Comment by coding123

2 years ago

Remember HN about 5-10 years ago and everyone here was saying how they're changing the world. Corporate hired that - spoke that language - convinced that - and even echo chambered some of it.

You see someone say something racist or sexist or homophobic and it's no longer the just a small voice that would blast the racist, sexist, homophobe but now it's everyone - including corporate America (and their twitter bot voices). And in the mean time since all those companies have "fallen in line" with the culture - it's OK to Buy Nike, Buy Starbucks, Buy Apple, Buy Microsoft because they all tow the line.

I mean it's good and bad. For one, it's good because now there's justice for the repressed. It's bad for it's cancellation culture. There are a lot of "cancelled" people that have done FAR less than say Harvey W. yet with a single tweet - mostly careless words - they're done. Even when they have that 15 second scramble after someone calls them out it just blows up. Apologies are meaningless after that. Being one person you can't defend against unlimited neural activity of millions of people digging into the background and lobbing as far as Twitter will let it go.

Haven't celebrities have always had to be careful of what they say and write? Seems like that's always been a risk to obtain mass-market status.