Why do they object? Because they have to have an opinion EVERYTHING

Watching news with an acquaintance - for every story on the news he had some comment - either it was "the worst thing in the world" or it was "great" - there was no middle ground or indifference. There was an opinion on everything even if it would never affect him.

I think that might be separate issues: all-or-nothing thinking with a large dose of ego (his opinion matters why?).

Did the acquaintance seem to have the same understanding as you about what the news subjects were? Did you have a shared understanding of what the words meant?

Repubs and many conservatives are such snowflakes, they are triggered by basically any bloody word or phraseology that wasn't fully accepted in the usa in the 1950s.

Words change, culture changes. Sometimes it is for the better, sometimes not. Demographics change and that's gonna affect ALL of our lives. Get over it.

Me?
I find evil objectionable. I find cowards objectionable. I find bullies objectionable.

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More often than not, it isn't the choice of words. You are talking about a group of people who need a boogeyman to blame their problems on.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
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I'm of the camp where words matters. So I get bothered a bit when an intended definition get lost or miscontrued or just open to lots of ambuguity.

"Defund the police" is a good example. At face value it sounds like it's just taking money away from police. It doesn't necessarily communicate the intended meaning that it's a re-allocation of funds to other areas that are better at dealing with disruptive people where the behavior is due to mental issues rather than criminal intent. But that's a mouthful.

"Cancel culture" is another phrase. I liked the interpretation that said it should be referred to as "Consequence culture".

But dealing w/the what words mean keeps lawyers* in business.

*Partly why I like the field I'm in (analytics), where the logic and outcomes are expressed, unambiguously, in terms of equations and code. Lots can be said and done in that framework.

i think i wrote the same on another thread, but i'll repeat myself here if so.

i've noticed that increasingly some people are using the word 'cancel' in places where we used to use terms like "criticize," or "hold accountable" or "allow to be exposed to natural consequences."

as i understand it, "cancelling" started as a social action some time ago, when people would (for instance) decide to boycott the sponsors of a media personality who advanced positions that those people found odious. it wasn't particularly partisan - i remember people doing this to ellen degeneres and don imus alike.

but recently i think trump jr was saying something like, "it was bad optics for cruz to go to mexico, but i'm not joining in calls for him to be cancelled." what? what does that even mean? he's a senator - he doesn't get "cancelled," he gets voted out. and if by cancelled you mean "criticized for making what we all seem to agree was a poor choice," than 'cancelled' is now meaningless.

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So you're telling us to not be so thin-skinned? :-)

Neither of your examples above trigger me, as I had to google the first one (wow, that gave me a headache, but OK) and I get what most people mean by DTP. But it's a great example of extremism. "Defund the Police" is a provactive term and I can see why people get upset about it, because the words and intent are different. So, yeah, maybe word choice does matter. But Defund the Police gets eyeballs and fits on a protest sign.

As for cancel culture, the complaint I have is that if you are not perfectly aligned to the wokeness cause, whatever it is, or if you have lived an imperfect life and did something stupid once, then you're called out and ostracized. Again, extreme, 1:0 thinking.

To illustrate my point above, let's take the phrases "black lives matters" and "all lives matter."


I'm not going to explain what either of them mean because it's 2021, and if someone doesn't know what they mean by now, then they don't want to know. When one equates "black lives matters" to mean "only black lives matter" yet never complained about breast cancer charities for not caring about forms of cancer, or if they replied with "all lives matter," but never actually attended an all lives matter fund raiser or protest, then I'm pretty sure we can assume that it's not the choice of words that's the problem.

Don't let the right control your language, because there is no end to it until they get a conservative world order. They do not care about you and your words.

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There have always been lines that can't be crossed and a group of people that determine if those lines have crossed. "Cancelling" is not something new and the people that complain about "cancel culture" the most are more than happy to "cancel" people, they are generally acting in bad faith. You don't see them screaming that Colin Kapernick was canceled or the Dixie Chicks, they are fine with that.

Lets face it, not too long ago you would have been "cancelled" for saying you were gay or even supporting gay rights.

Traditionally those lines have been decided by the privileged and those in power determined if those lines have been crossed. Now that has changed. Suddenly those that lacked privilege and power suddenly have a voice in the lines and if they are crossed. Those that used to have that power see it as a threat to their power and are upset. So the lines are changing.

Is it possible that this next paradigm may be over zealous? Possibly. Is it obvious that the old way of doing thing was absolutely terrible and allowed abuse and all sorts of misdeeds to be perputated by power? Fucking hell yes. Having the power to "cancel" someone being concentrated in a limited number of individuals, that lets face it were very homogeneous, just allowed so much abuse.

I think having more people involved in where the lines are is a good thing. Even if there are negatives, they far outweigh the negatives of the old systems.

if you want to be listened to, use a word or phrase that is precise, original, with few priors attached

if you want to rally people, use the slogan, the more baggage the better

Defund the police means, defund the police.

