What is Cancel Culture?
When you think about it, the act of cancelling someone has been around for longer than we think, and seems like it could take many different shapes. For instance, would boycotting be a form of cancelling? Would going on strike be? How about vegetarianism? Wikipedia defines “cancel culture” as “a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles — whether it be online, on social media, or in person.” Ostracism in this context basically means total exclusion. In this sense, all of the examples would seem to apply, with different kinds of intents and subjects; however, the common implication is it’s “cancelling” a particular person or group of people/company, so this line would seem to be a bit grey.
Aja Romano on vox.com defines it in a similar way, attributing the term primarily for social justice. The overwhelming method of socially boycotting a figure is seen as a way to match the power disparity and bring them down for harmful words or actions, which has become a source of recent debate. Many times, these sort of harmful words or actions that justify cancelling are subjective and can be used as ammunition by anyone savvy enough to convince a crowd with slippery evidence. Many people feel that this has gotten out of control and say that the act of cancelling is some sort of “celebrity hunting season.” Along with this, it’s also brought pitiful empathy towards cancelled celebrities, stating that there’s no one who goes through what they do, losing everything in their life in a day, sometimes over something trivial or misconstrued.
History
The act of publicly ostracizing or shaming someone has been around for millennia, and have been much more cruel — depending on what would be considered in line with cancel culture. This kind of behavior can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece and Athens, where people would be ostracized if enough people disapproved of them, namely, politicians. Archaeologists’ source of these beliefs started from a discovery in Athens of a pile of 8,500 ballots. They were in the form of broken pottery, the shards of which were essentially modern day’s scraps of paper, and they were meant to allow the people to vote for a candidate that they wanted to be kicked out of the city. This ostracism would last for ten years where they wouldn’t be able to participate in any politics. This form of “cancelling” bears a strong similarity to how we view it in out modern society, but the biggest difference would be that it’s not an organized democratic event, but rather entirely grassroots and primarily on social media or specific demographics.
This is one of the earliest cases, but there is also a form in early Judaism: the scapegoat. This is a case where the high priest would endow a goat with all the wrongdoing and guilt of the community and drive it out into the wilderness. Not exactly cancel culture, but a striking resemblance. In this sense, the jewish scapegoat seems to be taking all the right intentions of cancel culture or ostracizing and using it to cleanse the community.
Though there are tons of more cases of this kind of behavior throughout history, I found these two to be one of the more significant not only to show the complicated history of ostracism, but also draw connections from places that resemble it.
Is Cancel Culture a Good or Bad thing?
There is no simple answer to this question, as cancelling someone can be as grey and nuanced as it gets. It can depend on intent, reasoning for cancelling, means of achieving it, etc, which are all three already incredibly debatable regarding different moral standards. However, if we simply look at the results or the “accomplishments” so to speak of cancel culture, we can then have an idea of how it weighs on harm versus good.
On the good side of things, cancel culture seems like an incredibly effective method to combat social justice issues like racism, sexism, or other wrongdoing. In other words, it’s prevented shitty people from doing shitty things. In essence, the powerful system of cultural boycotting is intended for combatting systems of power that were too overwhelming otherwise to take on alone.
However, on the bad side of things, there seems to be lots of stuff to which cancel culture is mainly associated and brought up about now that it’s had its pervasive wave and gained a general awareness among younger generations or common social media users. As previously mentioned, the subjectivity of cancel culture allows people to wholly misconstrue anything that’s said with any form of political value or along the subject of social justice issues. This fear of being cancelled is forcing people to keep quiet or even withdraw their support. One notable time is the author of this article about cancel culture talking about a particular white woman who wanted to be an ally to women of color, but states that she was afraid of saying or asking the wrong thing and getting cancelled for it.
People’s reactions
With cancel culture being primarily a grassroots idea, people’s public opinions of it can greatly effect the nature, or even future of this concept. Morning Consult conducted a poll on American registered voters to find how many people have participated in cancel culture and their opinion of it. 40% of respondents said they had at least once withdrawn support from a figure they deemed immoral, and 8% said they would do this often. The poll also found that the majority of whom that participated in this kind of behavior were the younger generation. As for the opinion of it, the results turned out fairly mixed. 44% of respondents disapprove, while 32% approved — the rest had no opinion or were unsure. Additionally, 46% believed cancel culture had gone too far, while 10% believed the contrary, but 53% think that people should expect consequences for expressing unpopular opinions in public, even the ones that may not be deeply offensive to people.
Critics have responded to the growth and pervasiveness of cancel culture, stating that it’s evolved semantically and lost its original meaning. They highlight that people who are “cancelled” aren’t really all that affected on their lives and comfort level. Furthermore, its proportionately the people that fully embrace the term that perpetrate cancel culture. They comment that throughout Australian, European, and American history, there are numerous examples of people being persecuted for speaking out against injustice.
{could easily add more if needed. Kinda just stopped on the last paragraph and I could talk about my experience with cancel culture on a colloquial level}
Will cancel culture die?
Throughout history we’ve seen examples of cancel culture behavior, and now in more modern times it’s gained more traction and popularity to the point where people are mortified to voice their own opinions out of fear that their life would be ruined. Despite this fear, to most people it’s become a powerful tool to compete against prevalent social issues, and make those people who are scared to speak out ideally ones with racist, sexist, etc. ideals. In this sense, this seems like an overall positive thing, so why would we need to get rid of it? I’m not sure if there’s an agreed upon answer to this, but generally it seems to most like it’s gotten out of control. Potential talks to resolutions to immoral beliefs are shut out and ultimately, the divide between people is stronger and people are dragged into a particular belief like a sort of “sheep” magnetism.
Cancel culture itself is so pervasive now because of a sort of democratic freedom of speech. The idea of anyone — or the lower-level people with no power — having the ability to speak up and assimilate a voice loud enough to control the outcomes of someone with power greatly resembles a democratic system. However, in its worst, cancel culture completely hinders speech. It securely locks the conversation on one idea or way of thinking, and anyone who voices a different opinion or hesitation are at a great risk of getting associated with the cancelled party. So not only is it centralized onto one belief, the cancelled party now is majorly shunned with their side of the argument unacknowledged and damaged. If these kinds of arguments were productive, we would most likely be living in a very different world. But as many are more and more familiar with, this behavior doesn’t fit the role of convincing or educating someone, only ridding of them like a disease — they become irredeemably wicked, which a majority of the time (hopefully!), they are simply people who make human mistakes.
Then the question is: Should they be shunned forever? Should their punishment have an end date? Typically, the cancelled are only remembered as another name in the book of people to hate, but is that really the right answer? In some extreme cases, that may seem like a safe option, but for most of the others where people were cancelled on the basis of an unpopular opinion, what do we do? It would seem that people are starting to get more skeptical about cancel culture, critiquing it, and figuring out what makes it something for the greater good. I hope that there is a continual upward trend with it so that we can use it as a tool to healthily combat injustices and raise awareness for social justice.
