going on besides their social consciences acting up. Facebook’s inability to police fake accounts has to be part of the reason these companies are jumping on the boycott bandwagon, because their whole value proposition to big advertisers is that Facebook provides insight about who is looking at, and reacting to, their ads. When thousands of Russian bots are watching your ads and providing fake engagement data, as a big advertiser, you might just choose to advertise on other platforms, since you’re not getting much real data from this one.

I’m on Instagram (owned by Facebook) to view travel content, and the advertisements pushed to me are 80% garbage products on par with old school “as seen on TV” inventions by Ron Popeil. This kind of crap has always been around, and it will never go away, but no advertising platform ever made a fortune on it. Anyone with half a brain would never touch this kind of overpriced and overhyped junk with a ten foot pole, and I’m sure their advertising charges reflect that. If Facebook doesn’t change their tune, their list of advertisers will soon look like Glenn Beck’s or Alex Jones’, and that’s not a multi-billion-dollar book of business.

Reader Interactions

88Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    This whole “cancel culture” horseshit whinefest makes me want to laugh — welcome to political power being exercised by people who you don’t want to respect, old white males and other formerly untouchable, entitled racists and discriminators. Fuck them all, I say.

    I think I will join you and second that ‘FTA’, if you don’t mind.  They (as usual) just don’t want to be held accountable in any way for the things they do or say.

  5. 5.

    SFAW

    Whatever you think of his commercials or products, Ron Popeil was an actual inventor, not a “used car salesman” (so to speak), so cut him some slack.

  7. 7.

    Jeffro

    It’s funny, now that I think about it: a couple of months ago, a fellow educator was getting into it with some glibertarian nimrod on Twitter, and I ‘liked’ one of the educator’s responses.  I didn’t even say anything…just the ‘like’

    Woke up the next morning to find the glibertarian trying to get me in trouble by tweeting to his followers and @-ing my place of work and other related accounts.  Fortunately, I knew not to ‘feed the troll’ or worry about it overly much, but Le Glib kept at it for a couple weeks on and off, until no one responded or cared.

    ‘Cancel culture’ indeed.  They just don’t want to think it can happen to them.

  12. 12.

    hotshoe

    If prayer had any effect, the Orange Menace would have been cancelled years ago.

    And the whole Repug party to boot.

  15. 15.

    namekarB

    @raven: It’ll always be Fuck The Army to me.

    My first reaction also. Acronym from the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam

  17. 17.

    MoxieM

    I confess to being a reluctant, but frequent, FB user. As a person with very limited physical mobility, and a super-restricted social network. Also? Not much family, and they’re not my buds.  FB, alas, is the only current was I have to “socialize”.  Most of the people a talk to now are not actually people I know IRL, and yet we are a circle of mistfit toys. Open to better solutions.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Bari Weiss made her name in Manhattan whatever-the-fuck-they-are circles by claiming she felt threatened by a Palestinian professor, whom she wanted fired because of her feelings.

  22. 22.

    cain

    @Chyron HR:
    I have a number of french co-workers.. they are awesome. :) If anything they show me that I don’t take enough vacation! :D

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    @Cacti:

    Hmm, some surprises in there, like Jennifer Finney Boylan, Gloria Steinem, Randall Kennedy . . .

    I have to admit I couldn’t read it. It’s the worst kind of self-important academic prose.

  29. 29.

    frosty

    @MoxieM:

    Most of the people a talk to now are not actually people I know IRL, and yet we are a circle of mistfit toys.

    Sounds like the commenters on an almost Top 10,000 blog I heard about.

  31. 31.

    Marcopolo

    So I guess today was the day Trump officially decided another cornerstone of his re-election campaign was going to be bellowing “I made sure schools re-opened!”

    Trump on political leaders who won't yet open schools in the fall: "We don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons, they think it's gonna be good for them politically so they keep the schools closed. No way." He says he'll put pressure on them.— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 7, 2020

    At no point did Trump say anything about federal safety guidelines for this or federal financial aid to school districts to help them with things like purchasing PPE or making environmental improvements to school buildings/classrooms. As has been noted by many here on BJ, local school districts definitely don’t have the resources to do this and neither do state governments due to the pandemic hit on local and state economies.

