cancel culture argumentative essay

Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts Essay

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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Cancel Culture Essay

North American literature of the 20th century was predominantly white male-dominated, with works by authors like Faulkner, Hemingway, and Dreiser reflecting their experiences and world views. Post World War II, diverse voices emerged, with authors like Kingston, Morrison, and Baldwin expressing the theme of alienation through their works.

Excerpt from Full Free

When it comes to cancel culture, some love it and some hate it.  Like much in this nation, it is a subject that divides most people.  At root, cancel culture is about establishing new social norms through ostracism.  When a person fails to live according to the standards of political correctness, that person is in danger of being canceled, which can be anything from relentless online trolling via social media to being fired and blacklisted from whatever industry in which one works.  Essentially, it is not a new phenomenon.  Hawthorne wrote about it in The Scarlet Letter :  Hester Prynne was cancelled and ostracized from her community for violating norms regarding adultery.  Today’s Puritanical culture of political correctness has different standards for men and women , blacks and whites, and insists on those differences as a form of making reparations for perceived gender and racial wrongs committed by an immoral patriarchy .  Of course, not everyone agrees with that viewpoint, which is why the subject of cancel culture is so contentious.  This paper will provide a sample of topics and titles regarding cancel culture.  It will also provide an outline and sample essay on the subject of cancel culture to show how this issue can be discussed.

Essay Topics

1.  Does cancel culture help or harm society?

2.  Is cancel culture unjustly expecting perfection from everyone?

3.  Does punishing people for past mistakes really help to promote the common good ?

4.  Cancel culture is a Communist tactic to enforce social rules and instill totalitarianism.

Essay Titles

1.  Why It is Time to Cancel the Cancel Culture

2.  Falsely Accused of Harassment , Yet Cancel Culture Took His Job Anyway

3.  Rush to Judgment:  How Cancel Culture Has Undermined the Principle of Innocent Until Proven Guilty

4.  Cancel Culture is Just Another Name for Social Media Mob Rule in a Time of Political Correctness

Essay Outline

I. Introduction

a. What is Cancel Culture?

b. How it affects the world 

II. Background

a. Manifestations of cancel culture

b. How it operates

III. Comedy

a. Joking is a cathartic way to help people deal with differences

b. Cancel culture sees all offensive joking as bullying and impolitic

c. Not allowed to make offensive jokes

d. Comedians have to be PC for fear of being cancelled

a. Karens demand conformity

b. They lecture at will

c. They do not allow anyone to have any fun that they deem irresponsible

d. Everyone becomes a Karen in the PC cancel culture

V. Puritanism

a. Cancel culture is a form of Puritanism

b. No one is allowed to have any faults or make mistakes

c. Cancel culture forgives no one

d. It is malicious and undermines the spirit of Christian charity that fosters true community

VI. Conclusion

a. Cancel culture is a cancer on society

b. Cancel culture should be canceled

Introduction

Cancel culture is the idea that anyone who offends the politically correct sentiments of the Left will be canceled, i.e., tarnished on social media, boycotted by Leftist consumers, or piled upon by activists until the company that employs him feels enough pressure to terminate his employment.  Canceling a person for holding offensive beliefs is something the Left takes pride in doing.  They see it as part of their mission of militancy to establish new norms of thinking and behavior in society.  The problem is that not everyone agrees with the worldview of the Left, so it creates tension in society.  Those on the Right or of a Libertarian mindset reject the Left as “woke,” a term that is meant to belittle the Left’s activism.  Even beyond this contention is the fear that the cancel culture has created in society:  people feel more inclined to follow the norms of political correctness for fear of being canceled by the cancel culture mob.  This creates obvious effects in society.

Cancel culture is responsible for establishing a pattern of new cognitive and behavioral norms in society that are likely to transform all subsequent generations of Americans into good little Party-line following acolytes of Big Brother. 

Thesis Statement

Cancel culture has killed comedy, turned everyone into a Karen, and... …the 10 Commandments of Political Correctness.

Puritanism Run Amok

At root, cancel culture is nothing more than Puritanism rearing its head all over again. The best depiction of Puritanism in American literature can be found in Nathanael Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  This is a story about a woman named Hester Prynne who becomes pregnant and has a child—all while her husband is away from the colony.  Obviously she has committed adultery but she will not say with whom she has committed this sin.  The Puritans of the colony, suffice to say, cannot countenance this apparent slap in the face to their most-refined and august sensibilities—so they effectively cancel her.  She has to live on the outskirts of the colony like an isolated, fringe cast-off, and when she does step foot in public she has to sport a giant letter “A” for Adultery, which signifies her sin—that way everyone in the colony knows to avoid her.  It is a horrifying portrait of how self-righteous and cruel the “woke” mob can be.  Today, we are seeing this same cruelty emerge all over again.

