Cancel culture, also called call-out culture, is a social trend and a way people choose to associate with others. It happens when people criticize or stop supporting someone they believe acted or spoke in an unacceptable way. This often involves online calls for the person to be excluded, boycotted, avoided, or fired. This exclusion can happen in both online and real-life settings, especially with people who have influence in areas like media or politics. More broadly, cancel culture includes actions like removing statues from public places, taking books out of school lessons, or changing the names of places. People who experience this are sometimes said to have been "canceled." Some public figures have seen their careers affected by boycotts, which are often called "cancellation," while others who complained about being canceled have continued their careers.
The term "cancel culture" became widely used in 2018 and is often viewed negatively. Some people say it stops open discussion, does not help society improve, causes unfair treatment, acts like online bullying, or increases disagreements between political groups. Others say the term is used to criticize efforts to hold people accountable or to give a voice to those who are often ignored. Still others question if cancel culture is a real trend, pointing out that boycotting has existed for a long time before the term was created.
Origins
A professor from Cambridge University, Nathan Cofnas, says cancel culture is not new. He points to examples like excommunication in old religions, political actions, and social consequences for academics as early forms of cancel culture. British journalist Gavin Mortimer compared modern cancel culture to the anti-Semitic persecution of Jews in Nazi-Germany before World War II. Early examples include conservative groups opposing the magazine Hustler and the TV show Teletubbies, as well as public backlash against the Dixie Chicks for criticizing the Iraq War.
The 1981 album Take It Off by the band Chic includes a song called "Your Love Is Cancelled," which compares ending a relationship to canceling a TV show. The song was written by Nile Rodgers after a bad date with a woman who wanted him to use his fame to help her. This song inspired a screenwriter to include a reference to being "canceled" in the 1991 movie New Jack City. This use helped spread the term into African-American Vernacular English.
By 2015, the idea of canceling became common on Black Twitter. People used the term to describe choosing to stop supporting someone or something, either seriously or jokingly. Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times explained that this use of "cancellation" means completely stopping support for something. As online shaming became more public, the term "cancellation" grew to describe strong, widespread online reactions to a single controversial statement. Over time, more frequent cancellations and group reactions led people to call this a "culture" of outrage.
In October 2017, sexual assault claims against film producer Harvey Weinstein led to the cancellation of his projects, his removal from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and legal consequences, including a rape conviction. These events helped start the #MeToo movement, where people shared their own abuse stories, leading to the cancellation of careers for those accused. In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K. admitted to misconduct, causing his shows to be canceled and his contracts to end. He returned to work in 2018 and won a Grammy in 2022, but many in the entertainment industry said supporting him was inappropriate due to his past actions.
Discussions about "cancel culture" increased in late 2019. In the 2020s, the term became a way for people to describe what they saw as harsh reactions to politically incorrect speech. In 2020, Ligaya Mishan of The New York Times wrote that the term is used for a wide range of actions, from online justice to harassment. People who support canceling often want more than apologies, though it is unclear if they aim to fix specific wrongs or address larger power imbalances. The #MeToo movement also used "call-out culture" to encourage people to report abusers publicly, especially those in powerful positions.
Academic and legal perspectives
In 2021, law professor Sasha Volokh wrote on The Volokh Conspiracy that "cancel culture" is a term that includes many different actions and outcomes, such as boycotts, being fired, being criticized on social media, refusing to be friends, rejecting a college acceptance or speech invitation, removing a law, taking a book off a school list, and other similar actions. Volokh said cancel culture mostly involves people exercising their right to choose whom they associate with, which is a form of personal freedom. In a 2021 article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote that cancel culture is a type of free speech and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Media studies scholar Eve Ng defined cancel culture as the act of removing support, such as viewership, social media followers, or buying products endorsed by someone, for people who are believed to have said or done something unacceptable, often from a social justice perspective, such as sexism, homophobia, racism, or bullying.
Ng also described cancel culture as a group of people who are often from marginalized communities expressing strong disapproval of powerful individuals. Lisa Nakamura, a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan, said canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and that cancel culture is a way people show they have control over their choices, especially when they feel they have little power over what appears on social media. She also said cancel culture reflects a need for people to be held accountable by others.
