[jackson1442]

In reality, cancel culture is just the free market at work and has always felt, to me, like a narrative peddled by the powerful to allow themselves to not be held accountable for their actions.

If I don't want to buy a Musk-mobile because I don't agree with Musk on issues like racism[0] or don't like how he treats his employees[1], I am allowed to act on it. I am also allowed to share these thoughts with people on appropriate platforms, like I'm doing here.

I can understand the frustration coming from people digging up problematic tweets from 4 years ago, but this whole idea that "the internet forgets nothing" isn't new. I learned it in grade school. If you want to post racist/sexist/homophobic things on your public Twitter, so be it, but don't be surprised when someone finds it. There's also a delete button.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119832/tesla-elon-musk...

[1] https://www.ibtimes.com/elon-musk-hot-water-after-tesla-empl...

[inglor_cz]

"If you want to post racist/sexist/homophobic things on your public Twitter, so be it, but don't be surprised when someone finds it."

So, what is going to be the kiss of death in 2050? Do you know in advance? How many of your contemporary comments are going to run afoul of the standard of 2050 and will you remember to delete them all, including from Internet archive/wayback sites, in 2049?

Remember, a senior manager at Boeing was forced to step down 33 years after he wrote an offending article. The article was published before WWW even existed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/business/boeing-resignati...

[jackson1442]

I definitely agree that his forced resignation wasn't exactly just, but that's not really cancel culture in action, that was a response to a single employee complaint from my research. It almost reads as if execs were looking for an excuse to get rid of him. If it was up to me, I'd just quietly release a statement or something along that... 33 years is a long time.

What I'm more referring to is situations like JK Rowling where she is openly posting hateful content publicly (people don't even have to dig for it!) and she's criticizing cancel culture as the reason people don't want to read her new book, which just looks like it'll be awful[1].

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/15/entertainment/jk-rowling-trou...

[kombucha111]

So whats your point? Culture changes and what was once permissible is now taboo? This is decidedly not a new phenomenon.

I just can't find any sort of argument being made here.

No one can predict the future but do you believe culture is static and that the cultural landscape of 2050 will the same as 2020?

Close to 30 years ago everyone was up in arms that Murphy Brown was a having a child out of wedlock and without a man! Shock! Horror!

[inglor_cz]

The point is that human life is comparatively long and current technology enables the witch-hunters to destroy people for very old and no longer relevant utterances.

This is something that, IMHO, the society should frown upon and discourage. Destroying people should be as hard as possible, that is why nation states built so many protections into law over centuries.