we are allowed to criticize someone without canceling them

I'm not really looking to debate on Delany so this isn't really about him or anything. But in regards to this line: In the current climate, criticizing someone does result in canceling them a lot of the time. This is a publicly-read forum, presumably with thousands of BA fans lurking.

It is no secret that someone wording something in a catchy enough way on Reddit garners upvotes regardless whether someone has actually spoken truth. Its also no secret that as posts are upvoted in the beginning, more upvotes are likely to start to blindly follow. This is discussed in Reddit-centric threads all the time.

I'm not the person above and don't particularly care who is or isn't canceled if I'm being honest, but there's no doubt that coming onto a public forum and criticizing someone even as "dialogue" runs a risk of canceling them even if it isn't someone's intention.

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't have a dialogue. Just wanted to point out the part about criticisms totally leading to canceling someone - they have many times before.

There's some dude who doesn't even live in my state anymore that started an IG page where he has people submitting their "horror stories" from various restaurants and businesses in our city. He is blasting these stories -- some of which seem valid, some of which are so obviously disgruntled employees -- and trying to cancel each and every small business he blasts.

Once someone has been accused of something, whether it is true or not, there's nothing they can do. Public apologies are deemed not good enough. Explanations are insulted. Donations are eye-rolled and called virtue signaling. This young dude is seriously going around trying to ruin people's businesses with zero fact checking or anything. Worst part is he's accepting Venmo donations for this "work" he is doing.

So that's why I'm a bit sensitive to the whole canceling vs. criticism thing. It can snowball into very big unintended consequences.