If you have been online, watched the news, or
just sat at a dinner table with family any time
in the last, what, 10 years? Oh, at least. There's
this ghost haunting the machinery of our daily
lives. A ghost in the machine, yeah. It's a two
-word phrase that you have absolutely heard.
I mean, you've probably heard it shouted in anger.
And whispered in fear. Yeah, whispered in fear
in corporate break rooms. It totally dominates
headlines. It can destroy careers. And it seems
to be the one thing that everyone, and I mean
everyone, regardless of politics, age, background,
has a very, very strong opinion about. It's become
the ultimate Rorschach test for the 21st century.
You look at it and you see what you want to see.
Exactly. We are talking, of course, about cancel
culture. But here's the thing. And this is really
why we want to do this specific deep dive today.
For a term that is used so constantly. It's incredibly
poorly defined. It's just become this catch -all
boogeyman. Right. Is it social justice? Is it
a digital mob out for blood? Or does it, as some
people claim, not actually exist at all? It is
a fascinating paradox, isn't it? We see the effects
of it constantly. We see the apologies, the firings,
the trending hashtags. Oh, yeah. The notes app
apologies. Right. But we still struggle to agree
on what it actually is. Is it accountability?
Is it censorship? Is it just... bullying on a
massive scale. So today our mission is to move
past all the shouting matches. To cut through
the noise. Yeah, exactly. Right. They're going
to ignore the hot takes and the angry Twitter
threads. And we are going to perform an anatomy
of cancellation. I like that framing. and anatomy
we aren't here to debate whether specific people
should have been cancelled that's not the goal
we're here to understand the mechanism itself
and we have a massive stack of sources here historical
data psychological studies some pretty heavy
philosophical treatises, and some really surprising
pop culture history. And we are going to take
that anatomy metaphor quite literally. We need
to dissect the origins, the mechanism, the psychology,
and the ultimate impact of this whole phenomenon.
What makes it tick? Why are we so drawn to it?
What's the impulse? And trust me, you are going
to want to stick around for this. Because I promise
you, the origin story of the term cancel culture...
is not what you think. Not at all. It didn't
start in a university lecture hall. It didn't
start with some political manifesto. And it definitely
didn't start on a college campus. It started
with a disco song. Which is, frankly, my favorite
fact in this entire deep dive. It's amazing.
The road to modern political polarization starts
on the dance floor. It's just perfect. We'll
definitely get to the disco in a second. Yeah.
But first, let's just ground ourselves. Let's
set a baseline. When we say cancel culture, what
are we actually talking about according to the
research? Right. We need a working definition
before we can start tearing it apart. Exactly.
Okay. So if we look at the definitions provided
in our source material, specifically how sociologists
and media scholars categorize it, cancel culture
or call -out culture, they're often used together,
is essentially a modern form of ostracism. Ostracism.
That sounds so ancient. It is. Like ancient Greece
writing a name on a piece of pottery and literally
banning them from the city. That kind of ancient.
It's exactly that ancient. Humans are social
animals. Exile has always been the ultimate punishment
because, you know, evolutionarily speaking, if
you were kicked out of the tribe. You died. Simple
as that. You died. But while the impulse is ancient,
the mechanism is brand new. In the modern context,
it's where an individual is criticized for behavior
or speech that's deemed unacceptable. But, and
this is the key part, It doesn't stop at criticism.
It's not just an argument. No. The defining feature
is the call for action typically happening on
social media for that target to be shunned, fired,
boycotted or deplatformed. Right. So it's the
difference between saying I disagree with you
or she think you're wrong and saying you should
not have a job. Or you should not be allowed
to speak. Your publisher should drop you. Precisely.
It always involves a third party. It's not just
me versus you. It's me appealing to the crowd,
to the institution, to your boss to punish you.
And this leads directly to the central tension
we found running through every single piece of
research we looked at. Yeah, it's a constant
battle between two competing narratives. Okay,
so what's narrative A? Narrative A is that this
is mob justice. It's a direct threat to free
speech, a way to punish dissenters, and basically
a form of high -tech cyberbullying. Which is
the story we usually hear from those who feel
targeted by it or are afraid of being targeted.
