Cancel Culture

cancel culture

/kan-suhl kuhl-cher/

refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive.

This social phenomenon specifically targets the respective person’s reputation or employment opportunities. Therefore to be “canceled” does not mean to be insulted or bullied, but instead to be essentially shunned, by your followers, fellow peers, or even your employer.

The History of it All

The Salem Witch Trials

In 1693, the small town of Salem “cancelled” supposed witches.

Cancel culture has been around forever, but not in a way that is obviously familiar to us. After all, the golden age of the internet didn’t create the concept of the “angry mob”. In 1693, cancellation would have looked like innocent women being burned at the stake, or shunned by their village for being accused of witchcraft. In various revolutions across time, the rich have been repeatedly, in a way, “canceled” for participating in a system that their ancestors created, overthrown( by bloody invasion, of course), and then hunted down (by manhunt and slaughter, or if society is feeling a little extra merciless that evening: public execution). The commonality in all these examples is that the angry mob (rest of village, peasants, society) is responsible for all aspects of judgment and conviction. Meaning that cancellation is usually an informal process (or at least the cancellation will happen in an unjust court of law), where the mob is the jury, judge, prosecutor, and witness simultaneously. The internet encompasses all parties involved. The cancellation is always unanimous for if you don’t agree you will also be canceled.

Quick and Painful Internet Death

The Internet

The usage of the world wide web has become so commonplace, we take the privilege of using it for granted.

What has changed in the last 50 years, is the fact that now controversies aren’t localized anymore. Before the age of the internet, when someone got accused of being offensive in any way, they could easily relocate or flee the area. This means there was a chance of starting over or maybe even reinventing yourself. Now in an era where public knowledge of private conversations/info is commonplace, there is no way of escaping your accusations. Or as Ross Douthat, an NYT opinion columnist, puts it, “under the rule of the internet there’s no leaving the village.” Now anything you post, say, or do, will forever live in binary code, long after the accused stops making headline news. One haunting theme of cancel culture: the internet always remembers. Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit, have been the vessels of leaks of private conversations, offensive pictures, and mind-boggling scandals.

Celebrities

Doja Cat

Starting out as a viral sensation, Doja Cat has now transformed into an extremely successful artist. She recently was accused of racist behavior in chat rooms, and racist lyrics in past songs.

Even though cancel culture can sometimes target publicly irrelevant people like immature high schoolers and small business owners, its main targets are celebrities. People in the public eye, capable of making a top news story. 

What’s strange about this concept is that even though celebrities are the easiest target(easy access to personal info, public fan/service encounters, huge platforms), they are actually the hardest targets to legitimately cancel. So many celebrities like Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat, Jimmy Fallon, J.K. Rowling, have been thoroughly “canceled”, with their cancel hashtags trending everywhere, but have lived to tell the tale. Why these celebrities are so hard to cancel, is mainly due to their extremely long time of relevance and die-hard fanbases. For example, Doja Cat is a very successful artist in the music industry but is also a recently accused racist. We must ask if fans listen to her music, are their actions directly supporting a racist? As you can see, this line is a very perplexing one to draw. Because in order to truly cancel someone, they must be shunned by the majority of people, meaning their success must be halted. Therefore her success will most likely never be affected by her short-term “cancellation” due to her insanely catchy music and relevance in pop culture.

If not Celebrities than who?

Tik Tok

The world is obsessed with the highly popular social media app. But it has also been at the center of some low-profile user cancellations. Many users have been cancelled over plain embarrassment, racism, and cheating allegations.

Since the majority of the time, the internet fails to fully cancel celebrities, then who do they cancel? Well, halting the success of someone is made easy, when that someone is a less relevant person or is someone who is just emerging in their field. Meaning it’s easier to attack a small indie songwriter for offensive lyrics, than attack a multi-million dollar music icon with a ruthless fanbase and decades of fame. Since the culture’s whole motive is to establish cultural norms for the masses, failing to cancel high-profile celebrities, but succeeding in establishing a different norm of behavior is seen as a victory. 

This allows cancel culture to easily prey on vulnerable newcomers since it’s an easy way to scare the rest of the masses into conforming to the culture’s new norms. As Douthat puts it, “The goal isn’t to punish everyone, or even very many someones; it’s to shame or scare just enough people to make the rest conform.”

Who’s the bad guy?

Cancel Culture

Is cancel culture chaotic good or chaotic evil? No one really knows.

It’s hard to say. That’s the best answer. In some scenarios like instances of blackface, sexual assault, and other serious offenses, perhaps cancel culture is the good guy and the accused is the bad guy. But in other situations, the claims aren’t true, but the accused still suffer. There is no concrete answer. It’s difficult to understand if cancel culture is wrongly impulsive and overly sensitive, or if it’s a necessary defense and a much-needed spark for controversial conversations we must have. What we do know is, cancel culture has shifted the attitude in response to accusations away from deflection to responsibility. 

The message at the heart of cancel culture is: own up.