    Of course, the sycophantic R governors are racing off the cliff alongside him:

    All public schools in Florida must reopen to students in-person when the academic year begins next month, the state's education commissioner says, even as cases of the coronavirus continued to surge in his state. https://t.co/d0w0FvMQl1— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 7, 2020

    There was an article in the local paper about this as well with lots of comments about how “Covid-19 barely affects school-age kids,” while ignoring that actually kids do get sick, we aren’t actually sure exactly how the virus affects our bodies (at any age) long-term, that there are teachers & staff (many of whom are older & have co-morbidities like diabetes or high blood pressure, and that Covid caught at a school can be brought home to infect parents & extended family.

    It’s the entire “open up the states, liberate the states” shitshow that we first saw in May and whose results we are living through now just laid on top of schools. So, yeah, it is enraging. I do not have kids but I called my school district, state legislators, county council rep & county exec’s office to plead with them to either do this right or not do it at all.

    Fuck, if I were President, I’d have a goal of making it so every American could test themselves every day. You wake up & you are going out of the house to work or shopping or whatever, you do a test before you leave. If you are positive, you are quarantined until you test negative. If you test negative, go on your merry way. If you aren’t leaving your house you don’t need to test yourself. It could have been a new moonshot program. Sure, it would cost billions, but over the course of the pandemic it would save trillions since the vast majority of folks could lead mostly normal lives & we’d maintain a mostly normal economy.

    That’s my rant for the day. In other news, congratulations to Jimmy & Rosalind Carter on their 74th wedding anniversary! I wish I were even a tenth as nice & useful to the world as they are.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    @Cacti:

    They seem to be fighting for the right to avoid having to tell unreasonable people to fuck off, which is the way you handle unreasonable people in a liberal democracy (coupled with voting against Republicans).

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: it was weird!  Fortunately I’m not all that interesting or profitable enough or whatever to pursue with the “@” campaign, I guess.

    But yeah, this ‘cancel culture’ thing is just straight-up projection with these clowns.  They do this kind of thing all. the. time.

  34. 34.

    kindness

    We can hope it works out that way.  I for one don’t give a lot of credit for corporate America to have much of a spine.  Their accountants scream and then their leaders beg for anything to make it better.  That is what Zuckerberg expects.  So do I but I would love to be proved wrong on this.

  36. 36.

    sdhays

    Anyone with half a brain would never touch this kind of overpriced and overhyped junk with a ten foot pole, and I’m sure their advertising charges reflect that.

    I remember a few years ago Josh Marshall writing several posts about the fraudulent and abusive nature of Facebook’s advertising. They charge you based on the value they tell you they’re providing, and they got caught lying (“accidentally”) in a big way. Of course they’re ripping off their advertising customers again.

    It was founded as a scam in the first place, and it’s only gotten more brazen over time.

  38. 38.

    waspuppet

    “It’s ‘Trump/Pence: Fuck YOUR Feelings,’ not ‘Trump/Pence: Fuck MY Feelings!’ I mean, DUH!”

  39. 39.

    Barbara

    I don’t know where Jennifer Rubin’s conscience was before 2016, but today she explicitly takes on the NYT’s penchant for twisting itself into prolix prose in order to avoid stating that Trump is a racist.  Here is her conclusion:

    Racists and liars are enabled and protected from accountability when the media mince words in describing their language. It is those who are already the victims of racial injustice, brutality and persecution who are hurt the most when the media bob and weave, sidestepping unpleasant but true descriptions of their oppressors. I pray we will finally respond to protesters’ demands for racial justice, but in the meantime, can we at least be clear about the identity and tactics of their persecutors?

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @Marcopolo:It’s the entire “open up the states, liberate the states” shitshow that we first saw in May and whose results we are living through now just laid on top of schools. So, yeah, it is enraging. I do not have kids but I called my school district, state legislators, county council rep & county exec’s office to plead with them to either do this right or not do it at all.

    Spot on (about calling all of those officials).  That’s exactly what K-12 kids’ parents need to be doing right now.  You guys want the schools open/”daycare” provided/have a prayer of getting people working again?  Cough it up for some PPE and testing, jackasses!

  41. 41.

    Kropacetic

    @Cacti: Literally no one on that list has a problem getting their opinion out whether anyone wants to hear it or not.

    And they want to keep it that way.

