acceptance enforce the opposite

'how does a wave of acceptance also coincide with cancel culture?'

Note: “Remember you don’t know everything that goes on in people’s lives, everyone struggles and deals with things. Treating people with kindness is so important especially these days with social media, it makes things worse in a way because people will judge you without really knowing you.”

Social media is exhausting because you’re constantly being seen and advertised to as a type of person, makes you judge things that “aren’t your vibe,” even if you enjoy that thing.

If you’re about mental health, peace and networking keep that same energy with everyone I notice a lot of people false advertise behind a “brand, movement or platform.” — when in reality you discriminate and judge who you help based on their social media following and social status.

People can see your attitude on social media based on your tweet, don’t blame them and you should ask yourself before you give a judge to other people:

"Are you good enough, you are not and you are sick. Fix yourself!"

• (INTRODUCTION):
  "About 100/10 of this blog is available for free."

Look, you’re probably wondering "what the fuck am i doing on this page?” — ya I know, I’m wondering the same thing. Nobody wanted this page or article here, it just kinda happened so let’s get this over with.

• I’m an independent amateur writer, what that means is that I’m not under contract at: a magazine, newspaper, any publisher.
• I’m not beholden to some overbearing editor/publisher.
• I’m certainly not whoring myself out to some big media conglomerate, this means I don’t have to sell ads or beg for airtime.
• It means I can’t get cancelled or censored or intimidated out of saying what needs to be said, I don’t have to pitch a dozen article ideas just to get a thousand words printed somewhere where people will read it.
• I write stuff, you read it and it’s that simple.

***

“Bring your martial issues to social media, social media people use you for vibes, laughs and entertainment. People that have done worse things than you judge you and tongue lash you and your family.”

"How exactly have you solved your marital problems?"

• social media is not a courtroom
• you are not the judge
• you are not the prosecutor
• you are not holy above others
• train and tame your ego for your benefit and others

Twitter is not a good space for parents like me. Moms and Dads are not given grace on this app when it comes to be frustrated, tired or just over parenting and I am speaking as someone who didn’t give grace to the parents on here at one point.

This is why parents shouldn’t share the decisions they make with a bunch of strangers who probably don’t have kids. They should be able to share on their own space without being jumped on, we can share anything else freely but they shouldn’t? — “That’s not fair.”

I would look towards making my account private so the audience is only people I know won’t judge me, but if you’re going to go public with your decisions people are going to feel entitled to their opinions on those decisions.

Fair or not, that’s the reality of social media and you seemed unhappy about it but tone is difficult to judge on social media.

“Social media is a dark place, don’t let people who don’t know anything about you behind a screen judge you.”

I understand that forgiveness and grace can mean letting someone off the hook, can signal acceptance of behavior that is or should be unacceptable but cancel culture scares the shit out of me.

"How do we account for mistakes and misunderstandings also growth, are all flaws irredeemable?"

Something I see even in some of my personal relationships is a trend towards simplification, coming up with one-dimensional explanations for the things we don’t like. Sometimes those explanations may be valid, but in general I think humans are more complicated than that.

It is also crucial to distinguish between mistakes and abuse, sometimes people do abusive things. Misuse power, harming others — repeatedly despite feedback, creating a pattern that constitutes abuse. Then they complain that everyone “makes mistakes.”

Everyone makes mistakes, not everyone abuses.

Abusers are really interested in real accountability — abuse is about not being accountable. It is premised on it. So, how do you get people to be accountable about *not* being accountable?

This is where so-called “cancelling," unacceptable actions having consequences comes in and has a legitimate place.

IMO the equation isn’t, which flaws are reedemable but how often are people sincerely trying to redeem, not just manage reputation?

• “cancelling” is a response to mistakes without accountability.
• “forgiveness” without accountability is just a pass amd all of us make mistakes.

When we make mistakes repeatedly, especially when others have called us in or out on it and we are aware of the harm we are causing that is a pattern: "abuse." Some of you are defending people for their "mistakes" when what they’re guilty of is abuse.

"I didn't know" as the go-to defense of white nonsense, smh... this is why schools or institutions need policies — so we can say "you were responsible for knowing!"

It’s a double edge sword, cancel culture doesn’t leave much room for the complexity of human nature but also some “flaws” are irredeemable — especially if someone’s flaw is leading to the harm of others mentally or physically.

