Comment by DanielVZ
1 day ago
I once had a friend that was cancelled by an ex-girlfriend for petty and political reasons. I knew it was false because I had been present in most of the situations she described to cancel him and her story was full of lies. She was also a distant friend and her only comment was “I know why I do what I do”, which was pretty weird.
My friend was devastated, he had to stop going to his classes and feared that nobody would hire him, professors would hate him (since students already did), and that his life had ended. I spoke with him and assured him that wasn’t the case but to be honest I wasn’t sure either.
I don’t know the details but one year later she was suspended for a year for falsely accusing him, my friend graduated and promptly found a job.
All this to say I’m awfully scared now of the risk of my interactions with women being used in the future as a false narrative to cancel me. I’m happily married and due to life stuff I do have to interact with young girls and women. Because of this I try to be as distant as I can and limit any interaction that doesn’t involve multiple other adults.
I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can.
> All this to say I’m awfully scared now of the risk of my interactions with women being used in the future as a false narrative to cancel me.
Maybe just keep a war chest and slam them with a bunch of lawsuits if they get annoying. Or at least, that's how the professional bullshitters like Trump solve this problem
How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot of political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man, especially if they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or transphobic, but the vagueness of your anecdote is suspect.
> I don’t know the details but [...]
> I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can.
I'm sorry to hear that you've seemingly adapted your life based on someone else's "petty" experience with an ex-girlfriend, as you put it. Do you feel that this is a healthy and realistic way to live, though? Do you drive a car, walk around your neighborhood, or eat meat?
Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle.
> How can "political reasons" be false? I can imagine a lot of political reasons for a woman to "cancel" a man, especially if they're misogynist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or transphobic, but the vagueness of your anecdote is suspect.
What was false were the claims and I can say that because I was involved in the situations she described to cancel him.
I said “petty political reasons” as a summary for conciseness sake. But if you want more details:
- after they broke up she joined a certain left wing political party (student federation elections are a big deal here)
- during the election cycle my friend was part of the opposing team and they were doing quite well
- so the girl was approached by her party leadership to cancel him. They had this whole “cancel the opposition” operation
- Turns out everything was false and was done to benefit the left wing candidates and end the candidacy of the opposing party. which worked. They had to take down their candidacy to deal with all the problems that come from being cancelled.
> Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle.
I’m not so sure about that. Being cancelled is pretty serious, and quite risky. I’ve seen it quite a few times (this one being the closest I’ve been to people involved), and it’s so easy to avoid that I prefer to just do it. For example if I could avoid driving a car I would, but I do it because otherwise it is prohibitively expensive time wise.
“Opposite” of a “certain left wing political party” sounds not at all dissimilar to the reactionary extremist right wing folks here in the US with the only cohesive policy element of “own the libs”. They too suffer from a significantly higher rate of being cancelled. In fact, your story reminds me a bit of the Clinton scandals and the first Trump election. How does the saying go? Lie down with dogs and get up with fleas?
Not to digress, but really, if you’re not involved with politics and you’re not espousing hatred towards people, your risk of getting cancelled is truly and realistically low. But if you’re not talking to roughly half of the entire population because of that incident, visit a therapist. You’re missing out on some great connections.
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