A humble thread: in reflecting on the #CancelCulture Harper's letter, I realized--

It's not the consequences to actions that ppl who decry the made-up-thing that is cancel culture despise.

They despise that consequences are now levelled by ppl who once had very little power

Like... consequences to actions have always existed. It has always been a thing that you could lose your job, status, popularity, whatever because you had the "wrong" morals, identity, acted in certain ways or espoused certain opinions...

But in the past, decisions about who would bear the consequences for what ideas rested w/ a very specific class & group of ppl...the power to distribute consequence was strictly controlled by levers of power that those who rail against an imagined #cancelculture find legitimate

But now, in the age of social media, the power to distribute such consequences has spread. So now the consequences are coming from the commons (how repugnant). I mean the commons has always had this power at critical mass. But the ease at which that mass is reached has shifted.

Those of us who have been undervalued in society by those who previously held the power to level consequence can now expand what is unacceptable and can now, when a critical mass is met, distribute consequence. This is what they hate.

Anyway this is all ridiculous, as many have said. The false equivalence that the letter tries to create b/w gov't power and people fighting for justice is pathetically ignorant so we shouldn't even be having this conversation

But just thought I'd share. It's always abt power.