Absolutely. Then you have narrative B. Narrative
B is. Narrative B is that this is simply consequence
culture. That it's a vital tool for marginalized
people. People who historically had no access
to the media or the courts or corporate HR departments
to finally hold powerful people accountable for
their actions. So it's the shield versus the
sword. That's a great way to put it. One side
sees it as a weapon of tyranny and the other
sees it as the only. weapon they have against
tyranny. Exactly. And today we're going to explore
both sides of that. We'll look at the history
from 1981 all the way to today. We'll get into
the psychology. We're talking about concepts
like safetyism and the spiral of silence. And
we're going to dive into the philosophy, bringing
in some heavyweights like John Stuart Mill and
Martha Nussbaum. And crucially, we are going
to bust the biggest myth of all. which is that
this is a partisan weapon used by only one side
of the political spectrum. Because, as we'll
see, the evidence shows that is just factually
untrue. Cancellation, it turns out, is an equal
opportunity tool. It is absolutely tool agnostic.
OK, let's unpack all of this and let's start
where you promised we would. Let's start with
that disco beat. Let's do it. Because when I
found this in the notes, I actually laughed out
loud. We have this image of canceling as this
very modern, very serious, very online thing.
But the etymology, the origin of the word itself,
traces back to 1981. It really does. It takes
us back to the legendary band Chic. Chic. Le
Freak. Good times. Legends. Nile Rodgers is an
absolute musical genius. Undisputed. So in 1981,
they released an album called Take It Off. And
on that album, kind of buried in the track list,
is a song titled Your Love Is Cancelled. Your
Love Is Cancelled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds
like a bad game show tagline or something. It
really does. But the backstory here is fantastic.
Nile Rodgers, the guitarist and primary songwriter,
had gone on a date. Okay. And apparently it was
a very, very bad date. The woman he was with
expected him to use his celebrity status to do
things for her. Oh, no. Yeah. She wanted him
to get her into exclusive clubs, maybe buy her
expensive things. It was pretty clear she was
there for the clout, not for the actual connection.
She's trying to leverage his fame. A tale as
old as time. A tale as old as time. And Nile
Rodgers, being this incredibly cool, creative
person, just wasn't having it. He was frustrated.
So being a songwriter, what does he do? He channels
that frustration into his work. He writes a song
about it. He writes the song comparing the breakup
of a relationship to the cancellation of a TV
show. He's literally using the metaphor of a
network executive pulling the plug. That's brilliant.
He's saying our ratings are down. The sponsors
are leaving. The network is pulling the plug.
Your love is canceled. I love that. It's so witty
and a little bit petty and just perfect disco
drama. It's such a creative way to say we are
done. It is. But how do we get from a Nile Rodgers.
deep cut on a 1981 album to, you know, a geopolitical
weapon. That's a huge leap. It's a fascinating
case of cultural transmission. The song itself
might have just faded into obscurity. It wasn't
a massive hit like La Freak or anything. Right.
But a screenwriter named Barry Michael Cooper
heard it and that phrase canceled, just stuck
in his head. So 10 years later, a full decade,
he's writing the script for the 1991 film New
Jack City. Classic movie. Wesley Snikes as the
drug lord Nino Brown, an iconic performance.
An absolute classic. And Cooper puts that line
into the movie. There's a scene where Nino Brown
is breaking up with a woman in a very harsh,
dismissive way. I remember this. And he just
says, cancel that B. I'll censor myself there,
but you get the idea. And that's the spark. That
is the moment it jumps from the song into the
wider lexicon. That appears to be the moment.
It became slang. It entered what linguists call
African -American Vernacular English, or AAVE.
And at this stage, it is absolutely crucial to
note, it was not political. Not at all. It had
nothing to do with voting records or old tweets
or problematic statements. It wasn't about holding
someone accountable for some societal transgression.
No, not in the slightest. It was purely slang
for a personal decision to disinvest in someone.
So, Amanda, I'm done with you. You were dead
to me. I'm not dealing with you anymore. It was
about personal agency. It was about setting a
boundary. OK, so we have this slang term percolating
in AAVE for a couple of decades. Then we fast
forward to around 2015. This is where the story
pivots to black Twitter, right? Correct. Around
2015, we see the concept of canceling just explode
in usage on black Twitter. But again, the usage
was really nuanced. How so? It was often used
in jest. It was hyperbolic. You know, people
would say things like, it's raining out. So it
was just a funny way of expressing annoyance
or disapproval. Exactly. Jonah Engel Bromwich
at the New York Times did a piece on this, and
he described it as indicating a total disinvestment
in something. Anything. It could be serious.
