Thread by @AlexandraErin

Now, the stock answer for this is "They are selflessly speaking out on behalf of all the people without their riches and platform, and that's a good thing."

But here's where a lot of the criticism of both the letter and specific signatories come in...

https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1280887719716171776

If you *don't* have JK Rowling's reach, if you're just somebody with a couple dozen or couple hundred or even a couple thousand followers, it doesn't really take more than one person with a bee in their bonnet and a larger (not even huge) platform to mess up your life.

And that can be messing up your social media platform, it can be messing up your support circles, it can be messing up your professional life, and if all of those things are tied together, it can be all at once.

Now you're thinking, "Yes! Yes! And so it is GOOD that they're speaking out against that."

You know what a lot of cases where one person gets mobbed have in common?

The people mobbing think they're fighting cancel culture. Or "SJWs", earlier. Or "PC police", earlier still.

Stirring up fear of this bogeyman, whether you call it Cancel Culture or SJWism or PC Police or whatever, it does nothing to prevent pile-ons. It creates them, encourages them. In many cases it creates circular firing squads of people trying to cancel the cancellers.

You know what one message that rich and powerful people with a lot of reach could co-sign that would eliminate a lot of that?

A pledge to use their platforms responsibly and think about their reach vs. others' before wading in.

I know a lot of people who like that letter aren't going to agree with my view of J.K. Rowling's social media activity or her gender ideology so for the sake of this conversation let's not even argue about that.

Let's say she took the stance that "I, a factual billionaire with a loyal following and a lot of people watching from the sidelines for some drama, must realize that directing people's attention to someone in an argument is pointing firehoses full of bees at them, so I shan't."

J.K. Rowling, with that stance firmly in mind, could continue to think what she thinks and even say what she says, and there would be fewer "cancel culture pile-ons" that drive people off the internet, screw up people's lives and support systems and businesses, etc.

I'm just talking about her, her personally, doing that. If she were doing it as part of a movement where a bunch of other people with similar standing did the same? The effect would be greater. And if they encouraged, successfully, some... even just some... of their following?

Now the stock answer to this is "So people get to accuse JK Rowling of encouraging child abuse or dunk on her all day and she just has to be SILENT and TAKE IT? What about her free speech?"

She doesn't have to be silent. Still and always, no one can actually shut her up.

I have all of 42,000 followers or so on here, I think. You know what I've been cutting back on more and more with every new influx? QTing someone, anyone who doesn't have a similar footprint to mine or bigger, to voice criticism or disagreement. Won't say I never do it.

But boy howdy have I become aware, hyperaware, of the impact of me doing that. I feel a weight and recognize a responsibility, even with my moderate following. I know nothing I do can contribute to a pile-on more than singling someone out like that.

"So you censor yourself."

I *control* myself. Follow me for a day and you know I'm not the strong silent type. If I have something I think is worth saying, I say it. At length. I don't just spell it out, I use it in a sentence, and provide the definition and country of origin.

The dynamics for the little accounts they supposedly want to protect are just so different from the dynamics for a big or even moderately sized account. The ability to know at a glance who is being mobbed and who is stirring robust debate is just.. not there.

The ability to know what kind of intervention will make things better and not worse (usually, it's no kind of intervention) is not there.

Encouraging people to be kinder online is a good thing. It really is. Absolutely do that.

But invoking the specter of Cancel Culture doesn't lead to kindness, it doesn't lend itself to charitable readings of strangers' spur-of-the-moment formulations of their thoughts.

It leads to anxious vigilance against any sign you might have angered the monster.

The fear of Cancel Culture makes the kind of reasoned discourse and respectful disagreements the signatories supposedly want very difficult to have in the wilds of social media, because as soon as one says something that many people disagree with... IS THIS CANCEL CULTURE?

And once you think it might be Cancel Culture, you act like you're in a fight for your life. You are a principled crusader for truth and your critics are the censorious masses, attacking not just you and your opinions but the basis of liberal society!

If J.K. Rowling thinks trans people's existence is child abuse and we think her preferred treatment of trans and questioning teens is child abuse... she's still going to be able to get a platform to carry her thoughts no matter how many people on Twitter call her a child abuser.

She could literally sit there and count her money until she feels better about the mean words on the internet. No amount of such words can "cancel her".

But she can ruin anybody's day or life just by screenshotting them and saying "This is cancel culture."

"So she's just got to sit there and take it?"

I mean, what's the alternative? A billionaire with a million fans can't have a "robust, reasonable, and respectful" debate in a crowded auditorium with a random stranger where nobody's in the audience because we all have microphones.

It doesn't work. Social media is not the venue for J.K. Rowling to engage with her critics. Or respond to her trolls. Or try to cancel the cancelers. Hashtag Billionaire Problems, guess it sucks to be her but them's the breaks.