Cancel culture is very much a plague on society:  whereas society is meant to be a place where people can live and work together without fear of isolation or reprisal for “wrong-think,” it has become a place where everyone lives in fear of saying the wrong thing because it could mean being stripped of the right to work, the right to live, the right to speak, and the right to be part of the community.  Instead of canceling everyone for past sins or for comments that go against the PC doctrines, more charity and humility could stand to be seen.  It is only through charity and humility that real brotherhood can emerge.  The kind of uncharitable enforcement that cancel culture demonstrates is deadly to all society.

Sources used in this document:

References Schwarz, H. (2015). Jerry Seinfeld hates political correctness. So we ruined 7 Seinfeld episodes by making them PC.  Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/10/jerry-seinfeld-hates-political-correctness-so-we-ruined-7-seinfeld-episodes-by-making-them-pc/ White, A. (2020). Golden Globes: Read Ricky Gervais' Scathing Opening Monologue.  Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/transcript-ricky-gervais-golden-globes-2020-opening-monologue-1266516

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10 Theses About Cancel Culture

What we talk about when we talk about “cancellation.”

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

Cancel culture is destroying liberalism. No, cancel culture doesn’t exist. No, it has always existed; remember when Brutus and Cassius canceled Julius Caesar? No, it exists but it’s just a bunch of rich entitled celebrities complaining that people can finally talk back to them on Twitter. No, it doesn’t exist except when it’s good and the canceled deserve it. Actually, it does exist, but — well, look, I can’t explain it to you until you’ve read at least four open letters on the subject.

These are just a few of the answers that you’ll get to a simple question — “What is this cancel culture thing, anyway?” — if you’re foolish enough to toss it, like chum, into the seething waters of the internet. They’re contradictory because the phenomenon is complicated — but not complicated enough to deter me from making 10 sweeping claims about the subject.

So here goes:

1. Cancellation, properly understood, refers to an attack on someone’s employment and reputation by a determined collective of critics, based on an opinion or an action that is alleged to be disgraceful and disqualifying.

“Reputation” and “employment” are key terms here. You are not being canceled if you are merely being heckled or insulted — if somebody describes you as a moron or a fascist or some profane alternative to “Douthat” on the internet — no matter how vivid and threatening the heckling becomes. You are decidedly at risk of cancellation, however, if your critics are calling for you to be de-platformed or fired or put out of business , and especially if the call is coming from inside the house — from within your professional community, from co-workers or employees or potential customers or colleagues, on a professional message board or Slack or some interest-specific slice of social media.

2. All cultures cancel; the question is for what, how widely and through what means.

There is no human society where you can say or do anything you like and expect to keep your reputation and your job. Reputational cancellation hung over the heads of Edith Wharton’s heroines; professional cancellation shadowed 20th-century figures like Lenny Bruce. Today, almost all critics of cancel culture have some line they draw, some figure — usually a racist or anti-Semite — that they would cancel, too. And social conservatives who criticize cancel culture, especially, have to acknowledge that we’re partly just disagreeing with today’s list of cancellation-worthy sins.

3. Cancellation isn’t exactly about free speech, but a liberal society should theoretically cancel less frequently than its rivals.

The canceled individual hasn’t lost any First Amendment rights, because there is no constitutional right to a particular job or reputation. At the same time, under its own self-understanding, liberalism is supposed to clear a wider space for debate than other political systems and allow a wider range of personal expression. So you would expect a liberal society to be slower to cancel, more inclined to separate the personal and the professional (or the ideological and the artistic), and quicker to offer opportunities to regain one’s reputation and start one’s professional life anew.

“It’s a free country,” runs the American boast, and even if it doesn’t violate the Constitution, cancellation cuts against that promise — which is one reason arguments about cancel culture so often become arguments about liberalism itself.

Here’s What Cancel Culture Looked Like in 1283

The internet didn’t invent the angry mob..

