I wish you'd done a poll on how people would respond to movie stars doing things like "Posting a sexist tweet," to compare with their responses to "full-blown heel" -- I suspect your followers are more forgiving than the average.
Isn't family abandonment a tenet of liberal morality? In favor of no-fault divorce, open relationships, non-nuclear "families", sexual experimentation.
Eat Pray Love and all that. She abandoned her family and she was the protagonist.
Didn't Tyler talk up that tranny economist guy that abandoned his family (I know his version is the opposite, but I take the families word for it).
This isn't just a popular fiction thing, liberals I've known in real life don't seem to take marriage and cheating as seriously.
I think you could have done a better job steelmanning here, Bryan. Certain behaviors are really memetic (e.g. sexism, racism) and other ones, not so much (e.g. disowning your children).
I don’t know if there can be a definitive answer to the question raised here. But my vote would be that the “cancelable” offenses described can be used to great effect in the service of a political agenda, e.g., racism (against blacks), sexism (against women). There is an incentive to use such examples to bolster a political narrative and rile up a political base. A lousy spouse, by contrast, is just not going to serve that purpose.
"Why can’t a celebrity father be a role model for other fathers? And if you question the size of this role model effect for fatherhood, why not question the size of the role model effect for racism and sexism as well?"
The difference is a lot of people think homophobia, racism, transphobia, etc. are ok. And when someone high-profile can espouse those views with impunity, it increases the ability for other people to espouse those views with impunity.
The other factors are worse, yes, but the important thing is everyone agrees they are. People do them knowing they are bad.
Someone who kills their child is worse than someone who uses corporal punishment. But everyone agrees that killing a child is bad. Someone who argued that corporal punishment is necessary to raise a child issues disinformation that could convince people to do.
I think this ignores scope of influence and impact. Being a "heel" to direct family members might be blameworthy only to a limited extent, whereas influencing hundreds of thousands of people to be very slightly worse could be a much bigger deal.
I tend to agree, but I think there is a much better argument the other side can make here.
In particular, to determine if a particular kind of social punishment is worth it we need to compare the cost versus the benefits. It's not likely that there are much benefits to obtain by trying to coordinate a boycott of someone who cheat's on their spouse. OTOH, one might think that you could substantially shift what is considered acceptable ways to speak in public via appropriate coordination.
I don't think that argument really holds water. For instance, I doubt the overall benefit to changing which words people tend to use isn't that great (we just run in place not render people nicer and more compassionate) but I do think that's a better argument for the other side.
Occam's Razor says the reason is that the Left has gone from liberal to puritanical satanist. It's the simplest explanation that explains many weird behaviors.
The Left wants parents to mostly abandon children and turn them in to the State for raising. They are pushing for public schooling for three year olds, year around schooling, and keeping schools open until 5. Divorce is thus a good thing. Family is Repressive.
The Left now sees Brave New World as a utopia. Notice that "mother" is on the verge of becoming a swear word for the Left, just like in the book. "Woman" is now "human with a uterus," and the sooner we can take the human out of the equation, the better.
Well, for me personally, I have always sort of assumed entertainers acted in ways I would find deplorable. When the Harvey Weinstein thing happened the only surprising thing to me was that people were surprised this sort of thing happened. I found myself wondering if I was the only person outside of Hollywood who knew what "the casting couch" was, and how that could possibly be.
I you start with the assumption that "everyone in Hollywood behaves abominably" then finding out someone cheats, is a racist, never wears pants, is super mean to employees, drinks the blood of kittens, whatever, it doesn't change your stance much. You don't watch movies because you like the people making them, just as I don't choose an ice cream based on my personal feelings about the people who work at the plant. I don't expect them to have the same beliefs and values I have, I just care if the ice cream is good or not.
