Cancel Culture is the current buzzword among online social discourse. Every time someone says or does something deemed socially objectionable, there are calls to “cancel” that person, or claims that the person has been “cancelled.” This can take on many different forms. It could be refusal to consume that person’s intellectual property, or literal removal from a job or position of power, or even the more aggressive attacking of the person.
Contrary to popular belief, “cancel culture” is in no way new. History is littered with instances of individuals being “cancelled” for their behaviors, beliefs, and outcomes. It’s also often interesting that many of these “cancelled” people went on to be very successful (Looking at you, Martin Luther). Individuals have been written out of historical events because the authors were mad at them. Individuals were painted as demons and monsters based on the writer’s perception. “Cancelling” someone deemed socially objectionable is by no means new – no matter how much the internet wants to claim it is.
But “cancel culture” is certainly a new, toxic form of this phenomenon. I was just scrolling the Tik Tok “For You” page, as one is apt to o when they have lost all control of their anxiety and are procrastinating things they actually need to do, and I came upon a video of a young, straight, cisgender man apologizing for some comments he said. This particular situation intrigued me because the man was essentially defending wearing jewelry and nail polish. In his defense, he showed his privileged, bastardized perception of the social strides made in our culture in the last 50+ years by LGBTQ+ activists and even specifically mentions the LGBTQ+ icon, trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. This defense was more inflammatory than the initial criticism, and it showed some sensitive, raw issues in the nature of activism.
I am not here to comment on this specific situation, though. Instead, I wish to examine a phenomenon I noticed while scrolling aimlessly through the comments. First, there’s obviously a massive disconnect between different proponents on either side. There seemed to be as many LGBTQ+ people criticizing him as there were LGBTQ+ people defending him. But even so, that is not what was noteworthy. Someone, who I assumed was LGBTQ+ identifying based on context, asked “Are we really going to cancel a straight guy for wearing nail polish and pearls?”
I hadn’t thought much about the concept of “cancelling.” I always just viewed it as a buzzword. But this one comment made me think of where the idea of cancelling came from. Then I realized it. I examined a simple question: When people say “cancel” in this regard, what do they actually mean? They mean stopping that particular brand of thought, expression, or behavior from being seen by the general public. I emphasize general public, because we do not use the term in one on one interpersonal relationships. So I thought of where that idea came from, and it was obvious.
The toxic nature of cancel culture is not that it seeks to stop an individual from expressing themselves or criticizes problematic views. The toxic aspect of it is that it relates interpersonal, real world social issues to episodic, crafted storylines. It relates interpersonal relationships to media. What else gets cancelled? Television shows, books, and movies.
There will be no more episodes of this person because we don’t like the message they are spouting. This is the ultimate message of “cancel culture” and this message is not intrinsic in firing someone or discontinuing their work. It has been assigned to that behavior by modern culture. It likens cultural attitudes to television shows that we can tune into or out of at our personal leisure. It reflects the increased marketization and commodification – and even weaponization – of ideas. It reflects a usurpation of activism into a prepacked episodic that can be enjoyed and ignored like an episode of Friends. Rather than expressing these ideas as a part of life, they are sold as individual units of goods that can be traded and commodified.
This is an issue for both the canceller and the cancelled. “Cancelling” someone rarely actually addresses the cause of the problem. It’s an easy, self-satisfying way of feeling like we are enacting change, when its really just pushing those people into rabbit holes like Qanon and Incel subreddits. In an ironic twist, this behavior attempts to apply a capitalistic mindset to culture and ideas. The logic seems to be to artificially drive down the “demand” so there is less supply.
Unfortunately, ideas do not follow a capitalistic economic structure. It’s easy to measure culture and ideas in the terms that capitalism has defined – but that’s just playing into capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t care about the ideas and their merits. Capitalism has never and will never truly reflect morality or ethics in a culture. Capitalism has confounded the ideals of activism and attempted to apply economics to activism. As long as we measure our activism transactionally, we will never move out of it.
I do not argue that people should or should not be “cancelled.” Instead, I argue that the application of economic, capitalist ideals onto our modern notions of activism is detrimental to our causes. Cancel culture seeks to artificially alter the capitalistic concepts of supply and demand, but the “good” in question has no true supply and demand. Cancelling an idea does not remove the demand for the idea – it just sends it somewhere its not visible.
The true issue seems to be the commodification of activism. This criticism is obvious when companies and brands cling to trendy social causes that they believe will increase their profits, but much less obvious when we start applying capitalist themes to our activism. Just like ideas, people cannot be cancelled (at least, not without literal death). People need to be addressed, and ideas need to be shared and challenged.
Of course, there is a caveat to this. Activists did not invent the concept of “Cancel culture.” It was coined by frustrated people who kept getting their ideas challenged. The issues come with engaging in this discussion. The issue comes with using the phrasing, even if ironically or sarcastically. It was coined to delegitimize the arguments that were being made. It was coined to create a straw man argument against the activism. The reason it is so contentious is because we all know, deep down, that we cannot apply these concepts to ideas. That’s why the cancel culture argument goes nowhere. That’s what it is designed to do.
Someone gets “cancelled” and suddenly we are arguing about cancel culture, rather than what the person actually did. Gina Carreno said anti-Semitic things in a public forum. Why are we talking about cancel culture? Where are the articles and arguments from people bashing anti-Semitism? Yes, I know they exist, but the continuing conversation is on cancel culture and not on what she actually said. The issue here is not cancel culture. It is our cultural positions on certain issues. The thing is, activists have won the anti-Semitism battle. Everyone knows anti-Semitism is bad. They cannot argue against that, so they create a straw man to argue in its stead.
This is the goal of cancel culture, and we are playing into it whenever we engage in this cancel culture discussion.
Activists need to stop engaging with the discussion of cancel culture. They need to challenge ideas head on, instead of hiding behind a shield of cancel culture. Cancel culture protects people with objectionable ideas, beliefs and behaviors. To move beyond these ideals and truly move them into obscurity, we must reject the idea of cancel culture. Cancel culture is simply disguised “whataboutism” and “devil’s advocating” designed to undermine activism. It succeeds when we engage it.
Ideas are not commodities. We need to stop treating them that way
Sean Conklin 