Cancel Culture
First used in 2016, the phrase cancel culture, also known as callout culture, is the removal (“canceling”) of support for individuals (and their work), a group of people, an organization, or a company due to an opinion or action on their part deemed objectionable to the parties “calling” them out. [1][35]
(This article first appeared on ProCon.org and was last updated on August 16, 2023.)
Those being canceled are typically first called out on social media to magnify public knowledge of the perceived offense, whereupon the campaign to cancel ensues. The canceling can take several forms, including the exerting of pressure on organizations to cancel the public appearances or speaking engagements of the canceled parties and, in the case of businesses deemed offensive, organizing boycotts of their products. [1]
Celebrities and social and political leaders are frequently the targets of cancel campaigns. Actor and comedian Bill Cosby, who was found guilty in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman and accused of assault by more than 50 women, is only one of many recent high-profile examples. But everyday, people can be caught in the crosshairs as well. A public relations executive, for example, tweeted an offensive joke about AIDS before boarding a plane in London to travel to South Africa. An uproar on Twitter (now called X) followed, and by the time her plane landed, she had been “called out,” “canceled,” and fired from her job. [2][3]
The cancel campaigns are not always so successful or one-sided. In July 2020, after Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue praised U.S. President Donald Trump for promoting a Hispanic prosperity initiative, liberal Latino leaders organized a boycott of Goya products despite Unanue’s similar praise of President Barack Obama. Instead of bankrupting the company, the attempted cancellation prompted the Bodega and Small Business Association to come to the company’s defense with a “buycott” to support thousands of Black and Latino Goya employees and the more than 13,000 shops that sell Goya products. [4][5]
Anyone who remembers reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter knows cancel culture is not new. Alexis de Tocqueville, French political scientist, historian, and politician, noted the culture in the 1835 first volume of Democracy in America after having toured the U.S. from 1831 to 1832: A man who dares to speak contrary to the majority opinion will find a “political career is closed to him: he has offended the only power that has the capacity to open it up. Everything is refused him, even glory. Before publishing his opinions, he believed he had partisans; it seems to him that he no longer has any now that he has uncovered himself to all; for those who blame him express themselves openly, and those who think like him, without having his courage, keep silent and move away. He yields, he finally bends under the effort of each day and returns to silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.” [36]
What is new, however, is the ability of social media and the 24-hour news cycle to boost the speed, scope, and impact of a “cancel.”
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Pro 1: Cancel culture allows marginalized people to seek accountability where the justice system fails. Read More. | Con 1: Cancel culture amounts to online bullying and can incite violence and threats even worse than the original offense being called out. Read More. |
| Pro 2: Cancel culture gives a voice to disenfranchised or less powerful people. Read More. | Con 2: Cancel culture is not productive and does not bring about social change. Read More. |
| Pro 3: Cancel culture is simply a new form of boycott, a cherished tactic in the civil rights movement, to bring about social change. Read More. | Con 3: Cancel culture is a slippery slope and leads to intolerance in democratic societies as people systematically exclude anyone who disagrees with their views. Read More. |
Pro Arguments
(Go to Con Arguments)Pro 1: Cancel culture allows marginalized people to seek accountability where the justice system fails.
The Me Too movement gave innumerable women (and some men) the ability to call out and maybe cancel their countless abusers in a forum where the accusations might be heard and matter.
Olivia Goldhill, Quartz science reporter, explains, “Men have sexually assaulted and harassed women with impunity for millennia. Incredibly, ever since the allegations against Hollywood impresario Harvey Weinstein stopped being an ‘open secret,’ a few famous men have finally faced repercussions for their actions. Where inept courts and HR departments have failed, a new tactic has succeeded: Women talking publicly about harassment on social media, fueling the public condemnation that’s forced men from their jobs and destroyed their reputations.” [6]
“Historically, we as a culture don’t do much to the rich and famous and powerful men of the world when women say that those men have hurt them. We give them Oscars and a seat on the Supreme Court and in the White House, and we call their accusers liars or hysterical or unreliable. We treat the men and their power as sacrosanct and the women and their pain as disposable,” states Constance Grady, staff writer at Vox. [7]
By Oct. 2018, the end of the first year of Me Too, 429 people faced 1,700 allegations of sexual misconduct. That cohort included Harvey Weinstein, now convicted of third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act. The allegations against Weinstein date to the late 1980s, and had long been an “open secret” in Hollywood. Without cancel culture, Weinstein might still be in a position of power. [8][9][10][11]
Weinstein is the outlier in terms of criminal justice. Few powerful men are convicted of sexual misconduct. As of July 3, 2020, Me Too allegations have resulted in only seven convictions and five other people charged with sexual misconduct. However, 201 men in positions of power lost their jobs in the first year of Me Too due to sexual misconduct allegations that were posted on social media. [9][10]
As Jill Filipovic, lawyer and writer, explains, “For the powerful, criminal convictions are rare, in part because these people have better tools to work the justice system and rarely fit the stereotype of a convict. So the court of public opinion ends up being where accusations—and just as often, accusers—are tried.” [12]
Beyond Me Too, other movements are able to demand justice. Black Lives Matter has repeatedly called out the killing of Black men in particular by police officers. The result was perhaps the biggest global civil rights movement in history when 15 to 26 million people marched globally for Black rights in June 2020. [13] [14]
Pro 2: Cancel culture gives a voice to disenfranchised or less powerful people.
