I presume there’s some sizable sampling bias here, but these numbers are quite a bit higher than I expected.
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@litbong it happened years ago and was unimportant.
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@erincandescent I have Seen Individuals driven to Suicide and Madness from Social Isolation; I Wish it was as Harmless as you Say
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Erin 💽✨ last edited by
I've been on the receiving end of many internet harassment campaigns (some on Mastodon!), but I view that very different from being cancelled.
Harassment campaigns are people calling me the N-word and saying that they will kill me for hiring Black people or women in tech.️
Getting cancelled would be me doing something that causes my community that loves me to hold me accountable for my actions. I've never been cancelled, but I've been held accountable many times.
1/N
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
You can't get cancelled by a community that you are not in. Because cancellation is a removal of support. I can't cancel Maroon 5, because I'm not a Maroon 5 fan.
You can get dogpiled by complete strangers. Most of the people that post racist comments to me after seeing something I said screenshotted on the "Black People Twitter" subreddit, are people I would never hang out with.
You can be held accountable by anyone. Strangers, or your community.
2/2
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Erin 💽✨replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke What would you class “a dog pile ostensibly in the name of social justice, by people who are perhaps not part of ‘your community’ but are adjacent to it”? Especially when its based upon either something that you said but entirely decontextualised, or based upon something you didn’t say at all?
There are groups of people, both here and elsewhere, which enjoy employing this exact strategy - ostracising people on the basis of slights imagined or exaggerated. I have seen them referred to as “context collapse cults”, a term I think is quite apt.
They are often full of well meaning people who do not realise what their group has become, but they are very insidious.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Erin 💽✨ last edited by
Can you give me a few examples?
There are different types of this. Some of which I would classify under "accountability," and some under "disproportionate response."
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
I've gotten dogpiled by people that misunderstood what I said, but it was fine.
A Big Tech engineer who was into crypto had all his monkeys stolen from his wallet. Everyone laughed. I said it's not funny, because if a Big Tech SWE can't figure out how to keep his wallet safe, then there's no chance a non-technical user can. And while the SWE can afford the loss, many other users can't.
My take was anti-crypto but about 50K people (seriously) thought I was defending crypto. ️
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@erincandescent btw did you set 'quiet public' for this reply (and mine)? sorry, just bit confused since i don't remember setting it (just checked notifications and noticed the cool icon of moon)
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@litbong you must have done it since the first unlisted post in this thread is a reply you created
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Erin 💽✨replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke I think the continuum of what I’m talking about falls under the continuum from “disproportionate response” to “adversarial reading”.
Sometimes someone might say something bad and before their friends can call them in the callout post has escaped into space. Now everyone (for some value of everyone) knows them as an {insert type of prejudice/intolerance here}, and that associating with them is a bad look.
Sometimes someone might say something intended for their smaller audience and therefore they don’t add the caveats one might need when expressing something for a wider audience, and e.g. someone expressing their raw feelings becomes interpreted as a greater value judgement
Occasionally there are people who just read basically everything they come across from their non-friends in the most adversarial possible way and are basically looking for a new outrage to start. These people are rare but many of them have larger followings.
I really see them as a continuum because once callout posts/dunks/etc start they really prime people to engage in adversarial reading. If someone says a post is (e.g.) transphobic and there is a plausible transphobic reading of it, they will naturally interpret things that way
(this is also why for someone who finds themselves in the eye of sauron, the best strategy is usually to say as little as possible; because anything said will almost always be read in the most adversarial way possible)
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@Carbisari honestly one of the biggest reasons I say this is because it is very useful to know who your true friends are, and who will be too scared to be seen with you if/when things explode.