    The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right…

    Well, they got that right.

    censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism

    It’s okay to have opposing views, but not express that opposition in any meaningful way. BTW: Censoring is something only the government or some entity that controls a platform can do

    and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

    We’re certain this is morally wrong

    We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.

    As long as you aren’t calling for people to stop reading our shit.

    But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.

    We need to be more tolerant of intolerance

    More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.

    Like gassing protesters. Or not reading my book. Same dif

  43. 43.

    zhena gogolia

    Yes, I read the Bret Stephens piece. Ho hum. Yes, the intolerant left is a threat. Stipulated. However, I have excoriated people on the left for most of my career. But only opposing Trump produced harassment, demands to fire me, and death threats. Cancel culture, indeed. /1— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 4, 2020

  44. 44.

    New Deal democrat

    @John Revolta:in support of your opinion, let’s put the shoe on the other foot: a Trumpist employer in a red State fires an employee for voicing support for Black lives matter. Okay or not?

    If not, what’s the difference?

    Does it matter if the offense is voicing an opinion or engaging in an action?

  45. 45.

    Calouste

    @Jeffro: Complaining about cancel culture is the “party of personal responsibility” complaining that they are held responsible for their words and actions.

  46. 46.

    Cacti

    I remember when Bill O’Reilly got Pepsi to cancel Ludacris because his music “degraded women”.

    Oh the irony.

  47. 47.

    JMG

    All these prominent bigdomes who’re bent out of shape because of “cancel culture” should just get off social media. What they’re really mad about is that on Twitter, for one, people can tell you to your virtual face that you suck and they don’t like it. I mean, Salman Rushdie, who was REALLY persecuted for his words, signed it. I understand why this is a topic close to his heart, but he should’ve laughed at it instead. I have seldom read such a pompous piece of prose in my life.

  48. 48.

    Calouste

    @Kropacetic: Sounds like the usual: people think that the right to say whatever they want means that people have to listen to them. They can write any book they want, they can’t force me to read it or buy it or go to a bookstore that has that book on display.

  49. 49.

    laura

    Fuck them all, I say.

    So say we all!*

    Except:

    Raven who will say Fuck The Army

    Jackals who do not use swears and will come up with a similar phrase

    Betty Cracker who will come up with a scalding phrase that just gets it

    and beloved departed EFGoldman who would’ve said Fuck’em.

    I do not plan on reading what my intellectual betters tell me I must for the benefit of both sides no matter how many signatories the Atlantic article has. If you’re opinion is that we must not criticize the Tribe that rubs shit in its hair (hat tip to Driftglass), first they can stop rubbing shit in their hair and next they can stop insisting that everyone rubs shit in their hair and refusing to accept the premise is the real problem instead of the filth and the horror of shit rubbed hair. Then and only then will I cease the criticism.

  50. 50.

    raven

    @Cacti: He played the halftime show at the Georgia Spring Football game

     

    Ludacris saved the day for Georgia by performing at the Bulldogs’ spring game last Saturday after a number of country acts turned down the Dawgs. Before Georgia took the field, the Atlanta hip-hop artist performed a 15-minute medley of songs to the delight of the 93,000 in attendance at Sanford Stadium.

    You might ask yourself, how much does a 15-minute Ludacris performance cost?

    Well, if you’re Georgia, it costs you $65,000 plus fulfilling Luda’s hospitality rider, according to the contract obtained by Macon.com using an open records request.

    What’s a hospitality rider?

    It’s the list of other required purchases and assorted amenities for the artist. For Ludacris, that rider included dinner for 10 people with grilled chicken, chicken wings, pasta, brown rice, mixed vegetables, fruit salad, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (or the option for UGA to pay $40 per person for his crew instead of providing them dinner).

    The dinner is not the most interesting part of Ludacris’ hospitality rider, however. That is the list of things that must be provided in his dressing room.

