The term "cancel culture" conflates many different and distinct social phenomena in a way that stifles the discussion and understanding of any of them individually. Some of the "cancel culture" phenomena are good. Some of them are bad. Some of them don't exist. As an example, here's a list off the top of my head of "cancellings" that have happened or are purported to have happened:
Actors losing jobs after being outed as sex criminals
Kaepernick losing his job for kneeling in protest of the police state
That star wars actress losing her job for harassing her co-stars and comparing being a right winger to the holocaust
Working class people losing their jobs for expressing a point of view that their employer doesn't want to be associated with
Working class people losing their facebook accounts for posting reactionary garbage
People getting mad about something on the internet in a way that doesn't threaten to change anything
People getting mad about something on the internet in a way that does threaten to destroy livelihoods
People harassing individuals on twitter for making a Bad Post
Hasbro rebranding their Mr Potato Head line as just Potato Head
The Seuss Estate choosing not to publish some of their least popular books because they have racist caricatures
These don't really have a lot in common, so I don't think that using the phrase actually clarifies or helps communicate meaning. This is also why, in my opinion, you get a ton of "Cancel Culture is [good/bad/real/fake/actually just capitalism/etc.] takes in online leftist spaces, because we are each talking about our own Cancel Culture Rorschach.
Personally, I think that a lot of cancel culture discourse is a top-down right wing media project to condition their audience into equating stupid culture war bullshit with the fear that the woke mob is going to take their job.
There's also the whole ur-cancel culture of people wanting to "cancel" the Beatles and burning their albums back in the 60s; or evangelicals wanting to "cancel" Disney in the 90s because Scar seems a little gay to them and because Disney gave same-sex partner benefits to gay and lesbian employees back then.
That's a good point. There's a million things to criticize the term for, and one of them is that it sneakily implies a bunch of nonsense ideas like "this is a new thing that hasn't been a part of American society until recently." It's also almost only ever used for things conservatives get mad at. Ask them about Kaepernick or that AP journalist and you'll get an excuse for why those are different. The yearly outrage about starbucks cups isn't cancelling, but the imagined outrage about Aunt Jemima or Mr Potato Head is.
All-in-all, I don't think the term is productive and I personally dont use it
The term "cancel culture" conflates many different and distinct social phenomena in a way that stifles the discussion and understanding of any of them individually. Some of the "cancel culture" phenomena are good. Some of them are bad. Some of them don't exist. As an example, here's a list off the top of my head of "cancellings" that have happened or are purported to have happened:
These don't really have a lot in common, so I don't think that using the phrase actually clarifies or helps communicate meaning. This is also why, in my opinion, you get a ton of "Cancel Culture is [good/bad/real/fake/actually just capitalism/etc.] takes in online leftist spaces, because we are each talking about our own Cancel Culture Rorschach.
Personally, I think that a lot of cancel culture discourse is a top-down right wing media project to condition their audience into equating stupid culture war bullshit with the fear that the woke mob is going to take their job.
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There's also the whole ur-cancel culture of people wanting to "cancel" the Beatles and burning their albums back in the 60s; or evangelicals wanting to "cancel" Disney in the 90s because Scar seems a little gay to them and because Disney gave same-sex partner benefits to gay and lesbian employees back then.
That's a good point. There's a million things to criticize the term for, and one of them is that it sneakily implies a bunch of nonsense ideas like "this is a new thing that hasn't been a part of American society until recently." It's also almost only ever used for things conservatives get mad at. Ask them about Kaepernick or that AP journalist and you'll get an excuse for why those are different. The yearly outrage about starbucks cups isn't cancelling, but the imagined outrage about Aunt Jemima or Mr Potato Head is.
All-in-all, I don't think the term is productive and I personally dont use it