People have different views about whether cancel culture is fair. Some say it punishes people for actions that are not serious enough, similar to John Stuart Mill’s criticism of public shaming. Mill wrote that society can be more oppressive than governments because it limits people’s freedom in everyday life. Martha Nussbaum compared cancel culture to "justice of the mob," but she said this kind of justice is not fair or balanced.
Others believe that shaming can be helpful if done correctly. They say cancel culture sometimes harms people unfairly but can be improved to help people change their behavior. For example, holding people responsible for their mistakes can correct bad actions, but it should include the belief that people can improve. Some agree with Plato, who said shame can lead to moral growth. Everyone in this debate agrees that it is important to avoid "spoiled identity," which means being seen as someone who cannot change and is not welcome in a community.
In 2023, American conservatives and anti-trans activists boycotted Bud Light because of its hiring of transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. This event is considered an example of cancel culture and consumer backlash. The Harvard Business Review said the incident showed companies trying to connect with younger, socially-conscious customers but caused problems for Bud Light, such as retailers changing their plans, which hurt the product’s success. The event also made marketing teams worry about taking stands on social issues.
Harvard University professor Pippa Norris said the debate over cancel culture is between those who believe it gives a voice to people who are often ignored and those who think it limits free speech and debate. Norris said social media plays a big role in making cancel culture more common. Studies also show that online activism has made cultural conflicts worse. Norris also said the "spiral of silence" theory might explain why people avoid sharing opinions on social media, fearing their views might be criticized for not matching the majority.
In the book The Coddling of the American Mind (2018), social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said "safetyism" causes call-out culture on college campuses. Safetyism is a culture where people avoid making choices that might upset others. Cultural studies scholar Frances E. Lee said call-out culture causes people to avoid expressing opinions they think are wrong or harmful. Keith Hampton, a professor of media studies at Michigan State University, said cancel culture increases political disagreements in the U.S. but does not change people’s opinions. Eugene Scalia said cancel culture might affect the right to legal help, as some lawyers might avoid controversial topics to protect their reputation.
Some scholars suggest ways to improve cancel culture. Clinical counselor Anna Richards, who helps resolve conflicts, said learning to understand why people criticize others can help make call-out culture more effective. Professor Joshua Knobe, from Yale University’s Philosophy Department, said public criticism is not helpful and that society often judges people too quickly. He said these actions can backfire and that it is better to focus on the positive things most people do.
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The term "cancel culture" is often viewed negatively and is discussed in conversations about free speech and censorship.
In a speech at the Obama Foundation's annual summit in 2019, former U.S. President Barack Obama spoke about the influence of "call-out culture" and "wokeness" among young activists on social media. In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized "cancel culture," comparing it to totalitarianism and stating that it is a political tool used to punish and shame people who disagree, by forcing them out of their jobs and demanding they submit. He was later criticized for being hypocritical because he had previously tried to cancel several people and companies. Trump made similar comments during the 2020 Republican National Convention, saying that the goal of cancel culture is to make good Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and removed from society.
Pope Francis said that cancel culture is "a form of ideological colonization, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression," and that it "ends up cancelling all sense of identity." Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, explains that social activism involves more than just calling people out online or at protests. It includes planning strategies, holding meetings, and collecting signatures on petitions. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak included cancel culture, where one group "are trying to impose their views on the rest of us," among the dangers of the modern world.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek said that "cancel culture, with its implicit paranoia, is a desperate and obviously self-defeating attempt to compensate for the very real violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long suffered. But it is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-'safe space' whose discursive fanaticism merely strengthens the majority's resistance to it." Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Michigan, describes cancel culture as "a cultural boycott" and says it provides a culture of accountability. Meredith Clark, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, states that cancel culture gives power to disenfranchised voices. Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer for The New Republic, states that people are threatened by cancel culture because it is a new group of young progressives, minorities, and women who have "obtained a seat at the table" and are debating matters of justice and etiquette.
Dalvin Brown, writing in USA Today, described an open letter signed by 153 public figures and published in Harper's Magazine as marking a "high point" in the debate on the topic. The letter discussed arguments against "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty." A response letter, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate," was signed by over 160 people in academia and media. It criticized the Harper's letter as a plea to end cancel culture by successful professionals with large platforms who wanted to exclude others who have been "canceled for generations." The writers ultimately stated that the Harper's letter was intended to further silence already marginalized people. They wrote: "It reads as a caustic reaction to a diversifying industry—one that's starting to challenge diversifying norms that have protected bigotry."
