Is Cancel Culture Really Anything New?

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

I was just thinking about this yesterday. In a way it is kind of new since we live in an age where more people than ever make their living through mass entertainment. So when they get publicly shunned or people “cancel support” as I’ve heard it called, it can hurt more people now more than ever.

In another way publicly shunning is nothing new. Joseph McCarthy is one historical example that comes to mind. After he was publicly shunned he never had the same influence. For a more entertainment based and even older example you have Fatty Arbuckle whose career essentially died after a rumor spread that he violated a girl at a party (I’ll leave out the more sordid details).

[The Dark Order Inferno]

No. The difference now is it's being used as a means for marginalised people to push back, while in the past it was used as a means to prevent all social progress or purge the left from any position of influence in the case of Mccarthyism.

Christian groups spent most of the twentieth century fighting pop culture, trying to kill shows with interracial romances, gay characters, basically anything they wouldn't see on TV when the Dumont network was a thing. They have punched down over and over and over never accepting society was changing around them, and when they lost battles they started to begin with, they started playing the victim when they received pushback. They're now pretending this is something they never did, while still doing it I might add, see the Nike and Gillette 'boycotts', telling about cancel culture and trying to make people who've been the victims for the longest time, of being the oppressors. The LGBQT community, African Americans, latinos and other minorities, women who've been expected to smile through abuse are no longer willing to just accept it... And it drives people nuts who think god gave them the 'right' to punch down without any consequences.

[FinalGwen]

"Cancel Culture" is a term used to make consequences sound scary and left wing.

[Allie Kitsune]

You can't do it to people who are famous and already financially flush. They have too much money and/or influence to make them broke and permanently unemployable.

You CAN however do it to some random Joe Blow living paycheck-to-paycheck (or in huge debt) who catches the attention of a mob on Twitter. That's the kind of person you can doxx, harass their employer, etc... until they're homeless and unemployable. The public at large doesn't have any positive memories of them to hold onto, after all.

If you're not either homeless, or at a minimum unemployable (and don't have enough pre-acquired assets to stay out of poverty), you're not cancelled.

[hassanchop]

Is this so called culture for ethics or is it about vindictiveness? Because if it’s the latter it’s counter intuitive and maybe used against them later.

[Long A, Short A]

The Dysco Inferno and FinalkGwen knocked it out of the park. I think the only things that are new about so called cancel culture is the term itself and how people manipulate the narratives.

[The Summer of Muskrat XVII]

Cancel Culture isn’t new, it’s the immediate access to public reaction that’s new. Most people wouldn’t bother to write a letter to the network, or phone the FCC/CRTC to field a complaint so you had to really f*** up for people in charge to get an idea of negative reactions.

However, when you can express opinion in a hashtag and powers that be see that number in their face 24 hours later, the response tends to be swifter and stronger. It’s much quicker and easier for people to make their voice heard now, so you tend to see quicker responses from the top.