Every generation has its "free-speech advocates" moaning, "you can’t say anything anymore." The current panics: political correctness, cancel culture, jokes under siege, has the usual suspects asking, "What will the free-speech crowd say about this one?"
This is a perfect example of Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence and the violence of the arbitrary.
The uncomfortable truth is, for many the thrill isn't in enforcing fair rules, or even unfair ones. The thrill is in the power to enforce arbitrary rules. The point isn't who gets punished, it's that someone can be, at a moment's notice, for no coherent reason. And the joy is in unpredictability, in knowing they can shift the rules under your feet and there's no one appeal to.
This is the logic sitting beneath every hand-wringing editorial and rage-bait thread about "cancel culture run amok." The goal is sovereignty, not consistency. It's about who gets to draw the lines and when they can redraw them. Arbitrary enforcement isn't a bug. It’s the feature.
The clever "gotcha" crowd falls flat when they imagine that, by exposing contradictions, they'll force a confession, a moment of logic, an admission, and surrender. But that moment never comes. When the point is arbitrariness, contradiction isn't a failure. It's the currency of power. Pointing it out only proves you're not the one with power.
What will the "PC culture" critics say? Probably what they’ve always said. Remember, it's not about the arguments. It's about who gets to arbitrate, who gets to punish, and who gets to laugh last.
Yes, we hear versions of this conceit a lot, but how does it play out? Like where exactly is this arbritrary power exercised in your mind? Where is the payout? In each discrete call out or critique? Is the world in your view just full of a million tyrants fighting for various fiefdoms, or is there just one collective bad faith actor here? How can you marry here both the overarching individualism which would make this rendering possible with collective phenomena we actually see with this stuff?
This really is just what we have been hearing from the cultural right for a long time, masked as a kind both-sides/human-nature take. It sounds good, in that it gives something like general principle to subsume all the instances. But it just doesn't really make sense in the actually existing world. How could any given side even know they are the new hegemon, the new line-drawers, at any given moment. At what point are they rewarded with regard to the influence they wield? What does it even look like? Do you have examples? Sovereignty implies a concentration of something like power, but your very point here seems to decentralize sovereignty to the point of it being unrecognizable as such. Its like taking something very individual and trying to stretch it across everything in awkward way.
Just simply: how does this actually work? When does whatever side thats on top actually get to feel good, actually get to be the sovereign?
It sounds like you're asking what is the scope of this sovereignty?
In my experience, the scope is the establishment of a status hierarchy.
We love to put ourselves in a privileged position. In most internet discussion, the status hierarchy extends throughout the duration of the encounter. In most Thanksgivings, the crazy uncle goes away at the end of the night, in marriages, it extends for the duration of the relationship. It's fundamentally tied to the social engagement.
Yes gotcha. But just try to think it through carefully: does this really capture what is going on in these many instances? There is an implication here maybe that you have been on the short end of some interactions in the past, did you really feel subjugated by some abstract power then? Did it really seem like the person on the other end was getting some satisfaction, some giddy kickback from their "sovereignty"?
Does it not feel at least a little juvenile to think like this, if you look at it critically, maybe from a little more the outside than you seem to be? These kind of pat armchair psychologies that answer in one breath the phenomena of culture, of human interaction feel just extremely schoolyard to me... but I guess ymmv.
At the very least: its unfalsifiable; one could easily go the other way and say "people love to belong to a group, and being able to police another group's language/jokes/etc is the best mechanism for reinforcing their belonging".
To picture you and your smug interlocutor as ever placed in some asymmetric structure where they are the king and you are the pauper belies the staying power of these controversies, the clear struggle they manifest. You make it sound so much like there never even is a battle, just spontaneous winners and losers.
I don't want to come off as harsh, but what you are arguing for is the logic of a loser, in the technical sense. Its asserting a projection you/others have of perceived intellectual enemies as a kind social theory for everything. It dooms you to fatalism you just dont need to have! Humans, for better or worse have a capacity for much more complicated motives. You do not need to "Mean Girls" the entire world!
It really does capture what's going on because for decades I used to be the aggressor. That was exactly the mentality I held along with people from that group. Like recognizes like then and now.
I'm curious though, you seem to have not experienced this sort of internet domineering?
This is a perfect example of Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence and the violence of the arbitrary.
The uncomfortable truth is, for many the thrill isn't in enforcing fair rules, or even unfair ones. The thrill is in the power to enforce arbitrary rules. The point isn't who gets punished, it's that someone can be, at a moment's notice, for no coherent reason. And the joy is in unpredictability, in knowing they can shift the rules under your feet and there's no one appeal to.
This is the logic sitting beneath every hand-wringing editorial and rage-bait thread about "cancel culture run amok." The goal is sovereignty, not consistency. It's about who gets to draw the lines and when they can redraw them. Arbitrary enforcement isn't a bug. It’s the feature.
The clever "gotcha" crowd falls flat when they imagine that, by exposing contradictions, they'll force a confession, a moment of logic, an admission, and surrender. But that moment never comes. When the point is arbitrariness, contradiction isn't a failure. It's the currency of power. Pointing it out only proves you're not the one with power.
What will the "PC culture" critics say? Probably what they’ve always said. Remember, it's not about the arguments. It's about who gets to arbitrate, who gets to punish, and who gets to laugh last.
It always has been.