Some thoughts on “cancel culture”

“Cancel culture.” Members of the American right are outraged by it. Cries of “cancel culture” are pretty much guaranteed to rile the faithful. This is a complicated thing, in part because American conservatives have started throwing around accusations of “cancel culture” for ordinary free market activity and in part because “cancel culture” is a new name for a very old thing that goes back at least to Biblical times, and probably as far back as humans had language.

First, what cancel culture is not. Cancel culture is not someone choosing not to buy a product because they don’t like the things the product’s makers are doing.

If a fast food chain gives money to a gay conversion therapy group, and I decide not to eat there because I don’t want my money going to anti-gay organizations, that’s not cancel culture.

If a heavy metal band puts a picture of the devil on their album cover, and Joe decides that as an evangelical Christian he doesn’t want to buy albums with pictures of devils on the covers, that’s not cancel culture.

Both those things are examples of the ordinary action of free markets. In a free market economy, consumers make choices about which products to buy. They make those choices based on values important to them. They weigh the value of the money they have against the value of the product and make their decision.

The value of the product can and does include intangible things like emotion. It always has. Modern conservatives who blather about “cancel culture” when someone chooses not to shop at Hobby Lobby because they use their “Christian values” to deny health benefits to employees are low-grade morons. Liberals who blather about “cancel culture” when a right-wing Evangelical won’t shop at Starbucks because they use the ‘wrong’ color Christmas coffee cup are low-grade morons.

And anyone who thinks “cancel culture” is a liberal invention or a conservative invention is especially dim.

So what is cancel culture?

Cancel culture is, at least hypothetically, the idea that people should be shunned for ideas or actions that others find disagreeable.

I say “hypothetically” because in reality that’s not the way it usually plays out. In reality, that idea becomes co-opted into in-group and out-group dynamics, and specifically into using ostracism as a loud public display of in-group values.

What’s the difference between that and boycotting Starbucks or Hobby Lobby?

• Cancel culture extends beyond making economic choices. It often extends, for example, to disavowing people in their personal lives, shutting them down in social activities, and (this is a very important component) going after those who support the canceled person or thing, or are insufficiently critical of the canceled person or thing.

The greatest example of cancel culture in American history is without doubt the McCarthyist Red Scare.

Suspected “communists” lost their jobs. They were unable to find new jobs. They were excluded from social events. They were attacked in their personal lives. Their wives, husbands, and children were attacked. Anyone who said “no, I don’t think so-and-so is a Communist” lost their jobs and their wives and children were attacked. People caught up in Communist sweeps sometimes had to leave the country.

• Cancel culture frequently plays out within in-groups, not between groups. Cancel culture usually involves a person being canceled from within their own in-group by their own peers, not canceled by someone from a different group.

When the Dixie Chicks were canceled for criticizing the invasion of Iraq, they were canceled by people like them: southern conservatives.

People tend to be canceled for perceived violations of the group they belong to.Part of why cancel culture can appear so vicious is that the people doing the canceling are coming from a place of rage and betrayal. Emotionally, they believe, “I thought you were one of us, but you turned out to be The Enemy.” They feel personally harmed by the person or thing being canceled, even if they have never met or interacted with that person or thing. Cancel culture rests on a foundation of parasociality and in-group dynamics.

• Cancel culture is a coordinated attempt to enforce values and norms.When a person or thing is canceled, perceived supporters of the person or thing are also attacked, sometimes even more viciously than the original person or thing. Anyone who is not sufficiently zealous about condemning the canceled person or thing becomes The Enemy.
• Cancel culture extends beyond “I won’t support this person” to “I will make sure nobody supports this person.” People who wish to cancel a person or thing don’t simply vote with their own dollars, they try to vote with everyone else’s too.

They may, for example, attack venues that host the canceled person or thing. When the Dixie Chicks were canceled, listeners threatened radio DJs who played their music (and one radio station suspended two DJs for playing them). Radio stations received phone calls night and day telling them to ban Dixie Chicks.

Owners of venues that hosted Dixie Chicks concerts received death threats. Venues had to install metal detectors ahead of Dixie Chicks shows.

• Cancel culture is selective outrage. It tends to be triggered not by bad or immoral behavior, but specifically by bad or immoral behavior that makes the people doing the canceling feel personally betrayed.

When the Dixie Chicks were canceled, radio stations continued to play Tracy Lawrence, even though he was convicted of beating his wife.

Spouse abuse is an accepted, or at least widely tolerated, behavior among American conservatives. Condemning the Iraq invasion felt like a personal betrayal of American conservatives’ pro-military, pro-war-on-terror values.

• Cancel culture involves bandwagoning. People who participate in cancel culture generally do so because they see others doing so. It is an easy, low-cost way to virtue signal without risk. It does not require courage to go along with the crowd.

I will cop to doing this myself. When Amber Heard made her accusations against Johnny Depp, I jumped on the bandwagon, right here on Quora. It was an easy, zero-cost way for me to virtue-signal. (I have written about that here.)

The thing about bandwagoning is that not only does it offer a way to virtue-signal with no risk and require no courage, people don’t want to fact-check.

When you hear so-and-so has done Something Awful, engaging with the accusation and finding out if it’s true takes time, energy, and emotional resources. Not only that, people who do that work can end up in the crosshairs themselves. Even saying “hey, wait a minute” can make you a target of rage.

Canceling is about moral purity. It becomes an in-group/out-group signifier. “Are you one of US? Or are you with The Enemy?” That’s why the reactions — sending death threats to station managers of radio stations that play the Dixie Chicks, Winona Ryder saying she expected death threats for testifying in court Johnny Depp never abused her — seem so outrageously over the top.

In-group/out-group signifiers provoke strong reactions, even violence, because they feel like existential threats. When a person you believed was part of your in-group becomes part of your out-group, any support for the canceled person is a threat to group cohesion and identity. Because human beings are a social species, that can be perceived as an existential threat.

That’s why it’s not about not eating at Chick-Fil-A. It’s about doing everything in your power to extinguish the person or thing being canceled, and extinguish anyone who supports, directly or indirectly, the person or thing being canceled.

If you don’t buy the new Dixie Chicks albums, that’s free market economics.

If you don’t go to the new Johnny Depp movie, that’s free market economics.

If you stalk, harass, and threaten the manager of the radio station that plays Dixie Chicks, if you threaten to firebomb the concert hall that hosts a Dixie Chicks concert, if you say you’re going to buy a gun to shoot Johnny Depp, if you threaten to kill Johnny Depp’s ex because she says in public he always treated her well, that’s not free market economics. That’s something else, on a whole different level.

What do I think of this?

I think this is part of human nature. I think it has always been part of human nature and always will be a part of human nature as long as we are recognizably human.

I think I’ve participated in it. I look back on the ways I’ve participated in it and I’m ashamed of myself.

I am far less likely now than I was even two years ago to engage in bandwagoning and virtue signaling at someone else’s expense, especially when it seems easy and costs me nothing, and I don’t have all the facts. That doesn’t excuse the fact that I’ve done it.

I think there are a lot of parts of human nature that served us well when we lived in tribes of 50 people and were just figuring out how to use sharpened sticks that don’t serve us well now, and part of trying to be a decent human being is guarding against those things. It’s hard, because they feel natural. They feel virtuous.

I feel like anyone who thinks this is a “liberal thing” or a “conservative thing” is disingenuous. This is a human thing.

And finally, I think I will likely get pushback from both liberals and conservatives for saying this.