[TameAntelope]

Sufficiently talented communicators more or less only have these "cancel culture" problems through choice, not through inability to express themselves.

Which is honestly why I have little sympathy for the "cancelled", in many cases.

Occasionally, I do feel a pang of empathy for people like Gina Carano, for example, who genuinely don't seem to know how to say what they want to, and may not have intentionally wanted to harm others, but through ego end up refusing to reword their expression or to account for how their words might hurt others.

It's a small pang, and not a long lasting one.

I can see how the confusion might happen, but even for the least articulate among us there are clean off-ramps that get ignored.

[cowuser666]

no chilling effects here..

[TameAntelope]

My point is cancel culture is not very chilling if you're a competent speaker/writer, and it ought to be even less chilling than it is (possibly not chilling at all).

If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled.

[Banana699]

>If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled

Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor.

It's bizarrely hilarious how "Progressives" mirror religious fundamentalists, down to the particular language used to dispel accusations of censorship and closed-mindedness. "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)" looks painfully familiar for any closeted atheist.

[TameAntelope]

> Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor.

Completely disagree. Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language.

> "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)"

The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

[Banana699]

>Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language

You completely missed the point, the "selective" part is doing most of the work. By having a vague and ill-defined rulebook that nobody but an ideologically homogeneous group of people can invoke and enforce, this group acts as a censor that selectively switches on and off certain expressions it deems "not polite".

You also uncritically assume that polite language is universal, capable of expressing any possible issue. If I told you "you can write any program you want, just don't use C/C++/Rust" I have effectively banned you from writing a huge variety of programs, from OSes to Interpreters. Similarly, some things are inherently non-polite to say, because they express non-polite truths, and those truths will always exist because the universe is under no obligation to be polite. You can never discuss (say) Putin's human rights abuses in polite language, nor can you ever discuss how sexual predators use a trendy identity to escape retribution in a polite way using nice words.

>The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

Not at all, see above for my reasoning for why this is a natural implication of your words. You are free to dispute the major 2 points it rests on.

[TameAntelope]

You are not any less capable of writing quality software if you are prohibited from using specific programming languages, I don’t think that analogy helps you as much as you think.

Let’s stop being abstract; what idea is not expressable except in a way that results in effective cancellation?

[cowuser666]

If I have a log across a river, most people with decent balance can reasonably expect to cross it. Therefore, adding crocodiles to the river will not make anyone less likely to use the log bridge.

[letmeiiin]

For the lack of a better expression, you are full of *it.

The bar you are setting for people to speak without a mob ending them is so high it's not even funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante