[Roundy]

So, Dave Chappelle basically just doubled down, tripled down, and quadrupled down on his comments about trans folks, even daring to declare himself "team TERF", which is someone who considers himself a feminist, but excludes trans people.

And the internet is really angry! Several personalities have said they would no longer work with Netflix over it. Twitter is abuzz, as it tends to get in these situations.

But you know what? Far from ending his career, all the hubbub seems to be doing is providing free publicity for Dave. His career is just fine, as it has been after years of complaints over his past comments.

Is Netflix hurting over it? Based on the success of shows like You, Clickbait, and the legitimately amazing Squid Game, apparently not.

JK Rowling pissed a lot of people off with her "trans phobic" comments. But people are still reading her books and going to see the awful movies being made that are connected to them. I understand she's starting a new series. People have complained, but her career seems just fine.

Even Shane Gillis, the guy who lost his job at SNL for telling some jokes that some people found offensive on his podcast, is still practicing comedy. He's still making money. Yes, he lost an opportunity over it. But people have lost high profile jobs for saying controversial things as long as TV has existed. Contracts have included clauses saying people would lose their jobs if they say or do the wrong thing as long as the entertainment industry has existed. He lost an opportunity, sure. But he probably would have been in the same position 20 years ago. Michael Richards' career still hasn't recovered from the racist comments he made a couple decades ago or so.

Pity Joe Rogan, huh? He pisses the Left off all the time! His career is really suffering for it, huh?

Cancel culture as it applies to people like Kevin Spacey or Matt Lauer are different, I think. In the other cases, people are trying to cancel celebrities for expressing an opinion, or telling an offensive joke (which is ridiculous, because if comedy isn't offending to some degree they're doing it wrong). When the attitude is directed towards sexual predators, it's a completely different thing, and absolutely justified.

Canceling celebrities for expressing a controversial opinion, or even telling a racist joke, is not. But fortunately that doesn't actually seem to be happening. Where cancel culture is hurting the industry right now is studios treating it like a real thing, and fearing crossing lines as a result. But hopefully the survival of Dave's career has shone a light on just how overblown that fear really is, and will hopefully lead to creators not being afraid of taking chances again, and studios recognizing that they can survive even if they have someone on their roster who once said it was child abuse to give hormone suppression therapy to little trans kids who don't have any way to fathom how awesome an orgasm really is, or have expressed the opinion (as I have) that allowing women who were born as men to compete in women's sports is inherently unfair. So kudos to him for that, because it's about time.

/soapbox

[Dr David Thork]

Some people are just too big to fail and their legacy endures.

Singer of the Lost Prophets ... cancelled. Their music just wasn't that good.
Michael Jackson ... played on the radio all the time.

Dave Chapelle isn't getting cancelled because he is one of the best acts out there. Its anyone just below that who can be cancelled and disappear. The people who really get battered are regular people. Maybe someone works for Pepsi, makes a tweet and the next thing, they lost their job.

[Lord Dave]

Some people are just too big to fail and their legacy endures.

Singer of the Lost Prophets ... cancelled. Their music just wasn't that good.
Michael Jackson ... played on the radio all the time.

Dave Chapelle isn't getting cancelled because he is one of the best acts out there. Its anyone just below that who can be cancelled and disappear. The people who really get battered are regular people. Maybe someone works for Pepsi, makes a tweet and the next thing, they lost their job.

Cancel  culture is PR management?  Because if so, thats been around since society existed.  The big difference between 50 years ago and now is social media makes every stupid comment viewable to the world.

Pepsi is damn sure they aren't gonna want even 1% of their customers offended and dropping their product.  Like any business really.  So if the choice is fire one replacable employee or lose 1,000 customers, guess what they pick?

Remove social media and people will say shit, but it'll be confined to a small group.

[Pete Svarrior]

So if the choice is fire one replacable employee or lose 1,000 customers, guess what they pick?

