I can understand this fear people have to speak out. As @paula points out it is essential that people have proper respect for others, and if they cross the line and misbehave they donāt deserve a platform. Treat people like you want to be treated yourself. It should be part of normal decent human behavior, but unfortunately it is not.
Though ācancel cultureā goes a bit further than that. Yes, it includes the fine people that want to improve discourse online, and it is okay that thereās a bit of activism to that too as it is needed. These people are a majority.
But a minority is overly aggressive, in general too judgmental, and to quick to convict and ostracize. Those are causing others be hesitant and feel afraid to speak out, in fear of mistyping or breaking a cultural rule unbeknownst to them. Even while their intentions were good, or they were just misunderstood (easily happens in typed text, especially if thereās limited char length). And they might get cancelled for it by an angry mob. Maybe not so much on the Fediverse as in other online media as yet, idk.
It is this part why I donāt like to use the term ācancel cultureā myself, as here, on the fringes of the cultural movement, it turns more and more into ideological warfare. And even most likely benefits the alt-right as they take āwokeismā as a rallying cry (just my perception, I donāt know too much about that all).
Thereās a phenomenon that comes with cancel culture, I think, which is called a āpurity spiralā:
A purity spiral occurs when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.
But while a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is not about morality. Itās about purity ā a very different concept. Morality doesnāt need to exist with reference to anything other than itself. Purity, on the other hand, is an inherently relative value ā the game is always one of purer-than-thou. [ā¦]
It is a social dynamic that plays out across that community ā a process of moral outbidding, unchecked, which corrodes the group from within, rewarding those who put themselves at the extremes, and punishing nuance and divergence relentlessly. [ā¦]
A purity spiral propagates itself through the tipping points of preference falsification: through self-censorship, and through loyalty tests that weed out its detractors long before they can band together. In that sense, once one takes hold, its momentum can be very difficult to halt.
I wrote a topic about it on humane tech forum.