    The list is quite long (you can view the contract in full here), but here are some of the highlights: 1 loaf of whole grain bread, organic creamy peanut butter and organic grape or strawberry jelly (In case the dinner wasn’t enough, I guess.)
    1 Crest Spin rechargeable toothbrush and Crest toothpaste (Got to keep the teeth clean.)
    1 box of Fruit Roll-Ups (You’ve got to get your fruit snack on, sometimes.)
    6 Hanes Large White T-Shirts
    1 box of Trojan Magnum Condoms, Ecstasy (Naturally.)
    2 Jo Malone candles, Gardenia scent (The room has to smell good.)
    2 bottles of Belvedere Vodka
    2 bottles of Conjure Cognac (This is impressive finessing to force the people paying you to perform to purchase your brand of cognac for you. That’s how you get extra money.)
    2 bottles of Patron Silver
    2 packs of AA and AAA batteries (Always be prepared.)
    2 cases of Snapple (That’s a lot of Snapple.)
    1 small Secret Deodorant (I stand with Ludacris on #TeamLadiesDeodorant. It’s far superior.)

  52. 52.

    Marcopolo

    @Cacti:   I was wondering what happened to make Yglesias delete his twitter feed :).  And even though there are a fair number of folks on that list who I think suck, there are also a lot of folks on that list I admire quite a bit.  I read the letter.  I think it makes a fair point, with caveats–there are always caveats!  Like it strikes me that most all of the signatories to that letter have a fairly large megaphone (often well-earned of the course of years, mind you, but sometimes not!) when it comes to getting their opinions across.  Most of us don’t.

    I definitely loathe the trend, which I am pretty sure is exacerbated by how much argumentation occurs on-line vs in-person (and by increased partisanship as well), of outright dismissing thought we think is wrong (and no I am not necessarily saying you have to engage it as being worthwhile of engagement) instead of laying out why it is wrong.  I think it makes folks feel good (and it is quick and easy) things we dislike out of hand, which tends to lead to pile ons (in social media settings), but I find it pretty damned lazy.  Also though, I don’t see things changing for the better.  Arguing against, as opposed to dismissing, bad crap takes a certain amount of patience, knowledge, and coherence which I am not sure our culture promotes as virtues.  Can anyone imagine the Lincoln/Douglass debates moved to 2020?  I can’t.

  53. 53.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    This is actually the perfect time to bring up a related subject to “cancel culture”.

    There was philosophy book, called “A Critique of Pure Tolerance” that I came across on Wikipedia:

    The book includes a foreword jointly written by its authors, and three other contributions, “Beyond Tolerance” by Robert Paul Wolff, “Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook” by Barrington Moore Jr., and “Repressive Tolerance”, by Herbert Marcuse.

    The authors explain that the book’s title refers to the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), and suggest that their ideas may resemble those of Kant. They note that they have different perspectives on philosophy, with Wolff accepting, and Marcuse opposing, the approach of analytic philosophy, and Moore being critical of philosophy in general. They write that the purpose of the book is to discuss the political role of tolerance and that despite their disagreements with each other they believe that “the prevailing theory and practice of tolerance” is hypocritical and conceals “appalling political realities.”

    Wolff argues that tolerance should be studied “by means of an analysis of the theory and practice of democratic pluralism.”

    Marcuse argues that “the realization of the objective of tolerance” requires “intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed.” He makes the case for “liberating tolerance”, which would consist of intolerance to right-wing movements and toleration of left-wing movements.

    Based on the summary, it sounds familiar to what’s commonly accepted on the modern left today

    However, in 1965 when it was published, it received universally negative reviews from academia:

    A Critique of Pure Tolerance received a negative review from the sociologist Nathan Glazer in the American Sociological Review. The book was also reviewed by the philosopher John Herman Randall Jr. in The Journal of Philosophy and L. Del Grosso Destreri in Studi di Sociologia.

    Glazer described the book as “peculiar”. He credited Marcuse with being open in his advocacy of intolerance, but accused Wolff of being incapable of distinguishing “facts from theory” in his criticisms of tolerance and pluralist democracy. He disagreed with Wolff’s view that “The application of the theory of pluralism always favors the groups in existence against those in formation”, maintaining that it was contradicted by many historical examples, including the civil rights movement of the 1950s, and described his views as “politically naive.” He accused Moore of advocating violence, and wrote that Marcuse appeared to support measures such as breaking up meetings and destroying the literature of his opponents. He considered it fortunate that “the means by which he might impose his opinions are not terribly impressive.”

