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On the Media

From Public Shaming To Cancel Culture

On the Media

WNYC Studios

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4.68.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What part did mass internet shaming play in making "cancel culture" the moral panic it is today?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Over the last couple of weeks, we've taken on some of the battles in the ongoing culture war.

0:06.0

We looked at how a group with a right-leaning agenda weaponized the AP's adherence to neutrality

0:13.0

to get a young reporter fired for her Twitter activism.

0:17.0

We examine the issue of critical race theory, a term misapplied to classroom lessons about

0:23.6

America's racist past. And of course, we talked about the granddaddy of them all,

0:29.4

cancel culture. Michael Hobbs, co-host of the podcast you're wrong about, told us that there

0:36.2

isn't a situation that's been labeled a cancellation that

0:40.3

couldn't benefit from a more accurate word to describe what happened. So-and-so was fired. Such-and-such

0:47.4

was met with disagreement on Twitter. Cancel need not apply. He also explained on his own podcast with Sarah Marshall that there were a few

0:58.8

pivotal events along the way that led to the term cancel culture, becoming the moral panic it is

1:05.5

today. One of them was the 2015 release of John Ronson's book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

1:13.8

It was a series of case studies of people who were, in a word, canceled before we even started using the word.

1:22.2

When I spoke with Ronson in 2015, he told me that his investigation was triggered by his own discovery that someone had

1:30.2

started using a Twitter account in his name and with his face, an unknown entity that tweeted

1:36.9

in a way that was utterly unlike Ronson. Yeah, talking about how he was very much looking forward

1:43.4

to having a dinner party, and he's going to make some nice lemon grass stew, and, you know, anybody who knows me knows that I abhor dinner party. So this was annoying, embarrassing even, but it wasn't exactly shameful. No. How did that episode lead you into ultimately what became a deep exploration of shame?

2:04.5

Well, I asked these guys to take down their spam butt and they refused. And this went on for a couple of months.

2:11.9

Finally, I said, look, well, if you won't take down your spam butt, they kept calling it an infomorph.

2:16.4

Can we at least meet and you can explain,

2:18.0

you know, the rationale behind your spam bot? And they said, yeah, we'd very much like to meet to

2:21.3

explain to you the rationale behind the infomorph. And I said, good, because I'm really looking

2:25.1

forward to finding out the inspiration behind the spam bot. So I met them, and to cut a long story

...

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