>"But most whining about cancel culture are just asking to be free from criticism"
This assessment doesn't sit right with me because I don't sense the people 'whining' about cancel culture are trying to get out of ideological critique. I sense they're calling for tolerance because the 'critique' is laden with threats to livelihood and societal standing.
From that perspective, I don't believe that calling on people to be more tolerant of other people's speech is a substantial reduction in speech. One could say it results in a net gain of speech.
I don’t know if tolerance of speech is always a net gain of speech. Communities can enter death spirals where only extreme speech exists because everyone reasonable is so turned off by the extreme speech that they leave. (Edit: I’m not saying that tolerance of speech is always a net negative either. I’m just saying it might be too complex to say.)
>Communities can enter death spirals where only extreme speech exists because everyone reasonable is so turned off by the extreme speech that they leave.
This never happens in a country, people will not abandon their land and their social networks because $MEAN_PERSON said something bad about trans people. What you describe only happens in online communities or hobby clubs, and not all of them at that.
In practice, fears from "unpolite" speech is almost always hysterical reactions by those unprepared and/or ill-equipped to counter speech with speech.
I’m super confused where I ever invoked the idea of what this looks like outside of online communities. I’m sorry if I caused you to misunderstand my speech.
This assessment doesn't sit right with me because I don't sense the people 'whining' about cancel culture are trying to get out of ideological critique. I sense they're calling for tolerance because the 'critique' is laden with threats to livelihood and societal standing.
From that perspective, I don't believe that calling on people to be more tolerant of other people's speech is a substantial reduction in speech. One could say it results in a net gain of speech.