I first wrote a rant on this topic back on December 30, 2020 and the conversation that it opened up with the people who read it was really interesting. It's now the middle of 2022 and the topic is still extremely relevant. Thus, I am back with more thoughts on it and now I am sharing them with all of you.

One of my favorite podcasts, You're Wrong About, by Sarah Marshall (and formerly, Michael Hobbes), did an episode on this a while ago. I've been skipping around and listening to episodes at random since I started listening to it last December, and now I'm finally listening to this one which was released almost exactly year ago.

I'm going to be including some quotes from the episode throughout this rant because Michael's research was AMAZING and very thorough. They made some fantastic points and I wanted to share a few of the things I learned.

The first thing I want to bring up is how the term "cancel" (as we are using it in this context) began. Like a bunch of other modern slang terms, it was taken from black culture. Black artists would put it in their songs and it was used in primarily black television shows. However, the word was used in relation to people that you know. For example, a character would tell their ex, "You're canceled," and it would basically mean "You're cut out of my life/I have no interest in you/etc." Kinda like how we use "Cut them off." It meant you won't have any association with that person anymore.

Now it obviously means something very different. Generally, you don't "cancel" your racist neighbor down the street. The term mostly applies to public figures.

"Cancel culture" as we know it today really amped up around the time the #MeToo movement began and Harvey Weinstein's downfall started. Though the phrase "me too" in relation to sexual assault originated on MySpace in 2006, it was 2017 when it became a larger movement. I was a junior in high school at the time and I vividly remember this, as well as the moral panic it fused.

People (primarily men, though there were some women who shared these opinions) started fearing that anything a man did could be taken the wrong way and the woman would take to Twitter and end his life via a scathing tweet. I think this is where the whole "you do something wrong and your entire life is over because of the internet" idea that is associated with cancel culture started.

I previously mentioned how much it bothers me that there isn't a happy medium between ignoring something that someone did/said and trying to ruin their career because of it. In regard to #MeToo, a woman couldn't talk about her experience with sexual assault without people being like "She's trying to ruin this good man's life!1!1" when like... no. It was meant to bring awareness to the frequency of sexual assault and a place where survivors could talk to and support each other. The purpose wasn't to drag every man responsible to the depths of hell, although that would be nice.

Are we even surprised that the focus shifted to the poor, innocent men though? Won't someone think about all the men who are suffering because of this? WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THEM??? THE MEN ??? THE SUFFERING M E N ???

As Sarah Marshall said in the episode, "...As a society, it is our job to have more speeds than 'Nothing' and 'Life Destroyed'." You can bring awareness to something or hold someone accountable without your intention being to send them to a vacuum where nothing they do will ever have any meaning anymore.

It's also interesting how the "cancellation" of people almost always happens on Twitter. It's extremely unlikely to see Instagram or Facebook posts where people are getting cancelled. And, I think, part of this is the mob mentality on the app.

For example, back in March, Zoe Kravitz was trending when an old interview resurfaced where she made some comments about then 14-year-old Jaden Smith where she was like, "You're only 14, I have to check what I say to you." And some people were like "Hey, this thing you said was mega sketch and kinda fucked up," but then it turned into a massive rally for her to be cancelled.

The line between having a discussion about a questionable thing that someone did and then people demanding that the person be cancelled/attacking the person on social media/etc is very thin and thus often crossed. You can't really be like "Yeah, what that person said in 2010 was kinda gross," without being drowned out by the people screaming for cancellation.

And, also, there are instances where the majority of people will only be talking about something a person did, but news articles will be like "Uh Oh, Looks Like Twitter is Canceling ____ Now" so the blame also goes to media outlets who are using this term when it doesn't even apply.

People talking about something sketchy someone did ≠ canceling. You can acknowledge that a person did something gross without trying to shun them out of everything forever. And wanting people to face consequences for genuinely horrible things they've done isn't the same as canceling them!!! A male coworker sexually harassing a female coworker and then getting fired doesn't mean he was cancelled!!! He just faced consequences because he did a shitty thing!!!

The man who whines about "cancelled" when he was fired from his job for inappropriately touching coworkers:

Michael made an interesting point in the podcast: "One of my central beefs with this entire 'cancel culture' thing is the word 'culture'. Like, nothing has changed in America — you can look at public polling data, you can look at all kinds of population-level surveys — that show that most people are actually really uncomfortable with people being fired for old tweets ... There's no evidence that Americans are less capable of nuance or more punitive than they used to be, it's just that all of the nation's journalists spend time on this platform."

^Basically saying that online journalists get more clicks by posting articles about who's currently getting "cancelled" if a conversation about someone's wrongdoings is popularized.

He also says, "It is really remarkable to me how many of these 'cancelations' are just fucking Twitter. It's like, the specific dynamic of Twitter. It's not cancel 'culture' like Americans are different now than they used to be, it's not like the left is more punitive or censorious or less capable of nuance than we used to be, it's fucking Twitter. Twitter incentivizes people to collapse nuance, to gang up on people, to take people out of context, to say their ten-year-old utterances as if they are canonical."