“The critics of cancel culture are plainly threatened not by a new and uniquely powerful kind of public criticism but by a new set of critics: young progressives, including many minorities and women who, largely through social media, have obtained a seat at the table where matters of justice and etiquette are debated and are banging it loudly to make up for lost time,” explains Osita Nwanevu, staff writer at The New Republic. [15]
Meredith Clark, assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, elaborates on the power given to disenfranchised voices: “To me, it’s ultimately an expression of agency. To a certain extent: I really do think of it like a breakup and a taking back of one’s power.” [16]
“While there may be instances of collateral damage [in cancel culture], even people innocently accused, a more pressing problem to address is how and why institutions we are supposed to trust are deaf to many of the problems facing women and minority groups,” says author Oscar Schwartz. [17]
While not everyone has access to legislators or other powerful people, everyone can sign up for a Twitter (now X) account. “Canceling is a way to acknowledge that you don’t have to have the power to change structural inequality. You don’t even have to have the power to change all of public sentiment. But as an individual, you can still have power beyond measure [online],” and “for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversations,” explains Anne Charity Hudley, chair of linguistics of African America at the University of California Santa Barbara. [18]
Dee Lockett, music editor for Vulture, summarizes the results of the social media callouts during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests: “It’s been most effective as a collective public display of pointing the finger at a problem. It’s a massive signal boost, but that doesn’t mean it’s valueless. It’s performative…to post these screenshots of our donation receipts, swipe ups to anti-black reading lists, and lying en masse on the grass for eight-plus minutes as George Floyd’s last words are recited over a mic. It’s also the language and currency of this era. Purses are opening. Cops (in one case) have been charged. There’s also a lot of value in seeing your faves turn into grassroots activists overnight. Halsey is a war nurse out of nowhere?! John Boyega is an anointed civil-rights leader. Kehlani is mobilizing on the ground. I’ve never seen anything like it.” [20]
Pro 3: Cancel culture is simply a new form of boycott, a cherished tactic in the civil rights movement, to bring about social change.
Lisa Nakamura, professor and director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, states that cancel culture is “a cultural boycott. It’s an agreement not to amplify, signal boost, give money to. People talk about the attention economy—when you deprive someone of your attention, you’re depriving them of a livelihood.” She elaborates, “Socially irredeemable things are said on platforms all the time” but cancellation provides “a culture of accountability which is not centralized and is haphazard, but needed to come into being.” [16]
Hudley states simply, “If you don’t have the ability to stop something through political means, what you can do is refuse to participate.” Boycotts have long been associated with civil rights movements with the most famous, perhaps, being the Montgomery Bus boycott that began in 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of an Alabama bus. [18][19]
Craig Jenkins, Vulture music critic, refers to cancel culture as “a redrawing of the balance of power between brands and consumers—a necessary one, I think. I’m thrilled the brands are scared to death of saying the wrong thing for once.” [20]
Jenkins’s colleague, senior writer, E. Alex Jung responded, “Accountability is a really good way to frame it. It’s actually asking, well, if Amazon is suddenly going to uproot systemic racism (lol), what does that actually mean in terms of their labor practices? Or Twitter trying to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter even though as a company they haven’t taken racism and misogyny that affected their users seriously for years. The question is how deep this reckoning goes.” [20]
Meanwhile, at least 800 big brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Ford are using cancel culture to boycott Facebook advertising because of the platform’s refusal to censor the speech of organizations deemed “hate groups.” [21]
Con Arguments
(Go to Pro Arguments)Con 1: Cancel culture amounts to online bullying and can incite violence and threats even worse than the original offense being called out.
