Thread by @webdevMason

There's a fundamental misconception about cancel culture that I really think needs to be corrected: the idea that being "anti-cancel culture" means being against very strong social consequences/punishments *in general*

Most concerns about cancel culture have to do with three common features:

- The punishment is vastly disproportionate to the "crime"

- There are critical extenuating factors that are readily ignored

- There can be no redemption, even via sincere apology & demonstrable growth

I bring this up because there's been a recent slew of public figures & wannabe activists outright lying — verifiably, and in public — with the obvious intention of causing maximum destruction to the victims' lives. This isn't hard: people who do this should be fucking cancelled.

Too many comfortably-positioned intellectuals think "taking the high road" means committing to perpetual asymmetrical idea-warfare where you make your best arguments and the other guy tries to get you fired, because otherwise we're "just like them." See the problem here?

Telling extreme, verifiably false lies about someone to attempt to ruin their reputation, livelihood or social life is a BIG DEAL. In the most literal sense, society can't function if we don't enforce strict norms against this. The chilling effect is real and it is already here.

I talk all the time about the need for COURAGE, but we should NOT be asking heterodox thinkers to be STUPID, and that's exactly what we're doing if we refuse to hold malicious actors accountable when they tell lies.

We could start by openly encouraging all of the victims of this behavior to sue, and supporting them financially when they do. These lawsuits are costly in both time and attention and these cases are notoriously hard to win, so we should consider it a much-needed public service.