My sense about why people get so offended about recent Hollywood transgressions is that they believed the people making the movies were just like them and believed the same things. So, sure, being a heel is bad, but that is a personal failing that happens. All that other stuff though, that's going against the principles of the religion that they thought was shared. Apostasy cannot be ignored. They feel betrayed, and jump on the angry bandwagon.
For myself, and I suspect you as well, there was never any illusion that Hollywood shared our beliefs in any meaningful way, so we can't feel betrayed. It's just more stupid people being stupid; the low quality of movies is more distressing than their bad behavior off the set.
There's something else going on here, but I don't know quite where the right distinction is between public and private life.
How much work is being the "favorite" movie star doing here? I'm pretty indifferent to most movie stars, so if the guy was a notable jerk, it'd be a reason to avoid his movies. If there's a suitable supply of non-heel movie stars, I'd be more likely to avoid the heel.
Likewise with anything else. If I know one local restaurant is run by a serial deadbeat dad and another is run by a good guy, and they're about the same in quality, I'm going to give my business to the guy who's not a turd.
Maybe put this another way. What price would induce you to be buy a product made with slave labor?
I was not persuaded by your argument in this post. It seems to dismiss too easily that some issues are about cultural norms, and to create new norms anyone violating them must be called out immediately. Whereas someone cheating on their spouse and never seeing there kids is a “smaller” issue. Additionally there is almost always a lot more grey area involved with a divorce. Typically no one other than the couple know what really happened and there is no video which can go viral.
I think that this makes sense, and might be persuasive to some. But some view being racist as a threat to others and that this person needs to face consequences or else they will continue to cause harm. The action of cancelling them is morally virtuous because it prevents further harm. My natural inclination and many others is to defend people during cancellation for the opposite reason; we think it's not morally justified to cancel over trivial matters and we should not maintain this social norm.
I would say my response to the first question is: be less of a fan - probably watch fewer of everything. I still like the performances, but that person is less of an idol at that point. I love, love, love Louis CK's comedy, but I feel worse about loving it now.
I wish you'd done a poll on how people would respond to movie stars doing things like "Posting a sexist tweet," to compare with their responses to "full-blown heel" -- I suspect your followers are more forgiving than the average.
Isn't family abandonment a tenet of liberal morality? In favor of no-fault divorce, open relationships, non-nuclear "families", sexual experimentation.
Eat Pray Love and all that. She abandoned her family and she was the protagonist.
Didn't Tyler talk up that tranny economist guy that abandoned his family (I know his version is the opposite, but I take the families word for it).
This isn't just a popular fiction thing, liberals I've known in real life don't seem to take marriage and cheating as seriously.
I think you could have done a better job steelmanning here, Bryan. Certain behaviors are really memetic (e.g. sexism, racism) and other ones, not so much (e.g. disowning your children).
I don’t know if there can be a definitive answer to the question raised here. But my vote would be that the “cancelable” offenses described can be used to great effect in the service of a political agenda, e.g., racism (against blacks), sexism (against women). There is an incentive to use such examples to bolster a political narrative and rile up a political base. A lousy spouse, by contrast, is just not going to serve that purpose.
"Why can’t a celebrity father be a role model for other fathers? And if you question the size of this role model effect for fatherhood, why not question the size of the role model effect for racism and sexism as well?"
The difference is a lot of people think homophobia, racism, transphobia, etc. are ok. And when someone high-profile can espouse those views with impunity, it increases the ability for other people to espouse those views with impunity.
The other factors are worse, yes, but the important thing is everyone agrees they are. People do them knowing they are bad.
Someone who kills their child is worse than someone who uses corporal punishment. But everyone agrees that killing a child is bad. Someone who argued that corporal punishment is necessary to raise a child issues disinformation that could convince people to do.
I think it's mostly about signaling what actions we think are wrong in society.
I think this ignores scope of influence and impact. Being a "heel" to direct family members might be blameworthy only to a limited extent, whereas influencing hundreds of thousands of people to be very slightly worse could be a much bigger deal.