Get your self-gratification! Can’t have a canceling without self-gratification! You are hereby sentenced to be publicly canceled by having thy head smoked — This will be a good one. Yea, love a good canceling! She’s been canceled, yeah? Shh! Shut out, on the bog pile of shame for the crime of saying something offensive 11 years ago! [cheers] 11 years ago! Let’s judge past statements by present-day perspective. It’s like saying the same thing today, kinda! Don’t I get a trial? No! This is a canceling. No due process. We are the jury! Our anger makes us qualified. Plus, we’re all perfect. Yea, we’re all perfect! You may be granted a reprieve if you apologize. Of course, I apologize. I’m sorry that you were offended. Sorry that we’re offended? That’s a non-apology. That’s worse than saying nothing. Well, if apologizing makes it worse, what’s the point of apologizing at all? She hates apologizing! Cancel her even more. Cancel her! Fare thee well, and may you never again utter the phrase, “[Expletive] the peasants!” [gasps] He just said something bad about peasants. I‘m a peasant, and I’m offended. No, I said, uh, she said, “[Expletive] the peasants!” Oh my god! He said it again. No, I love peasants. I would never say “[Expletive] — ” Cancel him! [chanting] I apologize, unreservedly. That’s not a good enough apology. I thought it was all right. An apology apologist! He’s for apologies. Get him. Oh hang on hang on. I’m confused. Are we against him, for being for apologies? Or against her, for being against apologies? Because — That’s irrelevant. What matters is that you’re angry. Cancel him! [chanting] But we’re supposed to be canceling her! Well, that was whole minutes ago. Who knows? Things we say today might be offensive in the future. She’s right, you might have offended me in the future. Well, you might be offending me in the future right now. Pre-cancel! Pre-cancel! It’s a pre-canceling! I hereby increase your taxes by 150 percent. No? Well, I’m going to burn your crops too. I’ll just get on with it then, shall I? Could I come along? Yes, yes please. Age before beauty!

4. The internet has changed the way we cancel, and extended cancellation’s reach.

On the other hand, a skeptic might say that it wasn’t liberalism but space and distance that made America a free country — the fact that you could always escape the tyrannies of local conformism by “lighting out for the territory,” in the old Mark Twain phrase. But under the rule of the internet there’s no leaving the village: Everywhere is the same place, and so is every time. You can be canceled for something you said in a crowd of complete strangers, if one of them uploads the video, or for a joke that came out wrong if you happened to make it on social media, or for something you said or did a long time ago if the internet remembers. And you don’t have to be prominent or political to be publicly shamed and permanently marked : All you need to do is have a particularly bad day, and the consequences could endure as long as Google.

5. The internet has also made it harder to figure out whether speech is getting freer or less free.

When critics of cancel culture fret about a potential online-era chill on speech, one rejoinder is that you can find far more ideas — both radical and noxious — swirling on the internet than you could in a sampling of magazines and daily newspapers circa 1990. It’s easier to encounter ideological extremes on your smartphone than it was in the beforetime of print media, and easier to encounter hateful speech as well.

But at the same time the internet has hastened the consolidation of cultural institutions, so that The New York Times and the Ivy League and other behemoths loom larger than they did 30 years ago, and it’s arguably increased uniformity across cities and regions and industries in general. And the battle over norms for cancellation reflects both of these changes: For would-be cancelers, the chaos of the internet makes it seem that much more important to establish rigorous new norms, lest the online racists win … but for people under threat of cancellation, it feels like they’re at risk at being shut out of a journalistic or academic marketplace that’s ever more consolidated, or defying a consensus that’s embraced by every boardroom and H.R. department.

6. Celebrities are the easiest people to target, but the hardest people to actually cancel.

One of the ur-examples of cancel culture was the activist Suey Park’s 2014 hashtag campaign to #cancelColbert over a satirical tweet from the Twitter account of “The Colbert Report.” Six years later, Stephen Colbert is very much uncanceled. So are Dave Chappelle, J.K. Rowling and a much longer list of prominent pop culture figures who have faced online mobs and lived to tell, sell and perform.

Their resilience explains why some people dismiss cancellation as just famous people whining about their critics. If someone has a big enough name or fan base, the bar for actual cancellation is quite high, and the celebrity might even have the opportunity — like a certain reality-television star on the campaign trail in 2016 — to use the hatred of the would-be cancelers to confirm a fandom or cement a following.

However, not everyone is a celebrity, and …

7. Cancel culture is most effective against people who are still rising in their fields, and it influences many people who don’t actually get canceled.

