cancel culture essay deutsch

Hintergrund

"Cancel Culture" - Was ist das eigentlich?

"Cancel Culture" taucht als Schlagwort in Debatten immer häufiger auf. Die einen beklagen sich darüber, die anderen behaupten, Cancel Culture gebe es gar nicht.

Die "Harry Potter"-Autorin J.K. Rowling sorgt mit Tweets über Trans-Menschen immer wieder für Kontroversen. Mit "RIP J.K. Rowling"-Tweets wird dazu aufgerufen, sie zu Grabe zu tragen und ihre Bücher nicht mehr zu lesen. Kritiker werfen der Kabarettistin Lisa Eckhart vor, in einem Auftritt 2018 antisemitische Klischees bedient zu haben. Daraufhin wird sie vom Harbour Front Festival in Hamburg ausgeladen. Schauspieler werden aus Filmen, Gedichte von Hauswänden, Autoren aus Verlagsprogrammen und Autorinnen aus Debütanten-Salons entfernt. Auch in Deutschland taucht in den Diskussionen über diese Vorgänge verstärkt der Begriff "Cancel Culture" auf, was Streich- oder Abbruchkultur bedeutet.

Wie lässt sich "Cancel Culture" definieren?

"Cancel Culture" bezeichnet den Versuch, ein vermeintliches Fehlverhalten, beleidigende oder diskriminierende Aussagen oder Handlungen - häufig von Prominenten - öffentlich zu ächten. Es wird zu einem generellen Boykott dieser Personen aufgerufen.

Philosoph und Autor Prof. Julian Nida-Rümelin

Julian Nida-Rümelin meldet sich zu Wort, wenn es um die Diskussion gesellschaftlicher, politischer, ethischer Fragen geht. Aktuell beschäftigt ihn die "Cancel Culture". mehr

"'Cancel Culture' - damit werde ich mich sicher noch auseinandersetzen, weil ich den Begriff sehr interessant finde", sagte die Kabarettistin Lisa Eckhart im August 2020 bei NDR Kultur, als ihre Ausladung vom Harbour Front Festival in Hamburg dazu führte, dass der Begriff in der öffentlichen Diskussion überall auftauchte. "Ich sehe die Culture - also die Kultur - in dem Begriff 'Cancel Culture' nicht als das Subjekt - also als eine Kultur, die cancelt - sondern als das Objekt. Nämlich, dass man teilweise bestrebt ist, Kultur als Ganzes zu canceln. Das ist nicht etwas, das ich einem politischen Lager zuordnen würde, sondern eine Tendenz, die man in vielem sieht", so Eckhart weiter.

"Cancel Culture" entstand 2014 - als Spaß

Und doch sind es auch die politischen Lager, die sich bei der Bestimmung des relativ jungen Internet-Phänomens gegenüberstehen. Es entstand zunächst auf Twitter. 2014 wurde in den USA vom "canceln" gesprochen, gemeint war das als Spaß: Über jemanden, mit dessen Meinung man nicht übereinstimmte, schrieb man "diese Person ist für mich gecancelt". Doch schnell wurde der Protest ernsthafter, moralischer, lauter. Marginalisierte Gruppen verschafften sich unter dem Hashtag #CancelCulture Gehör, fordern seitdem Verbote und Boykotts von Personen, die ihrer Ansicht nach Unrecht begangen haben. Sie beschreiben diese Entwicklung als einen demokratischen Vorgang, der vom Internet ausgeht.

das ARD radiofeature: Wissenschaftsfreiheit

Cancel Culture in Wissenschaft und Forschung: Die Wissenschaftsfreiheit genießt in Deutschland Verfassungsrang. Trotzdem gerät sie zunehmend unter weltanschaulichen Druck. mehr

Sieg der Gesinnung über rationale Urteilsfähigkeit?

Doch dieser Vorgang hat Film-Sets und Universitäten, Verlage und Buchhandlungen, den gesamten öffentlichen Raum erreicht. Dagegen richtet sich in Deutschland ein "Appell für freie Debattenräume", den der Journalist Milosz Matuschek 2020 veröffentlichte. Darin heißt es: "Wir erleben gerade einen Sieg der Gesinnung über rationale Urteilsfähigkeit. Nicht die besseren Argumente zählen, sondern zunehmend zur Schau gestellte Haltung und richtige Moral."

Gespenst oder ernsthafte Bedrohung?

Linke dagegen zweifeln, ob es die Verbotskultur wirklich gibt oder ob die, die sie beschwören, eher um den Verlust ihrer Meinungsführerschaft fürchten. So schreibt die Kolumnistin Margarete Stokowski bei "Spiegel Online": "Der Begriff 'Cancel Culture' ist im Grunde nur eine Umbenennung von "man darf ja wohl gar nichts mehr sagen", faktisch aber gefährlicher, weil ein gewaltbereiter, mächtiger Mob fantasiert wird."

Ist die "Kultur der Absagen" ein Gespenst, oder ist sie eine ernsthafte Bedrohung für jede Art von Debatte? Geht es um Wahrheit oder Zensur? Darüber diskutiert Deutschland - mit einem Begriff, der allerdings uneindeutig und schlecht abzugrenzen ist.

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Dieses Thema im Programm:

NDR Kultur | Klassisch in den Tag | 24.08.2022 | 06:20 Uhr

Schlagwörter zu diesem artikel, kulturpolitik, ausstellungen.

Tee mit Warum - Die Philosophie und wir

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Cancel Culture — The Argument Against Cancel Culture

The Argument Against Cancel Culture

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Ng 2022 - Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis

2022, Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis

“Cancel culture” has become one of the most charged concepts in contemporary culture and politics, but mainstream critiques from both the left and the right provide only snapshots of responses to the phenomenon. Taking a media and cultural studies perspective, this book traces the origins of cancel practices and discourses, and discusses their subsequent evolution within celebrity and fan cultures, consumer culture, and national politics in the U.S. and China. Moving beyond popular press accounts about the latest targets of cancelling or familiar free speech debates, this analysis identifies multiple lineages for both cancelling and criticisms about cancelling, underscoring the various configurations of power associated with “cancel culture” in particular cultural and political contexts. Citation: Ng, Eve. 2022. Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. Link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-97374-2

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The Real Reason Cancel Culture Is So Contentious

People on both sides of the debate are being too vague about what they favor and what they oppose.

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The majority of Americans who insist that “cancel culture” is a problem and the minority who counter that it is a fraud, a myth, or a moral panic are too often talking past one another.

One faction invokes the term cancel culture as shorthand for a range of complaints: for instance, that figures such as the political analyst David Shor and Emmanuel Cafferty , a California utility-company worker, lost their jobs after innocent acts that provoked unreasonable offense in others; that universities have unjustly punished hundreds of scholars for protected speech in recent years; or that so many Americans are self-censoring that deliberative democracy is threatened .

Another faction dismisses complaints about cancel culture and reframes the status quo as “ accountability culture .” This shorthand encompasses what many regard as long-overdue consequences for figures such as Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, two entertainment-industry giants credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault, and the former NBA owner Donald Sterling, who was pushed out of the league after recordings of his racist comments surfaced.

Using any one term to frame such varied controversies hides the actual lines of disagreement. People who complain about “cancel culture” should always clarify what they oppose. They should be told: Be more specific, unless you’re literally saying that no one should ever be fired or stigmatized for anything they say or do. Likewise, people who laud “accountability culture” or dismiss cancel culture as a myth should be told: Be more specific about what you consider fair punishment, unless you’re literally saying that everyone fired or stigmatized for speech was treated justly.