Sam Biddle, the journalist who retweeted Justine Sacco’s joke about AIDS that resulted in her firing while on a plane to South Africa, later regretted his actions and their results, stating, “It’s easy and thrilling to hate a stranger online.” [22]
Asam Ahmad, author and community organizer, notes that canceling an everyday person without compassion for the complexities of that person’s life amounts to bullying: “For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.” [23]
Like the incident with Sacco, a single callout frequently snowballs into a mob attack on an individual. Anna Richards, vice president at The Neutral Zone Coaching and Consulting Services, notes that those doing the calling out are “taking this moral high ground, with a lot of righteous indignation, and inviting others to participate in a public shaming exercise.” And that is frequently counterproductive, because the people being canceled “feel as though they’re already on shaky ground and if they have some sort of mistake highlighted it would be drawing from an empty cup. Generally what I see is just a total collapse, where the person’s sense of self is eroded, or a kind of counter-attack, where they double down on their position and don’t want to learn.” [24]
“All too commonly…users feed off the negativity presented in these online boycotts to create a hate train of mass cyberbullying targeted at one specific individual. Death threats are oftentimes among the list of obscene proclamations directed toward canceled individuals, which elevate the resented climate to an even more alarming state and can lead to real-life detriments. From this perspective, social media users’ retaliation against those who are canceled is sometimes more offensive than the exposed behavior of the offender themself,” explains Alex Miranda, a high school student. [25]
Sameer Hinduja, codirector of the Cyberbullying Research Center at Florida Atlantic University, states that cyberbullies are “more likely to feel free from social norms and morals and ethics and rules and possible punishments and sanctions when they’re behind a screen and physically distant or geographically separate from the target.” [26]
Furthermore, the cancellation can damage both parties if it has devolved into bullying. A 2020 study found that 39% of cyberbully victims and 29% of cyberbullies showed signs of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). [26]
Con 2: Cancel culture is not productive and does not bring about social change.
President Barack Obama states, “Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, ’cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was. I called you out.’…That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.” [27]
As Patrisse Khan-Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, notes, “People don’t understand that [social activist] organizing isn’t going online and cussing people out or going to a protest and calling something out.” Activism is hard work entailing sometimes boring meetings, strategy sessions, building a campaign, and getting petitions signed. [28]
“Mainstream internet activism is a lot of calling out and blaming and shaming. We have to get honest with ourselves about whether calling out and canceling gives us more than a short-term release of cathartic anger,” says Aaron Rose, a corporate diversity and inclusion consultant. He admits that cancel culture did not give him the conclusions he wanted: “I was not seeing the true change I desired.…We were still sad and mad. And the bad people were still bad. And everyone was still traumatized.” [18]
Frequently, cancel culture backfires and engenders sympathy for the alleged offender, leading to continued support by fans. Louis C.K. took what amounted to a ten-month vacation before selling out dozens of comedy shows. After enduring decades of cancellations and documentaries about their alleged misdeeds, both R. Kelly’s and Michael Jackson’s music saw increases in streaming. Kevin Hart withdrew from his Oscars hosting job but saw no decline in audience for his movies or stand-up specials. [18]
Rose, among others, has promoted individual conversations with people to encourage growth on both sides. Sometimes termed “calling in.”
Author and digital strategist Maisha Z. Johnson offers, “Addressing harmful behavior is important, but so is understanding that everyone is on a different step of their journey, so we all make mistakes. And we all have different strengths—so if someone’s lacking in one area, like knowing vocabulary words, we don’t have to treat them like they’re totally disposable to the movement. We can help them grow in that area, and hope that others would help us in the areas we need to grow, too.” [29]
Con 3: Cancel culture is a slippery slope and leads to intolerance in democratic societies as people systematically exclude anyone who disagrees with their views.
Loretta Ross, author, deems cancel culture a “cannibalistic maw” that is “[s]ometimes…just ruthless hazing.” [30]
In a July 4, 2020, speech at Mount Rushmore, President Trump stated, “One of [the left’s] political weapons is ‘cancel culture’—driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.” [31]
Instead of canceling people, we should be encouraging more people to tell their stories, to add inclusivity and complexity. Connecting cancel culture to the dismantling of historical statues, Christian Sagars, assistant voices and opinion editor for Deseret News, states, “Instead, they have come for the opportunistic Columbus and the slave-owning Founding Fathers. They have come for Brigham Young, the eponym of my alma mater and the leader of one of the largest religious migrations in the country’s history. It’s healthy to expose the thorny characters of history’s pages—and there’s a distinction for those who fought against their country and those who built it—but to ignore or eliminate wholesale their contributions to the nation’s foundation is a slippery slope, indeed.” [32]
Cancel culture is also a slippery slope for those doing the calling out, as Steven Mintz, professor emeritus at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, explains: “Some members of the canceling group join in for fear of being canceled themselves. People should be able to speak out or remain silent on the issues without fear of retribution.” He continues by calling for more tolerance and “willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with and not seek to harm the offender.” [33]
Discussion Questions
- Is cancel culture good for society? Why or why not?
- What are the most productive ways to interact with someone who has said something offensive? Explain your choices.
- Does cancel culture silence different opinions or allow more opinions to be heard? Explain you answer and give examples if possible.
- Did cancel culture arise from digital addiction? Explain your answer.