The point of cancellation is ultimately to establish norms for the majority, not to bring the stars back down to earth. So a climate of cancellation can succeed in changing the way people talk and argue and behave even if it doesn’t succeed in destroying the careers of some of the famous people that it targets. You don’t need to cancel Rowling if you can cancel the lesser-known novelist who takes her side; you don’t have to take down the famous academics who signed last week’s Harper’s Magazine letter attacking cancel culture if you can discourage people half their age from saying what they think. The goal isn’t to punish everyone, or even very many someones; it’s to shame or scare just enough people to make the rest conform.

8. The right and the left both cancel; it’s just that today’s right is too weak to do it effectively.

Is it cancel culture when conservatives try to get college professors disciplined for anti-Americanism, or critics of Israel de-platformed for anti-Semitism? Sure, in a sense. Was it cancel culture when the Dixie Chicks — sorry, the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks — were dropped by radio stations and tour venues, or when Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” was literally canceled, for falling afoul of patriotic correctness? Absolutely.

But as the latter examples suggest, the last peak of right-wing cultural power was the patriotically correct climate after Sept. 11, a cultural eon in the past. Today the people with the most to fear from a right-wing cancel culture usually work inside Trump-era professional conservatism. (And even for them there’s often a new life awaiting as a professional NeverTrumper.) Attempted cancellations on the right are mostly battles for control over diminishing terrain, with occasional forays against red-state academics and anti-Trump celebrities. Meanwhile, the left’s cancel warriors imagine themselves conquering the entire non-Fox News map.

9. The heat of the cancel-culture debate reflects the intersection of the internet as a medium for cancellation with the increasing power of left-wing moral norms as a justification for cancellation.

It’s not just technology or ideology, in other words, it’s both. The emergent, youthful left wants to take current taboos against racism and anti-Semitism and use them as a model for a wider range of limits — with more expansive definitions of what counts as racism and sexism and homophobia, a more sweeping theory of what sorts of speech and behavior threaten “harm” and a more precise linguistic etiquette for respectable professionals to follow. And the internet and social media, both outside institutions and within, are crucial mechanisms for this push.

It’s debatable whether these new left-wing norms would be illiberal or whether they would simply infuse liberalism with a new morality to replace the old Protestant consensus. It’s arguable whether they would expand the space for previously marginalized voices more than they would restrict once-mainstream, now “phobic” points of view. But there’s no question that people who fall afoul of the emergent norms are more exposed to cancellation than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

10. If you oppose left-wing cancel culture, appeals to liberalism and free speech aren’t enough.

I said earlier that debates about cancellations are also inevitably debates about liberalism and its limits. But to defend a liberal position in these arguments you need more than just a defense of free speech in the abstract; you need to defend free speech for the sake of some important, true idea. General principles are well and good, but if you can’t champion controversial ideas on their own merits, no merely procedural argument for granting them a platform will sustain itself against a passionate, morally confident attack.

So liberals or centrists who fear the left-wing zeal for cancellation need a counterargument that doesn’t rest on right-to-be-wrong principles alone. They need to identify the places where they think the new left-wing norms aren’t merely too censorious but simply wrong, and fight the battle there, on substance as well as liberal principle.

Otherwise their battle for free speech is only likely to win them the privilege of having their own ideas canceled last of all.

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Chapter 4: Convincing Discourses

4.3.2 #canceled (research essay)

Melanie Wroblewski

English 102, April 2021

With the pandemic we can look back on a year of things cancelled. Holidays were cancelled. Sporting events were cancelled. Concerts were cancelled. While 2020 was the big year of all good things cancelled many would say that the year itself should be cancelled. Certainly, the main   reasons   the year was hated was that most work and schools went online with   Zoom   and it was hard to get a roll of toilet paper. Would I go as far to say 2020 was a god-awful year? Of course, I worked in a grocery store and people were insane. Would I say it needs to be cancelled? Well, no because that   doesn’t   really apply in this setting. We had a lot of canceled events but to cancel the year is hard because in principle cancelling   doesn’t   work that way. Why   doesn’t   cancelling apply in this setting? Well, what is cancelling to begin with?   Is cancel culture beneficial in society? Can someone truly be cancelled, who does cancel culture   hurt? Is cancel culture   hurting   more than helping? When has cancel culture gone too far? How do people interact with the idea of cancel culture on social media? What happens in   a fandom   when someone is cancelled or actively being cancelled? Do fans go too far? Has there been a time when   a fandom   has gone too far? Is there still room to enjoy what is created by a cancelled entertainer?  Cancel culture may be a good form of social justice in society but the ways in which it is used and abused online has   swayed   far from its actual purpose.   