This could be easily solved by expanding the protections on freedom of speech. The cancel culture crowd managed to convince people that "freedom of speech means the government won't shoot you for saying mean things, nothing more". Clearly, the solution is to prevent such misinterpretations in the future.

[Lord Dave]

So if the choice is fire one replacable employee or lose 1,000 customers, guess what they pick?

This could be easily solved by expanding the protections on freedom of speech. The cancel culture crowd managed to convince people that "freedom of speech means the government won't shoot you for saying mean things, nothing more". Clearly, the solution is to prevent such misinterpretations in the future.

Yes but since America is America, it won't matter.  If its illegal to fire someone for speech, you just fire them without a reason.  Legal in several states. Or you find a reason.

Also, some people are toxic with their speech.
Ex: office chat about things which are very inappropriate but not strictly 'sexual harassment'. 
Or posting lies about a company.  Defermation of character would need to still be illegal while allowing other speech to be allowed.

Its a thin line.

[Roundy]

Some people are just too big to fail and their legacy endures.

Singer of the Lost Prophets ... cancelled. Their music just wasn't that good.
Michael Jackson ... played on the radio all the time.

Dave Chapelle isn't getting cancelled because he is one of the best acts out there. Its anyone just below that who can be cancelled and disappear. The people who really get battered are regular people. Maybe someone works for Pepsi, makes a tweet and the next thing, they lost their job.

I don't think the little guy losing his job as a bottler at Pepsi over something he tweets is what people are talking about when they talk about cancel culture. It seems to specifically refer to public figures in most cases.

Not that that's not a problem, if it's happening, but I question how widespread it can possibly be, and it's not what I'm talking about anyway.

And the singer of Lostprophets is apparently a disgusting sexual predator. As I pointed out there's a clear difference between what he was cancelled for and what JK Rowling was "cancelled" for. If that's the best example you know of a celebrity actually being cancelled it just underscores my point.

[garygreen]

This could be easily solved by expanding the protections on freedom of speech. The cancel culture crowd managed to convince people that "freedom of speech means the government won't shoot you for saying mean things, nothing more". Clearly, the solution is to prevent such misinterpretations in the future.

let's use the first amendment to the us constitution as a test case here since protecting free speech from being legislated away by congress is exactly what the text states: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..." (lol founding fathers = cancel culture crowd?)

in general, how would you rewrite and/or re-characterize this rule to expand the freedom of speech?

[Pete Svarrior]

in general, how would you rewrite and/or re-characterize this rule to expand the freedom of speech?

I wouldn't rewrite it, I don't think it warrants a constitutional amendment, that's way too high up the chain. Also, there is a reason I said "freedom of speech" and not "the 1st amendment" - I know (roughly) what the 1st amendment says, and that it doesn't provide full coverage of the democratic principle of freedom of speech (compared to, say, articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). That's fine - it can and should be covered by other laws. I am also not the right person to write legal texts - anything I come up with will be deeply flawed. But hey, let's try:

I'd like to see firing people for expressing bad opinions to be considered a form of discrimination.

So, we're one sentence in and the deep flaws are poking through. What's a "bad opinion" and what's "discrimination"? Let's go for something like James Damore's Google memo. It was controversial, and at odds with scientific consensus in many places, but the intent was harmless, and the execution was pretty benign, too. I'd like for something like this to be considered discrimination in the same way that firing someone for being Jewish would be discrimination. It's a personal belief which he expressed politely - it should not be grounds for his firing just because some people on Twitter demanded an ideological purge.

This would potentially come with an added benefit to businesses who don't want to participate in cancel culture, but who do so for the fear of reputational damage. If it's their choice to fire someone or not for their latest hot take, then their reputation will be impacted by the choice they've made. By removing businesses' power to dictate workers' ideology you liberate both the workers and the fat cats.