It could be a joke. But then something shifts.
And this feels like the real pivot point for
our entire discussion today. This is the moment
of weaponization. Yes. We move from these isolated
instances of online shaming or just joking around
to a culture of outrage. The transition is subtle
but profound. It's the move from I am done with
this person to we must all be done with this
person. That is a huge leap. It goes from being
a personal boundary to a collective demand. A
moral imperative. It stops being about my relationship
with you and starts being about my relationship
with the group. About you. And that demand is
then enforced by the mob, by the digital crowd.
It becomes a litmus test of your own morality.
If I cancel this person for their transgression
and you don't join me. Then maybe you're part
of the problem. And maybe you need to be canceled,
too. And then, of course, we hit the earthquake
of 2017. Harvey Weinstein. October 2017. This
is the hashtag me too turning point. I mean,
the allegations against Weinstein were just.
horrific decades of systemic abuse. And the fallout
was massive. Expulsion from the academy, cancellation
of his projects. And most importantly, actual
legal consequences. He was eventually convicted
of rape and sent to prison. And I don't think
anyone would look at that and argue it wasn't
justice. That seemed to be exactly what the system
is supposed to do, even if it took far too long.
All right. But this is where the term cancel
culture starts getting applied to these really
high stakes scenarios. We saw it again just a
month later with Louis C .K. in November 2017.
He admitted to years of sexual misconduct. He
did. And the consequences were swift. His shows
were canceled. His distribution deals were terminated.
He was dropped by his management and his publicist.
It looked like his career was over. But here's
where it gets really, really interesting and
where that question of does it even work starts
to come in. Louis C .K. didn't just vanish into
the ether. No, he did not. He returned to stand
-up touring in 2018. He sold out Madison Square
Garden multiple times. And in 2022, he won a
Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. A Grammy.
After being canceled. After being, for a time,
the poster child for career destruction in the
hashtag MeToo era. Which forces us to ask a really
uncomfortable question. Is cancellation permanent?
Or is it just a pause button for the rich and
famous? For Weinstein, it was... Prison total,
permanent removal from society. But for Louis
C .K., it was effectively a career hiatus, a
forced sabbatical. This variability, this inconsistency
is a huge part of why the definition is so slippery
and so debated. So we have this mechanism, we
have the history. But what is actually happening
in our brains when we participate in this? Because...
Let's be honest, it can feel good, can't it?
Oh, absolutely. It feels like you're doing something
righteous. You're on the right side of history.
You're fighting the good fight. To understand
that feeling, we need to look at the psychology
and the sociology of calling out. And the first
thing we have to do is distinguish between two
terms, call out culture and cancel culture. I
feel like I usually hear them used interchangeably.
They often are, but they're cousins, not twins.
They're distinct. Okay, so break it down for
us. Eve Enga, who is a media studies scholar.
defines cancel culture specifically as the withdrawal
of support. It's about viewership, purchases,
ticket sales. It's about hitting a public figure
where it hurts their wallet and their platform.
So it's economic and social warfare. That's a
good way to put it. It's rooted in a social justice
perspective, targeting sexism, racism, homophobia,
and using market forces as the weapon. And Lisa
Nakamura from the University of Michigan has
a really interesting take on this. She calls
it an ultimate expression of agency. I think
Nakamura's point is absolutely vital for understanding
the motivation here. Think about who is usually
doing the canceling, at least in this formulation.
Historically, it's people who don't have access
to the traditional levers of power. They don't
own TV networks. They don't run the newspapers.
They can't fire CEOs. Social media is the one
place where their collective voice has power.
So it's a way of leveling the playing field.
Nakamura argues that canceling is born of a desire
for control and for accountability that isn't
centralized. It's a distributed justice system.
So if the actual justice system won't punish
a powerful person for being, say, racist or sexist,
and the HR department ignores all the complaints.
People say, fine, we'll do it ourselves. It becomes
a cultural boycott. It's the market speaking
loudly. But there's a flip side to this agency.
