[majormajor]

Discussions of "wokeism" should keep in mind that one of the most visible cases of being "canceled" is Colin Kaepernick, and you'd hardly call those blackballing him "woke." Meanwhile other less-accomplished QBs still bounce around from at least backup job to backup job...

But beyond that... people have been getting blackballed forever in this country.

So it's very important in this discussion to make it clear if you're complaining about just:

a) people facing repercussions for saying 'conservative' things

or

b) people facing repercussions for other things as well

or even just something like

c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and mobs on Twitter

[rootusrootus]

> c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and mobs on Twitter

Ding ding ding! This is the fundamental problem. We collectively seem to care entirely too much about the fringe people who bother to vent their minds on Twitter.

[inglor_cz]

A lot of influence with no responsibility, that is the hellish combination. If the Twitter mob drives somebody to suicide, no one is going to punish them.

Power without responsibility is a wild combination, very unstable.

[rootusrootus]

I think we have to resolve that a real person (or at least a discrete identifiable group) has the actual power, and the responsibility lies squarely with them. That may require them to take heat directly rather than fire some random employee the Internet has decided to hate, but I don't think they get to deflect responsibility for taking the easy out.

That doesn't necessarily address the suicide part, except to observe coldly that the person directly responsible for the suicide is the only one who can stop it, unfortunately. So they have to figure out how to stop the assault from reaching them.

I don't have any particularly good answers, this is a fairly hard problem to solve. Probably some combination of things, up to and including involving law enforcement and giving them the tools to identify people and hold them accountable (as much as we'd like the Internet to be an anonymous place, that may be a pipe dream). Of course, what constitutes breaking the law? If someone on the playground taunts you, they're not breaking the law, and the risk to you is pretty low. But if a million people on the Internet taunt you, this is a different thing.

[overgard]

I don't think Kaepernick is really relevant here because he didn't piss off most people, he pissed off 32 mostly white billionaires in their 70s and 80s. IE, it's less that he got "cancelled" by society in general but rather he got cancelled by an insular cabal. That culture really doesn't reflect the culture of society as a whole.

[ncmncm]

They are little different from millions of others, aside from their excessive power. Wokeism enforcement (as distinguished from being woke, itself) could even be interpreted as a defense against their hegemony.

The Iraq War minted hundreds of them, mostly in Dick Cheney's camp. We will be living with that legacy for generations.

[majormajor]

You think it was the owners who cared directly themselves, not the pressure generated by a right-wing fan and media shitstorm?

[overgard]

Mostly yes. Buying a professional sports franchise is rarely a true business decision; it's a chance for these people to be the king of their own kingdom. It's a vanity project. These owners go against the wishes of fan bases and media all the time

[commandlinefan]

> Colin Kaepernick

If he had been winning football games, he’d still be playing football. Witness the legions of other non-cancelled football players who’ve done way worse (but still win).

[majormajor]

Colt McCoy is older and still has a backup job. Lots of other crappy QBs bouncing around for years too... If not for the right-wing shitshow, someone would've taken a flyer in the last five years on a QB who once led a team to a superbowl appearance.

We also, if we want to say it's just about results, can look at Dave Chappelle, who falls on the opposite side of the "woke or not-woke" line but remains famously un-canceled despite that. So I could see someone reaching the conclusion of "the lines of 'what you can't say' aren't as strong as they're made out to be on either side, if you can bring in the money" OR the conclusion that it's not a one-sided "wokeism" thing... but "this is purely a woke thing and it's a huge problem" seems unsupportable.

[overgard]

Right, like, teams are still courting Deshaun Watson who is, if the accusations are true, a pretty awful person. Because Deshaun won games. I think the ostracism of Kaepernick was super unfair and ugly, but I also think he was playing himself into being a career backup.

[philwelch]

Kaepernick’s career was going downhill before he started protesting. He was already the backup by then and frankly already had a reputation as an egotistical jackass. If you want to be an egotistical jackass in the NFL, it’s possible, but it will limit your career options even if you have the talent to back them up, which Kaep didn’t at the end. He’s also went on to sabotage his own comeback opportunities at least once. Probably the best comparison I could make is Kyrie Irving, and the only reason Kyrie isn’t out of the league is the NBA CBA.