Separating Art From Artist

[Kestrel]

@Auspice said in Separating Art From Artist:

What about the authors who can't find a publisher because something is considered 'risky' (we listed a few authors earlier in the thread whose work got pulled and was only later found to not be remotely what the naysayers said it was)?

I have 0 sympathy for this.

Don't want the hassle of struggling to get your risky material published? Don't write risky material.

Or do, and own it; that's the price of taking a stand. See: Neil Gaiman, Phillip Pullman, Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, all of whom have had books banned and I doubt they give a shit.

I look forward to one day having my books banned by the kinds of people I'm expressly trying to annoy.

[insomniac7809]

@surreality If someone who would have been my friend decides what I'd done wasn't something they'd look past, well, that's still my fault. I still did them.

(Of course, that's even far likely if my response to being called on my shitty behavior was "WHY ARE YOU SO SENSITIVE FUCK YOU" or even a mealy-mouthed "I'm very, very sorry if your oversensitive child-brain spontaneously took offense while I was doing something" apology, which would probably be a more direct analogue to most of the people burned by cancel culture.)

[surreality]

@insomniac7809 Not the same thing, either. Someone individually deciding 'naw, you peed on a guy in an alley, I didn't know that when we became friends, I can't get past that' is one thing.

This is a crowd broadcasting 'no one is ever allowed to associate with this person, hire them, be their friend, or view their work again without getting harassed about it by we broadcasters'.

ETA: I don't support the 4chan trollstorm approach. Not even when it's 'my team' doing it.

[Rinel]

@Auspice said in Separating Art From Artist:

Publishers and studios won't touch something that might be 'risky'

That's always been the case, and as you yourself pointed out, censorship usually affects the oppressed more than the oppressor.

Thankfully self publishing is in full swing these days, so now is actually the best time to be a new author.

[insomniac7809]

@surreality Is it, though?

I mean, when we get into actual doxxing or death threats, that shit is evil and the people doing it need to be in a fucking cell.

But the big "CANCELLED" YA author I was reading about... she took a lot of shit from twitter people who thought that having a racist character was endorsing racism. She decided to cancel herself, and then she un-cancelled herself, and she was able to b/c it turns out the publisher never actually gave an especially wet fart about the tweetstorm.

[surreality]

@insomniac7809 I don't disagree re: the doxxing and death threats. I have zero tolerance for that.

It is the same dynamic: the acts of an online mob. If you don't see the trendline there? Uhm. It's there. I may also loathe the people I've seen 'my side' say should be <list of exactly the same kinds of horrible things the 4chan mobs suggest>-ed, but that doesn't make it OK.

[Pandora]

She didn't cancel herself, she canceled her release due to fear she'd be canceled otherwise. You don't aim a gun at someone, watch them break an ankle running away, then tell the police 'she injured herself, I didn't touch her'. Or I mean, you do, and hopefully your attorney can make that work for you, but you're still a gun-wielding maniac.

[Tyche]

@Ganymede said in Separating Art From Artist:

3159 W. 11th St.

I know that place. Has a ridiculous looking lamp in the window.

[bored]

@surreality said in Separating Art From Artist:

ETA: I don't support the 4chan trollstorm approach. Not even when it's 'my team' doing it.

I think this is kind of the key. If you allow/support this kind of discourse, well, then it's the discourse you're going to get regardless of who is speaking. Which leads perfectly to:

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

I mean, when we get into actual doxxing or death threats, that shit is evil and the people doing it need to be in a fucking cell.

The first time I'd ever seen 'dox' used in the mainstream (as opposed to a decade+ earlier when it was purely hacker lingo) was on a feminist blog calling/asking for info on some right wing target of theirs (another younger blogger). Every time I see it brought up as a right-wing tool, my mind jumps to this. So the point still stands. You don't want this horrible behavior, regardless of the team.

[Ganymede]

@bored

Can we play this out?

Suppose someone attends a KKK rally and gets spotted. The spotter uses Facebook to track down the person’s name and employer, and then posts it publicly. The attendee then gets fired from their employer.

Is this doxxing?

[Ghost]

@Ganymede You asking bored specifically?

[bored]

@Ganymede What are you really asking?

Is it doxxing, definitionally? Depends on the definition. Aforementioned hacker version: nah, the information is too public. Modern twitter definition? Probably.

Are you asking if I'm happy about the outcome? Lizard brain says: hey cool a nazi got in trouble, take that. Just like lizard brain can watch Richard Spencer get punched in the face repeatedly to great glee, while realizing that the guy doing it is definitely guilty of assault and punishing him for it is a basic requirement of modern civilization. Logical brain might also posit that having good laws on this topic would help when, say, the theoretical KKKer's bros gather to launch doxx campaign against <leftist target du jour>.

So my bigger scale answer is 'I would prefer there be some good laws about this stuff,' but as someone pointed out earlier (not sure if in this thread), our lawmakers have a tendency of treating online shit like it's make-believe, which is problematic. I'm not a legal scholar myself. In your example, I imagine a public rally to some degree mitigates expectation of privacy. But then again, this might also affect, say, one's college-aged activist-minded but still immature child getting spotted at a left leaning rally and losing out on future job opportunities when their would-be employer googles them.

It always cuts both ways.

[Ganymede]

@bored

It was a question of whether it was acceptable behavior.

I mean, I understand from the discussion that we are talking about shaming. Shaming people for their bad behavior. And if that means affecting their life so be it.

The line I see is whether the shaming leads to physical consequences. It is clearly wrong if someone is assaulted or killed as a result of exposing them.

But losing one’s job? Some people think that the truth hurts. But it also hurts children who depend on that job. Does the morality depend on what a person is being shamed for?