And I actually really agree with him on these points. Since my last rant, I've realized that the majority of people who start talking about a bad thing someone did are just doing that — talking. It's either a small minority of people or the media who amp things up and call it 'cancellation'. Or sometimes it's both of those things that make the act of cancelling someone seem way more common than it actually is.

Sometimes the person being scrutinized isn't even the one truly being cancelled. It's everyone else who dares to say they like a song by them/enjoyed their performance in a movie/etc as if you can't enjoy something and acknowledge that some part of it is shitty at the same time. Critical thinking flies out the window.

It's very interesting to me that the people (largely on Twitter) who rally for actual cancellation of public figures (or people who continue to consume their media) are relying on a holier-than-thou rhetoric, especially when it comes to something the person did years ago. They act as if they've never said anything in bad taste, out of genuine ignorance, or that they've regretted. They forget that part of life is learning from your mistakes.

In general, most people are more educated than they were ten years ago. Lord knows that I would've slapped my eleven-year-old self for some of the things I thought and did even though I considered myself to be very open to things. But not everyone changes and horrible people should be held accountable for their actions when they continue to be horrible.

And also, it's okay to dislike someone without wanting to see their career go up in flames. There is a middle ground. For example, I have a strong dislike for Adam Sandler. I do not think he's funny whatsoever, I don't like looking at him, and I just think he's annoying for no particular reason. That doesn't mean I want him to bury himself in a ditch and never star in another movie again. Do I want to dig my eardrums out with screwdrivers every time I hear his Thanksgiving song? Yes. Do I want him to lose his livelihood? No. I just move on with my life because I'm a mature adult.

Basically, normalize just... disliking people. You don't even need a reason to dislike someone. Or even if you do have a reason, like my entire list of reasons I dislike Jennifer Lawrence, you can still not like them while acknowledging that they exist as a human being.

It's like... I feel as if some people genuinely want change in various industries, like film, so actors don't have to worry about being sexually assaulted by their producers. Or for known abusers to stop using their positions of power to hurt people. Some people may just want the figure to acknowledge what they did and be like "Yo, what I said/did was super fucked up and it's not a reflection of who I am today, and I'm very sorry to the people I hurt by saying/doing that," and they do better. But it's drowned out by the people blowing things out of proportion and the media adding gasoline to the fire by publishing 249024 articles about what's happening and being like "Cancel culture is at it again!11!"

Not to mention that there is such intense pressure to know everything that anyone has done wrong, ever. This is what I mean by people attacking others who have consumed a "problematic" figure's media in any capacity. I've seen it on here where people are like "You're using XYZ as a faceclaim/putting their music in your playlist? You know they did ABC, right? Shame on you. Do better. You're disgusting for supporting them" or something like that on people's fics and it's like... okay? What did you accomplish by doing that? Nothing.

I actually did have that happen to me on Fireheart because someone didn't like that I used Benjamin Wadsworth since he said his character on Deadly Class wasn't bisexual. And I was like... I literally don't care that he said that and I will continue to believe that Marcus's sexuality is up to interpretation by the audience. If people want to believe he's bi/pan, cool. If they want to believe he's straight, cool. But they were acting like I was a monster for using him as a faceclaim because of this.

We're all a little bit problematic. Sometimes we will say things that are insensitive and realize our mistake later. Sometimes we will listen to the devil on our shoulder and do something we will regret. But there is room to grow, and room to forgive, and room to not forgive if we don't want to.

Please share your thoughts on this topic because I'd really like to hear them and discuss with you!!

Also PLEASE LISTEN TO THE YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT PODCAST!!! I'VE LEARNED SO MUCH !!! Like how the story of Kitty Genovese (which is one used in a lot of psychology books to explain the bystander effect since, supposedly, 38 people witnessed her murder outside an apartment complex and none of them called the police because they all assumed someone else would do it) is actually one of police incompetence, POC being rightfully afraid of the police, and gay people being written out of the narrative (Kitty Genovese was a lesbian and literally lived with her girlfriend). Or how the Stanford Prison Experiment's results were skewed and faked. Or how alpha male wolves as a personality trait don't actually exist in the wild and were only observed in captivity ("Alpha wolves" as in those in charge of the pack are often just the parents).

The podcast is really informative and really funny, so I'd definitely recommend it! I like listening to the episodes about topics I'm unfamiliar with because learning a LOT about an incredibly niche thing is my jam. So far, the only topic I've been 100% correct in my understanding of is the Columbine shooting. And that's only because I went into a deep hyperfixation of school shootings in the US last year and spent 5 hours straight reading about them. Then looked up and realized I was sitting in pitch black darkness because the sun had long since set and I didn't even realize 🙃

As an ending note, I would like to display the GORGEOUS signoff gif that remuslupout made me literal months ago and I keep forgetting to include in these chapters :) so here it is!!! Everyone oooh and aaahh at Ashton's amazing skills!!!