[user104658]

Originally Posted by Liam-

And there you have it, people are scared of something because bad faith actors are causing hysteria by amplifying a minority of voices that have no real effect, like you said, people aren’t actually being cancelled, but people are told people are being cancelled, that is the control that is happening, it’s a tactic old as time, it’s how we got Brexit, it’s how we got Trump and it’s how we got Johnson, minority cases are taken, exploited, amplified and distorted, misinformation is spread and fear ensues, it’s gas lighting 101, are there horrible abusive people out there? Of course there are, there always will be, but they’ll never be the majority and they’ll never really have any real power or influence

People are scared of it happening to them because it does happen and they have seen it happen. A number of high-profile academics have been ripped to shreds for discussing the wrong things. Just because you haven't seen it yourself doesn't mean it's imaginary... I have seen careers ruined for refusing to blindly reinforce public zeitgeist. Group-identity-power and anti-intellectualism are all too real. Repeatedly insisting that they're goblins under the bed isn't going to change that.