I guess that’s why I err on the side of not shaming.

[surreality]

@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:

So my bigger scale answer is 'I would prefer there be some good laws about this stuff,' but as someone pointed out earlier (not sure if in this thread), our lawmakers have a tendency of treating online shit like it's make-believe, which is problematic.

^ This bears repeating, so there it is.

Part of what is so absurd to me is that no one would think positive promotion -- advertising, a social media campaign to promote a work of some kind -- is make-believe, and yet, the reverse is not recognized as also being real.

[Rinel]

@Ganymede said in Separating Art From Artist:

The line I see is whether the shaming leads to physical consequences. It is clearly wrong if someone is assaulted or killed as a result of exposing them.

I'm going to say it's immoral, because you're treating that person as a means to an end (inducing others not to be nazis) rather than an end in themselves (changing their mind re: nazism).

But that's because I despise consequentialism.

[Kestrel]

@bored said in Separating Art From Artist:

But then again, this might also affect, say, one's college-aged activist-minded but still immature child getting spotted at a left leaning rally and losing out on future job opportunities when their would-be employer googles them.

It always cuts both ways.

Although this sucks, wouldn't the child in question be happier, in the long run?

My facebook profile is pretty clear on where I stand on political issues. I'm aware potential employers (or realistically these days, clients) google that stuff, but that doesn't actually bother me.

I was much shier about my political beliefs when I was younger and felt it was much more important to keep the peace, not rock the boat, accommodate everybody. I wanted to be nice and likeable.

You know what, though, I ended up in a job I hated, with sexist, fat-shaming employers and colleagues who would roll their eyes and shut the conversation down any time someone even dared utter the accursed word "feminism". Mind you my job had physical demands, but the fact that myself and my female colleagues were sexually harassed at work, regularly, and food-shamed at meal-times (I was stationed at a remote location for a field research job) was awful. I had just gone vegan at the time and I was not a preachy vegan. I wasn't even a strict vegan. I was a "minding my own business just eating what I want to eat" vegan yet people at my job regularly felt it was their business to tell me why I needed bacon and butter and bullied me for my choices. At a review of my leadership skills I was told off for being bossy.

This job made me beyond depressed. Also, they broke several laws concerning employee rights, which I now actively campaign for.

If someone scours for information about me on the interwebs and discovers that I'm a loud-mouthed vegan feminist and doesn't want to hire me because that? Good. I don't want to work for them, either. I want to work for and with people who think I'm fucking awesome and will treat me with respect. I want to work with men who aren't intimidated by feminism, because those are men who want license to be abusive towards their female colleagues and employees.

Really, I think a lot of this boils down to a person's willingness to accept consequences for their actions.

I am a loud-mouthed, preachy feminist & environmental advocate and I gladly accept the consequences for that.

Fascists and misogynists can do the same.

[bored]

@Ganymede

You're the lawyer, but I assume the split you're describing between 'this action causes a person to lose their job' and 'this action causes a person to become a victim of subsequent physical violence' is largely a division of the same basic concept into civil and criminal realms, right?

So obviously the standards (and potential consequences) are going to be (maybe very) different. This is why I am saying more robust laws are important, because it delineates what is acceptable and what is not.

I think what's acceptable isn't for me alone to decide, and it's going to vary across a wide continuum of actions and consequences. Maybe getting caught at a KKK rally should get you fired (but again, we'd have to concede that attending an Occupy Wall Street event might also preclude one from future employment). That lady who lost her job for making an AIDS/Africa joke (that was intended to be shedding light on the situation, not mocking it)? Probably not.

Intentionally trying to get someone fired from their job is fairly serious, and should be treated as such, particularly given the potential run-on effects (dependents, suicide, maybe even the risk of violent outburst).

[bored]

(double for latepost)

@Kestrel

Your willingness to wear your beliefs on your sleeve is your own choice, though. In the United States (and even moreso in Europe, really), we do enshrine a certain right to privacy, particularly as in regards to political belief. This is to ensure people retain a freedom to such beliefs, and we can look to easy examples of what happens when it is not upheld (ie, McCarthyism etc). This is all at least in theory anyway, as there's another thread discussing how this may be less true in practice, where people's reactions to that knowledge were generally alarmed. Because we expect that we can keep those things to ourselves if we choose.

So its clear: I'm not advocating that people be immune to consequence for their actions where they express certain beliefs, but instead that there be laws and standards related online bullying, threats, and violation/dissemination of PII. We actually do have laws for some of those things, but they only seem to apply in the meat/paper world. Online, mob justice is supreme, and it feels oh so wonderful until you're the target.

(I am not that interested in debating the specifics of a rally beyond what I've said already to the lawyer catbot: it's public action so it mitigates privacy).

[surreality]

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

Although this sucks, wouldn't the child in question be happier, in the long run?

Potentially! I am (genuinely) glad it worked out for you this way, and the previous work environment sounds awful and inappropriate in a zillion ways I'm (also genuinely) sad to hear you had to put up with.

Thing is... it isn't always that easy. The job market is pretty harsh in many parts of the world in ways that mean that if you want to eat and keep a roof over your head, you may be stuck in that shitty job and shitty circumstances without any good alternatives. Some folks don't have a ton of marketable skills, either, or means (which are usually financial) of acquiring them to get out of that hole. Sometimes it may involve relocating, which people may not be able to do for any number of reasons.

[GreenFlashlight]

So if Kestrel reports a Klansman for being at a Klan rally, the effects of that on the Klansman's family belong more to Kestrel than to the Klansman who chose to be at the rally, who chose to be a Klansman, who chose to tie his family's fortune to his Klan participation? Because I feel like it's on the Klansman, and on the Klansman's SO who realistically had to know what they were getting into.