A darker side. And this is where we get into
the concept of safetyism. Yes. This comes from
Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, who wrote
the very influential and also very controversial
book, The Coddling of the American Mind. I've
heard a lot about this. What's the core idea?
Hate and Lukianoff argue that call -out culture,
particularly on college campuses, stems from
a fundamental shift in moral culture. They call
this new culture safetyism. Safetyism, meaning?
It's the belief that people, especially young
people, need to be protected not just from physical
harm, but from emotional harm and from offensive
ideas. So this is the framework where you get
the idea that words can be violence. That's the
core of it. In this framework, if you believe
that hearing an offensive or challenging opinion
causes you actual trauma, that it is a form of
violence, then you have a moral obligation to
shut that speech down. So you aren't just disagreeing
with it. You're actively preventing harm. Exactly.
You're creating a safe space. Which sounds noble
on the surface. I mean, who doesn't want people
to feel safe? But the critique is that it completely
shuts down necessary conversations. It leads
to a refusal to make tradeoffs. The argument
is that the need for open debate is secondary
to the need for emotional safety. And that shutting
down has a name. It's a well -documented phenomenon
in political science. It's called the spiral
of silence. That sounds like a sci -fi movie
title. It does sound dramatic, doesn't it? The
spiral of silence. Or maybe a heavy metal album.
Totally. But what is it, actually? It's a very
grounded political science theory. It was originally
proposed by Elizabeth Noel Newman, but it was
highlighted in the context of cancel culture
by Pippa Norris at Harvard. The theory is that
people have sort of sixth sense for public opinion.
We can read the room. We can read the room. We
are intensely social animals and we are constantly
scanning our environment, whether that's an office,
a classroom or the Internet, to see what the
majority view is. Because we don't want to be
the odd one out. We don't want to be the antelope
that strays too far from the herd. Exactly. We
fear social isolation more than almost anything.
So let's say you're on Twitter or you're in a
university seminar. You see everyone shouting
one opinion. Loudly. And you see that anyone
who expresses even a mild disagreement is getting
absolutely destroyed. They're mocked. They're
shamed. They're called horrible names. Even if
you privately disagree with the group, you see
the consequences of speaking up. So what do you
do? I keep my mouth shut. It's not worth the
trouble. Precisely. And here's the crucial mechanism
of the spiral. Because you remain silent. and
the person next to you who also disagrees remains
silent, the loud side looks even stronger and
more unanimous than it actually is. It creates
an illusion of consensus. A false consensus.
Which makes the next person who disagrees even
more afraid to speak, and the next. Hence, the
spiral. It spins downward until only one opinion
is allowed to be voiced publicly. It's self -reinforcing.
And Keith Hampton at Michigan State University
found something really critical here in his research.
He found that cancel culture contributes massively
to political polarization. But, and this is the
absolute kicker, it does not actually change
opinions. Wait, it doesn't change minds? No.
The people being canceled or, more importantly,
the much larger group of people watching the
cancellation and staying silent, they don't say,
oh, wow, I guess I was wrong. They say, I better
shut up. I hate you for making me shut up. It
just drives their opinion underground. It doesn't
eliminate the disagreement. It just makes it
fester in the dark where it often becomes more
extreme. That seems incredibly dangerous for
a functioning democracy. If we aren't arguing,
we aren't thinking, we're just performing compliance.
And that brings us directly to the philosophical
battleground, because this isn't just about Twitter
feelings or campus politics. This is about the
fundamental principles of liberty and free society.
We have to talk about free speech. Is cancel
culture a form of free speech or is it the enemy
of free speech? It feels like it can't be both.
That is the million dollar crusher. And we have
some very heavy hitters on both sides of this
argument. Who's on the defense team? On the defense,
you have people like Eugene Scalia, the former
secretary of labor. He argues that legally speaking,
cancel culture is a form of free speech. How
does he square that circle? That seems so counterintuitive.
