In this situation, who took the decision to fire you? The owner? The bank? The bank regulators? The politicians? The people who called the restaurant, in fear for their health? The people who published the initial lie? Everyone participated a little, and by the end of it, there wasn't really any other possible choice. That's how it usually works.
Most cases I have seen have more been about loss of business and fear of loss of reputation. Basically, in your example, the manager would have the talk with the employee after just the social media storm. Perhaps the manager's fear are all the other things, but the cancelling happens before it ever goes that far.
As expected. If you find yourself at risk of something bad happening to you, you'll make steps to mitigate that risk before it materializes. The question of how real is that risk extends beyond "cancel culture" - it sits at the core of the public relations and reputation management industries.
Whether it makes sense or not, companies tend to be quite aggressive at protecting their reputation in certain contexts. This is an empirical fact. Cancelling someone is mostly about exploiting that - it's an art of causing harm to a person by making them a target of their employers' PR immune system, which starts acting before any real harm comes to the company itself. It's been demonstrated to work, the mechanism of action is clear and obvious, and it's quite easy to use.
When done properly, there isn't a single person or group that could be specifically blamed for destroying the victim's life. You can't fine the company for trying to proactively protect their business deals or shield themselves from potential liability. You can't fine the crowd for being idiots. The original instigators have plausible deniability. And everything happens so fast that it doesn't matter whether the allegations about the victim are true, or complete fabrication.
That's why people are so afraid of it.
Note that with AI the process of producing a huge volume of false "information" about someone can now be automated.
Literally seen it today. I don't remember having a week without something like that happening. It's routine by now - somebody got a flu, somebody got cancelled by online mob.
https://archive.ph/20201214175330/https://twitter.com/AnimaA...
Anima Anandkumar holds dual positions in academia and industry. She is a Bren professor at Caltech CMS department and a director of machine learning research at NVIDIA. At NVIDIA, she is leading the research group that develops next-generation AI algorithms. At Caltech, she is the co-director of Dolcit and co-leads the AI4science initiative, along with Yisong Yue.
Debate is 1-on-1, not army-on-one. And you don't call your opponents fanatics, if you want to have a real debate. In reality the list is intended to intimidate them.
Technically, yes, that is 'encouraging people to engage with others', but it is clearly inflammatory and I wouldn't be surprised if several people on that list have been blindly harassed by her fans/supporters/followers.
That tweet was stupid, and anyone on that list who is harassed may well have a good chance in a defamation case if they chose to pursue it.
So saying anything that might be even remotely offensive to anyone can end up with you losing your job. Based on stories like this, I'm personally afraid of cancel culture. Because this joke is the sort of joke I could've made.
0: https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spirale...
Not that there aren't legitimate free speech issues that we still wrestle with and don't get right or real injustices out there, but it's mostly a bugaboo.
I'll take it a step further. "cancel culture" is the same moral panic that's always existed. But now the power is put in the hands of the masses instead of the elite.
Cancel-culture panic is a largely anecdote and feelings-driven. There's no real data to show that firings or social consequences for speech are more numerous or more severe or more unjust (or even more "left-wing") today than they have been at any point in the past.
And in many of these anecdotes that seem to drive the discourse, nothing of note actually happens to the person who was "cancelled" - they are the subject of an investigation or social media dust-up for a news cycle. Then life carries on.
The Information Age has had a catalytic effect on the calls for ousters of any number of people for the merest hint of thoughtcrime.
They cause massive damage to other people's lives over what's essentially wrongthink.
> Who's in charge of "cancelling" exactly?
Organized internet mobs, often from Twitter. Look up Sleeping Giants for an example.
> Is it just fear of losing your job
"Just" losing your job? That's a major life-changing punishment by itself. They can ruin your reputation and essentially blacklist you.
These people essentially run a denial of service on your life and that of your family by denying you income for the crime of offending them with your thoughts. In a way, they're a self-righteous Kiwi Farms.
> who makes that call? HR? Executives?
Whoever's in charge. They will be intimidated into firing you for your offensive conduct or suffer the same consequences for supporting and aligning themselves with such an abominable wrongthinker.
The shift happened because businesses became dependent on more and more talent for continued growth. Suddenly having a large contingent of your workforce threaten to quit because some dude wants to spout off about women not being as naturally smart as men is really bad business; and it's not surprising that businesses respond to the incentives and axe the dude spouting off.
At least this is how people use it. You could argue it's an inaccurate term since there are no actual cancellations in most case. But the prevalence of this sentiment is still noteworthy imo.
In other words, these complainers have never had to endure or think about:
- anti-black housing discrimination (e.g., redlining) - misogynistic sidelining and glass ceilings - anti-Jewish admissions policies at major universities
etc., etc.
Guess what, in all these cases, socially coordinated groups could cause you to lose your job, or not be able to buy a house, or lose your career, etc. It was never fair. Employers in the US could in general terminate you for no cause at all.
It's just that these people who complain about cancel culture now have never had to worry about this stuff before, and it seems like something new and pisses them off.
