From elementary age until I was a young adult, Bill Cosby provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment. From watching the animated series \u201cFat Albert\u201d on Saturday mornings, to belly laughing while listening to vinyl comedy albums (remember those?) to my standing appointment with \u201cmust-see TV\u201d that kicked off every Thursday at 8p with The Cosby Show, Cosby\u2019s wit and wisdom was a staple of my upbringing.<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s difficult to talk about Bill Cosby in positive terms today. Once the world caught onto his toxic and twisted approach to women, it \u201ccanceled\u201d him. This was particularly bad timing for me, as just weeks before revelations started to emerge, I\u2019d taken my children to his live concert to see \u201cone of the best comedians of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their book The Canceling of the American Mind<\/em>, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott take on the rapid proliferation of cancel culture in the United States. They argue that though we already have strong legal first amendment free-speech protections, that \u201cfree speech law is dependent on free speech culture to survive.\u201d[1]<\/a>And they use scores of examples from both the left (with their \u201cPerfect Rhetorical Fortresses\u201d) and the right (with their \u201cEfficient Rhetorical Fortresses\u201d) to point to this growing problem.<\/p>\n According to the examples provided in this book this threat exists on campuses (where cancel culture first took root) to publishing, and media, and business, and government, and beyond, where unruly mobs of right wingers are canceling liberals just for believing in woke ideology, and undisciplined hordes of liberals are canceling conservatives simply for speaking their minds.<\/p>\n OK, I know that last sentence is hyperbolic and represents the extreme views of cancel culture. But this book also makes some compelling arguments in the middle: There are<\/strong> people who have had the mob turn on them and have lost their livelihoods and relationships for seemingly innocent or insignificant statements. I have empathy for this kind of disproportionate response as I\u2019ve had both left and right leave the church over something I said (but only the right has tried to use social media and groupthink to cancel me).<\/p>\n However, though I empathize with the challenges and believe the authors had some important insights into this problem, I was left with several nagging concerns. I only have space to address two:<\/p>\n First, I didn\u2019t feel that they sufficiently distinguished the difference between canceling someone and using influence to oppose a person or idea. They quote comedian Ricky Gervais who said \u201cYou turning off your own TV isn\u2019t censorship. You trying to get other people to turn off their TV, because you don\u2019t like something they\u2019re watching, that\u2019s different.\u201d[2]<\/a> \u00a0The authors argue against cancel culture, but then argue that \u201cthere are some institutions, ideas, and even people who need to be torn down.\u201d[3]<\/a> I had a hard time finding a place where they properly explain who gets to decide who \u201cgets torn down\u201d, and why, and how it gets to be decided.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not suggesting there isn\u2019t a line, but I\u2019m questioning where that line exists. As an example, if I preach that God calls us to unconditionally love the alien, I might feel abused if I was canceled, but if I preached the Bible was not the word of God I might agree with the cancelation.<\/p>\n I have a second lingering concern about a potential hole in their analysis: While the authors state 2014 as the season in which cancel culture exploded[4]<\/a> they did not seem to address the social media algorithms as a major cause for the rise of cancel culture (someone please correct me if I missed this).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This is a big deal. The rise of social media in the early 2000\u2019s and then the use and rise of algorithms by social media companies in the mid 2010\u2019s[5]<\/a> correspond to the growth and then explosion of cancel culture, first on campuses (where social media was most used) then to other segments of society (that picked up on social media later).<\/p>\n Algorithms are designed to \u201ccontrol the flow of information people see\u201d and to \u201camplify information that drives engagement.\u201d[6]<\/a> The result is a false polarization\u2014when you only see what is fed to you to increase engagement (whatever gets you to click on it) the possibility of becoming a part of a group you were unaware of before and then participating in \u201ccanceling\u201d someone seems to grow exponentially.<\/p>\n It’s almost as if social media companies designed it that way.<\/p>\n Case in point: While I was reading this book, I was also keeping an eye on someone being canceled in real-time. On a podcast, pastor and author Alistair Begg replied to a hurting grandmother wondering what to do about her transgendered grandchild\u2019s wedding. Begg, who is extremely theologically conservative, gave her the pastoral advice to attend the wedding and bring a gift to express love and grace. That advice sent the theologically conservative social media world into a frenzy. In short order, his radio show was dropped by its network, Begg was disinvited to a high-profile conference, and a mob of thousands rose up on social media cutting this man\u2019s teaching out of their life.<\/p>\n All for a single piece of \u201cquestionable\u201d pastoral counsel weighed against thousands of hours of conservative Biblical teaching by which his followers lived their lives.<\/p>\n While I would defend the ability of anyone to disagree with, and influence others against, a teaching they don\u2019t agree with, I doubt this cancelation would have happened in a world without social media algorithms and sound bites. It seems that 30 years ago, a pastoral response like that might catch some disagreement, discussion, and debate, and maybe an eventual realignment of allies (where and to whom you have a voice), but light-speed cancelation of Begg\u2019s ministry, without careful consideration, would have been unheard of.<\/p>\n Maybe we should stop being entertained by criminals like Cosby, or perhaps we should push back on the cancelation of a faithful pastor who gave an answer that garnered disagreement, but either way it\u2019s important to us to understand the nature of cancelation and the things (including culture, and technology) that promote it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> 298<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> 255<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> 6<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> 49<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/social-media-algorithms-rule-how-we-see-the-world-good-luck-trying-to-stop-them-11610884800<\/a><\/p>\n [6]<\/a> https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/social-media-algorithms-warp-how-people-learn-from-each-other\/<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From elementary age until I was a young adult, Bill Cosby provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment. From watching the animated series \u201cFat Albert\u201d on Saturday mornings, to belly laughing while listening to vinyl comedy albums (remember those?) to my standing appointment with \u201cmust-see TV\u201d that kicked off every Thursday at 8p with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3042],"class_list":["post-35552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lukianoff-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35553,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35552\/revisions\/35553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}