Conor Friedersdorf: The threat to free speech, beyond ‘cancel culture’

Before going any further, I’ll lay my cards on the table. Although I dislike the term cancel culture because of its vagueness and potential for misinterpretation, I tend to think that “cancel culture” is a problem, by which I mean:

• Like former President Barack Obama, I fret about a puritanical streak in U.S. politics that condemns others too often and leaves too little room for forgiving them.
• In my view, Margaret Atwood, Cornel West, Deirdre McCloskey, and my colleague Thomas Chatterton Williams—among many other authors who signed the controversial 2020 Harper’s Magazine letter on free expression—were right to lament waning “norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”
• Like the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, I suspect that speech taboos on university campuses are undermining teaching and scholarship.
• And like the New York Times editorial board , I worry that some Americans are withdrawing from public discourse because they so frequently see others personally attacked, capriciously punished, or unjustly shamed by digital mobs who reject liberal speech values.

Inevitably, fair societies impose social sanctions on some bad behaviors. But fair societies also levy such sanctions in ways that the average citizen understands and accepts. They frown on arbitrary or excessive sanctions. And they reserve the most extreme extralegal punishments, such as public shaming, shunning, or depriving people of their livelihood, for extreme cases. If everyone were more specific, people who come down on opposite sides of the abstract, 30,000-foot debate over cancel culture might find some agreement about concrete cases.

To illustrate how greater specificity could keep the two sides of the debate from talking past each other, consider a 2021 Mother Jones article with the headline “ Roxane Gay Says Cancel Culture Does Not Exist .” Indeed, that’s precisely what Gay, a best-selling feminist author, tells her interviewer: Cancel culture, she says, “is this boogeyman that people have come up with to explain away bad behavior and when their faves experience consequences. I like to think of it as consequence culture, where when you make a mistake—and we all do, by the way—there should be consequences.”

Yet in the next breath, Gay seems to acknowledge that punishments are not being meted out fairly: “The problem is that we haven’t figured out what consequences should be,” she says. “So it’s all or nothing. Either there are no consequences, or people lose their jobs, or other sort of sweeping grand gestures that don’t actually solve the problem at hand.”

The interviewer’s next question was about the podcast Reply All , which had reported on allegations of unjust workplace dynamics at the magazine Bon Appétit but canceled the series before it was finished, because similar accusations arose against Reply All ’s own host. “I think it’s a mistake,” Gay declared. “I understand that the reporting is not finished on the final two episodes. But this is not the Mona Lisa. Somebody can finish these stories. I think the Bon Appétit story is interesting. And it’s typical. And it deserves to be told.”

As it turns out, Gay and I agree that a journalistic institution imposed a wrongheaded “consequence.” Its decision makers solved no problems while stymieing a valid inquiry into a worthy subject.

That’s more common ground than one would expect from the headline of the Mother Jones article. In the same spirit, I agree that, absent a rigorous definition of cancel culture , bad actors can exploit any ambiguity to deflect legitimate criticism of their conduct.

“Why should we care about having a serious discussion about defining cancel culture?” asks the attorney Ken White, who is deeply skeptical of the term. “We should because simply complaining about it in the abstract, without attempts to define it, without actionable responses, and without taking the rights of ‘cancellers’ doesn’t ease the culture war. It inflames it.” He’s right.

Read: How capitalism drives cancel culture

That said, the most incisive critics of cancel culture have specifically defined when a line is crossed, as they see it, from vigorous public disagreement with someone’s views to misguided attempts to stifle their expression. The free-speech activist Greg Lukianoff defines cancel culture as “the measurable uptick, since roughly 2014, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is—or would be —protected by the First Amendment.” In the higher-education sector, which Lukianoff tracks closely, he and Komi T. German note :

Since 2015, we documented 563 attempts (345 from the left, 202 from the right, 16 from neither) to get scholars canceled. Two thirds (362 incidents; 64 percent) of these cancellation attempts were successful, resulting in some form of professional sanction leveled at the scholar, including over one-fifth (117 incidents; 21 percent) resulting in termination … In 2001, the idea of one tenured professor being fired for protected speech seemed impossible, yet since 2015 there have been 30.

The author Jonathan Rauch offers a list of cancel-culture tells , which include “Are people denouncing you to your employer, your professional groups or your social connections?” “Is the tone of the discourse ad hominem, repetitive, ritualistic, posturing, accusatory, outraged?” “Are [campaigners] claiming that allowing you to be heard is violence against them or makes them unsafe?” The writer Wesley Yang has published videos , tweets , and essays fleshing out his theory that “cancel culture” is how activists pursue “the politicization of everyday life, the rule of didacticism in art, and the installation through coercive means of a dysfunctional new moral system by a tiny and unaccountable elite.”

Have any of the critics who dismiss cancel-culture concerns made a commensurate attempt to flesh out which punitive social norms are desirable, to define “accountability,” or to specify when it is warranted?

Americans will never achieve consensus about exactly which behaviors are beyond the pale—or what should happen to those who violate accepted norms. But even contested yet clearly understood rules (like the comedian George Carlin’s famous seven words you couldn’t say on TV ) are better, if adopted provisionally by institutions or consistently adhered to in public discourse, than an alternative in which taboo lines are so murky that all manner of adjacent speech is chilled and many people refrain from speaking publicly at all for fear of unwittingly transgressing.

In some cases, the standards are kept vague because more specific ones would be indefensible. If you want to know which faction is abusing its relative power in a given sphere of society, ask who sees no problem with opaque taboos versus who is worried that they will unduly stifle speech.

In states solidly controlled by Republicans, for example, populist-right legislators want to punish certain categories of speech related to race or sex, likely chilling some expression that they could not persuade majorities to ban specifically, and progressive educators are noticing that vague and malleable standards guarantee such speech-dampening excesses. At Ivy League universities, progressive faculty members and DEI administrators are the ones pushing to punish certain kinds of speech related to race or sex, in many cases launching investigations into poorly defined transgressions, and centrist liberals and conservatives are the ones pointing out the danger of vague and malleable standards.

When any faction with power fails to clarify which statements and behaviors it would punish (as opposed to merely criticize) if given the chance, its members might like the fact that they are chilling the speech of their culture-war antagonists. A dearth of clarity is hugely useful for wielding social control. It leaves everyone guessing. But a self-governing people shouldn’t have to guess at what speech is forbidden and what’s allowed.

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Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts Essay

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Planning the Introduction

Planning the body of your essay, planning the conclusion.

Topic sentence: Public shaming has been around since ancient times. Only recently, Gen Z created the term cancel culture to refer to the modern form of public shaming. Cancel culture refers to the practice of an individual or company stopping a public organization or figure after they have said or done something offensive or objectionable (Hassan, 2021).

The following paper bases its idea on three facts:

• Cancel culture simplifies intricate problems and promotes hasty judgments.
• Cancel culture has prompted individuals to ask for forgiveness without typically comprehending the weight of their deeds.
• Cancel culture is an invasion of privacy; it involves criminal threats and might drive an individual to suicide.

Thesis: There are positive effects of cancel culture, such as holding people accountable; however, it is a harmful and wrongful act, and people should not condone it.

Supporting Evidence Paragraph #1

Topic Sentence: The increased awareness of cancel culture has promoted sudden judgments and simplified complex problems.

Explain Topic Sentence: Often, there is a definite contrast between wrong and right. However, in a situation whereby people are constantly searching for mistakes, they may not know it and can be quick to judge (Romano, 2021).

