No, I’m talking to you. You really sound like you just don’t want to believe it’s a real problem as do the majority of people in the thread, which is shameful, because their behavior is proving what I’m saying is real. Stuff like that really does happen to people. It’s real.

Honestly, the way everybody is acting is really, really shameful. I am a person who made a thread and gave it a [Serious] tag because I wanted serious, literal answers to a serious problem that, given my chosen career path, will affect me at some point in my life and could potentially ruin it without good info to prepare for such a crisis beforehand. But all I’m getting is denial, mockery, condescension, lies, put-downs.

And it’s rooted in this desire to either pretend the problem is not real because you’re all secretly afraid it’ll affect you yourselves, or it’s because you know it’s real but you view it as a positive because ostracization and shunning people is an emotional cudgel you wield to silence people you don’t agree with on the internet, and answering the question honestly would require framing such actions as a negative and that would make you question the morality of your actions. And that’s not only sick, that’s just cowardly. If you believe cancelling people is morally A-O good, then at least have the temerity to threaten me with a “Don’t speak your mind and mask up” response like at least a few people were honest enough to do.

But don’t insult my intelligence by thinking you can lie to my face and pretend that something I’ve been personally watching happen to other people for over a decade is not, in fact, happening.

Jesus Christ. 🤦

You just don’t want to believe it’s real, don’t you?

Or it’s easier to discredit the problem itself than to acknowledge that it could happen to you, too.

Okay. You win the argument. I hope that makes you feel better, and more importantly not angry at or inconvenienced by me in any way.

Good people don’t get “canceled”.

I’m sorry but that’s just naive.

Who cares what they think.

I do, because those people are either my employers or my customer base, and I need their money to survive.

If we lived in a perfect world where everyone had their own 40 acres and a mule and didn’t have to depend on other people to survive, I’d believe you. But we don’t, and as a member of society I am dependent on these people to live.

And most people are aware of this, and don’t really want to give a meaningful answer to my question because that would mean losing the power they wield over me, so the only meaningful response is to dismiss the reality of the situation or wrongly frame it as an emotional issue when it is anything but. My fear over it is extremely justified. People, including rich and powerful celebrities, have lost everything over this.

Take Sinead O’Connor, for example, who was cancelled in the 90’s for opposing the Catholic Church and trying to expose their sex abuse scandal. And she died, her reputation having never really been repaired, in the U.S. at least.

It matters. It’s real. And it’s a very, very valid concern. What other people think doesn’t just matter, it means everything if one wants to live.

Normal people don’t just up and believe anything they are told by some rando.

Uh… MAGA? Trump? Alex Jones? Hello?

And this is where you lost me. It’s a very real and very easily observable phenomenon; you can do a quick search on Twitter or Google (such as they are) and see for yourself it’s a very real and very frightening phenomenon.

I’m sorry you don’t take the problem seriously, but don’t jump on me to make yourself feel better over it.

Thank you for being the one person taking me seriously here.

Well, I thank you for answering the question, at least.

What happens when those that still keep going make up the vast majority of the population, including your customer base and/or employers?

What happens when people just lie and make shit up about you, and the population refuses to listen to the truth because the lie resonates with their political beliefs?

I wonder if it’s even possible to do that legally in the U.S. anymore.

You must have been living under a rock the past decade then.

It is an emotional problem. I own part of a business and it’s nearly impossible to “cancel” me.

EDIT: Never mind, I know you’ll purposefully with-hold a straight answer because you think the fact that I am worrying about this is a moral failing on my part and you are trying to condition me to adopt your way of thinking. And that’s sick. It’s also a pretty good example of what I’m talking about so keep going

I’m not worried about my ego, I’m worried about my livelihood, my dreams and my life. It’s so easy to dismiss the problem by wrongly framing it as an emotional one instead of treating it like the real threat that it is. It’s a lot harder to acknowledge there’s a serious problem here that everyone, not just myself, has to worry about.

Ordinary people get cancelled all the time whether they deserve it or not, too, so we can’t reasonably just assume nobody will care. People clearly do.

🤔

It does, and it’s a possibility that terrifies me. A lot of the celebrities who are cancelled are cancelled for justifiable reasons, granted (especially scumbags like R. Kelly), but it can happen to ordinary people for unjustifiable reasons, too, meaning anyone who seeks to do anything in life has to live with a sword of Damocles hanging over their head. Meaningful relationships with others can’t be built if the dynamics of that relationship include the fact that that other person has untold, unchecked power over you and you have legitimate reason to be afraid of them, given that it’s a thing.

I want to own businesses in my life and even saying that has earned the ire of, by my count, at least one person in this thread. What’s to stop them from doxxing me and putting my personal information on blast all over the fediverse, or even old social media like Twitter, preventing me from ever being able to pursue my dreams simply because they don’t like capitalism? What’s to stop the right wing from doxxing me and sending me death threats if I gain a following and then speak out against them to that following, or boycotting my business because I put up a pride flag for Pride Month? How can community even be possible with the threat of something like that happening to you in existence?

🤔

Get outside your own bubble and realise that getting ‘cancelled’ rarely has any real material consequences.

Tell that to the poor victim of the Steubenville, OH rape. She was cancelled by that entire town because of what was done to her, not because of what she did. Other townspeople burned her house down because she came forward. Stuff like that happens to people all the time, even if not under such extreme circumstances, either through no fault of their own or they’re actually in the right in a confrontation but just face a determined group of bigoted people, like the Bud Light boycott.

Being ostracized or cancelled or whatever you wish to call it has demonstrably and nightmarishly gruesome consequences for its victims, and it can happen to anyone over anything whether justified or not. It is very much something anyone who seeks to participate in civilized society has to prepare and plan for, hence the thread.

Oh. 🤔 That is actually a very good question.

I don’t see how perspective can alter the reality of losing your job, your home, or even suffering threats or violence for the slightest misstep, which is how people live nowadays.

No, not really. I am just very cognizant of the fact that this is a very real possibility, especially given my chosen career path (I’m going to be a business owner). The possibility that something that will take me many years to build can be lost in the timespan of a day, all because one person or a group of people got mad at me, terrifies me. The whole point of being a business owner is to be independent and free from the influence, and negative behavior, of others, but, at least the way our media portrays life, everyone is extremely vulnerable to being “cancelled” in that sense at any time for any reason. It even happens to people just working regular jobs. It’s a very real threat to one’s life that needs to be addressed and planned for, I just don’t know how and hoped others on Lemmy would.