Though, obviously, line still needs to be drawn. Other countries offer too much protection to religions (and other personal beliefs that they choose to call religion because it's an easy way out). If you're calling for the gays to be purged because Lord Baby Jesus (pbuh) said so, get fucked and get fired lmao.

tbh it seems rather disingenuous to me to insist that since the constitution doesn't fully cover the principle, then the principle cannot be followed - doubly so to imply silly things like "the founding fathers clearly wanted you fired for your tweets my dude". It's the same kind of disingenuity 2nd amendment freaks put forward to justify owning recreational nukes or whatever.

[Roundy]

"Dave Chappelle showing no signs of getting canceled after sold-out show in London | Fox News" https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dave-chappelle-not-canceled-sold-out-show-london.amp

Hey, look, even Fox News seems kinda sorta almost ready to admit that cancel culture isn't real.

[crutonius]

I've watched this special and I have no idea what the lunatics are on about.  I don't know how it could possibly be construed as transphobic.

[Roundy]

"Netflix Walkout Over Dave Chappelle’s ‘The Closer’ Reveals List Of Asks – Deadline" https://deadline.com/2021/10/dave-chappelle-netflix-walkout-rally-trans-staffers-list-of-asks-1234859014/#respond

The article, of course, takes the typical media slant that Dave is evil, Netflix out of touch, and these employees' demands aren't ridiculous fantasies. But look at the comments to see what people really think.

[crutonius]

Well. That list is bonkers. They seek parity funding and representation to anything they deem transphobic. Since transphobia was the norm yp until about ten years ago that's a lot of Trans TV shows.

I still genuinely wonder if most of these people have even seen this special. If the standard for what's considered harmful to trans people is this low then entertainers will most likely just never talk about them publicly. That sort of dehumanization seems to me like it would be harmful to that community.

[honk]

I feel like the OP has things a little backwards. The decision to "cancel" a public figure by deplatforming them, cutting ties with them, or otherwise professionally shunning them, is always going to rest with the studios, publishers, and other corporations that have the power to do so. It's not something that can be achieved by general consensus on Twitter. Netflix chose to stand by Chappelle and his material. WB and JK Rowling's publisher chose to stand by her. They absolutely could have chosen to "cancel" them instead, and that wouldn't have been any more definitive proof of the almighty power of cancel culture than the fact that they didn't is definitive proof of its impotence. Conversely, Hollywood could have chosen to not cancel people like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. They would have been harshly criticized and possibly faced boycotts for it, which is probably why they didn't do it, but they could have done it, and I have no doubt that at least Weinstein (and quite possibly Spacey too) could have weathered the storm and continued his career. Another great example is Mel Gibson. Hollywood blacklisted him back in 2006, long before online outrage took the form it holds now, and was only welcomed back into the fold after several years of exile. Cancel culture is not something that happens to studios and other corporations, it's something they choose to actively do or not do.

Shane Gillis is a bizarre example to bring up as evidence of the ineffectiveness of cancel culture. I'd say he was pretty effectively canceled when he lost his role on SNL and with it his shot at mainstream success. Of course he wasn't going to delete his podcast out of shame and retire from comedy altogether as a result, and I think it's a little silly to imply that's a metric to measure whether or not someone has been canceled. And regarding Michael Richards, let's be real - his career in film and television more or less began and ended with Seinfeld. The incident with his racist tirade wasn't notable because it marked the end of his career, it was notable because it was the first time anyone had heard of him in the years since the end of that show. He's either got the worst agent in Hollywood, or, as I suspect is more likely, he's simply chosen to leave film and television behind and focus on small-time local comedy.

And speaking of comedy, I believe that we as a society have reached a point where mocking and belittling marginalized groups publicly is no longer considered acceptable, and that's not a bad thing. The idea of changing societal standards is also not a new one. A hundred years ago, comedy acts frequently involved blackface and open, overt racism. I'm sure if those comedians were still around today, they would call us oversensitive for not considering their acts to be acceptable, just like aging comedians today call modern audiences oversensitive for pushing back on their acts ridiculing people for being gay, trans, or having a foreign accent when they used to perform them with no backlash for so long before.