The conveniences that the internet and social media has brought have certainly outnumbered the bad. Today   social media   can branch together family who   have not   seen each other in days, months, or years and now especially due to the pandemic. There is however a downside to platforms like this. These platforms undoubtedly can bring the worst out of people hopping on a   trend or hashtag. When someone makes even the slightest misstep people   act   online to let everyone know. This has brought about a new era to social media with rising concepts of cancel or call out culture. But what is cancel culture?   One explanation form “Disruptive rhetoric in an age of outrage” by Michael Welsh explains that cancel culture has become its own societal discourse of social   issues in   which people can take to social media and announce that someone is cancelled for a perceived crime by the accuser.   

With cancel culture social media has become reactionary instead of investigating whether these claims are true.   In “With (Stan) ding Cancel Culture: Stan Twitter and Reactionary Fandoms” Hailey   Roos   explains that   “cancel culture is intended to hold powerful people accountable, but it has been constantly appropriated, and its influence has been diminished because of how frequently people are cancelled for less serious offenses.”   What ways can someone be cancelled? There can be social media movements led by hashtags declaring   someone   is cancelled which can lead to extreme consequences   to   those, the people cancelling and those being cancelled. The action taken by those who are cancelled can be to take accountability in their actions and reflect on them and change or they can   defend and   deflect what is being accused of them to   keep   the status they have.   Joseph Ching Velasco in “You are Cancelled: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Emergence of Cancel Culture as Ideological Purging” explains that there can be those who are accused of committing a crime they   did not   commit for the sake of someone else’s gain. In the same sense though cancel culture as an act in society is confusing as it can be used for its purpose or as a “power play” which leads to a need for more understanding on how to wield such a power. There   is not   a clear-cut way of knowing for certain if   in   the moment it is merely just a business move or if the person did something wrong.   

Today   the internet, more specifically social media platforms, have decided that there is a need for judge, jury, and executioner in the matter of social issues. Who   oversees   making such decisions and on what terms are used to judge?   From “Twitter, What’s The Verdict?” Aya Imam explains that it can be said that growing up we are taught through fairytales and fables that everything is good versus evil, where we take every situation and boil it down to that. In terms of defining every situation in terms of black and white that leaves little room   for the person to defend themselves.   If someone is   justifiably   cancelled what are these codes of conduct that they have broken?   Then it seems for that everyday people have taken matters into their own hands by essentially “cancelling” someone if they   don’t   follow societal rules (Imam 2).   

When it comes to hearing about cancel culture the first people to come to mind would be celebrities. Celebrities fill our newsfeed on the daily with videos, stories, etc. for the public’s entertainment. There has become a sense of connection with celebrities   and their audience, where they need to adhere to their publicized person or face the consequences (Roos   3-4). With this constant connection more issues   become known   or are dug up. In recent   years,   the celebrities   that people associate with cancel culture are   names like Harvey Weinstein and Billy Cosby, who both have a list of sexual assault allegations against them. Others like Kathy Griffin, who posted a photo of herself holding a “bloody” Trump mask, or Taylor Swift who will be discussed later in this essay.  

Aya Imam briefly discusses the disparities in cancel culture:  

Does Harvey Weinstein deserve the backlash he’s received? Yes, 1000% yes. But does James Charles – a very famous YouTuber who was initially called out by another YouTuber for endorsing the ‘wrong’ vitamin brand – deserve the false accusations of being a sexual predator (which, in turn, resulted in millions of people unfollowing and unsubscribing from him)? No, I don’t believe he deserves that (Imam 2).  

I would like to note that as I was doing my research, I picked this article and this quote because it did display the gap between how serious or not Weinstein’s or Charles’s situations were but at the current time it has   become known   that James Charles has multiple allegations of sexual misconduct (texting/messaging primarily) with minors. With the James Charles cancellation he   was friends with another YouTuber, Tati   Westbrook,   and owner of a vitamin supplement company, who recorded a video   accusing of   Charles of behaving inappropriately with straight men. The video and its message were then condensed down to it being about Charles endorsing a rival vitamin company.   In   “How Can We End #CancelCulture – Tort Liability or Thumper’s Rule?”   Nanci   Carr   explains how a situation much like James Charles’s can show that   when a celebrity is cancelled it is more off a hunch than actual   information.   So, then what   decides   why, how, or what extent someone is cancelled? There is no real set of rules on cancelling someone.   Carr   explains that   “we are living in a ‘cancel culture’ where if someone, often a celebrity, does something either illegal or unethical, society is quick to ‘cancel’ them, or lessen their celebrity standing or cultural capital   (133).” For Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, yes, they face consequences for their actions but when it comes to Taylor Swift was the punishment fitting of the crime?  