Introduce Evidence: For instance, politicians and other individuals have used cancel culture to coerce people (Romano, 2021).

Concluding Sentence: The acts of cancel culture stop people from sharing their opinions even though that is the appropriate or necessary action.

Supporting Evidence Paragraph #2

Topic Sentence: Additionally, the current cancel culture has led to the perpetrator routinely asking for forgiveness for their past errors after a public outcry (Romano, 2021).

Explain Topic Sentence: The main problem with this outcome is that these individuals solely ask for forgiveness after the public outcry and not after personally acknowledging their mistakes.

Introduce Evidence: For instance, according to Hassan, people should reach out to the perpetrator and constructively share their thoughts and expose their faulty logic instead of calling them out (Hassan, 2021).

Concluding Sentence: Cancel culture affects the habits of individuals negatively. For instance, it causes people to senselessly apologize to people without understanding the cause of the problem.

Supporting Evidence Paragraph #3

Topic Sentence: Unquestionably, cancel culture is toxic when it entails driving an individual to suicide, privacy invasion, or criminal threats (Hassan, 2021).

Explain Topic Sentence: The nature of most social media comments appears to demonstrate that cancel culture does not necessarily result in positive social change. Cancel culture spreads hate online, just like cyberbullying (Hassan, 2021).

Introduce Evidence: For instance, cancelling culture is illegal since hate crimes are prohibited.

Concluding Sentence: The violation of civil rights is viewed as a crime in America, and cancel culture denies citizens who disagree with other people to speak.

Counterargument

Topic Sentence: The advantage of cancel culture is that it typically gives people who have not heard the platform to call out injustices and voice their opinions through social media. It makes individuals impact real-life situations, such as raising awareness against ableism, sexism, or racism. For instance, a canceled entertainer such as Roseanne Barr lost her job and fans after making a racist tweet (Romano, 2020).

Concluding Sentence: When correctly used, cancel culture gives absolute power to everyday people and allows them to have such a significant impact in a virtual setting. However, the problem with this outcome is that the legal system does not share the perceptions towards the deviant behavior done by the canceled individuals.

Topic Sentence: In conclusion, the positive effect of cancel culture does not supersede the adverse impacts of cancel culture, which is harmful and wrongful. Cancel culture should not be allowed. Most individuals think it is an essential social justice tool, especially in an environment with substantial power imbalances between influential public figures and the affected communities and individuals. However, cancel culture has become uncontrollable and has allowed other individuals to invade people’s privacy, leading to senseless apologies while encouraging lawlessness.

Concluding Sentence: Cancel culture is unavoidable in today’s society, but optimistically, people should make a more positive culture with fair criticism.

Public shaming has been around since ancient times. Only recently, Gen Z created the term cancel culture to refer to the modern form of public shaming. Cancel culture refers to the practice of an individual or company stopping a public organization or figure after they have said or done something offensive or objectionable (Hassan, 2021). The following paper bases its idea on three facts: cancel culture simplifies intricate problems and promotes hasty judgments, quickly bringing outrageously severe outcomes in less harsh circumstances. Secondly, cancel culture has prompted individuals to ask for forgiveness without typically comprehending the weight of their deeds. Lastly, cancel culture is an invasion of privacy; it involves criminal threats and might drive an individual to suicide. There are positive effects of cancel culture, such as holding people accountable; however, it is a harmful and wrongful act, and people should not condone it.

The increased awareness of cancel culture has promoted sudden judgments and simplified complex problems. These deeds can easily result in outrageously severe outcomes in less harsh circumstances. Often, there is a definite contrast between wrong and right. However, in a situation whereby people are constantly searching for mistakes, they may not know it and can be quick to judge. For instance, politicians and other individuals have used cancel culture to coerce people (Romano, 2021). The acts of cancelling culture stop people from sharing their opinions even though that is the appropriate or necessary action.

Additionally, the current cancellation culture has led to the perpetrator routinely asking for forgiveness for their past errors after a public outcry. The main problem with this outcome is that these individuals solely ask for forgiveness after the public outcry and not after personally acknowledging their mistakes (Romano, 2021). For instance, according to Hassan, people should reach out to the perpetrator and constructively share their thoughts and expose their faulty logic instead of calling them out. Cancel culture affects the habits of individuals negatively. For instance, it causes people to senselessly apologize to people without understanding the cause of the problem.

Unquestionably, cancel culture is toxic when it entails driving an individual to suicide, privacy invasion, or criminal threats. The nature of most social media comments appears to demonstrate that cancelling culture does not necessarily result in positive social change (Hassan, 2021). Similar to cyberbullying, cancel culture spreads hate online. For instance, cancelling culture is illegal since hate crimes are prohibited. The violation of civil rights is viewed as a crime in America, and cancel culture denies citizens who disagree with other people to speak.

The advantage of cancel media is that it typically gives people who have not heard the platform to call out injustices and voice their opinions through social media. It makes individuals impact real-life situations, such as raising awareness against ableism, sexism, or racism. For instance, a canceled entertainer such as Roseanne Barr lost her job and fans after making a racist tweet (Romano, 2020). When correctly used, cancel culture gives absolute power to everyday people and allows them to have such a significant impact in a virtual setting. However, the problem with this outcome is that the legal system does not share the perceptions towards the deviant behavior done by the canceled individuals.

In conclusion, the positive effect of cancel culture does not supersede the adverse impacts of cancel culture, which is harmful and wrongful. Cancel culture should not be allowed. Ordinary folks have been vigilant of individuals who have rejected their values and morals. These deeds of public humiliation have always existed. In the age of social media and technology, social shaming has taken a new name called the cancel culture. Most individuals think it is an essential social justice tool, especially in an environment with substantial power imbalances between influential public figures and the affected communities and individuals. However, cancel culture has become uncontrollable and has allowed other individuals to invade people’s privacy, leading to senseless apologies while encouraging lawlessness. Cancel culture is unavoidable in today’s society, but optimistically, people should make a more positive culture with fair criticism.

Hassan, S. A. (2021). Why cancel culture by anyone is harmful and wrong. Psychology today. Web.

Romano, A. (2020). Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture. Vox. Web.

Romano, A. (2021). The second wave of ”cancel culture.” Vox. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, December 14). Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cancel-culture-the-adverse-impacts/

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IvyPanda . (2022) 'Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts'. 14 December.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts." December 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cancel-culture-the-adverse-impacts/.

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Cancel culture: a force for good or a threat to free speech?

Discussion about cancel culture has become heated, but who is really in the right? Is it a useful tool for social justice or a form of censorship? We speak to activists, psychologists and authors to find a way forward

Let’s begin with what cancel culture is and what it isn’t, because it has come to mean a great deal of different things to different people. To some, it poses a grave danger to free speech. To some, it is a new take on ‘political correctness gone mad’ and a method used by the intolerant left to enforce a puritanical censure.

To others, it’s just a way of saying that someone has done something they perceive to be offensive and therefore has lost their respect. It is not a new phenomenon – free speech has always had consequences, especially when that speech has the potential for harm. High-profile figures have been challenged and publicly criticised for apparent wrongdoings by the media for decades, celebrities who have acted in opposition with a company’s values have been dropped and politicians regularly pillory their opponents. Today, it can be viewed as a way of defending the weak against higher powers. Rightly or wrongly, cancel culture gives the marginalised an amplified voice and a way to challenge damaging narratives promoted by the status quo.

