Is Paul B getting kicked out the same thing as "cancel culture"? It seems like he's violated a rule of a voluntary group he was in, and was kicked out of that group. I know its subjective, but I don't think that's "being cancelled" in the sense that it's usually used. Its more like if you lost your diving license for speeding.
How do you hear it being used? Basically every time I’ve encountered the phrase, it’s referred to someone getting fired, kicked out of school, uninvited from a speaking engagement or something similar.
For the most part though, it means getting fired/etc. over something that is unrelated to your work, rather than breaking a (literal or assumed) work rule.
I think it'd be more cancel culture to fire the other guy. He did something bad that isn't related to YC's rules, but maybe shows poor morals.
That’s not a distinction I hear a lot of people make. Andrew Cuomo used “cancel culture” to describe calls for his resignation in the wake of sexual assault allegations. The owner of a horse also used it to describe his suspension after the horse failed a drug test. People said it was “cancel culture” when the estate of Dr. Seuss decided to stop publishing some of his books.
But even if there is a line, it’s really blurry. A lot of people said it was “cancel culture” when Blake Bailey’s publisher decided to pull his biography of Philip Roth. The sexual assault allegations are ostensibly unrelated to his contract. But they gave him that contract with the expectation that publishing him would be profitable; is it “canceling” to renege when that’s no longer the case?
Sure. Once words have the kind of buzz that cancel culture does, they get used tactically and the meaning blurs... or evolves. "Fake news" was used very differently circa 2015-2016.
I don't think we're quite there yet though. The horse guy was also widely ridiculed for calling it cancel culture. In any case, I don't think the expanded usage is what pg had in mind, and that's what's relevant here.
Kicking out paul might be too severe, but it's not "cancel culture," in the reevant sense of the term.
If a firing or whatever is described as an example of ‘cancel culture’, that usually means it was driven by some kind of orchestrated pressure from third parties.
Typically it means those third parties (usually online activists, the ‘cancellers’) have gone out of their way to get the person fired/disinvited/whatever, with the specific motivation of diminishing their public standing. This may involve techniques such as deliberately fomenting online outrage with the aim of creating a negative PR situation for their employer that will go away when they fire the the targeted person.
(Just explaining what I think the term usually means; not saying anything about any specific claimed instances of it.)
Article mentions various music artists such as The Beatles being cancelled in 1966 and Sinéad O’Connor in 1992 (both in conflict with the mighty Catholic Church) and The Dixie Chicks in 2003. More examples here [1]. Pre-internet, it's as old as Rome^H^H^H^HAthens.
Paul Graham claims the person who popularized the term in the USA is anything but a rightist. According to their Wikipedia page they see themselves as centrist. It doesn't matter who popularized the term though. The phenomenon pre-internet is older, and you arguing it is good or evil or neutral or whatever is like a discussion on ethics. Or politics. Ie. opinionated, without a clear (scientific) answer to it.
