"Cancel culture" hides the damage of cancelation

Cancelation is identity annihilation, banishment, exile, and ongoing humiliation. That's all lost in airy talk of "cancel culture."

I was speaking with someone for the first time, and 30 minutes into our conversation he said, “After I decided I wasn’t going to end my life...” This individual had been canceled. Compared to dozens of other canceled people I’ve talked to over the last two years, he got off relatively easy: he kept two of his jobs, has widespread support amongst his community and coworkers, and his story never hit the media. And yet he still considered ending it all.

The next day, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The reactions and counter-reactions to Kirk’s murder made “cancel culture” the hot topic of debate and both-sides-ism at a pitch not seen since George Floyd.

But just like at that time, there is no talk nor consideration of the consequences of cancelation on the targeted individuals. That’s even less forgivable now, given that the year 2020 left us with hundreds or maybe thousands of data points.

Cancelation is not losing your late night talk show, comedy gig, campus or conference appearance, or even your job. Nor is it a day or week of social media mobbing.

It might start with a call for one of those, perhaps in response to posting #JusticeForAll instead of #BlackLivesMatter from a corporate account, or not sufficiently condemning Charlie Kirk’s murder before criticizing one of his debates. Then it reaches a disgruntled coworker or neighbor, a lazy clickbait merchant, or a catalytic algorithm. Having been summoned, the devil will not behave.

Cancelation is identity annihilation. Every professional achievement is erased. In my industry, sports, halls of fame and season-by-season records are punctuated by gaps that previously held the name of now-canceled coaches. Every personal attribute is erased—if you’re lucky—or replaced by sexist, racist, abusive, fill-in-the-blank-phobic.

That’s what drove the individual above to despair. Everything he had done and everything he was were under threat. If things had gone further, it would have been like he had never been there. Again, only if he was lucky. Many other canceled people have had well-earned legacies not erased but over-written by cheap but indelible stains.

Cancelation is also banishment. You are not only fired from your job—you are exiled from your professional and social communities.

One former CEO who was a high profile victim of a cancelation in 2020 has sent out over 200 resumes and applications. He’s received three calls back, and no offers. A senior IT employee at a major state university received two offers shortly after he was canceled. One was revoked after the prospective employer came across the articles that canceled him in small college town media. The other company pulled theirs after speaking with the university, which chose not to mention that he been fully cleared by a Title IX investigation.

But it’s the day-to-day moments that make it unbearable. People cross the street or brusquely look away to avoid even passing contact. They make appointments with your wife’s physical therapy practice in the hope of obliquely learning how you’re doing without having to face you.

Some think that lowly of you. They believe you’re the racist sexist something-phobe from the toxic bullying environment. Some don’t want to take the risk of being seen interacting with you. Others don’t want to face the awkwardness of “Do I acknowledge him? Can I? If so, how?” That would get too close to confronting their own complicity in what they know to be an injustice and what they sense is a trauma. So they double down on the exclusion.

Unhirable due to social stigma or a public blacklist, your friends won’t talk to you, and you make midnight runs to the Wal-Mart two towns over while wearing a hoodie and dark sunglasses in the hopes of not being recognized and shamed or accosted.

Neuroscience research has demonstrated that humiliation is a more intense experience within the brain than happiness or anger.

The “social pain“ of exclusion activates regions of the brain adjacent to our experience of physical pain. Prolonged and intense social pain—like that which accompanies humiliation and exile—can have many of the same downstream health effects as prolonged and intense physical pain. That helps explain the acute and chronic medical and psychological symptoms that many canceled people experience. Those, in turn, explain the tendency for canceled people to seek relief through drugs—some prescription, some not—or alcohol.

As one canceled coach put it: “Pain is easy as a lifelong athlete. Everything has been hurt. But emotional is different.”

Many canceled people have major depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms. The canceled CEO was so deep in treatment-resistant depression that he doesn’t remember our first meeting two years ago: “There’s a lot of things I don’t remember from those years.” And before you ask, he’s a teetotaler.

All of this is lost in the phrase “cancel culture.”

“Cancel culture” keeps us at a remove from the individual. The term itself is intrinsically collective. We already don’t need to get any closer than our keyboard, nor stick around around longer than hitting “Send” or “Post.” From there, we can skip over what we’ve inflicted or induced, and instead earnestly pontificate about trends and preen about applying “your rules” to the other side.

If either side in the cultural-political divide wants to claim some moral high ground on cancel culture, they can take the time to learn about the consequences of cancelation on the targeted individuals. Go back through The New York Times, local newspapers, or college newspapers from the peak years of 2019-21 and do some follow-up reporting, some “Where are they now?” features.

Going deep into one person’s cancelation will take most people to places they don’t want to go. It’s essential not only as a matter of ethics and civics, but of education. Cancelation opens grim doors for exploring the human condition. Limiting ourselves to “cancel culture” shields us from consequences but walls off new avenues of knowledge and understanding.

Related:

• No ‘Morning After’ for Victims of Cancellation (Reality’s Last Stand)

• Why Your Dignity Is So Vulnerable Today (Psychology Today)

• An enquiry into the effects of public punishments upon criminals and upon society. (Benjamin Rush, 1787)

• The Pillory, the Stock, and Cancel Culture (American Thinker)