Its purest definition is the boycotting of a person or organisation because of an objectionable comment or act. It is the withdrawal of support, be it no longer watching films that the offending person has starred in or books that they have written. The cancellation is akin to voiding a contract, severing ties with someone or something that you might have previously been a fan of.

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What it isn’t is call-out culture, which is highlighting a mistake, condemning it if it’s harmful and asking them to do better so that the individual doesn’t make the same error again. Both are linked to public shaming, and both have been used as a way of achieving social justice. Both have become extremely divisive over the past six months, reaching a crescendo last week over comments made by JK Rowling about the trans community. She, along with over 150 academics, writers and authors, penned a public letter condemning cancel culture (thought to be an escalation of call-out culture) on the basis that it threatens the right to free speech, “the lifeblood of a liberal society”, arguing that it promotes an “intolerance of opposing views [and] a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”. It’s a fascinating line to take – to argue that something endangers free speech by telling others that they don’t have the right to theirs.

There are many pitfalls of cancel culture if we take it to mean boycotting a person and expunging them from society. “When does ‘cancelling’ cross over with bullying?” asks the psychologist, lecturer and author Dr Audrey Tang. “The number of Lea Michele’s co-workers who spoke up about her poor behaviour may have been making a point, which Lea Michele addressed, but I refer to the tragic suicide of Caroline Flack. What outcome do those calling for change actually want? Unfortunately, when we say anything, we simply do not know how others will react.”

“Psychologically, cancel culture carries echoes of Melanie Klein’s ‘Splitting Theory,’” says the psychotherapist Lucy Beresford. “This is where small children separate the world into good or bad, and can’t integrate or tolerate the two sides of someone or something. For example, when a parent stops them having ice-cream between meals, they are ‘all bad’ and the child will be furious, whereas when they kiss the child goodnight, they are now ‘all good’ and the child is content. As we grow up, ideally, we are able to hold in our hearts the idea that someone can have different views from us and still be a good or decent person. Cancel culture doesn’t allow for the same kind of nuance.”

One of the potential issues with cancel culture is how it taps into feelings of shame, which rarely helps or propels an individual to learn and make positive changes. Essentially, it renders cancel culture ineffective when it comes to social justice, which is its goal. The research professor Brené Brown, who has spent two decades studying vulnerability, shame and empathy, says that shame is rarely productive.

We think we can shame people into being better, but that’s not true

“We think that shaming is a great moral compass, that we can shame people into being better, but that’s not true,” says Brown in a recent episode of her Unlocking Us podcast . “Here’s a great example that comes up a lot when I’m talking about parenting. You have a kid who tells a lie, so you shame that child, and say, ‘You’re a liar.’ Shame corrodes the part of us that thinks that we can be different. If I’m a liar, if that’s who I am, how do I ever change? How do I ever make a different decision? This is versus ‘You’re a good person and you told a lie, and that behaviour is not OK in this family.’ Everyone needs a platform of self-worth from which to see change.”

Shame is different to guilt, which can prompt positive behaviour. “When we see people apologising, making amends and changing their behaviour, that is always around guilt,” says Brown. “Guilt, the whole ‘I am bad’, is not easy. It creates psychological pain, ‘I have done something that is inconsistent or incongruous with my values or who I want to be.’ When we apologise or make amends for something we’ve done and change our behaviour, guilt is the driving force. It’s a positive, socially adaptive experience.”

The activist and author Jenna Arnold, who was one of the key organisers of the history-making Washington Women’s March in March 2017, agrees that cancel culture is unproductive on the basis that the shame associated with being wrong deters people from moving forward. “It doesn’t leave space for redemption, and while this isn’t an opportunity to pardon those who have caused harm, it is worth the exercise of watching the very important role humility and responsibility can and need to take in a world that is trying to right its way.”

The idea of pushing someone out - because they have said or done something perceived to be offensive - leaves no room for growth or learning. Matt Haig describes cancel culture as “anti-progress because it is anti-change”. “Cancelling people pushes them away and makes them more likely to find spaces where bad views are the norm,” he says. “Obviously, if someone has been convicted of, say, violence or sexual assault then they need to be punished, but cancel culture isn’t that. Cancel culture, as I see it, involves the shutting down of different perspectives and treating people like mere disposable artefacts in the cultural economy.”

Cancel culture involves the shutting down of different perspectives and treating people as disposable

If the purpose of cancel culture is a method to achieve justice for marginalised groups or people, then its influence isn’t as great as we’ve been led to believe. Of individuals who have been ‘cancelled’ over recent years, many are still working and enjoying relative success. Many have not seen long-term boycotts – R Kelly still makes music, Woody Allen still shoots films and Louis CK still performs.

The problem with cancel culture is that it has become too broad, and near meaningless. R Kelly was cancelled over decades of sexual-assault allegations, yet so too was Jodie Comer for dating a Republican. There is no proportion. It is used in so many different contexts, both heavy and light, that it oversimplifies, and loses its weight because it allows those who have engaged in dangerous and/or harmful rhetoric and behaviour to ride on the backlash.

“When something becomes ‘fashionable’ it can lose meaning,” says Dr Tang. “For example, when the debate around Dominic Cummings’ lockdown behaviour was a social-media trend, the calls were to resign, but why not a hefty fine? Why not a suspension? In the workplace ‘you’re fired’ is not the only option. We should not allow the complexity of the human brain to be reduced to a hashtag.”

In the eyes of cancel culture, people are reduced to good or bad with no room for anything in-between. “The process is like air-brushing someone or something out,” says Beresford, “It doesn’t allow for the possibility that two sides could ever agree, or learn from each other, or could persuade each other of their arguments – or even agree to disagree.”

Being told you’re wrong is not the same as being cancelled

That’s not to say that individuals should not be held accountable when they air a questionable view or do something wrong. Call-out culture is just that, the idea that we can challenge someone’s opinion or action without deleting them, therefore leaving them with room to grow and learn. “Being called out has made me a better person,” said Jameela Jamil on Instagram. “Not being cancelled has enabled me to be accountable, learn from my mistakes, and go on to share those lessons with others and do good with my privilege. Most of us have the potential to do that.”

When we decide to call someone out, we must resist a combative approach if we want to have the best chance of helping that person see the issues with what they may said or done. Most of us respond to criticism with defensiveness. Dr Tang says the best results come from talking to someone privately and also to challenge without accusation.

“Ask a question first to generate explanation. For example, ‘When you said x what did you mean by that?’” advises Dr Tang. “It doesn’t have to be nasty, nor humiliating. In fact, the more diplomatic you are, the more likely you are to effect a change of mind and that is after all, what you want. A subtle private message to see if they acted in error is more likely to influence than having a go. The latter only results in defensiveness that neither party wants fundamentally. The debate often turns on wanting to win rather than any form of learning.”

Instead of calling people out, we must start calling them in

Jenna Arnold says we must use forms of restorative justice that don’t make people feel threatened and therefore less likely to want to change. She wants to evolve our concept of call-out culture, instead arguing for ‘call-in culture’.

“My aim is to provide practical tools to use as we start listening with open hearts to others and inviting them to listen to us in the same manner — as, instead of calling people out, we start calling them in,” she says. “We must put aside the urge to win — or maybe just redefine what winning means. We’re not stirring the pot with the goal of a neat resolution or a concrete answer; rather, we want to start uncomfortable conversations for the sake of urgently needed exploration. This can be hard to fully internalise. Yet this hard work is the most essential antidote to the polarisation widening the rifts in society and within ourselves."

By calling each other in, rather than out, when it comes to debate, we take into account the fundamental human desire for acceptance and to be part of a collective.