I tend to agree, but I think there is a much better argument the other side can make here.
In particular, to determine if a particular kind of social punishment is worth it we need to compare the cost versus the benefits. It's not likely that there are much benefits to obtain by trying to coordinate a boycott of someone who cheat's on their spouse. OTOH, one might think that you could substantially shift what is considered acceptable ways to speak in public via appropriate coordination.
I don't think that argument really holds water. For instance, I doubt the overall benefit to changing which words people tend to use isn't that great (we just run in place not render people nicer and more compassionate) but I do think that's a better argument for the other side.
Occam's Razor says the reason is that the Left has gone from liberal to puritanical satanist. It's the simplest explanation that explains many weird behaviors.
The Left wants parents to mostly abandon children and turn them in to the State for raising. They are pushing for public schooling for three year olds, year around schooling, and keeping schools open until 5. Divorce is thus a good thing. Family is Repressive.
The Left now sees Brave New World as a utopia. Notice that "mother" is on the verge of becoming a swear word for the Left, just like in the book. "Woman" is now "human with a uterus," and the sooner we can take the human out of the equation, the better.
Well, for me personally, I have always sort of assumed entertainers acted in ways I would find deplorable. When the Harvey Weinstein thing happened the only surprising thing to me was that people were surprised this sort of thing happened. I found myself wondering if I was the only person outside of Hollywood who knew what "the casting couch" was, and how that could possibly be.
I you start with the assumption that "everyone in Hollywood behaves abominably" then finding out someone cheats, is a racist, never wears pants, is super mean to employees, drinks the blood of kittens, whatever, it doesn't change your stance much. You don't watch movies because you like the people making them, just as I don't choose an ice cream based on my personal feelings about the people who work at the plant. I don't expect them to have the same beliefs and values I have, I just care if the ice cream is good or not.
My sense about why people get so offended about recent Hollywood transgressions is that they believed the people making the movies were just like them and believed the same things. So, sure, being a heel is bad, but that is a personal failing that happens. All that other stuff though, that's going against the principles of the religion that they thought was shared. Apostasy cannot be ignored. They feel betrayed, and jump on the angry bandwagon.
For myself, and I suspect you as well, there was never any illusion that Hollywood shared our beliefs in any meaningful way, so we can't feel betrayed. It's just more stupid people being stupid; the low quality of movies is more distressing than their bad behavior off the set.
"Honestly, I doubt almost anyone sincerely thinks so."
No; most people think so.
There's something else going on here, but I don't know quite where the right distinction is between public and private life.
How much work is being the "favorite" movie star doing here? I'm pretty indifferent to most movie stars, so if the guy was a notable jerk, it'd be a reason to avoid his movies. If there's a suitable supply of non-heel movie stars, I'd be more likely to avoid the heel.
Likewise with anything else. If I know one local restaurant is run by a serial deadbeat dad and another is run by a good guy, and they're about the same in quality, I'm going to give my business to the guy who's not a turd.
Maybe put this another way. What price would induce you to be buy a product made with slave labor?
I was not persuaded by your argument in this post. It seems to dismiss too easily that some issues are about cultural norms, and to create new norms anyone violating them must be called out immediately. Whereas someone cheating on their spouse and never seeing there kids is a “smaller” issue. Additionally there is almost always a lot more grey area involved with a divorce. Typically no one other than the couple know what really happened and there is no video which can go viral.
I think that this makes sense, and might be persuasive to some. But some view being racist as a threat to others and that this person needs to face consequences or else they will continue to cause harm. The action of cancelling them is morally virtuous because it prevents further harm. My natural inclination and many others is to defend people during cancellation for the opposite reason; we think it's not morally justified to cancel over trivial matters and we should not maintain this social norm.
I would say my response to the first question is: be less of a fan - probably watch fewer of everything. I still like the performances, but that person is less of an idol at that point. I love, love, love Louis CK's comedy, but I feel worse about loving it now.