From 52d5e9267a1fdadd5e91d8e096753f2b39b1abee61c733346078d510ce619645 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Johnson Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Convert angle brackets to square brackets Hugo was rendering the angle brackets as raw HTML and omitting them. --- content/entry/on-compassion.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) (limited to 'content/entry/on-compassion.md') diff --git a/content/entry/on-compassion.md b/content/entry/on-compassion.md index a334eb1..a418ab7 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-compassion.md +++ b/content/entry/on-compassion.md @@ -33,11 +33,11 @@ Okay, everyone knows prisons are hateful places. But the very worst kind of hate I've seen young people, as their immediate first instinct, pull out their smartphones and record someone else who is being homophobic or racist or transphobic and later publish it to social media in an attempt to weaponize the social media cancel mob against them. Perhaps to make them lose their job, be ostracized from their community, or have total strangers think poorly of them. ## Is Cancel Culture Helpful? -These smartphone-wielding social justice warriors who treat the social media hate mob as their own personal weapon fail to realize that they themselves are guilty of the very thing they're attempting to expose. Is purposely mobilizing an online hate mob against someone any less hateful than being a racist? You're not going to make go away by shaming people. You're just making people uncomfortable to express it which pushes it into the shadows. It doesn't actually disappear. +These smartphone-wielding social justice warriors who treat the social media hate mob as their own personal weapon fail to realize that they themselves are guilty of the very thing they're attempting to expose. Is purposely mobilizing an online hate mob against someone any less hateful than being a racist? You're not going to make [insert ism here] go away by shaming people. You're just making people uncomfortable to express it which pushes it into the shadows. It doesn't actually disappear. Let's do a thought experiment and I've seen this happen before: An older lady shamed a young girl for her promiscuity. The young girl pulled out her smartphone to record the older lady and posted the incident on social media. In the comments, the social justice mob went after this lady: "What a horrible person. Nobody likes her. She's just jealous of the young girl's looks." and on and on. Now let's suppose the lady even saw the comments being made about her. Do you think she was encouraged to be more compassionate and understanding by random internet strangers telling her off? -Is stoking an internet hate mob really the best way to go about promoting self-reflection? Is that really what compassion looks like? Is that what justice looks like? I don't think so. There are better ways to get people to self-reflect. People that do this clearly have bad motives. If it's someone in a position of power being exposed like a politician or leader of some community, then obviously to some degree they're signing up to public scrutiny. But when it's done to Joe Blow, what good is coming out of that? +Is stoking an internet hate mob really the best way to go about promoting self-reflection? Is that really what compassion looks like? Is that what justice looks like? I don't think so. There are better ways to get people to self-reflect. People that do this clearly have bad motives. If it's someone in a position of power being exposed like a politician or leader of some community, then obviously to some degree they're signing up to public scrutiny. But when it's done to [insert ist here] Joe Blow, what good is coming out of that? ## Lack of a Mechanism For Forgiveness And don't forget there's practically no way to atone for your wrongdoing after you've been canceled. If your public racism gets recorded on video and uploaded and you get canceled, and then after some self-reflection you see the error of your ways, it's too late. You've already been condemned. Everyone who saw the video already thinks you're a racist jerk. Even if you make a formal apology, is everybody going to see that? And even if they do, will they believe that it's genuine or will they think you're just apologizing to get uncanceled? There is no mechanism for forgiveness because the internet never forgets and your mistake stands independent from any atonement or personal growth you've made since. -- cgit v1.2.3