Take Action
- Examine Osita Nwanevu’s argument that cancel culture is about women and minorities gaining power.
- Consult Merriam Webster on adding the phrase cancel culture to the dictionary.
- Consider Sam Biddle’s mea culpa about canceling Justine Sacco for one ill-considered tweet.
- Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.
- Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. senators and representatives.
Sources
- Merriam-Webster editors, “What It Means to Get ‘Canceled,’” merriam-webster.com (accessed July 14, 2020)
- Graham Bowley, “Bill Cosby Assault Case: A Timeline from Accusation to Sentencing,” nytimes.com, Apr. 25, 2018
- Jon Ronson, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life,” nytimes.com, Feb. 12, 2015
- Francisco Marte, “Why Hispanic Business Owners Are Urging You to BUY-cott Goya Products,” nypost.com, July 15, 2020
- Goya, “History: Our Story,” goya.com (accessed July 23, 2020)
- Olivia Goldhill, “Naming Abusers Online May Be ‘Mob Justice’ but It’s Still Justice,” qz.com, Nov. 7, 2017
- Constance Grady, “Some Say the Me Too Movement Has Gone Too Far. The Harvey Weinstein Verdict Proves That’s False.,” vox.com, Feb. 24, 2020
- Riley Griffin, Hannah Recht and Jeff Green, “#MeToo: One Year Later,” bloomberg.com, Oct. 5, 2018
- Audrey Carlsen, et al., “#MeToo Brought Down 201 Powerful Men. Nearly Half of Their Replacements Are Women.,” nytimes.com, Oct. 29, 2018
- Orion Rummler, “Global #MeToo Movement Has Resulted in 7 Convictions, 5 Charges of Influential Figures,” axios.com, July 3, 2020
- BBC editors, “Harvey Weinstein Timeline: How the Scandal Unfolded,” bbc.com, May 29, 2020
- Jill Filipovic, “It’ll Never Be the Right Time for Famous Sexual Predators to Make Their Comebacks,” time.com, May 10, 2018
- Spencer Kornhaber, “It’s Not Callout Culture. It’s Accountability.,” theatlantic.com, June 16, 2020
- Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” nytimes.com, July 3, 2020
- Osita Nwanevu, “The ‘Cancel Culture’ Con,” newrepublic.com, Sep. 23, 2019
- Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Everyone Is Canceled,” nytimes.com, June 28, 2018
- Oscar Schwartz, “Calling Out for Justice,” ethics.org, July 19, 2018
- Aja Romano, “Why We Can’t Stop Fighting About Cancel Culture,” vox.com, Dec. 30, 2019
- History.com editors, “Montgomery Bus Boycott,” history.com, Feb. 10, 2020
- Craig Jenkins, E. Alex Jung, and Dee Lockett, “Videos, Blackouts, and the Times: A Roundtable Discussion on a Chaotic Week in Social Media,” vulture.com, June 5, 2020
- Nancy Scola, “Inside the Ad Boycott That Has Facebook on the Defensive,” politico.com, July 3, 2020
- Sam Biddle, “Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came to Peace with Her,” gawker.com, Dec. 20, 2014
- Asam Ahmad, “A Note on Call-Out Culture,” briarpatchmagazine.com, Mar 2, 2015
- Adrienne Matei, “Call-Out Culture: How to Get it Right (and Wrong),” theguardian.com, Nov. 1, 2019
- Alex Miranda, “Let’s Cancel ‘Cancel Culture,’ ” southblueprint.com, Mar. 4, 2020
- Megan Marples, “Some Cyberbullies Show Signs of PTSD, According to UK Study,” cnn.com, June 24, 2020
- Emily S. Rueb and Derrick Bryson Taylor, “Obama on Call-Out Culture: ‘That’s Not Activism,’ ” nytimes.com, Oct. 31, 2019
- Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin, “How We Fight White-Supremacy,” 2019
- Maisha Z. Johnson, “6 Signs Your Call-Out Is About Ego and Not Accountability,” thebodyisnotanapology.com, May 22, 2019
- Loretta Ross, “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.,” nytimes.com, Aug. 17, 2019
- Brandon Tensley, “Cancel Culture Is About Power—Who Has It and Who Wants to Be Heard,” cnn.com, July 10, 2020
- Christian Sagars, “Is There Any Stopping the March of Cancel Culture?,” deseret.com, June 19, 2020
- Steven Mintz, “Ethics and the Cancel Culture,” ethicssage.com, Dec. 16, 2019
- Jessica Bennett, “What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?,” nytimes.com, Feb. 24, 2021
- Merriam-Webster editors, “cancel culture,” merriam-webster.com, Aug. 6, 2023
- Jamelle Bouie, “Cancel Culture in 1832 Sounded Pretty Fierce,” nytimes.com, Mar. 12, 2022