The patron saint of orange techbros is very mad about not being able to say the n-word, so here’s 2000 words on why cancel culture heresy is simultaneously both resurgent and continuously responsible for the deaths of many. No sources are cited or examples are given, because those would unnecessarily date this mess, which is otherwise about why Paul “Sylvester” Graham can’t say the n-word on Twitter in 2022. Special shout-outs to Greg “Koch-head” Lukainoff, Claire “Skullgirl” Lehmann, and Marc “Shape Rotator” Andreessen.

The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn’t work that way.

Paul ‘context isn’t real’ Graham.

Also just say ‘bigoted’, ‘x-ist’ makes it sound like you’re talking about existential risk or something

Fifteen techbros have been writing this exact post every year since 2014

Conspicuously absent from this incredibly boring diatribe are mentions of, or even allusions to, ideas that are no longer “heresies”. Per Gallup, Americans’ support for same-sex marriage rose from 27% to 70% between 1996 and 2021. Support for legalizing marijuana has followed much the same trajectory. Affiliation with organized religion has also dropped off a noticeable bit, which at least hints at the possibility that “you can be a good person and an unbeliever” is less heretical than it was even a generation ago.

E: It’s also pretty fuckin’ weird to act like the only people Intolerant Of The Heresies since 1985 have been lefty college kids. Was Graham just napping through the whole freedom fries/boycott the Dixie Chicks era of history?

For example, when someone calls a statement “x-ist,” they’re also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion.

This is a conflation between “ending a discussion” and “continuing the discussion in a way I don’t like”

He’s doing it wrong with the “x-ist” thing. The real key is to keep what you describing as “heresy” totally vague, so that everyone who reads it can replace it with their own personal bugaboo. Shoulda had Alexander give it a once-over to explain how you can better hide your actual opinion under the guise of “just defending peoples rights to free expression”.

There’s something hilarious about trying to simultaneously argue “this has been going on for at least 40 years and will be occurring in the future”, “this right now is the worst its ever been” and “I won’t give a single example of how this has actually caused any significant problems or issues”. If it’s such a long-running issue with such potential for harm, surely there must be some non-controversial example you can point to in the last 40+ years?

The situation is similar to what’s happened with infectious diseases like measles. Anyone looking into the future in 2010 would have expected the number of measles cases in the US to continue to decrease. Instead, thanks to anti-vaxxers, it has increased. The absolute number is still not that high. The problem is the derivative. [6]

In both cases it’s hard to know how much to worry. Is it really dangerous to society as a whole if a handful of extremists refuse to get their kids vaccinated, or shout down speakers at universities? The point to start worrying is presumably when their efforts start to spill over into everyone else’s lives. And in both cases that does seem to be happening.

Kinda fucked up his own thesis, huh?

E: fuckit im too tired for this shit.

What a dumb article, and we should start a betting market for when he gets shoved in a locker.

Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception.

Writing for programmers, by (ex-)programmers.

I’ve already written an essay describing the aggressively conventional-minded.

The unintended irony is off the charts.

The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like.

Or you could just look back at e.g. McCarthyism or many other examples.

Hard to believe that some of those reviewers actually paid any attention to this post. Someone should write a post about the danger yes-men pose to the search for truth.

The idea that you need twenty separate people to “read drafts” of this boilerplate is some dark shit.

“I’m Paul Graham, and this is Jackass.”