As I had said previously mentioned Taylor Swift for   a moment   had been cancelled. Most if not all articles on the topic of cancel culture touched on what happened to Taylor Swift. Truly, I   do not   think anyone would consider her to be cancelled because she faced no major backlash financially but what   the situation   did damage was her reputation, which would become the topic of her 6 th   album.   Swift’s story goes all the way back to 2009 when Swift won an award and Kanye West stormed the stage to let her and everyone know that Beyonce had the best video of the year. Swift and West had different paths from this event with Swift being pegged as a victim and West as the villain, which led to if other situations arose that Swift was playing the victim because that first moment garnered her so much sympathy and people saying that it helped her career back then. Fast forward to 2016 after West and Swift had mended fences as Swift puts it in “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” and West had called to ask if he could reference Swift in a song. The song in question was “famous” would later be released for everyone to hear the line, “I   feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, why, I made that bitch famous.” Swift claimed she had only heard   the first part of the lyric and was never made aware of the part where West would call her a bitch or that he made her famous. This led to bitterness on social media between Kanye West, his wife Kim Kardashian, and   the   Kardashian’s friends and family.   

The following quote by Swift was at the 2016 Grammy Awards after winning album of the year and many believe it is in reference to the situation:  

As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but, if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world. Thank you for this moment. (Griffiths)  

Taylor Swift in this moment wanted to show that she got to where she was on her own and for   the   Kardashian this moment would lead to her releasing clips of the recorded conversation. While the phone conversation was recorded what we saw in 2016 was an edited version posted on Snapchat by Kim Kardashian, years later the full conversation would be released online to reveal more truth to Swift’s side of the story. The below picture is a tweet that Kardashian tweeted before the release of Kardashian’s video, she posted on Twitter “Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!” with a slew of snake emojis. As shown in the picture it was liked   over 300 thousand times and shared over 200 thousand times.   

You can see the Tweet here 

Kardashian’s tweet   doesn’t   seem   too   malicious at face value. The tweet   doesn’t   mention anyone by name,   doesn’t   mention the need to cancel anyone, nor does it attack   anyone. Kardashian’s plan was methodical, by simultaneously posting this tweet and posting the edited video it jumpstarted others to take the idea that Taylor Swift was a snake   and not to be trusted. There was an onslaught of attacks on Swift and her character. The hashtag #TaylorSwiftisoverparty was a worldwide trend.   In the article “From Cancel Culture to Changing Culture” Liz Theriault explained that   “[Swift] was being sent ‘mass amounts of messages’ telling her to ‘either shut up, disappear, or [as] it could also be perceived as, kill yourself.’” The extent of tweets towards Swift ranged from benign to telling her to kill herself or for her to be killed. In terms of cancellation, yes Taylor Swift was indeed cancelled but online forums made her the target of worse hate. Cancel culture should not be to take the opportunity to break down someone even more than needed, in this situation it   should have   been to take accountability of your actions however benign they may have been. For cancel culture this is one of many examples of how we make quick calls about someone’s character due to social media outlets (Imam 3). In the below tweet the user says, “I love this #taylorswiftisoverparty…. been at this party since 1989…. most annoying and ridiculous singer in the   biz…. ok! Kill her!” This shows the extreme hate that was directed at Swift during the cancellation.   With respect to the following person, I have blacked out their image and username.  

After seeing such malice towards a celebrity for a crime   committed   how can being cancelled affect them? As with Swift she disappeared for a year, no trace of her in public or on social media where she was an avid user prior to this scandal because   that is   what she thought people wanted. Even with years prior of being primarily silent on political issues, she knew the optics of getting involved in the 2016 presidential election.  

Taylor Swift in the following explains why she felt adding her opinion in such a polarizing election year would have added fuel to the fire:  

The summer before that election, all people were saying was ‘She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar.’ These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. ‘Would I be an endorsement, or would I be a liability? Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So, I disappeared. In many senses (BBC News).  

