Don't @ me Cancel culture

In 2004, “the smartest funnyman on TV and the funniest smart man on TV” Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire where he heavily criticised the show’s co-hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala: “you're hurting America”. In the aftermath, CNN cancelled the show with the network’s president agreeing “wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise”.

While boycotts started as a 19th century movement against feudal-era mistreatment of poor Irish farmers, today’s conversation of cancellation lives within the comment section of the Internet. Comments devolve into back-and-forth name calling, online trolls emboldened by anonymity throw fuel on embers to watch things burn and meaningful discussion becomes impossible in these volatile spaces.

"Commenting was a cesspool of online exchanges— the ability to dump on someone else’s content and walk away from it.” - Liba Rubenstein of Tumblr (The Atlantic, 2013)

Cancel culture has entered many cultural spaces: comedy, sports, films and even to our shopping aisles (Goya beans).

The current approach is to simply banish a person, work or symbol into obscurity and take away its successes. This generally occurs after some indiscretion is uncovered - “espousing or enabling racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sexual harassment and capitalistic exploitation” - Mary McNamara (LA Times). 

But cancelling for the sake of cancellation ignores the opportunity of rehabilitation for the misguided.

Imagine this: you post an ill-considered opinion and come face-to-face with a barrage of comments from the internet hate machine. Against a mob, your defenses kick in and you clench your fists readying for a fight. Could you bring yourself to listen?

While cancelling can be effective at bringing attention to punish a blunder, does the creator truly understand why their opinions or actions were hurtful and seek to change their beliefs? Or is the apology just a publicist’s attempt to appease the angry crowd? 

“If we completely cut people down every time they show their ignorance or they make a mistake or they have a mistake from 10 years ago, then people are going to feel like there’s no value in learning or progressing whatsoever because you’re punished forever for the sins that you no longer stand by. So if you haven’t done irrevocable harm, I think you should be allowed the opportunity to learn and grow and do better.” - Jameela Jamil (The Daily Show, 2019)

If someone has misstepped, start with education and be principled in your reasoning. And if they’re unwilling to listen or they maintain their offensive stance; then cancel. Vote with your wallet, vote with your time, vote for what you stand for.

When cancelling a creator, there's an opportunity to converse. But a work of art can’t talk back. 

Cancelling art often sparks a heated culture war. One side is outraged by the celebration of misguided art while the other side sees it as political correctness overreaching and censors rewriting history. 

Hollywood’s top grossing film, Gone With The Wind (1939), was temporarily removed from HBO Max before the streaming service inserted a 4.5-minute preamble by Black film scholar Jacqueline Stewart discussing “treatment of this world through a lens of nostalgia denies the horrors of slavery, as well as its legacies of racial inequality”. This preface allows for a more nuanced recognition of the landmark film. 

In a similar effort, Netflix and BBC removed the comedy show Little Britain (2003) from its libraries after its creators apologised for blackface. One of its creators, Dan Lucas said: “If I could go back and do Little Britain again… I wouldn’t make that show now, it would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I’d do now.”  

It does not erase our history, but repositions once celebrated works of art to reflect our value-system today. It is only through introspection that reformation can truly occur. 

Because if reform doesn’t happen, not all that’s cancelled stays cancelled. Where do the banished go? After Crossfire ended in 2004, Carlson ultimately landed at Fox News where he was a contributor for many years, espousing the same beliefs. Then in 2016, he debuted his own show and in this year is now the highest rated cable show in history, earning him indisputable power in his echo-chamber.

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This post is the sixth in a series of chapters. Kim and Rob met in Sydney in 2017. Kim now lives in Singapore, while Rob’s in San Francisco. We continue to ask the questions that keep us up at night and we’re sharing our thoughts publicly on the macro-trends impacting our collective future. Shoutout to Vee, our editor in chief.

P.S.: Don’t worry, Paw Patrol isn’t cancelled. 

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Chapter 3: "Due to covid, we are experiencing some delays with our service"

Chapter 4: How to focus with distractions in an age of overload

Chapter 5: Where do we scroll for happiness?