Walk On Podcast Episode 56 : CaNcEL CuLtUrE

Public shaming is not new; think public executions, throwing petty criminals in the stockades, witch trials. People have always LOVED the drama. Why else would Reality TV exist?

Father of some of our most embarrassing psychological theories Sigmund Freud coined the term “schadenfreude,” which means taking pleasure in watching someone else suffer. I think this is what possesses so many of us to gleefully participate in what antiquated shock jocks and Chrissy Teigan call “Cancel Culture.”

In the glory (and also sometimes really cringe) days of tumblr dot com, I was consuming information about social injustice like a black hole. I could not get enough. We were critiquing, everything, hunny!!! And it felt good. It felt good to question everything that always felt wrong but no one would admit was wrong—it felt good to feel motivated to change the status quo, it felt good to have answers to the age-old question why is life so hard?. We were fighting the good fucking fight!!! I needed this. 20something and struggling financially, with my sexuality, my gender, my relationship with my body, seeing a major push back against police brutality, reading other people’s problem’s with capitalism, finding the words “patriarchy,” “white supremacy,” and seeing them discussed as now problems and not some monsters of the past, it changed me. It woke me up.

We were watching, for the first time in history, cis men and white people who abused their power, being forced to take responsibility. And that felt like healing. It absolutely was healing. This spun out into public call-outs of people being problematic in one way or another. Post a racist joke? That shit went viral and you would lose your job. Say something homophobic? Boom, life as you knew it was changed forever. DM an underage person with the intent to hit on them? Not today, J*mes Fr*nco!!! This was a cultural shift in the way we handled oppression in the macrocosm of society and the microcosm of interpersonal relationships. The marginalized finally had a voice—the internet was our loudspeaker. It was beautiful.

I have this theory that healing happens on a pendulum, and that it often has to swing between extremes in order to find balance. I think we—or maybe I should just speak for myself—I swung a little too far. I really enjoyed watching people I perceived as powerful fall from grace. I really enjoyed knowing a fucking Karen was losing everything. I really enjoyed occasionally making a fellow white woman cry by simply explaining how racist she was being. I do not regret these moments, but I have also come to love living in the discomfort of realizing I still have a lot to learn and doing the never-ending work to learn it. I have started to wonder if some people haven’t been denied the opportunity to fall in love with being wrong and learning to know better and then begin doing better, by living in fear of saying something wrong and being Next™.

I started to notice something that made me pause, take a step back, and reconsider this way of operating. I started to see public shaming done by people with more capitalist and opportunistic motives used as a weapon to take down people they considered competition. This happened to a former friend and mentor of mine and it almost ruined her career—she then turned around and used that same tactic on me, which gave me an even more personal experience with the shadow side of industry-disguised-as-community. Its effective. It works.

The mob mentality is full-proof in the sense that—once the snowball starts rolling downhill, no one wants to jump in front of it, lest they be run over too. The Cancel is contagious. Defend someone in the harsh spotlight, and it’ll shine on you too. I always start to feel doubtful of anything that insists it shouldn’t be questioned. If it can’t stand up to a little scrutiny… maybe the foundation isn’t really that strong. I mean, look at the faith of dogmatic religious people.

Once I started studying the philosophy of abolition and restorative justice—how in order to move away from a punitive society, we have to provide more resources to people and stop operating from a space of scarcity—I realized the punitive nature of what we were calling social justice. I began to change my mind and move differently. Abolition requires prevention of suffering in the first place; a complete overhaul of how society runs. Abolition requires infrastructure. Basically, it’s the abolition of global capitalism. This is why the ruling class won’t have it.

I think the Big Goals of being a leftist eventually bring on the disappointing realization that being on the left means that we might never see the change we are fighting for. This is extremely disheartening. I think nit-picking our comrades can be a lot more satisfying and rooted in instant gratification than the grueling and lifelong work of taking direct action in our real-life, nonvirtual or real virtual, non social media witch hunt communities. I think the ego loves feeling like the smartest person on the internet. I think “well actually” can feel really good and can very easily cloak itself in "education” when it might actually just be superiority. I think “google it” culture has linked up with “you don’t owe anyone anything” culture has linked up with “ghost people who don’t live up to your unspoken expectations” has linked up with the capitalist program of perfection to have one big orgy called Disposability Culture.

If you are still reading, let me clarify. If you are marginalized and someone who is in a position of holding privilege over you is demanding you educate them, that burden should not fall on you. That burden should fall on your allies. If someone is a fucking shitbag and they get called out for being a shitbag, that is absolutely their fault. If someone is toxic, abusive, or straight-up unwilling to learn, but demanding interaction with you, fucking block a lil bitch. Otherwise, maybe what we really need is some good old-fashioned (new fangled???) conflict resolution. A conversation. An understanding that it isn’t about being perfect, it’s about never stopping trying, never stopping learning, never stopping fighting against the real enemy—the real, systemic oppressor. If we turned all this energy, all this vitriol, all this doxxing, all this resentment, all this schadenfreude on Them, we might actually get something done.

"Cancel culture" is what bigoted Fox News anchors, problematic starlets, and washed-up comedians call taking accountability--buuut more and more people are experiencing public shaming and the use of internet call-outs as a power play amongst people who may not have entirely altruistic motives. When does activism turn into bullying? Have we lost sight of the goal? Is "perfect" even attainable? Is there a way to foster communication and accountability without adding shame to the situation? It may be time to have this conversation, after all, you could be next. Listen here.