“Human beings yearn for community,” she says. “We are longing to belong to something bigger than ourselves. Inviting people into the conversation — calling each other ‘in’ versus calling each other ‘out’ — is key to our survival. But that doesn’t only need to happen in the wake of an awkward statement, bumper sticker or post-election conversation. We need to share ideas and seek out the perspectives of others in our communities, throughout our lives. We’re no longer allowed to go back to sleep, no matter who is in the White House or how fair the world suddenly becomes. Being a citizen is active, hard, constant work.”

We live in a society where it’s easier than ever to have our voices heard – social media was designed for it. What we must do now is listen, regardless of which side we fall on. The free-speech argument is two-fold – progress will not be achieved through silencing either party, whether that’s ‘cancelling’ someone, or by dismissing one’s right to criticise. Being told you’re wrong is not the same as being deleted. It’s time to listen, process and move forward.

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The second wave of “cancel culture”

How the concept has evolved to mean different things to different people.

by Aja Romano

“Cancel culture,” as a concept, feels inescapable. The phrase is all over the news, tossed around in casual social media conversation; it’s been linked to everything from free speech debates to Mr. Potato Head .

It sometimes seems all-encompassing, as if all forms of contemporary discourse must now lead, exhaustingly and endlessly, either to an attempt to “cancel” anyone whose opinions cause controversy or to accusations of cancel culture in action, however unwarranted.

In the rhetorical furor, a new phenomenon has emerged: the weaponization of cancel culture by the right.

Across the US, conservative politicians have launched legislation seeking to do the very thing they seem to be afraid of: Cancel supposedly left-wing businesses, organizations, and institutions; see, for example, national GOP figures threatening to punish Major League Baseball for standing against a Georgia voting restrictions law by removing MLB’s federal antitrust exemption.

Meanwhile, Fox News has stoked outrage and alarmism over cancel culture, including trying to incite Gen X to take action against the nebulous problem. Tucker Carlson, one of the network’s most prominent personalities, has emphatically embraced the anti-cancel culture discourse, claiming liberals are trying to cancel everything from Space Jam to the Fourth of July .

The idea of canceling began as a tool for marginalized communities to assert their values against public figures who retained power and authority even after committing wrongdoing — but in its current form, we see how warped and imbalanced the power dynamics of the conversation really are.

All along, debate about cancel culture has obscured its roots in a quest to attain some form of meaningful accountability for public figures who are typically answerable to no one. But after centuries of ideological debate turning over questions of free speech, censorship, and, in recent decades, “political correctness,” it was perhaps inevitable that the mainstreaming of cancel culture would obscure the original concerns that canceling was meant to address. Now it’s yet another hyperbolic phase of the larger culture war.

The core concern of cancel culture — accountability — remains as crucial a topic as ever. But increasingly, the cancel culture debate has become about how we communicate within a binary, right versus wrong framework. And a central question is not whether we can hold one another accountable, but how we can ever forgive.

Cancel culture has evolved rapidly to mean very different things to different people

It’s only been about six years since the concept of “cancel culture” began trickling into the mainstream. The phrase has long circulated within Black culture, perhaps paying homage to Nile Rodgers’s 1981 single “Your Love Is Cancelled.” As I wrote in my earlier explainer on the origins of cancel culture , the concept of canceling a whole person originated in the 1991 film New Jack City and percolated for years before finally emerging online among Black Twitter in 2014 thanks to an episode of Love and Hip-Hop: New York. Since then, the term has undergone massive shifts in meaning and function.

Early on, it most frequently popped up on social media, as people attempted to collectively “cancel,” or boycott, celebrities they found problematic. As a term with roots in Black culture, it has some resonance with Black empowerment movements, as far back as the civil rights boycotts of the 1950s and ’60s . This original usage also promotes the idea that Black people should be empowered to reject cultural figures or works that spread harmful ideas. As Anne Charity Hudley, the chair of linguistics of African America at the University of California Santa Barbara, told me in 2019 , “When you see people canceling Kanye, canceling other people, it’s a collective way of saying, ‘We elevated your social status, your economic prowess, [and] we’re not going to pay attention to you in the way that we once did. ... ‘I may have no power, but the power I have is to [ignore] you.’”

As the logic behind wanting to “cancel” specific messages and behaviors caught on, many members of the public, as well as the media, conflated it with adjacent trends involving public shaming, callouts, and other forms of public backlash . (The media sometimes refers to all of these ideas collectively as “ outrage culture .”) But while cancel culture overlaps and aligns with many related ideas, it’s also always been inextricably linked to calls for accountability.

As a concept, cancel culture entered the mainstream alongside hashtag-oriented social justice movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo — giant social waves that were effective in shifting longstanding narratives about victims and criminals, and in bringing about actual prosecutions in cases like those of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein . It is also frequently used interchangeably with “woke” political rhetoric , an idea that is itself tied to the 2014 rise of the Black Lives Matter protests. In similar ways, both “wokeness” and “canceling” are tied to collectivized demands for more accountability from social systems that have long failed marginalized people and communities.

But over the past few years, many right-wing conservatives, as well as liberals who object to more strident progressive rhetoric, have developed the view that “cancel culture” is a form of harassment intended to silence anyone who sets a foot out of line under the nebulous tenets of “woke” politics . So the idea now represents a vast assortment of objectives and can hold wildly different connotations, depending on whom you’re talking to.

• “Wokeness is a problem and we all know it”

Taken in good faith, the concept of “canceling” a person is really about questions of accountability — about how to navigate a social and public sphere in which celebrities, politicians, and other public figures who say or do bad things continue to have significant platforms and influence. In fact, actor LeVar Burton recently suggested the entire idea should be recast as “consequence culture.”

“I think it’s misnamed,” Burton told the hosts of The View . “I think we have a consequence culture. And that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society, whereas they haven’t been ever in this country.”

Within the realm of good faith, the larger conversation around these questions can then expand to contain nuanced considerations of what the consequences of public misbehavior should be, how and when to rehabilitate the reputation of someone who’s been “canceled,” and who gets to decide those things.

Taken in bad faith, however, “cancel culture” becomes an omniscient and dangerous specter: a woke, online social justice mob that’s ready to rise up and attack anyone, even other progressives, at the merest sign of dissent. And it’s this — the fear of a nebulous mob of cancel-happy rabble-rousers — that conservatives have used to their political advantage.

Conservatives are using fear of cancel culture as a cudgel

Critics of cancel culture typically portray whoever is doing the canceling as wielding power against innocent victims of their wrath. From 2015 on, a variety of news outlets, whether through opinion articles or general reporting , have often framed cancel culture as “ mob rule .”

In 2019, the New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu observed just how frequently some media outlets have compared cancel culture to violent political uprisings, ranging from ethnocide to torture under dictatorial regimes. Such an exaggerated framework has allowed conservative media to depict cancel culture as an urgent societal issue. Fox News pundits, for example, have made cancel culture a focal part of their coverage . In one recent survey , people who voted Republican were more than twice as likely to know what “cancel culture” was, compared with Democrats and other voters, even though in the current dominant understanding of cancel culture, Democrats are usually the ones doing the canceling.

“The conceit that the conservative right has gotten so many people to adopt , beyond divorcing the phrase from its origins in Black queer communities, is an obfuscation of the power relations of the stakeholders involved,” journalist Shamira Ibrahim told Vox in an email. “It got transformed into a moral panic akin to being able to irrevocably ruin the powerful with just the press of a keystroke, when it in actuality doesn’t wield nearly as much power as implied by the most elite.”

