I got distracted from this point in my last reply, but no, boycotts and cancel culture are absolutely not the same.

First, there's the question of scale. Both in the size of the harm done, and also in the target. Cancel culture is not, at least as far as I see it, about complaining that somebody said something you disliked. That's called discourse. And that, I think was why Rogan apologised. I think he knew that what he said was wrong, and now it resurfaced he apologised. Nor is cancel culture choosing to cancel your Spotify account if you don't like Rogan's podcast.

But boycotts are about change. The Montgomery Bus boycott, for example, was about an existing problem that needed to be rectified. It wasn’t because black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus 9 years ago and they were demanding a performative apology from the CEO. It was because black people had to sit at the back of the bus at that time. There was also a clear aim; change the discriminatory practices that the bus companies were guilty of. Once the practices were changed, the boycott was a success. Nobody, as far as I know, was demanding a performative apology on social media. They wanted change, not to pillory people.

This is the problem with cancel culture. The vindictiveness is the only point. Not the issues. Not making the world a better place. It's the going after people's jobs, regardless of how much time has passed or the offence in question. It's the abuse and the death threats. It's the lies about what this person is really about. It's the missed opportunity to educate people, especially people who are basically reasonable, instead of turning them into martyrs.

So no, I'm definitely not caping for Joe Rogan 😅. I'm totally indifferent to him. He's a convenient example of this problem but, as many people have pointed out, he's going to be just fine regardless. The point is, plenty of people on a smaller scale aren't. The guy who was fired for making an okay symbol that some other guy decided was a white power sign, the family restaurant that was shut down because the owner's daughter sent racists tweets as a teenager (eight years prior), the professor who was suspended for legitimately teaching Chinese words that sound like the n-word, and many more, this is the real problem I'm pointing to. And it has nothing to do with accountability.

Thanks for the discussion. I appreciate you.