Many people have pointed out that the letter does not actually address itself to anyone and it doesn't call for any particular specific action, and this is where the idea that it's speaking out in protection of The Forgotten Common People just falls utterly flat.

A widespread societal agreement that Cancel Culture is bad, just like the preceding widespread societal agreement that Political Correctness was bad, does nothing except give the status quo and the defensive and privileged a club to use to shut down criticism.

If everybody stood back and applauded the letter and its signers for being so right and true about something that is obviously good and we didn't interrogate the meaning and implications, all it would do is add weight to the accusations that some random person is Cancel Culture.

If you want to talk about Witch Hunts?

Look what happens to the mentions of anybody who is accused of engaging in Cancel Culture. Look what happens when some powerful, very important special person says they are under assault by a random account.

I'm heartened at how much pushback there is at the whole idea that "Cancel Culture" as it's formulated even exists because people for years got away with using "PC Police" as an excuse to shut down critical discourse, label it as false and petty and ridiculous.

The whole IDEA of cancellation comes out of a language of exasperated powerlessness.

"That's it, Monday's cancelled." Fact check: No one can cancel Monday. "Snow again? Winter is cancelled." Fact check: Seasons don't care if we schedule them or not.

Declaring someone or something "cancelled" is a cry of frustration, an acknowledgment of helplessness in the face of something we have no control over.

It only became a bogeyman because it slotted into an existing mythology, that had Social Justice Warriors and PC Police.

But the BELIEF that cancellation is not powerless, that there's a whole CULTURE out there and it's TARGETING people for just making one tiny innocent mistake or for merely disagreeing or having a difference of opinion...

I mean, that's powerful.

That's powerful fear, powerful enough to make the powerful defensive and to make the righteous vindictive. Because if Cancel Culture is such a threat, then it must be confronted. It's virtuous to fight back against such an insidious and powerful threat.

Which is how we get, 27 times a week on this site, little fandom/subcultural shooting matches where there's three different sides and each side is sure they're only defending themselves against cancellation from the others, and these are mostly petty little blow-ups...

...that few people outside an immediate circle will ever see, but they still can ruin days and on occasion ruin more than a day, and every once in a while one of them blows up and becomes one of the things it seems like everybody is talking about.

And it's how we get someone with the power and reach of JK Rowling feeling utterly self-assured that she is defending herself against existential attacks, against strong enemies who are coming for her throat with lethal force, and so she not just can but must defend herself.

And if you want a kinder and more positive internet, this is a bad thing.

And if you want a robust marketplace of ideas where people disagree respectfully and debate what is up for debate, this is a bad thing.

If these signatories want an end to Cancel Culture, they should kill it the way you'd kill any monster straight out of your nightmares: stop believing in it.

Stop engaging with it.

Stop engaging *in* it.

And there's a real critique here that says: but not calling it Cancel Culture and having celebrities be more restrained isn't going to stop the real problem of people, such as trans women, being harassed and hounded off this platform.

And this is true. It won't.

But that was happening before they called anything "Cancel Culture", it was happening before they called anyone "Social Justice Warriors", and what these terms have primarily done in the area of hounding marginalized people is, it gave the mobs new weapons to wield.

I don't want to run anybody off of Twitter but if I did, the way I would do it is look for excuses to accuse them of being part of Cancel Culture.

That would be much more likely to work than trying to "cancel" them via Cancel Culture.

Just. Look at the actual track records of declaring someone canceled vs. accusing them of being a cancel cultural attache. Look at which one gets actual results more often.

And there are people in this ~*debate*~ who absolutely know the score and are just giddy at how many well-intentioned people play along, but if you're not one of them, and you are concerned about mobs and witch hunts and ruined lives... look at the actual dynamics in play.

Find as many people as you can think of who were declared "cancelled" and look at what happened to them. And then look in their Twitter feed for people they held up as examples of "cancel culture" or "attackers" and look at what happened to them.

And you want to talk about people "virtue signaling" and "going along with witchhunts" so as to "not offend the mob"?

Number one way to avoid being accused of being part of cancel culture is to denounce it every chance you get.

If you're there joining every anti-"Cancel Culture" pileon you can see, co-signing every letter, boosting every "Cancel Culture Gone Too Far This Time" screenshot, then anybody who tries to accuse you of being part of Cancel Culture has an uphill battle.

When you look at the numbers - nobody is afraid of speaking out against Cancel Culture. That's the order of the day.

But it sure seems like people are afraid of being seen to *not* speak out against it, lest suspicion fall on them.

Is that not how a witch hunt works?

TL;DR - even assuming the best of intentions, that letter is not going to protect "common people" without a big platform. It's going to make things worse for online discourse and make it easier to rain a parade of hatred down on anybody who crosses the JK Rowlings of the world.