It's time to cancel this talk of 'cancel culture'
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What, exactly is cancel culture?
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Is it someone getting fired for harassment or problematic views? No, that's a workplace doing its job.
Is it a popular figure losing fans or affiliations because of their past actions? No, that's the power of public opinion.
Is it a company choosing not to publish a book, or a group of people boycotting a brand? No, that's just the free market at work.
Cancel culture, as it's understood today, isn't real. Not only do people and things allegedly "canceled" by this imaginary movement often prevail in the end, the whole concept is a smoke screen to distract from actual systemic forces of suppression.
People are almost never actually 'canceled'
Let's take a look at some recent victims of so-called cancel culture.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the group that handles the iconic author's legacy, announced a handful of his titles, out of dozens, will no longer be printed or sold because of racist depictions. These books are not illegal to own, and in fact, many libraries have said they are actively finding ways to keep these titles on their shelves with context around their troubling content.
Still, some people cried "cancel culture" and within days, mainstream Seuss titles like "The Cat in the Hat" were topping bestseller lists.
Bestselling country artist Morgan Wallen faced criticism after he was caught saying a racial slur on camera. Some radio stations decided to stop playing his songs, but they climbed up the Spotify charts nonetheless, and his album sales and social media followers skyrocketed. So far, his career has certainly not be canceled.
© Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America/Getty Images U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan speaks at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Neither were the careers of Lana Del Ray, Doja Cat, Camila Cabello, Justin Bieber or other singers accused of racist speech.
Gina Carano, who played a supporting role on Disney's "The Mandalorian," was fired after comparing the treatment of conservatives to the Holocaust.
She's not banned from getting work, and in fact has already landed herself another gig -- funded by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.
We've seen this all before
Cancel culture is nothing new.
Its philosophy -- that anyone can be excoriated for speaking their mind, that people are too sensitive, that the slightest offense can be fatal -- is just a repackaged extension of the decades-long culture wars and the "political correctness" dialogue popular in the 1990s.
It's also a remix of common First Amendment and censorship arguments, which often vastly misinterpret the constitutional and legal bounds of both terms. For instance, conservatives have long alleged "censorship" of like-minded voices on Twitter and Facebook, when data analysis shows the volume and reach of conservative content is quite strong and often outperforms other content.
The term "cancel culture" actually began among vast, amorphous social media groups and online fandoms.
Fans of, say, a particular music group or Youtuber often celebrate the missteps of rival groups or stars, saying they're "canceled" or "over."
Taken as a piece of internet parlance, the bombast and performativity is quite clear, and even on these less visible levels of online discourse, one usually doesn't stay "canceled" for long. (Singer Shawn Mendes and Youtuber James Charles are two examples of this type of cancel culture. Each has literally millions of followers and fans, and their careers don't seem much worse for the wear).
So people targeted by "cancel culture" are almost never actually canceled.
However, proponents of this imaginary force want you to believe its victims prevail not because cancel culture doesn't exist, but because it can be thwarted. That argument breaks down when those very proponents have to apply the same logic to people within their fold.
It's no secret cancel culture has been adopted as a cause du jour among conservative celebrities.
Ohio Representative Jim Jordan recently called for a House Judiciary hearing on cancel culture, saying it was causing a wave of censorship across the country.
The theme of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference was even "American Uncancelled."
And yet, the conference ended up canceling a speaker who expressed anti-Semitic views online.
This dissonance reveals cancel culture for what it is: Accountability for one's actions.
There are things cancel culture doesn't fight for
Women afraid to speak up for fear of being blacklisted, LGBTQ people hiding their identities to protect their careers or lives, people shunned for their culture or their views:
These are the real problems that exist. It's not cancel culture.
To know the difference, look at the people who actually suffer when these culture wars play out.
In 2016, Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem at an NFL game. After that season, he hasn't played football since.
In the ensuing years, Kaepernick and Eric Reid, another player who knelt, filed grievances against the NFL, saying the league was colluding to keep them from being picked up by other teams.
The early fallout from the #TakeAKnee protests were met with studied indifference by many NFL leaders, and former President Donald Trump and countless other political figures repeatedly cast wide and sometimes violent derision their way.
Where are the anti-cancel culture warriors in Kaepernick jerseys? Where are the anti-cancel culture warriors fighting for men and women who allege wrongdoing at great risk to their own career?
It's very convenient that the same people who want to convince you that cancel culture is real also seem to be the ones determining who is worthy of being saved from such a fate, and who is not.
That's because cancel culture isn't real.
There is accountability. There are legal repercussions. There are tides of public opinion and the pull of the free market. There are also longstanding institutional structures that serve to suppress and threaten those who act against the interests of those with power.
None of this is cancel culture.
And by pretending otherwise, we're distracting ourselves from seeing the patterns of who really benefits from this rhetoric, and who really loses.
