How 'cancel culture' quickly became one of the buzziest and most controversial ideas on the
internet
By Rachel E. Greenspan
Insider, Aug 6, 2020
"Cancel culture," which President Donald Trump last
month called "the very definition of totalitarianism,"
describes the phenomenon of frequent public pile-ons
criticizing a person, business, movement, or idea.
The phrase — a surprisingly recent creation — has
become ubiquitous in pop culture and reached the
highest halls of power, used to describe "cancellations"
large and small.
On one end of the spectrum are people like Bill
Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and R. Kelly who were
canceled by the public before their sex-crimes trials. On
the other end are everyday people like David Shor, who
faced criticism on Twitter after he tweeted a study from
an academic journal questioning the political
consequences of violent and peaceful protests. Shor,
who tweeted the link during the George Floyd protests,
was fired, though the company has said it wasn't over
the tweet.
Despite the seemingly positive intentions of many
cancellations — to "demand greater accountability from
public figures," as Merriam-Webster's evaluation of the
phrase notes — people tend to call out cancel culture
itself as a negative movement, suggesting that the
consequences of cancellation are too harsh in minor
instances or represent rushed judgment in complicated
situations. Others have criticized that criticism, saying
cancel culture doesn't exist.
With the varied usage and wide debate around the term,
it's reasonable to ask where it came from and how it
became a part of everyday speech.
The phrase was popularized only in the past few
years. Now it's everywhere.
"Cancel culture" came into the collective consciousness
around 2017, after the idea of "canceling" celebrities for
problematic actions or statements became popular.
Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of
Michigan who studies digital media's connections to
race, gender, and sexuality, told The New York Times in
2018 that cancellation was a "cultural boycott" of a
certain celebrity, brand, company, or concept.
Merriam-Webster, the American publisher of
dictionaries and thesauruses, connected cancel culture
with the #MeToo movement, which coincided with the
rise of the term's popularity online. New allegations
seemed to come out daily, and attitudes quickly shifted
against the accused.
The trend of calling someone out laid the groundwork
for full-on cancellations. While "canceling" has been
used colloquially for the better part of a decade, "cancel
culture" is much more recent.
The phrase "cancel culture" experienced notable growth
in 2016 and 2017, particularly on Black Twitter,
according to research by Insider and reporting
by Merriam-Webster and Vox. Insider identified fewer
than 100 tweets or threads with the phrase "cancel
culture" before 2018.
The phrase continued to gain popularity on Twitter in
late 2017, with several people writing "cancel culture"
in quotation marks to describe the trend. Insider found
that most of those tweets referred to cancel culture
negatively. "Cancel culture is SO toxic, you can't even
learn from your mistakes anymore because you're not
even allowed to make any," another tweet in November
2017 said.
The concept gained steam among celebrities and
influencers in 2018
A series of fleeting cancellations of celebrities including
Taylor Swift and Kanye West brought about more
discourse. "Almost everyone worth knowing has been
canceled by someone," Jonah Engel Bromwich wrote
for The Times in June 2018 in one of the first news
stories to analyze the trend.
The comedian Kevin Hart faced intense online backlash
in the fall of 2018 when his homophobic tweets
resurfaced after he was chosen to host the 2019 Oscars.
Ellen DeGeneres and others defended Hart, who said he
shouldn't be judged based on a statement he made years
ago.
Still, anti-cancel-culture rhetoric continued on social
media. Zolita, a German American singer, said in
a December 2018 tweet that "cancel culture needs to be
canceled." Indya Moore, who stars on FX's TV show
"Pose," wrote that month that "nobody deserves to be
defined by the worse mistakes they ever made."
Eventually, the term became politicized
The idea of cancel culture eventually found its way into
mainstream politics. Former President Barack
Obama criticized the trend in an interview about youth
activism at an Obama Foundation summit in October,
though he didn't use the phrase. "That's not activism.
That's not bringing about change," he said. "If all you're
doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get
that far. That's easy to do."
Trump condemned cancel culture in his Independence
Day address at Mount Rushmore, saying it was being
used as a "political weapon" by protesters fighting for
the destruction of statues of American slaveholders. "It
is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it
has absolutely no place in the United States of
America," he said.
Common conservative depictions of cancel culture
compare the idea to mob rule and authoritarianism. In
a column last year, The Wall Street Journal's Peggy
Noonan compared it to China's Cultural Revolution.
"Social media is full of swarming political and
ideological mobs," she wrote. "In an interesting
departure from democratic tradition, they don't try to
win the other side over. They only condemn and attempt
to silence."
In her 2019 JSTOR Daily article, Luu said the anti-
cancel-culture sentiment was rooted in the negative
discourse about groups or movements — and it's the
same notion that has led to criticism of Black Lives
Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and other social-justice
movements.
"The kind of language that's used to talk about groups of
people assembled together—or their collective actions
seeking to change the status quo—often maligns
communities as irrational, 'mobs' or 'rioters' with
uncontrolled, invalid emotions, a kind of faceless
contagion that presents a threat to civilized, law-abiding
society and the ruling establishment," Luu wrote.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened
activism, cancellations have increased — but they've
been less controversial
As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many people
into social isolation, and as activism has spiked around
the Black Lives Matter movement, cancellations appear
to have reached a high point.
YouTubers, celebrities, and figures in traditional
media have recently faced waves of criticism of
controversial content or bad behavior. Many of these
cancellations have had intense consequences, such as
firing or brand separation. But many people online have
framed the criticism around accountability rather than
cancellation, saying that people in power are finally
being asked to address problematic pasts.
Private people have experienced an uptick in public
criticism too. Videos of white women — sometimes
referred to as "Karens" — going on racist or generally
inappropriate public tirades have been massively
popular. Many of these women, including Amy Cooper,
who called the police on a Black birdwatcher in Central
Park in May, faced real-life consequences: She lost her
job and temporarily lost her dog after the video went
viral. Their defenders have blamed cancel culture, with
one op-ed article proclaiming that "Karens" were the
victims in these situations.
Hubbard, the chair of a National Association of Black
Journalists task force, said cancel culture was the wrong
phrase to use for these instances where sleuths on social
media identify a person caught on camera acting racist
or being offensive. "I think it's unfair for anybody to say
what happened to Amy was cancel culture," she said.
"What happened to Amy was public accountability,
because her actions were harmful."
Now, Hubbard said, "the term 'cancel culture' is being
used as a shield" as people try to evade responsibility for
their actions and decry any kind of public
accountability.