Well, think about it from a strict First Amendment
perspective. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak. It prevents the government from
arresting you for your opinion. Right? It's about
government action. But it also protects my right
to criticize you. It protects my right to boycott
you. It protects my right to stand on a soapbox
and tell all my friends, don't buy this person's
books or don't watch their movies. So if a group
of people decides... We don't like what this
person said, so we are collectively refusing
to buy their product. That's just the free market
of ideas and action. Legally, yes, that's a protected
form of expression. But socially, it feels very
different. And that is where the philosopher
John Stuart Mill comes in. OK, we're going back
to the 19th century now. To his seminal 1859
work on liberty, Mill warned about something
he called social tyranny. Social tyranny. Tell
me more about that. Mill argued that society
itself can practice a tyranny that is more formidable
than many kinds of political oppression. Whoa.
More formidable than the government. That's a
really bold claim. It is. But think about his
reasoning. The government's power, while immense,
has limits. They can't be in your living room
all the time. They can't monitor every conversation
you have with your friend group. At least they
weren't supposed to be able to. Right. But social
tyranny, Mills said, penetrates much more deeply
into the details of life and enslaves the soul
itself. Well, enslaves the soul. That hits hard.
That's not a phrase you just toss around. Mills'
point was that if you are terrified of your neighbors
shunning you, If you live in constant fear that
your employer will fire you for a private opinion
you expressed, you're not truly free. Even if
the law says you have free speech. If the social
cost of using that speech is the destruction
of your entire life, then you don't really have
it in any meaningful way. It's a right you're
too afraid to exercise. And the modern philosopher
Martha Nussbaum takes this a step further, right?
She talks about the justice of the mob. Nussbaum
is... extremely critical of this phenomenon.
She argues that what we see online is mob justice
and it is fundamentally not deliberative. It's
not impartial. What does she mean by deliberative?
Think about a court of law. It has procedures.
It has rules of evidence. It has a defense attorney,
a prosecutor. There's a judge, a jury. There's
a process of weighing facts. The Internet mob
has none of that. It's just instant emotional
judgment. It's guilty until proven innocent.
And even if you are somehow proven innocent,
it doesn't matter because the punishment, the
reputational damage has already been inflicted.
The damage is the process. And she has this concept
of the spoiled identity, which I found really
chilling. Yes, this is crucial. A spoiled identity
means that the person who is canceled is branded
as irredeemable. They aren't just someone who
made a mistake. Their very identity is now spoiled.
They are a mistake. They are seen as fundamentally
unwelcome in the community forever. It's the
modern equivalent of the scarlet letter. You
wear the mark of your sin and it defines you
completely. And Nussbaum's warning is that this
creates a society without forgiveness, without
grace. A society where one slip up can define
you for the rest of your life. But is there any
counter argument here? I mean, can shame be a
good thing? Shame is a powerful social tool.
It stops us from doing terrible things sometimes.
That's the nuance. Some philosophers, and they're
referencing thinkers going all the way back to
Plato, and modern counselors like Anna Richards
argued that shame can be constructive. How so?
It can lead to moral improvement. It teaches
us social norms. It makes us reflect on our behavior.
But, and this is a massive but, it only works
if it is paired with a belief in redemption.
There has to be a way back. Exactly. The message
has to be, you did a bad thing, and you need
to understand why it was bad, fix it, and then
you can come back into the community. It can't
be, you are a bad person, so go away and never
come back. If there's no path back, if the door
is permanently locked from the inside, then the
shame isn't constructive. It's purely destructive.
It's purely punitive. It doesn't make the person
better. It just destroys them. Yeah. Now... I
want to pivot to something that I think genuinely
surprises a lot of people when they dig into
this. There's this persistent myth, this narrative
that cancel culture is a tool of the woke left.
Oh, yeah. You hear it on talk radio and cable
news constantly. The left is canceling us. The
left is censoring free thought. That is very
common perception. But the historical record
and the modern evidence show that it is completely
factually false. The mechanism of cancellation,
as you said before, is tool agnostic. It happens
across the entire. political spectrum, the historian
Nicole Hammer points out that the American right
has been canceling people for decades, long before
the term even existed. You dug up some history
on this that really blew my mind because I think
we tend to have such short memories. Well, think
about the most famous example, McCarthyism in
the 1940s and 50s. The Red Scare. The Hollywood
blacklist. That was the ultimate cancel culture.
It was the state and society working hand in
glove. People were blacklisted from their industry,
fired from government jobs, and socially ostracized
because of an accusation of communist sympathies.