    In 1970, the philosopher Maurice Cranston called A Critique of Pure Tolerance Marcuse’s most popular and disturbing work to date. Cranston commented that it was published, “in a peculiar format, bound in black like a prayer book or missal and perhaps designed to compete with The Thoughts of Chairman Mao as devotional reading at student sit-ins.” The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argued that Marcuse’s theory of the right of revolutionary minorities to suppress opinions is both false and could potentially become “an effective barrier to any rational progress and liberation”. He accused Marcuse of having “taken over from liberal and right-wing critics of the European revolutionary tradition a theory which they falsely ascribed to the left, but which was rarely held until Marcuse espoused it.” Against Marcuse, he argued that the proper end of tolerance is not truth but rationality, and that Marcuse’s proposals undermined the possibility of rationality and critical discussion. He stated that Marcuse’s case against tolerance made those radicals who espouse it “allies of the very forces which they claim to attack.” The political scientist Ronald Bayer identified Marcuse’s arguments about “repressive tolerance” as an influence on gay rights activists, who disrupted lectures by psychiatrists and refused to tolerate the views of their opponents as they campaigned for homosexuality to be declassified as a mental disorder.

    That bolded section is something, depending on how it was done, is probably a tactic most of us wouldn’t disagree with. It’s like university students not wanting Milo Y to speak at their college.

    However, a bunch of these mid-century (I assume) white guys were absolutely horrified by such ideas. Cranston himself later became a Thatcherite. I’m inclined to think that maybe Cranston et al were full of shit

  54. 54.

    Marcopolo

    Speaking of cancel culture, Eliza Orlins wants to cancel the way the Manhattan DA office has been run for, well for just about forever (hint, it tends to go easy on the rich, powerful & well connected). She put up a request for donations yesterday. Throw her a buck (literally she says a $1 donation will help) or two if you want to help out.

    This is one of the most important weeks of this entire campaign. We need you to join our movement. Can you give $1 today?https://t.co/hDidL11SJD pic.twitter.com/ARYQ7eRnCd— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins) July 7, 2020

    Off to dinner and real world crap. Have a nice evening everyone.

  55. 55.

    laura

    @raven: Sure, but like LBJ, ‘Bama and parade pups there are some subjects that are YOURS and other are free to join in.

    I like Ludicris’ contract ryder and it keeps the other party to the agreement honest in fulfilling their end of the bargain. I’ve had opportunities to clear out the dressing rooms as Roadie brothers adjacent and can report that Mick brushes his teeth just before taking the stage, men love scented candles, Carlos sends beautiful flowers to other artists and tea is the preferred backstage beverage of vocalists. Also Le Croix is a terrible substitute for most other beverages.

  56. 56.

    David Evans

    @zhena gogolia: Is this a “both sides do it”? Shouldn’t we say about attempts to suppress opinion: both sides do it and both sides are wrong to do so?

  58. 58.

    Yutsano

    @laura: That’s the whole reason why the ridiculous demands are in there. It’s to make sure the contractee has actually read the contract. If every item is complied with (and they almost always are) then the contract is fulfilled. That’s the main reason those are in there. Most stars aren’t actually that picky.

  59. 59.

    J R in WV

    @Cacti:

    150 “aggrieved” public figures just barfed out this whine-fest of a letter on “cancel culture” to Harper’s magazine.

    Signatories include the highly oppressed J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Matt Yglesias, Bari Weiss, etc.

    I’ve read most all of those you list, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have any high regard for any of them, including Ms Rowling. I’ve tried to read her stuff, and frankly, it’s terrible. I’m not that crazy for Tolkien, whom I have read most of twice, but I can’t make it through Rowling’s the first time, actually.

    Cancel away, folks, not like any of those are a great loss to Western Society!! Especially if they’re in favor of right wing Fascism and racial purity. Yuck!

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    It’ll blow their minds to learn that “canceling” is just the other party exercising their right to free speech.

    Are there individuals who don’t want to listen to stuff they don’t like? For sure. Is that a problem? It is for them. I don’t think it’s a problem for the rest of us.

    What is indeed a problem is anyone believing that they are entitled to a platform. If you have an opinion, you can print out a newsletter and hand it out on a street corner. You aren’t “canceled”. You’re “unpopular”.

  62. 62.

    J R in WV

    @MoxieM:

    Most of the people a talk to now are not actually people I know IRL, and yet we are a circle of mistfit toys. Open to better solutions.

    Spend more time here on Balloon Juice !!! We’re a great crowd of Jackals, and ads are scarce and reasonable.