If you want to talk about reallocating resources, or even just bolstering non-police emergency resources, say that. When you leave words open to interpretation they can mean anything you want them to and that's where we run in to problems.

It's like me saying "CallMeMaybe is a jerk" but, that phrase actually means that we just have different opinions, so Im ok with the phrase because I know what it actually means. Even though many other people might hear that phrase and think that you are a jerk because it is repeated often enough.

Just for clarification I am not actually calling anyone a jerk...

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Yes, it does.
I think it shows either laziness, inability or malice if an adult doesn’t bother to use the appropriate word for the context.

Baby-Talk or Teenage speak unfortunately are considered to be cool and engaged. Doesn’t work so much in an adult environment (other than entertainment), where words matter and have consequences
I won‘t elaborate on the malice aspect.

And increasingly there is, ‘like....like...’ the lack of proper education to built a vocabulary.

But I am just an outsider looking in.

I think the difference between cancelling and holding accountable is that the cancel crowd is quick to cancel with very little evidence. People have lost jobs and livelihoods and had their names destroyed over unproven allegations. That is just not right. It's one thing to say "so and so is a bad person for x reason" and another entirely to make sure that person loses their job, receives death threats and so on without them even having a day in court.

A good friend of mine was accused of raping a girl in highschool. He was dragged out of class in handcuffs, not allowed to graduate, his family kicked him out of their home... And it wasn't even true. The girl admitted to it years later. That is what is wrong with cancel culture.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Defund the police has the various knee-jerk interpretations. I imagine there would a whole different reaction, from law enforcement and their supporters, if the phrase had been "Re-fund the Police". As in, reallocate funds to train cops to deal with mental health issues.

Totally. The phrase "defund the police" wasn't used by accident or because it was catchy. It is used to create division and threaten. The intent is very clear.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I agree in a sense, but the people who coined the term would probably say the "division and threats" were already there. And they just decided to engage in the conflict by threatening public funding. Instead of responding with violence, knee-to-neck, etc.

There are elements of "cancel crowd is quick to cancel with very little evidence" in this story about an incident at a college a few hours from where I live. If the story is accurate, the janitorial and cafeteria staff didn't get a very fair shake on this one, IMO.

https://www.nytimes.com/...&pgtype=Homepage

I'll also say, there are many in the 'woke' crowd who do mean exactly that: defund the police. And so words do matter, and intent does matter. There is the 'defund the police' crowd and the 'more social services' crowd and their aims and views are different. They should be classified differently and discussed as real solutions differently. But they're not, they're conflated and so the aims of fairly extreme types are intermingled with those of more reasonable, center-left folks.

I kinda disagree.


I think it came about because people were EXTREMELY pissed off at what the police were doing in their communities, and then combined that with the realization that people themselves were funding the police (and the police idiocy) with their own tax dollars. Hence, 'defund the police.' It is not a big stretch to see this if one has ever been pissed by any government or corporate overreach.

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Can you explain what these phrases mean to you, and what white supremacy has to do with math? Genuine question.

I've talked about this particular thing before. One issue is when we expect someone to be fired from their current job wholly unrelated to the offense. And frequently completely different from the one they had at the time of the offense.

Gina Carrano(sp?) is an idiot. If your employer has warned you before about your behavior you don't turn the dial to 11. And the things she is saying are stupid. But does she never get to work again? Does she only get written out of this show? If she makes a pretend apology (because we know she isn't at all sorry about what she said so an apology is pointless) can she be cast in the future? What is the connection between what she did and the job she has?

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

But for the folks' that were pissed off, what did that accomplish for them? It just made the other side push back. Furthermore, it opened the door (for the right) to push their message that the result of "Defund the Police" is criminals running amok. If you want to win "hearts and minds", Defund the Police was a poor phrase to run with if there was interest in solving the issue constructively.

Of course, in hindsight, it was a not a good choice. (Of course, how many of us have made thousands of decisions in our lives that in hindsight were not good choices ... I can't claim innocence there ...)

But that was a simple phrase and it made for a "good" slogan ('good' in that it was short and it moved people -- just imagine folks yelling, "Take some funds from the police and use those to fund on-call mental health counselors !!!" "Take some funds from the police and use those to fund on-call mental health counselors !!!" "Take some funds from the police and use those to fund on-call mental health counselors !!!" -- not sure that would have worked too well ...)

But those were the imprecise words chosen for the slogan. In hindsight, definitely not a good choice.

And I'm not defending it, only that I perfectly understand the anger that created it in the moment.

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The good choice would (should) have been to go with or pivot to "Re-fund the police!".
The aggrieved crowd would be on board as it calls for the reallocation. The Police could easily respond with ok, give us the money and we'll use the dollars towards mental and racial sensitivity training. No one turns down funding/money. And the politicians could take credit and say, "See, Unity". Instead, we have what we have of the butt-hurt and the butting of heads.