You didn't even have to be a communist. You just
had to be accused of knowing one or not being
willing to name names. It ruined thousands of
lives and careers. And then you have the lavender
scare running alongside it. This was the systematic
firing of suspected gay employees in the federal
government. It was a purge. based on the idea
that they were a security risk. Or look at the
1970s and Anita Bryant's Save Our Children campaign.
Which sought to ban gay people from teaching
in public schools. Or the constant attempts to
ban books from school libraries, like Heather
Has Two Mommies in the 90s. Or more recently,
with groups like Moms for Liberty targeting LGBTQ
-related books, like Entango Makes Three. So
the target changes over the years. It's communists,
then it's gay teachers, then it's books. But
the tactic is exactly the same. It's exactly
the same ostracism and the removal of livelihood
in order to enforce a specific moral code. And
we see it just as clearly in the modern era.
We have to talk about the Bud Light boycott in
2023. Oh, right. The Dylan Mulvaney situation.
This is a huge story. It is a textbook example
of right wing cancellation. Anheuser -Busch,
the parent company of Bud Light, sent a single
personalized can of beer to a transgender influencer.
Dylan Mulvaney. It's one can. It wasn't even
a commercial. It was one can for an Instagram
post. The conservative backlash was swift. It
was coordinated and it was massive. And it wasn't
just, I disagree with this, so I'm not drinking
this beer. No, it was a coordinated effort to
destroy the brand's market share, to get the
marketing executives who approved it fired. There
were videos of people shooting cans of Bud Light.
It was a cultural war. And it worked, didn't
it? Their sales absolutely tanked. It hurt the
product's performance significantly. And the
Harvard Business Review noted that the real impact
was that it made brand marketing departments
across the country terrified of taking a stand
on any social issue. That's the definition of
a chilling effect. Exactly. And then we have
a very recent, very dark example. The aftermath
of the assassination of the conservative activist
Charlie Kirk in 2025. This is a critical case
study in what the New York Times called the rise
of a woke right. It really is. So let's remind
listeners of the specific details here. Charlie
Kirk was assassinated. A political tragedy by
any measure. But the reaction to the reaction
was where the cancel culture element really came
in. Right. After his death, there were some people
on social media, liberals, leftists who were
critical of him or in some cases who just failed
to mourn him adequately. They were maybe indifferent
or they were critical of his past rhetoric, even
in the immediate wake of the event. And the response
from prominent figures on the right wasn't just
that's distasteful or that's disrespectful. No.
J .D. Vance, the vice president, explicitly called
on Americans to report people who were celebrating
the killing. to their employers. He promised
federal investigations into liberal organizations
that didn't condemn it strongly enough. Think
about that for a second. Yeah. The vice president
of the United States called for private citizens
to be reported to their employers for their speech.
He was effectively deputizing the public to cancel
their neighbors. Yes. And The New York Times
analysis described this as a conservative version
of cancel culture. that mirrored exactly what
the right had spent years criticizing the left
for doing. The logic was identical. You have
violated our sacred moral code so you should
lose your livelihood. It's an absolutely perfect
mirror image. Yeah. And we see the same dynamic
on college campuses regarding the Israel -Palestine
conflict, too, right? Absolutely. It's a political
pincer movement. You have Republicans in Congress
grilling university presidents, accusing them
of not doing enough to silence speech that they
perceive as anti -Semitic. Pushing for students
to be expelled or faculty to be fired. At the
same time, you have pro -Palestine activists
calling for boycotts and deplatforming of speakers
and scholars they see as Zionist. You even had
NYU withholding a diploma from a student who
was critical of US support for the war in Gaza.
So if you're pro -Palestine, you risk getting
canceled by one side. If you're pro -Israel,
you risk getting canceled by the other. And stuck
in the middle, you have that spiral of silence
widening, just swallowing up everyone who is
too afraid to say anything at all because they
don't want to get hit by the political crossfire.
So we've established that everyone does it. It's
a bipartisan blood sport. But what does the average
person think about all this? Yeah. Because if
you look at the polling data, it seems like we're
a nation of anxious people constantly looking
over our shoulders. The data is really sobering.
