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by RONROC 1847 days ago
Probably an unpopular take but cancelling typically occurs in domains that either deserve the maximum amount of public scrutiny such as politics and show business (the reasoning here is that the people who operate in these domains have, always will, and should be held to account for the simple reason that they wouldn’t be in these positions without the inverse, ie. positive public perception—-if you’re not useful, you’re replaceable) or in industries that have a inherently corrosive framework whose success is predicated on extracting a disproportionate amount of value from the those who are doing the cancelling such as big tech and media (no normal person will weep for these people and with good reason).

The only exception here is the cancelling of people with relatively small followings/influence who receive heavy-handed negative attention (like the Reddit bomber or people in academia like the N-word professor) but instances like these are fewer and far between and will probably decline over time as boomers leave the discourse (die).

I used to work at a few big media companies in a position that required a decent amount of public facing and had brushes with this sort of behavior in the past (people tweeting death threats at me, which I just brushed off because I understood what I signed up for and am not naive). These days I work for myself in a “blue collar” industry and mostly ignore social media, so I can’t really be cancelled.

I guess the point i’m trying to make is, if this is something you’re actually worried about, just

1; go work in an industry that lacks the highly educated, overstimulated, and mostly out of touch people that dominate 99% of the discourse but speak for 1% of the population

2; learn how to read the room (ie. listen more and talk less)

Big tech wanted everyone to have a voice and now they do. :)