  64. 64.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    July 7, 2020 at 5:10 pm

    Fun Travel and Adventure!

    I remember another TV commercial slogan:

    Join the Navy and see the world !!!

    All I got to see was Key West, Mobile Bay, and Pascagoula, MS… Well… Great Lakes, Chicago, and Charleston, SC. But not the world… probably a good thing.

    Travel the whole world, and bomb it flat!!!

    Wasn’t that a slogan of Dick Cheney… or, someone like that!

  65. 65.

    BC in Illinois

    @raven:

    In the early 1970s, there was a publication [or, rather, a cheaply-printed newsletter] that showed up at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda Maryland . . . entitled FTN.

  66. 66.

    Philbert

    I am on FB for family and hobbies and somehow have evaded RWNJ stuff except for one hometown fellow who is ignored. Whenever Zuckerburg posts some corporate FB bullshit, I call him on it for enabling Trump fascism and finish with SUCK IT ZUCK.  No problems yet!

  67. 67.

    BC in Illinois

    @J R in WV:

    Join the Navy and see the world !!!

    I get to see Great Lakes IL and Bethesda MD.

    I guess the world could come and see me.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    @Marcopolo:

    In other news, congratulations to Jimmy & Rosalind Carter on their 74th wedding anniversary! I wish I were even a tenth as nice & useful to the world as they are.

    OMG, Wife and I have 25 years go catch up with those kids!!

    Congrats to the Carter Family!!!

    Many Happy Returns!!!

  71. 71.

    Fair Economist

    @Kropacetic:The thing is, they aren’t trying to protect the *free* exchange of information, they’re trying to protect the *paid* exchange of information. All these people are free to tweet, blog, or print anything they like and always will be. The question is whether they can get big bucks for it or are they going to be doing it for free with the peons. Fortunately people are catching on that with financialized media discussing and spreading reprehensible ideas is providing active and extensive monetary support.

    “Cancel culture” is the only moral response with media run by capitalism.

  74. 74.

    Major Major Major Major

    Eh. There are legitimate and recent examples of people getting fired or whatever for wrongthink. Nothing wrong with pointing it out. You have to be pretty online, especially on twitter, to hear about it a lot of the time. Here is one example https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-racism-racism-progressive-progressphiles-david-shor.html

    (yes, it’s Chait, yes, he’s annoying, besides the point)

    @zhena gogolia: and this would be the correct way to point it out.

  75. 75.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Cacti:

    Are at least some of them just not used to having someone(s) they don’t consider their superior or even their equal telling them ‘Hey shut up for a while . I’m just NOT INTERESTED in what you have to say about this suject right now!’

  76. 76.

    J R in WV

    Cancel culture. I hear people talk about “Never upset anyone who buys ink by the barrel!”

    When I was  kid, Granddad operated a newspaper business in a small town. He did very well by distributing papers in like 12 counties. They bought a used Goss press from the Cincinnati Enquirer, it came in all apart on the Railroad, and millwrights put it back together.

    There was a wide spot in front of the building where they erected that press, and there were valves there where a guy could pull his tractor trailer tanker load in and discharge thousands of gallons of various colors of ink into the underground tanks. Barrels, hell… look out for the guys who buy ink by the tractor trailer load!

    Of course that was back in time well before the Innertubes  existed, when communication depended upon ink or TV signals broadcast over the air waves.

  77. 77.

    Kropacetic

    @Fair Economist: The question is whether they can get big bucks for it or are they going to be doing it for free with the peons.

    …

    “Cancel culture” is the only moral response with media run by capitalism.

    This.  These people get paid for their opinions because their opinions are profitable, not because they’re good or well informed.  Otherwise we could get rid of a few dozen talking heads and replace them with people from Balloon Juice.

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    Cancel Culture is when the administration of the country doesn’t care if I get cancelled by a virus, yes?

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    The best thing I’ve read on the general topic is “Tolerance is not a moral precept“.  The author’s basic thesis is that tolerance is more like a peace treaty than a moral principle.  The key idea is that tolerating others is a mutual agreement rather than something freely given.  When somebody violates the agreement by refusing to tolerate people who abide by it, others are no longer bound to tolerate their behavior.  It explains why “I will tolerate anything except intolerance” is not a self-contradictory position.

