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What do you hope becomes cancelled?

Brian63

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In the spirit of "cancel culture" becoming the world's gravest threat, are there any particular forms of entertainment that you hope to be cancelled? You may dislike the show, the characters, the actors/writers/directors, the commercials, etc. and want to see them eliminated from your life forever.

I have never liked the Saturday Night Live comedian Kenan Thompson, and am hoping his newly debuted sitcom "Kenan" tanks miserably and gets cancelled quickly. The guy overdoes his facial expressions and they are cringeworthy to watch.

Other TV personalities I cannot stand and have to mute or change the channel or walk out of the room whenever they appear:
Simon Cowell
Reverend Al Sharpton
Eugene Banks

Some particularly annoying commercials include the insurance companies of Farmer's and Liberty ("Liberty, Liberty, Liberty" jingo) and anything with Shaquille O'Neal. Why is he endorsing so many products and in so many commercials, and is he really an expert on best types of printers to purchase? There is a cutout of him in pretty much every Staples store in that department.

Stop it already with the animated movies intended for kid audiences. Or at least stop bombarding the TV with commercials for them and stores I visit that have toys with their themes.



Your picks on people and items you hope to be victims of "cancel culture"?
 
I would like the phrase, "cancel culture" to be cancelled. It's window dressing for, "I wish to be a cunt with zero consequences". If you want to be an arsehole, fucking own it.
 
I don't see it necessary to cancel something that's on TV as you can just flip the channel to something else. But I would like news stations to stop using Twitter as a point of reference for anything in their news stories. Too often there's a story and then the newscaster will announce "one user on Twitter said this was really bad and compared it to nazi concentration camps and another said they were fine with it". WTF ? Stop that.
 
I don't see it necessary to cancel something that's on TV as you can just flip the channel to something else. But I would like news stations to stop using Twitter as a point of reference for anything in their news stories. Too often there's a story and then the newscaster will announce "one user on Twitter said this was really bad and compared it to nazi concentration camps and another said they were fine with it". WTF ? Stop that.
My God. We actually agree on something.
 
Actually, since Harry and Meghan have been in the news quite a bit lately and the royal family in too, I'd like to see the monarchy cancelled.
 
Eh, none of those. Keenan Thomson's more than earned it, Sharpton became a legit civil rights leader back in the early 2000s (although they should let him wear his glasses when he's reading from teleprompters), Simon Cowell - annoys me, but I'm more concerned by moral monsters being rehabbed by competing on those shows, and I've never heard of that last guy.

"Cancelling" is fine for the show/tour of someone who is actually a horrible person, such as Bill Cosby or maybe now Josh Whedon. And I could see it if someone were airing something like Amos & Andy on broadcast tv today. But aside from that...eh, it's not worth going through any sort of campaign.
 
Canceling could be easily overused; I think it is best thought of as an advanced species of boycott, and as such, powerful only when used sparingly and targeted carefully in an organized fashion. I don't think blind boycotts of a person's entire oeuvre are apt to be effective, since the absence of your currency is not likely to be noticed unless it is a targeted, mass movement, and these are going to work better when focused on a single product or release. And even so, I think these should be reserved for cases in which:

1. The work itself is a threat to society in some intrinsic fashion, primarily because of the contributions of the targeted artist. So for instance, it would make more sense to me to boycott "Troubled Blood" than "Harry Potter", because the content and message of the latter isn't harmful to anyone as near as I can tell, whereas the former is both directly harmful to trans people, as the result of intentional decisions tied to Rowling's political views.
2. The person being targeted is the primary beneficiary of the work. Not watching a Youtube video or accessing a social media account, for instance, is both more effective and much more fair than trying to boycott a television series, because the only parties losing money are the creator and the platform that is hosting them, as opposed to an entire industry of mostly innocent workers. When I cut off Alex Day from my personal consumption for instance, it was at the same time as a lot of other people, and he... got the message. In his pocketbook. Whereas just not listening to old Chameleon Circuit albums wouldn't send any sort of message, and would seem quite pointless to me.
3. The product is so inherently tied to the individual's brand, that boycotting the product is tantamount to canceling them; ie, refusing to eat Trump Steaks (tm) is unlikely to be mistaken for a protest against steak.

As with all forms of boycott, cancelation works best in combination with communication. Simply failing to consume something means little unless accompanied by a call or letter explaining the reason for this targeted refusal.
 
Cancel the phrase "cancel culture" as portraying it as something new. It's been around forever.
 
I don't see it necessary to cancel something that's on TV as you can just flip the channel to something else. But I would like news stations to stop using Twitter as a point of reference for anything in their news stories. Too often there's a story and then the newscaster will announce "one user on Twitter said this was really bad and compared it to nazi concentration camps and another said they were fine with it". WTF ? Stop that.
My God. We actually agree on something.

Hey, let's make it a three-way!

In that same vein, I'd like to see all people stop using social media comments as the basis for any claims about general societal phenomena. That includes claims that "cancel culture" and "the woke" are the greatest threats to civilization based upon a non-representative handful of people out of 7 billion posting an over-reaction on social media to a given event.
 
Cancel the phrase "cancel culture" as portraying it as something new. It's been around forever.

Yes, and it has been and still is mostly practiced by the right. There is no more glaring or harmful example of it in the past decade than conservatives attempts (successful sometimes) to "cancel" anyone who dared engage in the universal sign of respect, kneeling, during a song, in order to draw attention to fascistic killings by law enforcement. Even Trump got in on demanding they be fired. Not only did they try to "cancel" people for complaining about police injustice, but also for not displaying mindless nationalism in their preferred manner.
 
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