A number of professors, politicians, journalists, as well as other citizens and activists have questioned the validity of cancel culture as an actual phenomenon. Connor Garel, writing for Vice, states that cancel culture "rarely has any tangible or meaningful effect on the lives and comfortability of the cancelled." Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter for NPR, wrote in 2021 that overuse of the phrase "cancel culture" in American politics, particularly by Republicans, has made it "arguably background noise." Per Kurtzleben and others, the term has undergone semantic bleaching to lose its original meaning.
Historian C. J. Coventry argues that the term is incorrectly applied, and that the label has been used to avoid accountability for historical instances of injustice. Another historian, David Olusoga, made a similar argument, and argued that the phenomenon of cancellation is not limited to the left. Indigenous governance professor and activist Pamela Palmater writes in Maclean's magazine that "cancel culture is the dog whistle term used by those in power who don't want to be held accountable for their words and actions—often related to racism, misogyny, homophobia or the abuse and exploitation of others."
Sarah Manavis wrote for the New Statesman magazine, "For the better part of the last decade, we have given a label to something that has existed for the length of human history. Some might call it criticism, others might call it backlash." Additionally, she observed that many opponents of so-called cancel culture had drawn upon the arguments of Jon Ronson's book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. However, noting that Ronson himself remarked that the term cancel culture is "not useful at all" since it "encompasses wildly different people and situations," Manavis wrote that "Ronson himself believes that the 'public shaming of civilians' which Ronson wrote of in his book 'doesn't apply' to the social phenomena labelled as cancel culture." To Manavis, the public shaming of "non-famous people" is not essentially about lack of "free speech," but about "how little power normal people have." To Manavis, "[s]ocial media can be intimidating when you have thousands of people disagreeing with you," but the "right to free speech is not the right to have your unfiltered thoughts published without critique. It’s likely [that,] if you feel this way, you hold more power than most of the world."
Some media commentators including LeVar Burton and Sunny Hostin have stated that "cancel culture" should be renamed "consequence culture." The terms have different connotations: "cancel culture" focusing on the effect whereby discussion is limited by a desire to maintain one certain viewpoint, whereas "consequence culture" focuses on the idea that those who write or publish opinions or make statements should bear some responsibility for the effects of these on people.
A survey conducted in September 2020 on 10,000 Americans by Pew Research Center asked a series of different questions in regard to cancel culture, specifically on who has heard of the term cancel culture and how Americans define cancel culture. At that time, 44% of Americans said that they have at least heard a fair amount about the new phrase, while 22% have heard a great deal and 32% said they have heard nothing at all. 43% of Americans aged 18–29 have heard a great deal about cancel culture, compared to only 12% of Americans over the age of 65 who say they have heard a great deal. Additionally, within that same study, the 44% of Americans who had heard a great deal about cancel culture, were then asked how they defined cancel culture. 49% of those Americans state that it describes actions people take to hold others accountable, 14% describe cancel culture as censorship of speech or history, and 12% define it as mean-spirited actions taken to cause others harm. It was found that men were more likely to have heard or know of cancel culture, and that those who identify with the Democratic Party (46%) are no more likely to know the term than those in the Republican Party (44%).
A poll of American registered voters conducted by Morning Consult in July 2020 showed that cancel culture, defined as "the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive", was common: 40% of respondents said they had withdrawn support from public figures and companies, including on social media, because they think
In popular media
- The American animated TV show South Park used a "#CancelSouthPark" campaign to make fun of cancel culture during the promotion of its 22nd season in 2018. In the season's third episode, "The Problem with a Poo," the show mentioned the 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, the cancellation of the TV show Roseanne after a controversial tweet by Roseanne Barr, and the 2018 Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.
- In 2019, cancel culture was a main topic in Dave Chappelle's stand-up comedy show Sticks & Stones.
- The 2022 movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes fun of cancel culture by showing Leatherface killing someone who threatens to cancel him.
- The 2022 movie Tár was said by some critics to explore ideas related to cancel culture.
- The 2023 movie Dream Scenario criticizes cancel culture. The movie's creator, Kristoffer Borgli, said he wrote the screenplay after learning about university teachers who were fired for sharing personal opinions.