  80. 80.

    dirge

    @sdhays: They charge you based on the value they tell you they’re providing, and they got caught lying (“accidentally”) in a big way. Of course they’re ripping off their advertising customers again.

    You misunderstand the purpose of social media advertising.  As someone with a little experience making this particular sausage:  the purpose is to produce numbers, charts, and graphs that the VP of Marketing can use to persuade the executive team to divert resources away from product improvement and towards marketing.  This money is then delivered to Facebook, et. al. in exchange for more numbers, charts, and graphs, the purported accuracy of which are of no interest to anyone who understands what’s going on.  Any advertising or sales which may incidentally occur are only useful insofar as the executive team can be convinced of their tenuous connection to actual business goals.

    Perhaps I exaggerate, but it is true that the effectiveness of advertising is essentially unknowable, and that vast resources are devoted to making very optimistic guesses about its value.

    My guess is that a lot of companies have been side-eying this scam for a while, and are using the social justice moment as cover to shut it down without losing face.

    That said, there are some pretty useful things companies could be doing with social media, more in the vein of customer service and audience research, but those require innovation, hard work, and willingness to take risks.

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    @dirge:

    There’s an old joke about advertising that everyone knows half of their ad spending is useless, but they never know which half.  Part of the promise of Facebook (and Google, etc.) was that you’d finally have the numbers to know which half.  But when it becomes public knowledge that the whole thing is a scam, it gets harder to justify that.

  83. 83.

    dirge

    @Roger Moore: everyone knows half of their ad spending is useless.

    Like I said, very optimistic guesses.

    It’s true that you can say much more these days about who’s seen an ad, where, and when, but dependably closing the loop to sales is still very much out of reach.

  84. 84.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Here’s the deal: when you get 750 big brands together to shit on an advertising platform, there’s something going on besides their social consciences acting up. Facebook’s inability to police fake accounts has to be part of the reason these companies are jumping on the boycott bandwagon

    I’d call this a “stupid” question, but it’s not really – it’s one of the few places where I’m proudly ignorant.

    I heard-tell there was a social media place that demanded real names for real people, and for some reason, “Facebook” seems like it was that service. Or, maybe they were, once, and aren’t any longer. Or maybe they were, are, and always shall be, but stopped giving a damn once they could monetize fakery.

    Am I misremembering? Because, honestly, the only thing that would make me think that Zuckerberg is even more of a DH (and I don’t mean he plays American League ball, in a “batter only” position) would be if he’d pretended to care about that, precisely to the point that he could monetize hate *and* deceit, and then threw it (and much of Facebook’s product, the users) into the toilet.

    (If I’m misremembering, and anyone knows which service, I’d appreciate knowing. Yes, I know, I could search, but they’ve been around long enough that their policy won’t be noteworthy if it’s still in existence, and it would be bloody well *impossible* to find an article saying “they used to” if they stopped long enough ago. This is one of those rare questions where the only way to get the information quicker than asking, is by posting the wrong answer – and everyone will rush in to correct (and/or flame).)

  85. 85.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Sublime33: When does Ron DeSantis get his apology?

    After:

    1) he’s right about *anything*, and

    2) after the Dixie Chicks (now just “the Chicks” IIRC) get theirs

    Wow… if we have to wait for *both*, I’d project it at roughly past the heat death of the universe.

    (When W thought it was great fun for people to harsh on the Dixie Chicks, that was the moment when I realized he was more than just a puffed up paragon of deceit; he was also pathetic.)

  87. 87.

    Amir Khalid

    @dopey-o:

    Fun Fact: Weird Al once did a song about Mr Popeil, Ron’s dad, and hired Ron’s sister Lisa to sing backing vocals on it.

  88. 88.

    Pedler

    @Marcopolo: Yglesias got reported to his boss because by signing the letter, according to a colleague, he associated with known “anti-trans” people and the colleague found the letter full of anti-trans dogwhistles. Ironically, few online liberals noticed the irony that signing a letter critical of ideological denunciations resulted in an immediate ideological denunciation.

    I think standard liberal dismissals of cancel culture have outlived their validity in light of recent firings — like David Shor for posting an academic paper, and the random lady the Post got fired over a Halloween costume from two years ago. I don’t see many people offering affirmative defenses of these situations, which I find significantly more, uh, problematic than whatever some Oberlin students did.

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