You wouldn’t know that to listen to right-wing lawmakers and media figures who have latched onto an apocalyptic scenario in which the person or subject who’s being criticized is in danger of being censored, left jobless, or somehow erased from history — usually because of a perceived left-wing mob.

This is a fear that the right has weaponized. At the 2020 Republican National Convention , at least 11 GOP speakers — about a third of those who took the stage during the high-profile event — addressed cancel culture as a concerning political phenomenon. President Donald Trump himself declared that “The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it.” One delegate resolution at the RNC specifically targeted cancel culture , describing a trend toward “erasing history, encouraging lawlessness, muting citizens, and violating free exchange of ideas, thoughts, and speech.”

Ibrahim pointed out that in addition to re-waging the war on political correctness that dominated the 1990s by repackaging it as a war on cancel culture, right-wing conservatives have also “attempted to launch the same rhetorical battles” across numerous fronts, attempting to rebrand the same calls for accountability and consequences as “woke brigade, digital lynch mobs, outrage culture and call-out culture.” Indeed, it’s because of the collective organizational power that online spaces provide to marginalized communities, she argued, that anti-cancel culture rhetoric focuses on demonizing them.

• The “free speech debate” isn’t really about free speech

Social media is “one of the few spaces that exists for collective feedback and where organizing movements that threaten [conservatives’] social standing have begun,” Ibrahim said, “thus compelling them to invert it into a philosophical argument that doesn’t affect just them, but potentially has destructive effects on censorship for even the working-class individual.”

This potential has nearly become reality through recent forms of Republican-driven legislation around the country. The first wave involved overt censorship , with lawmakers pushing to ban texts like the New York Times’s 1619 Project from educational usage at publicly funded schools and universities. Such censorship could seriously curtail free speech at these institutions — an ironic example of the broader kind of censorship that is seemingly a core fear about cancel culture.

A recent wave of legislation has been directed at corporations as a form of punishment for crossing Republicans. After both Delta Air Lines and Major League Baseball spoke out against Georgia lawmakers’ passage of a restrictive voting rights bill , Republican lawmakers tried to target the companies, tying their public statements to cancel culture. State lawmakers tried and failed to pass a bill stripping Delta of a tax exemption . And some national GOP figures have threatened to punish MLB by removing its exemption from federal antitrust laws. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that “corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs.”

But for all the hysteria and the actual crackdown attempts lawmakers have enacted, even conservatives know that most of the hand-wringing over cancellation is performative. CNN’s AJ Willingham pointed out how easily anti-cancel culture zeal can break down, noting that although the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was called “America Uncanceled,” the organization wound up removing a scheduled speaker who had expressed anti-Semitic viewpoints. And Fox News fired a writer last year after he was found to have a history of making racist, homophobic, and sexist comments online.

These moves suggest that though they may decry “woke” hysteria, conservatives also sometimes want consequences for extremism and other harmful behavior — at least when the shaming might fall on them as well.

“This dissonance reveals cancel culture for what it is,” Willingham wrote. “Accountability for one’s actions.”

CPAC’s swift levying of consequences in the case of a potentially anti-Semitic speaker is revealing on a number of levels, not only because it gives away the lie beneath concerns that “cancel culture” is something profoundly new and dangerous, but also because the conference actually had the power to take action and hold the speaker accountable. Typically, the apocryphal “social justice mob” has no such ability. Actually canceling a whole person is much harder to do than opponents of cancel culture might make it sound — nearly impossible, in fact.

Very few “canceled” public figures suffer significant career setbacks

It’s true that some celebrities have effectively been canceled, in the sense that their actions have resulted in major consequences, including job losses and major reputational declines, if not a complete end to their careers.

Consider Harvey Weinstein , Bill Cosby , R. Kelly , and Kevin Spacey , who faced allegations of rape and sexual assault that became impossible to ignore, and who were charged with crimes for their offenses. They have all effectively been “canceled” — Weinstein and Cosby because they’re now convicted criminals, Kelly because he’s in prison awaiting trial , and Spacey because while all charges against him to date have been dropped, he’s too tainted to hire.

Along with Roseanne Barr, who lost her hit TV show after a racist tweet , and Louis C.K., who saw major professional setbacks after he admitted to years of sexual misconduct against female colleagues, their offenses were serious enough to irreparably damage their careers, alongside a push to lessen their cultural influence.

But usually, to effectively cancel a public figure is much more difficult. In typical cases where “cancel culture” is applied to a famous person who does something that incurs criticism, that person rarely faces serious long-term consequences. During the past year alone, a number of individuals and institutions have faced public backlash for troubling behavior or statements — and a number of them thus far have either weathered the storm or else departed their jobs or restructured their operations of their own volition.

For example, beloved talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has come under fire in recent years for a number of reasons, from palling around with George W. Bush to accusing the actress Dakota Johnson of not inviting her to a party to, most seriously, allegedly fostering an abusive and toxic workplace . The toxic workplace allegations had an undeniable impact on DeGeneres’s ratings, with The Ellen DeGeneres Show losing over 40 percent of its viewership in the 2020–’21 TV season. But DeGeneres has not literally been canceled; her daytime talk show has been confirmed for a 19th season, and she continues to host other TV series like HBO Max’s Ellen’s Next Great Designer .

Another TV host recently felt similar heat but has so far retained his job: In February, The Bachelor franchise underwent a reckoning due to a long history of racial insensitivity and lack of diversity, culminating in the announcement that longtime host Chris Harrison would be “ stepping aside for a period of time.” But while Harrison won’t be hosting the upcoming season of The Bachelorette , ABC still lists him as the franchise host, and some franchise alums have come forward to defend him . (It is unclear whether Harrison will return as a host in the future, though he has said he plans to do so and has been working with race educators and engaging in a personal accountability program of “counsel, not cancel.”)

In many cases, instead of costing someone their career, the allegation of having been “canceled” instead bolsters sympathy for the offender, summoning a host of support from both right-wing media and the public. In March 2021, concerns that Dr. Seuss was being “canceled” over a decision by the late author’s publisher to stop printing a small selection of works containing racist imagery led to a run on Seuss’s books that landed him on bestseller lists. And although J.K. Rowling sparked massive outrage and calls to boycott all things Harry Potter after she aired transphobic views in a 2020 manifesto, sales of the Harry Potter books increased tremendously in her home country of Great Britain.

A few months later, 58 British public figures including playwright Tom Stoppard signed an open letter supporting Rowling’s views and calling her the target of “an insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media.” And in December, the New York Times not only reviewed the author’s latest title — a new children’s book called The Ickabog — but praised the story’s “moral rectitude,” with critic Sarah Lyall summing up, “It made me weep with joy.” It was an instant bestseller .

In light of these contradictions, it’s tempting to declare that the idea of “canceling” someone has already lost whatever meaning it once had. But for many detractors, the “real” impact of cancel culture isn’t about famous people anyway.

Rather, they worry, “cancel culture” and the polarizing rhetoric it enables really impacts the non-famous members of society who suffer its ostensible effects — and that, even more broadly, it may be threatening our ability to relate to each other at all.

The debate around cancel culture began as a search for accountability. It may ultimately be about encouraging empathy.

It’s not only right-wing conservatives who are wary of cancel culture. In 2019, former President Barack Obama decried cancel culture and “woke” politics, framing the phenomenon as people “be[ing] as judgmental as possible about other people” and adding, “That’s not activism.”