Pew Research Center, Morning Consult, Harvard
-Harris, they all paint a very similar picture
of deep division and widespread fear. Let's hit
some of those key stats. OK, so as of 2020, about
44 percent of Americans had heard a fair amount
about cancel culture. So awareness is high. But
the generational divide is really stark. What
does that look like? 55 percent of voters aged
18 to 34 admitted to taking part in cancel culture
in some way. Over half of young people admit
to doing it. That's incredible. Compare that
to only 32 percent of voters over the age of
65. So it is definitely a younger demographics
tool of choice. But the fear. The fear is universal.
This is the one that got me. A 2022 New York
Times -Siena poll found that 84 % of adults believe
it is a serious problem that Americans do not
speak freely due to fear of retaliation. 84%.
That is the vast majority of the country walking
around afraid to say what they really think.
I mean, just pause and consider the implications
of that for a society. And 46%, nearly half,
said they feel less free to talk politics than
they did a decade ago. That is the social tyranny
Mill was warning us about in 18... 1959, it's
not a hypothetical anymore. We are living in
it. But what's so interesting is that even with
all that fear, Americans are completely split
on what cancel culture actually means. Right.
The definition itself is part of the fight. A
morning consult poll found that 49 percent of
people define it as holding people accountable
for their actions. So half the country sees it
as accountability. But 14 % define it as censorship
and another 12 % define it as mean -spirited
harm or bullying. So we are all looking at the
exact same phenomenon and seeing two totally
different things. One person's justice is another
person's mob. Which has led to this concerted
effort to rebrand the whole thing. You've probably
heard the term consequence culture being used
more and more. Yes, LeVar Burton, another legend,
Geordie LaForge himself, and Sonny Hostin from
The View have been big proponents of this. Their
argument is that the term cancel culture is a
loaded phrase. It's a right -wing talking point
designed to imply the victimhood of the person
being canceled. It frames them as the victim.
Right. Consequence culture, on the other hand,
reframes it. It implies that you are simply taking
responsibility for the effects of your opinions
and your speech. As the saying goes, freedom
of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Which is a very powerful and catchy slogan. But
the skeptics aren't really buying it. No. John
Ronson, who wrote the incredible book So You've
Been Publicly Shamed, which I highly, highly
recommend to everyone listening, argues that
cancel culture isn't a useful term at all. Why
not? Because it encompasses too many different
things. It's too broad. Right. I mean, canceling
Harvey Weinstein for actual crimes is not the
same thing as canceling a teenager for a dumb
tweet they made when they were 12 years old.
They are two completely different moral and social
universes, but we use the same term for both.
And Sarah Manavis from the New Statesman points
out that for non -famous people, for regular
folks, public shaming isn't about free speech
or consequences. It's about a massive power imbalance.
Exactly. When thousands or hundreds of thousands
of people pile on one normal person, a nurse,
a truck driver, a student, that isn't accountability.
That's just destruction. So this brings us to
the ultimate practical question. Does any of
this actually work? Does canceling someone actually
achieve meaningful social change? Or is it mostly
just noise and performance? There's a concept
from linguistics called semantic bleaching that
Danielle Kurtzelbin from NPR talks about in this
context. Semantic bleaching. I like that. It
sounds like something you do to your laundry
when you use too much bleach. That's exactly
the metaphor. It refers to when a word is used
so much in so many different contexts that the
color, the specific meaning, is washed out of
it. Becomes bleached. And the term cancel culture
has been used so often by politicians, specifically
Republicans, as this catch -all defense. If you're
criticized for anything, a policy, a scandal,
a lie, you just claim you're being canceled.
It becomes a dog whistle, as the academic Pamela
Palmater puts it. It's just a way to shut down
criticism and avoid any real accountability.
I'm not wrong. I'm just a victim of the woke
mob. Exactly. It short -circuits the conversation.
And when we look at the actual tangible effects,
Conor Gurel from Vice argues that for the wealthy
and the powerful, cancellation rarely has meaningful
long -term effects on their lives. Like the Louis
C .K. example. He won a Grammy. Or Mel Gibson,
who continues to direct major movies. Right.
Or Morgan Wallen, the country singer who had
the number one album of the year right after
being caught on tape using a racial slur. Precisely.
