i think it would be good to point out that cancel culture is not merely a liberal/left phenomenon. The right engages in "cancel culture," all groups engage in "cancel culture".

McCarthyism/red scare shit is an example of cancel culture. A more recent example could be post-9/11: Phil Donahue got his show on MSNBC cancelled b/c he was against the invasion of Iraq. Bill Maher also got his show cancelled for being critical of US Foreign policy. Also, imagine being a politician and saying Israel should not exist. You'd never have a career in politics.

Here's a good article someone linked on this site: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/18/political-correctness-destroying-america/

Like, what is "cancel culture?" It's just normal human interactions, except that now we're "cancelling" people for hating gay people and not being progressive enough, as opposed to cancelling them for being communists and not wanting to invade Iraq. I'd call that an improvement. As someone else in the thread notes, people have always been asked to follow certain norms. It's just that now these norms are changing.

Also, I'd be interested to hear these people's solutions to "cancel culture." I think there was a dunk tank post recently of some twitter person complaining that nowadays she has to self-censor herself around her friends. Like, yeah, of course, we all self-censor ourselves to some extent so we can have a functioning society and normal interactions. Like what should we do, just all walk around with no filter all the time?

This obsession with cancel culture seems to me to just be because people who aren't used to having their opinions questioned are now having them questioned, and it's much more bottom-up, since the internet has allowed regular people to more easily interact with celebrities and politicians.