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"Cancel Culture" is just another nonsensical flavor of the month about nothing for people to latch on to. It seems some people just need a cause to get behind.
I saw another seed where it included the My Pillow Guy as part of the "cancel culture" because retailers are now refusing to sell his crap products due to his Trump dick sucking. IMO, his kind of culture should be cancelled. He even included QANON as part of his promotion code.
n to distract from actual systemic forces of suppression.
This isn't real, unlike cancel culture, where the mob claims another victim on a regular basis. I mean, look no further than the nation's supposed "newspaper of record" for cancel culture run amok.
Although its funny to see the organizations and industries that are supposedly the most "systematic" in their oppression (education, tech, entertainment, liberal city governments, Governor Cuomo's office) are almost universally run by liberals
"systematic suppression" is just a meaningless phrase designed to explain results that progressives don't like. It's just a tool for liberals to blame the "other" without having to ever to ask any hard questions of themselves.
Trump supporters tried to cancel an entire presidential election, Sean.
A comment followed by several examples of it. There is a difference between saying something is wrong, in a very general way (morally), and claiming legal rights are being violated. In most cases, the complaint about cancel culture is the former, not the latter. That doesn't make it unreal.
I see two general paradigms of canceling.
The first is because someone perceives - sometimes correctly and often not - some imperfection in a person or thing from the past that offends their modern sensibilities. The offense taken is usually to some minor aspect of the person or thing that amounts to a small fraction of the whole, and totally ignores the many virtuous things for which that person or thing is generally remembered and honored.
The second is offense taken to a contemporary person or thing and the offense basically boils down to blowing something small way out of proportion. Often, this is done, not in violation of the law, but in violation of our collective values that are at the foundation of our laws. Free speech, for example. Many Americans have a sense that even though only the government is legally required to tolerate speech it doesn't like, our larger society should make some effort to also be tolerant of people we disagree with.
It's usually unfair because the 99% of things that you knew and esteemed about a person or thing are still true. Then they do or say one thing you disagree with and suddenly you can have nothing else to do with that person. It is usually an absurd and extreme reaction to something insignificant.
I'm not talking about serious revelations, like finding out that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist.
Speaking of rapists, it's time to point out some Hollywood Hypocrisy - something they are great at. Someone like Gina Carano - who has become quite popular on the Mandalorian and is arguably an actor that girls and women can look up to for her prominent action and acting role, not to mention realistic body positivity - is excoriated and allegedly fired (and blackballed?) for making an unsophisticated holocaust analogy (something lots of people do). But Roman Polanski gets Oscars and standing ovations, while he hides from justice for raping a 13 year old girl. They let Harvey Weinstein pull his shit for years and said nothing so they could get jobs.
We're supposed to take these people seriously when they express how offended they are? We need to call out fake virtue signaling more than we do.
That's dumb. No one is banned from getting work.
What's the big deal? He's not banned from getting work, right?
Most people didn't have a problem with Kaepernick protesting injustice. They had a problem with him doing it when they were trying to relax and enjoy the national anthem and a football game. They either saw it as a violation of leisure time they paid for or open disrespect for the military and the country as a whole. He could have protested all day long the other 6 days of the week, and no one would have been offended. Other people get canceled for speaking their mind on their own time. He got canceled for being disruptive at work, messing with the paying customers, and for being a mediocre quarterback.
For now. Because they instantly became rare items. Regular people can no longer buy them at low prices in the world's biggest marketplace. Going forward, fewer and fewer people will be able to read the books at all. They are well and truly canceled. That's the point.
It's disingenuous to claim that a person or thing hasn't been canceled because it still exists somewhere other than where it was found before, or that a fired person can still legally get a job, or that government isn't doing the canceling. The term obviously does not mean any of those things. That's like claiming that systemic racism doesn't exist because we passed a civil rights law or minorities can still get work by hanging out in front of Home Depot. Such claims ignore the reality of the situation - on purpose, in my opinion, to justify an unjust reaction.
There's nothing wrong with criticism. Critique away! That's free speech.
Lol tacos, NO ONE “enjoys” the national anthem at a sporting event. It is your last chance to get a beer or go to the bathroom before the game starts.
Frankly they should just drop the whole thing outside of international competitions. It’s not like anyone would really notice/care.
That's not true. I love the national anthem. So do a lot of people. It matters to them for a variety of reasons. Hell, when the Super Bowl is on, I can guarantee you I will watch the anthem, but I am unlikely to watch the whole game.
When someone does a nice job presenting it, the crowd actually cheers. When someone fucks it up - Roseanne Barr, Colin Kaepernick - they boo.
Go to a Blackhawks game.
“Cancel culture” is just some people crying about the fact that everyone has the right to express their own opinions and make their own decisions.
People can say whatever they want (mostly) but no one else has to listen or associate with someone when they exercise that right.