Becoming Cancel-proof
By: Joseph Parrish
Tags: Politics, Cancel Culture, Investing, Social Media, Fake News

Becoming Cancel-proof

Joe Rogan, comedian, martial artist, and host of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’

What is this thing called cancel culture?

“Cancel culture” is a controversial term about an era of controversy. Many disagree on what exactly is cancel culture or not, since it’s a term that has developed organically and lacks a historical, academic, or etymological basis, except that it seems to borrow from the concept of having TV shows cancelled (more on that in a moment). In an attempt to encapsulate it as best as possible, I’ll define it myself. I think cancel culture has the following features:

The purpose is to deny an income source to a targeted individual or group, permanently. The motives for cancellations are primarily political in nature. Being a “culture,” it relies on reputational pressure to succeed (and this thrives on social media and major platforms).

The essence of cancel culture is that, once you’re cancelled, you’re always cancelled.

Before we go any further, let’s also look at something that is not a feature of cancel culture: Truth. This is not to say that every attempt to cancel someone is based on lies. It merely means that the truth is not a consideration in the process. “Cancel mobs,” as they are sometimes called, involve ordinary people on social media rapidly reacting to an allegation and demanding the cessation of a related income source for that person/persons. The speed at which people from the mob latch onto the allegation typically means that little-to-no time is spent verifying it. Once the allegation is made, the damage is done.

If you are reading this post, I imagine you can recall such a scenario. A Tweet goes out declaring that Mr. XYZ said this or that about a minority or women or someone’s religion. A month of outrage occurs. Mr. XYZ is forced to apologize and gets fired anyway or loses contracts. At the end of that month, a sleuth who did their homework finds stark evidence that Mr. XYZ not only said nothing of the sort but that the original accuser fabricated the whole thing. A lot of people will do half-hearted apologies about believing the accusation too soon. A lot won’t. Those that do will make zero efforts to help restore Mr. XYZ’s reputation, and he doesn’t get his job or business relationships back.

The essence of cancel culture is that, once you’re cancelled, you’re always cancelled. Jesus himself could get cancelled, but he won’t become un-cancelled on the third day!

This is particularly strange in light of the 2016 election and the awareness this election brought to us about the proliferation of fake news and how even malicious actors, like Russian agents under Putin, are actively engaging in misinformation and manipulation to sow division among their Western rivals. We had numerous hearings in Congress and investigations by the FBI about what foreign dictatorships and social media companies have enabled. Everyone in a hypothetical cancel mob knows that the mechanisms of cancel culture (which rely on this same nexus of fake news and social media) are vulnerable and are being exploited every single day, and yet they continually become willing puppets to this exploitation.

Recent history notwithstanding, we have plenty of folk wisdom to let us know why we shouldn’t just believe things uncritically. We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. We all remember that classroom game called “Telephone,” where the teacher would whisper a sentence into one student’s ear. That student would then whisper it to the next student, and so on in a line, until it got to the last student’s ear. The teacher would then ask the last student what they heard, and it’s always something different at the end. Either because things were misheard or deliberately changed, information was corrupted. We all know this happens in real life, and yet many of us act like it doesn’t happen.

Thus, the reality of cancel culture is not only that it will permanently weaken its target, it will also never self-correct. It is a looming threat for the rest of our lives.