With the rise of social media platforms there has become a sense of connection with celebrity and their audience, where they need to adhere to their publicized persona or face the consequences (Roos   3-4). As with the case of a cancelled celebrity what happens to their respective fandom? I can say that I do have a bias in this situation because I am a Taylor Swift fan, while I am still on the fence of the idea of being called a “Swiftie,”   a hardcore stan, I can say seeing this used against a celebrity that I liked can also put a form of shame on a fan. Should I   still like her? If I still like her what will people think of me? Did she really lie about the situation? If she lied, then is it true she just plays the victim any time she gets called out? All valid questions I had for myself which now looking back on were a little over the top, if she had done what she was accused of it really   was not   that bad of a crime. During that time when it came to Taylor Swift most of my friends just labelled her as annoying, not a good singer, and that she deserved it. After watching several other celebrities or content creators being cancelled or held accountable, I can say that sometimes it is hard to say that I am a fan without there being some amount of judgment.   

We   have really seen cancel culture only affect those who have fame and money but cancel culture is not a solo phenomenon to affect only celebrities, it also affects everyday people like me and you. With call out culture it is   seen   with bringing awareness to social issues.   Unfortunately,   you will see more videos of people acting out on racist ideas. The purpose of call out culture is in its name; you call out that behavior.   In the essay “Cancel Culture: Posthuman   Hauntologies   in Digital Rhetoric and the Latent Values of Virtual Community Networks” Austin Hooks discusses the possibility there is   with   cancel culture,   social media, and how it   can   drudge   up the past holding people accountable to their past actions, which can be referred to as a “haunting” or doxing and is the basis of this culture. While most people think   it is   fun to revisit posts from their pasts on apps like   Timehop   and Facebook, others suffer this as an unfortunate consequence as their past self comes back to haunt them.   

For an example of a haunting I would like you to meet Carson King. King was a regular college student who   needed   beer money and made a sign that said to Venmo him Busch Light Beer money, this led to many donating a large amount of money to the beer cause which he in turn donated to charities and would later team up with the same beer company to donate upwards of one million dollars to a charity of his choice (Carr   135-136). The story at the time was a feel-good moment where you could see a kind college kid doing something for laughs would end up turning his life upside down. King was eventually cancelled for two old racists tweets that were dug up by a reporter, Aaron Calvin, while writing a feel-good piece on the donations (Carr   136). Was it necessary for Calvin to report this while   writing   an article on a large donation? No, it really   was not   necessary but Calvin “felt obligated to publicize the existence, confirming once again, no good deed goes unpunished (Carr   137).” The story on his tweets turned into companies backing out   of partnerships with   King   and   getting negative attention online. King apologized for his past remarks but also felt that they   did not   represent   who he was as person at the time. After King’s apology,   he was still receiving criticism for his past remarks, many online had thought it was unnecessary for Calvin to go through King’s social media the story was on how King was able to get money to donate to charity and not for King’s past. The public then   acted   and as with Calvin, they felt obligated to   investigate   Calvin’s old tweets and found some highly questionable tweets (Carr   138). For King, it was unnecessary to do   a deep dive into his past actions online so was it necessary to do the same to Calvin?   “[Calvin] acknowledged that [the tweets] were ‘frankly embarrassing’ but then asserted that they had been ‘taken out of context’ to ‘wield   disingenuous   arguments against [him]’ (Carr   138)” Calvin had lost his job and suffered similar consequences for the same judgment he had placed on   King.   

On the other hand, with the case of Bill Cosby some repercussions with “the way the public villainized Cosby’s family, and even the fans of the show, mirrors the ways that incarcerated citizens are being reduced to their ‘guilty’ label and vilified, as described by Jamison (Imam 3).” When a celebrity is cancelled it goes so far to say that if you partake in their media, you are also just as bad. As I have said   there   was a mild villainization on being a part of a fandom where their celebrity is being cancelled but of nothing criminal. In the case of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, among others who have a list of sexual assault allegations against them, can you still enjoy their art?   Yes, you can still enjoy their art but also remember what they did. You   do not   have to take accountability for their actions but also   do not   vilify   their victims.   

We have looked at cancel culture in terms of celebrity, regular people, and the reaction to their said cancellation. Briefly mentioned is cancel culture in terms of fans but what contribution do fans have on social media especially   on   cancel culture? “Fandoms often serve as a buffer to being cancelled on Twitter (Roos   4).” Many fans especially the hardcore fans, also known as stans or depending on who it is for have a special name like   Swifties, can help soften the blow that the celebrity is experiencing. For   Taylor Swift,   her fans were online trying to defend her but would mostly go on to send a brief tweet to show their support or love. Recently   this has become more of a popular thing for her fans during a time where she was battling for the rights to the   masters   to her first six albums.   In the article “Taylor Swift needs to call off her fans as they send Scooter Braun death threats”   Mel   Evans discusses how   in 2019 it was announced that the record label that owned Swift’s   masters   was being   sold to   Scooter Braun.  

