,
9 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
When I teach students about organizational culture, I note what I call the "______ culture" problem. Thats the idea is that you name something you don't like, and then append "culture" to it.
And I think we are at that point with "cancel culture." 1/
And I think we are at that point with "cancel culture." 1/
Some examples of the "______ culture" problem. The chief problem is that it does not really describe culture per se, if you think of as ingrained norms and beliefs. Instead, they simply relabels something with an artificial weight and menace to a phenomena you dislike. 2/ 
Another issue with the "_____ culture" problem is that you once you name something, you start to label all sorts of things as that culture, even if they are not, on closer inspection, the same phenomena. 3/
An example of the "______ culture" problem comes from this generally nuanced piece on "cancel culture" 4/ thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/1…
The piece presents Peter Boghossian of the Sokal Squared crowd as an expert on, and victim of, cancel culture. For speaking out bravely, he was banned on doing human subjects research! Cancelled! 5/
Except, that is not remotely what happened. Boghossian did research on human subjects without getting permission from his university, or even doing human subjects training. His "ban" required him to do human subjects training (letter below). Thats it. Not cancelled! 6/
The lesson here is that "cancel culture" as a trope is easily weaponized, allowing those who receive a slap on the wrist for obvious failures to cast themselves as victims of oppression rather than defend their actual actions. 7/
Another lesson is that if cancel culture is everything, maybe its nothing. If journalists frame any type of punishment or imposition of social norms as cancel culture, then the term loses all descriptive value. 8/
Finally, I would like to confess to and apologize for engaging in cancel culture, when I told my research assistant she was banned(!) from engaging in research until she did human subjects training. 9/