If you are rich and powerful enough, you can
wait it out. You have a redemption arc built
into your PR budget. You can disappear to your
mansion or a private island for a year and then
come back when the news cycle moves on. but for
ordinary people. For ordinary people, as Ligaya
Mishan wrote in The Times, it is shambolically
applied. It can range from a hostile online debate
to full -blown stalking, harassment, and losing
your livelihood. For a normal person, a Google
search result that permanently labels you a racist
or sexist is a life sentence. There's no Grammy
waiting for you. There is no comeback tour. It's
basically a caste system of cancellation. The
powerful survive, and the weak are destroyed.
Which is a very dark irony considering the tool
was supposedly invented to give agency and a
voice to the powerless. It's become so pervasive
now that pop culture is just eating it up and
satirizing it constantly. I mean, South Park
did a whole hashtag cancel South Park marketing
campaign. Which was just brilliant. They preemptively
canceled themselves to mock the entire outrage
cycle. They leaned into it. And then you have
a serious artistic film like Tar. You've seen
Tar. Oh, absolutely. Cate Blanchett is just phenomenal.
It's a masterpiece. And it explores this nuance
so perfectly. It asks the really hard question.
Can we and should we separate the art from the
artist? Lydia Tarr is a musical genius, but she
is also a predator. The movie doesn't give you
an easy answer. It just makes you sit in the
mess of it all. And then on the complete other
end of the cinematic spectrum, you have the 2022
reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A slightly
different artistic approach. Yes. There's this
one scene that went viral where Leatherface,
the guy with the chainsaw for those who don't
know, is threatening a bus full of influencers
who have come to gentrify this ghost town. And
one of them holds up their phone and says, try
anything and you're canceled, bro. And then he
proceeds to kill all of them with a chainsaw.
It's obviously over the top satire, but it captures
the absurdity of thinking that a Twitter thread
can stop a physical threat. It shows how disconnected
online power can be from physical reality. And
then there's a film like Dream Scenario with
Nicolas Cage. The director said he conceived
the idea after reading all these stories about
professors being fired for personal opinions.
It just captures the absolute nightmare of suddenly,
inexplicably. becoming the villain in everyone's
story, the sheer confusion of it. So where does
this whole journey leave us? We've gone from
a chic disco track about a bad date to J .D.
Vance calling for federal investigations into
how people grieve, all the way to Leatherface
revving his chainsaw at influencers. It is a
wild, wild journey. But if we try to synthesize
all of this, if we zoom out, we are left with
a core conflict that isn't going away anytime
soon. The conflict between accountability and
mercy. I think that's it. Exactly. On the one
hand, we absolutely need mechanisms to hear the
voices of the marginalized. We need to be able
to say as a society, this behavior is unacceptable,
especially when the law or the corporations fail
to do so. That is the consequence culture argument.
We cannot have a society where the powerful can
do whatever they want. with impunity. But on
the other hand, in building that mechanism, we
have created a machine of spoiled identity, a
machine that judges instantly, often without
context, without due process, and that offers
no clear path to redemption. And that machine
is now being operated by everyone. The left uses
it. The right uses it. It has become the primary
weapon of modern cultural and political conflict.
It's the social nuke we all carry around in our
pockets. And as we discussed with the spiral
of silence, it is making us all quieter, more
afraid, and arguably more polarized and divided
than ever before. We're just shouting at each
other from our trenches, not talking to each
other in a common square. So what's the final
thought you want to leave our listeners with?
Well, here's a thought I want to leave you with.
We talked about Plato and the idea of constructive
shame. The idea that shame can be a tool for
good, but only if there is a door left open for
the shamed person to come back in. The path to
redemption. Right now, cancel culture. whether
you call it mob justice or consequence culture,
often feels like a house with no doors. It just
locks people out. And my question for you is
this. If we embrace a culture of cancellation
without a clear and consistent mechanism for
redemption, are we actually creating a society
of moral improvement or are we merely creating
a society of permanent exile? And if the tools
of cancellation are now wielded by everyone against
everyone, has the term cancellation even lost
its meaning? Or is this just the new brutal normal
of how we exist together in a digital world.
It's a terrifying thought, but it's one we all
have to confront. That is all for today's Deep
Dive. We hope we don't get canceled for this
one. Fingers crossed. Thanks for listening. We'll
see you next time.