Outside the extremes, there’s some gray area to cancel culture that needs to discussed constructively. but I will admit, most celebs who get canceled seem to end up being just fine a few months or year done the road. So then there’s a question of if people actually get “canceled.”

I wrote a new flash called "Cancel Culture" because I'm wondering these things too. It's like the obverse of Ben Franklin's concept of errata (printer vocabulary, but basically mistakes are inevitable and recoverable, you learn from them)

This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to as well like when people dig things up from x-amount of years ago, it’s one thing to be a current shitty person and it’s another to have a history of bad behavior/interactions and learn from them, develop also change.

Here’s my take as someone not important enough to get "cancelled" in any real meaningful way: ‘I’m trying really hard, but there is simply no avoiding the fact that I will fuck up ’ — we’ve been programmed to support a racist culture so, when I get called out it hurts and it sucks.

All I can do is grow from that and listen to the explanations I am given, because here's the thing when you are literally talking about people dying and being harmed in many tangible ways, they don't have to be gentle with their frustration and their criticism they literally may not have the time for that. I became aware of police violence when Mike Brown and Freddie Gray died and I did nothing but be aware of it. I thought now that it was out, it would take care of itself as if it was newly discovered.

The only tangible thing I did was decide that I couldn't become a cop, because there was no fixing this from the inside and on top of that I considered myself more enlightened because I was aware but what if we had actually done something meaningful 5 years ago?

In short if I get called out, I probably need it and yes my first response is always to be defensive but I know that now, so at least I can take a step back and reflect then step forward and say "you're right, I was wrong and I'm still learning."

“I guess for me it’s about patterns and ownership.”

Last year I had an upsetting interaction with an author who had been "canceled" for an aggressive racist action but months later he didn't apologize, instead doubling down. If we don't grow, we don't get to demand a free pass?

Examples of canceling going too far:

• people losing jobs over social media likes.
• high schoolers going through peers social.
• media to report instances of racism and compiling public lists.
• humus grill loses customers and its lease for old posts by owner’s 14 y/o daughter.

Eh, being canceled isn't that bad. It's been proven to be non-permanent, just gotta work hard to get right.

I hate the acceptance of cancel culture, I agree with the 21st century expectation that we should accept nothing less than accountability and sincere acknowledgment but how the fuck do we expect people to learn if they're not allowed to make a mistakes? People are so toxic.

Making a mistake is ok if they learn from from it when called out on it, when they exhibit a pattern of making the same mistakes again and again and won't sincerely acknowledge it or hold themselves accountable it is a problem.

I don’t understand the recent thought process going on, it screams "accept everybody, but cancel everything.” — Everyone’s “feelings” must be preserved.

"How does a wave of acceptance also coincide with cancel culture?"

I watched the Social Delima last night on Netflix, I already knew a ton of what was in the documentary but something that was shown but not really talked about was self-censorship.

In the doc, there is a teenage girl who posts a picture that doesn't get a ton of likes, or even gets bullied about the picture. So she takes it down but let's expand this — because that's a case most people can relate to, how about something you're against?

• How many people don’t post their true thoughts, feelings, etc. because of fear of acceptance in their social circles?
• How many people are self-censoring themselves to avoid cancel culture and the mob of social media?

Expand this even more, how many people have thoughts on a topic but won't say them because they know they won't get enough likes or engagement?

“Social media has become a disgusting place for free speech.”

Also, if you don't understand why people believe differently than you or don't see the same information as you, this is by design of social media. It is designed to pull people apart into their own bubbles.

I know people like to dogpile on tweets when they aren't aligned with the traditional Twitter-based values but I would like everyone to remember that you'll just drive them to self-censor and dig further into their beliefs.

If you don't understand how people could think differently from you, you haven't been paying attention.

• (CLOSURE):
  If you’ve ever liked or shared an article of mine, if you’ve ever read something and thought, “holy-cow-turds, that’s dope as fuck!” — if something I’ve written has ever saved you from a headache, a divorce, or imminent death you can thank me later instead of consider throwing me some shit things I don’t know.

That’s all it is, just hit the shiny follow button and welcome to the club!

Some support actually can to feed me and make me write more my things, it allows me to keep doing what I do best and it keeps things simple. No middle man, no ugly ads, no bullshit just me yammering on and you reading and (hopefully) liking it.

Love y'all, Oliver
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