What Is Cancel Culture?

If you’re unsure what cancel culture is, a good working definition is

“…popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive.“

Additional tactics can include calling for someone’s job, removal from boards, etc.

Where Do We Go Now?

As I thought about cancel culture, I thought about what we see on social media and how it makes us react.

In my opinion, social media is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it has never been easier to mobilize allies and supporters for or against people, organizations and causes. On the other hand, it is similarly effortless to hit share without having close to a full understanding (“doing the work”) regarding what you’re sharing or posting. An easy example is when people react to an article’s headline without even reading it. I know this because people will ask questions in the comments that would have been answered by reading. With this ease, it’s dangerously obvious how we can get ourselves or others worked up over something while still being 100% wrong. When we are wrong, I wonder how many make the necessary corrections or take down the incorrect post?

What No Second Chance?

On Medium, where I share my blog posts, I read “My Black Friend Corrected My Unwittingly Racist Statement. The author told a story, where they used a word to describe a medical condition. Then, a friend took them aside (I assume) offline and gently explained how that word had a racist background. Rather than using an angry, confrontational approach, the friend knew that the author used the word out of ignorance rather than out of genuine malicious intent.

As I wrote more of this post, I thought about this Medium post and some of the content that I recall working people up. When we react, I wonder if we realize how much power that we have? Recalling my suspicion that people may not often check before sharing or posting something, there can be unforeseen repercussions.

The other day I re-watched ESPN’s 30 For 30 on Bruce Lee Be Like Water. There was an excerpt from his 1962 letter to Pearl Tso that I found in a book of his collected letters, Bruce Lee: Letters of The Dragon,

“When you drop a pebble into a pool of water, the pebble starts a series of ripples that expand until they expand until they encompass the whole pool. This is exactly what will happen when I give my ideas a definite plan of action.“

While here Bruce Lee spoke about how ideas with a definite plan can have power. I would say that ideas with no definite plan for action can have similar power. While good can come from it, likewise bad things can happen, too. When we’re talking about the possible effects on people’s lives, I feel that we should be sure that we know what happened, prior to taking action under cancel culture.

Rush To Help Rather Than Rush To Punish

About one month ago, I published “How An Effective Apology Can Improve Communication.” In that post, I wrote about three points that should be part of a legitimate apology going towards making things right:

1. Admitting fault

2. Explanation (notice that I didn’t say excuses)

3. Make amends

From what I’ve seen, when people make mistakes they usually go through steps 1 and 2, but not necessarily step 3. Perhaps it’s from lack of self-awareness or not knowing where to start. It’s not my place to justify nor excuse someone’s problematic actions. However, I would suggest that rather than pushing to “cancel” them, how about trying to rehabilitate them, as with the friend of the Medium post’s author, and make them better people?

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Returning to Bruce Lee’s analogy of the pebble thrown into a pool of water, the actions that we call for have tremendous power, especially when combined with those of others. When we call for a particular action, I think that it’s prudent to be as close to 100% that we have accurate facts to direct our informed decision. Also, short of something unconditionally reprehensible, I feel that we should make sure to justify the action. We should be able to live with ourselves regarding any consequences. If you sought facts, confirmed them, decided on a justified action and morally feel comfortable with it, then I think that you’ll be okay.

As I wrote in “Hello World, my first post,”

“It can be hard to make sense of the world. This is why it’s important to connect the right dots.”

What I wrote here over one year ago is as relevant today as it’s ever been. With the speed of transmission with social media, we need to be sure. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take action. However, I am saying that we should be absolutely sure prior to doing so. At the end of the day, let us remember that what we call for affects other people’s lives. Before you call for them to be cancelled, I ask you to first give them the time and space to legitimately and actually make the necessary amends.

BE SURE BEFORE YOU CALL FOR ACTION.

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