In the following quote from a   Tumblr   post of Swift’s she explains everything surrounding the battle to owning her   masters:  

For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead, I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and “earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. … I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. (Taylor Swift)  

Swift also said “Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this. Scooter also manages several artists who I really believe care about other artists and their work.”  This message would lead her fans known as  Swifties  to go on the attack.

Swifties  would go on Scooter Braun’s social media and either just tell him to give her the  masters  back or actively threaten him, his family, and company. Braun would ask Swift to talk about this privately instead of broadcasting it to her many fans (Evans). This  was not  the only example of  Swifties  going past the message she was trying to send to her fans. More recently a tv show on Netflix titled “Ginny  & Georgia” and one of its lead  actors  was on the receiving end of this. You can see the Tweet here. 

The following is a quote from the image above of a tweet from Taylor Swift:  

Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and wants it lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard   working women   by defining this horse shit as   Funny. Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit   doesn’t   look cute on you Happy Women’s History Month I guess (Taylor Swift).  

The image that Swift had post was of the line from the show which says, “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.” Swift had been the punchline of this joke for many years having called it out in the past and even writing songs about how the media portrays   her like “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”   Swifties   took this tweet as a call to action to attack the show, but not the writers of the joke, the   actor   who spoke the line. A lot of responses were   like   “Respect Taylor Swift” or “Apologize to Taylor” but then there were quite a few racist replies which many wanted Taylor Swift herself to apologize for.   Swifties   as a culture I   would not   say they are racist, but when people start swinging for their favorite they tend to punch down and unfortunately aim to hurt. The   actor   was not the target of Swift’s disdain, it was the show writers and Netflix but because she used the online platform to air her grievance her fans wanted to take their turn at cancelling someone. Unfortunately for Swift, her fans will   continue   this path of destruction for the sake of preserving her legacy.   Fans have the power to build up   and   tear down.   

I have talked about different variations of cancelling, the reactions the public and fandoms have made,   and   the   vague rules that are broken but what are these rules to online social platforms?   Who makes these rules? If you break these   rules,   are you thereby cancelled?   Throughout all social media online we have a collected idea of   what is   right and wrong and that is referred to as “collective consciousness” (Velasco 2).   As a society, we have applied some baseline rules to ourselves of what is acceptable and what is not. When people break these   rules,   they have committed a high crime   where people see no difference between people convicted of crimes and people who are cancelled (Imam 3).   When there is no difference between those incarcerated and those cancelled   the   rules need to be revisited and revised much like the justice system altogether.   With this cancel culture can be beneficial in society after it is closely reexamined   so it is not used as a power gain or to tear down someone for simply not agreeing to something. People should be held accountable for serious indiscretions   like derogatory remarks, violence, and sexual assault. Cancel culture should not be used as a witch hunt for the rich and famous to root out people who are their rivals. With the current political climate and with current news media we need to stop labeling everything as being cancelled when it truly is not. Mr. Potato Head is not being cancelled for the company declaring it is genderless,   it is   a potato of course it has no gender. Dr. Seuss made highly racist books that the estate wants to withdraw from the public because of their content, not because they are being cancelled. Instead of cancel culture it needs a stiff remarketing as accountability   culture.   As   a society we need to cancel “cancel culture” and instead help people become accountable of their actions.   

@kimkardashian. “Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!” Twitter, 16 July 2016 7:22 P.M. https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/754818471465287680

BBC News. “Taylor Swift: ‘Saying You’re Cancelled Is like Saying Kill Yourself.’” BBC News, 9 Aug. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49289430.

Carr, Nanci K. “How Can We End# CancelCulture-Tort Liability or Thumper’s Rule?.” Cath. UJL & Tech 28 (2019): 133.

Evans, M. (2019, November 26). Taylor Swift needs to call off her fans as they SEND Scooter Braun death threats. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/taylor-swift-attack-scooter-braun-danger-toxic-fandom-11215672/

Griffiths, K. (2016, February 16). Transcript of Taylor SWIFT’S 2016 Grammys speech that was a HUGE Feminist Victory. Retrieved April 16, 2021, from https://www.bustle.com/articles/142222-transcript-of-taylor-swifts-2016-grammys-speech-that-was-a-huge-feminist-victory

Hooks, Austin. “Cancel culture: posthuman hauntologies in digital rhetoric and the latent values of virtual community networks.” (2020).

Imam, Aya. “Twitter, What’s The Verdict?”

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Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Melanie Wroblewski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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