If the standard for what's considered harmful to trans people is this low then entertainers will most likely just never talk about them publicly. That sort of dehumanization seems to me like it would be harmful to that community.

Yes, I'm sure that trans people would be horrified if entertainers stopped talking about them publicly.

[xasop]

And speaking of comedy, I believe that we as a society have reached a point where mocking and belittling marginalized groups publicly is no longer considered acceptable, and that's not a bad thing.

This is absolutely not true. We've reached a point where mocking some marginalised groups, or even talking about them in a way that might be misconstrued as mocking, is considered unacceptable. But marginalised groups that aren't part of the social justice clique — poor, rural white people, for example; or lonely, virgin men — are not only still fair game, but it's now considered trendy in some circles to mock them.

Have we made progress, on the whole? I would have to say yes, because we now have support structures in place for demographics that were largely ignored until about 50 years ago. But that progress is not uniform.

[rooster]

I've seen a fair amount of defenders of poor, rural, white people and lonely, virgin, men on Twitter whenever someone does try to pointlessly belittle them. Progress might not be uniform but people are catching on that you shouldn't punch down.

[Rushy]

There's no such thing as "cancel culture". Simply preferred discrimination. Everyone discriminates in some form or fashion. What we're calling "cancel culture" is simply that discrimination viewed at a macro level. It's up to humanity as a collective to decide what groups of people need to be discriminated against. If those are transgendered people, lonely virgins or even the uber wealthy, then so be it.

I don't have to hire fascists or communists. I shouldn't have to hire transgenders or blacks. Discrimination is healthy and normal and there's nothing wrong with belittling groups that you consider to be dangerous to society. For some people, those groups are transgender people. For some groups, those are white people. Some groups despise lonely virgins (and it's not like people become lonely virgins for no reason). We shouldn't be forcing people or "reeducating" them to coexist with groups they obviously do not like. A private business should be able to choose who they want to do business with. A person should be free to associate with who they like and therefore free to disassociate with who they do not. Are you a Nazi? Neat. Landlord kicked you out for being a Nazi? Too bad, lmao.

If diversity is truly our strength, then people who embrace it will prevail and survive. People who don't will die their little deaths. If the opposite is true, then so be it. If your politics are so happy and wholesome and good for everyone, then they should not need some hyper-active violent overlord enforcing them all the time and jailing anyone who disagrees.

There's no such thing as cancel culture. There's societal winners and societal losers. If you're getting belittled and you're getting canceled: congratulations, you're losing.

[Pete Svarrior]

I've seen a fair amount of defenders of poor, rural, white people and lonely, virgin, men on Twitter whenever someone does try to pointlessly belittle them.

What was the overall response to them?

[rooster]

I've seen a fair amount of defenders of poor, rural, white people and lonely, virgin, men on Twitter whenever someone does try to pointlessly belittle them.

What was the overall response to them?

There wasn't a response really. When people make fun of others who are having a shit time of life it's pretty universally ratio'd.

You can disagree with shitty opinions, but if you just make fun of someone for living in a mobile home in the south or a sad lonely person then you're just a bully.

[Action80]

I've seen a fair amount of defenders of poor, rural, white people and lonely, virgin, men on Twitter whenever someone does try to pointlessly belittle them. Progress might not be uniform but people are catching on that you shouldn't punch down.

Are those defenders calling for the cancelling of the punchers down?

Or are the defenders just accurately describing the punchers down as a bunch of free-wheeling sodomites?

[rooster]

I've seen a fair amount of defenders of poor, rural, white people and lonely, virgin, men on Twitter whenever someone does try to pointlessly belittle them. Progress might not be uniform but people are catching on that you shouldn't punch down.

Are those defenders calling for the cancelling of the punchers down?

Or are the defenders just accurately describing the punchers down as a bunch of free-wheeling sodomites?

Neither, those options are both ridiculous.