At a recent panel devoted to making a nonpartisan “ Case Against Cancel Culture ,” former ACLU president Nadine Strossen expressed great concern over cancel culture’s chilling effect on the non-famous. “I constantly encounter students who are so fearful of being subjected to the Twitter mob that they are engaging in self-censorship,” she said. Strossen cited as one such chilling effect the isolated instances of students whose college admissions had been rescinded on the basis of racist social media posts.

In his recent book Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture , human rights lawyer and free speech advocate Dan Kovalik argues that cancel culture is basically a giant self-own, a product of progressive semantics that causes the left to cannibalize itself.

“Unfortunately, too many on the left, wielding the cudgel of ‘cancel culture,’ have decided that certain forms of censorship and speech and idea suppression are positive things that will advance social justice,” Kovalik writes . “I fear that those who take this view are in for a rude awakening.”

Kovalik’s worries are partly grounded in a desire to preserve free speech and condemn censorship. But they’re also grounded in empathy. As America’s ideological divide widens, our patience with opposing viewpoints seems to be waning in favor of a type of society-wide “cancel and move on” approach, even though studies suggest that approach does nothing to change hearts and minds. Kovalik points to a survey published in 2020 that found that in 700 interactions, “deep listening” — including “respectful, non-judgmental conversations” — was 102 times more effective than brief interactions in a canvassing campaign for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Across the political spectrum, wariness toward the idea of “cancel culture” has increased — but outside of right-wing political spheres, that wariness isn’t so centered on the hyper-specific threat of losing one’s job or career due to public backlash. Rather, the term “cancel culture” functions as shorthand for an entire mode of polarized, aggressive social engagement.

Journalist (and Vox contributor) Zeeshan Aleem has argued that contemporary social media engenders a mode of communication he calls “disinterpretation,” in which many participants are motivated to join the conversation not because they want to promote communication, or even to engage with the original opinion, but because they seek to intentionally distort the discourse.

In this type of interaction, as Aleem observed in a recent Substack post, “Commentators are constantly being characterized as believing things they don’t believe, and entire intellectual positions are stigmatized based on vague associations with ideas that they don’t have any substantive affiliation with.” The goal of such willful misinterpretation, he argued, is conformity — to be seen as aligned with the “correct” ideological standpoint in a world where stepping out of alignment results in swift backlash, ridicule, and cancellation.

Such an antagonistic approach “effectively treats public debate as a battlefield,” he wrote. He continued:

It’s illustrative of a climate in which nothing is untouched by polarization, in which everything is a proxy for some broader orientation which must be sorted into the bin of good/bad, socially aware/problematic, savvy/out of touch, my team/the enemy. ... We’re tilting toward a universe in which all discourse is subordinate to activism; everything is a narrative, and if you don’t stay on message then you’re contributing to the other team on any given issue. What this does is eliminate the possibility of public ambiguity, ambivalence, idiosyncrasy, self-interrogation.

The problem with this style of communication is that in a world where every argument gets flattened into a binary under which every opinion and every person who publicly shares their thoughts must be either praised or canceled, few people are morally righteous enough to challenge that binary without their own motives and biases then being called into question. The question becomes, as Aleem reframed it for me: “How does someone avoid the reality that their claims of being disinterpreted will be disinterpreted?”

“When people demand good-faith engagement, it can often be dismissed as a distraction tactic or whining about being called out,” he explained, noting that some responses to his original Twitter thread on the subject assumed he must be complaining about just such a callout.

Other complications can arise, such as when the people who are protesting against this type of bad-faith discourse are also criticized for problematic statements or behavior , or perceived as having too much privilege to wholly understand the situation. Remember, the origins of cancel culture are rooted in giving marginalized members of society the ability to seek accountability and change, especially from people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, power, and privilege.

“[W]hat people do when they invoke dog whistles like ‘cancel culture’ and ‘culture wars,’” Danielle Butler wrote for the Root in 2018, “is illustrate their discomfort with the kinds of people who now have a voice and their audacity to direct it towards figures with more visibility and power.”

But far too often, people who call for accountability on social media seem to slide quickly into wanting to administer punishment instead. In some cases, this process really does play out with a mob mentality, one that seems bent on inflicting pain and hurt while allowing no room for growth and change, showing no mercy, and offering no real forgiveness — let alone allowing for the possibility that the mob itself might be entirely unjustified.

See, for example, trans writer Isabel Fall, who wrote a short story in 2020 that angered many readers with its depiction of gender dysphoria through the lens of militaristic warfare. (The story has since become a finalist for a Hugo Award.) Because Fall published under a pseudonym, people who disliked the story assumed she must be transphobic rather than a trans woman wrestling with her own dysphoria. Fall was harassed, doxed, forcibly outed, and driven offline . These types of “cancellations” can happen without consideration for the person being canceled, even when that person apologizes — or, as in Fall’s case, even when they had little if anything to be sorry about.

The conflation of antagonized social media debates with the more serious aims to make powerful people face consequences is part of the problem. “I think the messy and turbulent evolution of speech norms online influences people’s perception of what’s called cancel culture,” Aleem said. He added that he’s grown “resistant to using the term [cancel culture] because it’s become so hard to pin down.”

“People connect boycotts with de-platforming speakers on college campuses,” he observed, “with social media harassment, with people being fired abruptly for breaching a taboo in a viral video.” The result is an environment where social media is a double-edged sword: “One could argue,” Aleem said, “that there’s now public input on issues [that wasn’t available] before, and that’s good for civil society, but that the vehicle through which that input comes produces some civically unhealthy ways of expression.”

Prevailing confusion about cancel culture hasn’t stopped it from becoming culturally and politically entrenched

If the conversation around cancel culture is unhealthy, then one can argue that the social systems cancel culture is trying to target are even more unhealthy — and that, for many people, is the bottom line.

The concept of canceling someone was created by communities of people who’ve never had much power to begin with. When people in those communities attempt to demand accountability by canceling someone, the odds are still stacked against them. They’re still the ones without the social, political, or professional power to compel someone into meaningful atonement, but they can at least be vocal by calling for a collective boycott.

The push by right-wing lawmakers and pundits to use the concept as a tool to vilify the left, liberals, and the powerless upends the original logic of cancel culture, Ibrahim told me. “It is being used to obscure marginalized voices by inverting the victim and the offender, and disingenuously affording disproportionate impact to the reach of a single voice — which has historically long been silenced — to now being the silencer of cis, male, and wealthy individuals,” she said.

And that approach is both expanding and growing more visible. What’s more, it is a divide not just between ideologies, but also between tactical approaches in navigating those ideological differences and dealing with wrongdoing.

“It effectuates a slippery-slope argument by taking a rhetorical scenario and pushing it to really absurdist levels, and furthermore asking people to suspend their implicit understanding of social constructs of power and class,” Ibrahim said. “It mutates into, ‘If I get canceled, then anyone can get canceled.’” She pointed out that usually, the supposedly “canceled” individual suffers no real long-term harm — “particularly when you give additional time for a person to regroup from a scandal. The media cycle iterates quicker than ever in present day.”

She suggested that perhaps the best approach to combating the escalation of cancel culture hysteria into a political weapon is to refuse to let those with power shape the way the conversation plays out.

“I think our remit, if anything, is to challenge that reframing and ask people to define the stakes of what material quality of life and liberty was actually lost,” she said.

In other words, the way cancel culture is discussed in the media might make it seem like something to fear and avoid at all costs, an apocalyptic event that will destroy countless lives and livelihoods, but in most cases, it’s probably not. That’s not to suggest that no one will ever be held accountable, or that powerful people won’t continue to be asked to answer for their transgressions. But the greater worry is still that people with too much power might use it for bad ends.

At its best, cancel culture has been about rectifying power imbalances and redistributing power to those who have little of it. Instead, it now seems that the concept may have become a weapon for people in power to use against those it was intended to help.

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How Americans feel about ‘cancel culture’ and offensive speech in 6 charts

Americans have long debated the boundaries of free speech, from what is and isn’t protected by the First Amendment to discussions about “political correctness” and, more recently, “cancel culture.” The internet has amplified these debates and fostered new questions about tone and tenor in recent years. Here’s a look at how adults in the United States see these and related issues, based on Pew Research Center surveys.

This Pew Research Center analysis looks at how Americans view the tenor of discourse, both online and off. The findings used here come from three surveys the Center conducted in fall 2020. Sample sizes, field dates and methodological information for each survey are accessible through the links in this analysis.

In a September 2020 survey, 44% of Americans said they’d heard at least a fair amount about the phrase “cancel culture,” including 22% who had heard a great deal about it. A majority of Americans (56%) said they’d heard nothing or not too much about it, including 38% – the largest share – who had heard nothing at all about the phrase.

Familiarity with the term cancel culture varied by age, gender and education level, but not political party affiliation, according to the same survey.

Younger adults were more likely to have heard about cancel culture than their older counterparts. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of adults under 30 said they’d heard a great deal or fair amount about cancel culture, compared with 46% of those ages 30 to 49 and 34% of those 50 and older.

Men were more likely than women to be familiar with the phrase, as were those who have a bachelor’s or advanced degree when compared with those who have lower levels of formal education.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were about as likely as Republicans and GOP leaners to say they had heard at least a fair amount about cancel culture (46% vs. 44%). But there were more pronounced differences within each party when taking ideology into account. About six-in-ten liberal Democrats (59%) said they had heard at least a fair amount about cancel culture, compared with roughly a third of conservative and moderate Democrats (34%). Similarly, around half of conservative Republicans (49%) had heard of the term, compared with around a third of moderate and liberal Republicans (36%).

Americans were most likely to mention accountability when describing what the phrase cancel culture means to them. As part of the fall 2020 survey, the Center asked U.S. adults who had heard a fair amount or a great deal about the term to explain in their own words what it meant to them. Around half (49%) said it describes actions people take to hold others accountable.

Smaller shares described cancel culture as a form of censorship – such as a restriction on free speech or as history being erased – or as mean-spirited attacks used to cause others harm (14% and 12%, respectively).

About a third of conservative Republicans who had heard of the phrase (36%) described it as actions taken to hold people accountable, compared with roughly half or more of moderate or liberal Republicans (51%), conservative or moderate Democrats (54%) and liberal Democrats (59%).

Conservative Republicans who had heard of the term were also more likely to see cancel culture as a form of censorship: 26% described it as censorship, compared with 15% of moderate or liberal Republicans and roughly one-in-ten or fewer Democrats, regardless of ideology.

In the September 2020 survey, Americans said they believed calling out others on social media is more likely to hold people accountable than punish people who don’t deserve it. Overall, 58% of adults said that in general, when people publicly call others out on social media for posting content that might be considered offensive, they are more likely to hold people accountable . In comparison, 38% said this kind of action is more likely to punish people who don’t deserve it.

Views on this question differed sharply by political party. Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to say that this type of action holds people accountable (75% vs. 39%). In contrast, 56% of Republicans – but just 22% of Democrats – said this generally punishes people who don’t deserve it.

In a separate report using data from the same September 2020 survey, 55% of Americans said many people take offensive content they see online too seriously , while a smaller share (42%) said offensive content online is too often excused as not a big deal.

Americans’ attitudes again differed widely by political party. Roughly six-in-ten Democrats (59%) said offensive content online is too often excused as not a big deal, while just a quarter of Republicans agreed – a 34 percentage point gap. And while 72% of Republicans said many people take offensive content they see online too seriously, about four-in-ten Democrats (39%) said the same.

In a four-country survey conducted in the fall of 2020, Americans were the most likely to say that people today are too easily offended . A majority of Americans (57%) said people today are too easily offended by what others say, while four-in-ten said people should be careful what they say to avoid offending others, according to the survey of adults in the U.S., Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

In contrast, respondents in the three European countries surveyed were more closely divided over whether people today are too easily offended or whether people should be careful what they say to avoid offending others.

Opinions on this topic were connected to ideological leanings in three of the four countries surveyed, with the largest gap among U.S. adults. Around two-thirds of Americans on the ideological left (65%) said people should be careful to avoid offending others, compared with about one-in-four on the ideological right – a gap of 42 percentage points. The left-right difference was 17 points in the UK and 15 points in Germany. There was no significant difference between the left and the right in France.

In the U.S., the ideological divide was closely related to political party affiliation: Six-in-ten Democrats said people should be careful what they say to avoid offending others, while only 17% of Republicans said the same.

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Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center .

Americans’ views of offensive speech aren’t necessarily clear-cut

Many adults in east and southeast asia support free speech, are open to societal change, americans’ views of technology companies, most americans say a free press is highly important to society, ­most americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online, most popular.

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Cancel Culture Argument/Essay

Hi, I recently wrote an argument against cancel culture for a hs English class and have been tasked with publishing it somewhere on the internet, so I figured this would be a good place.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hzcg1WMM18cXLIN-j7wwB3TVjeEs5rt6E42CMrynOcU/edit?usp=sharing

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student opinion

How Do You Feel About Cancel Culture?

Do you think public call-outs are an effective way to hold others accountable for their harmful actions? Or is it better to call them in and work toward a resolution?

By Nicole Daniels

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

When you hear the terms “canceled” or “cancel culture,” what comes to mind?

According to Dictionary.com, “ cancel culture 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.”

But these days, the phenomenon can apply to personal relationships, too. Have you had an experience with canceling someone — whether a friend or family member, a celebrity, or someone in your school community — or being canceled yourself? Would you say that cancel culture is prevalent at your school?

In the 2019 Style article “ Tales From the Teenage Cancel Culture ,” Sanam Yar and Jonah Engel Bromwich share six stories of cancel culture from high school and college students.

In one, a teenager grapples with what she sees as a classmate’s problematic music choices:

A few weeks ago, Neelam, a high school senior, was sitting in class at her Catholic school in Chicago. After her teacher left the room, a classmate began playing “Bump N’ Grind,” an R. Kelly song. Neelam, 17, had recently watched the documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” with her mother. She said it had been “emotional to take in as a black woman.” Neelam asked the boy and his cluster of friends to stop playing the track, but he shrugged off the request. “‘It’s just a song,’” she said he replied. “‘We understand he’s in jail and known for being a pedophile, but I still like his music.’” She was appalled. They were in a class about social justice. They had spent the afternoon talking about Catholicism, the common good and morality. The song continued to play. That classmate, who is white, had done things in the past that Neelam described as problematic, like casually using racist slurs — not name-calling — among friends. After class, she decided he was “canceled,” at least to her. Her decision didn’t stay private; she told a friend that week that she had canceled him. She told her mother too. She said that this meant she would avoid speaking or engaging with him in the future, that she didn’t care to hear what he had to say, because he wouldn’t change his mind and was beyond reason. “When it comes to cancel culture , it’s a way to take away someone’s power and call out the individual for being problematic in a situation,” Neelam said. “I don’t think it’s being sensitive. I think it’s just having a sense of being observant and aware of what’s going on around you.”

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