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intro
Hi, guys! It’s Stacey! Today’s episode is going to be a quick chat on cancel culture—what it is and how it has been panning out in the media in the past few years. Tune in towards the end for our resident interviewee, Rachel and her thoughts on cancel culture.
seg 1 - what is cancelling
A public figure says something that doesn’t sit right. Enter stage right: public backlash in the form of posts, videos, tweets, and every other technical social media term that means an output of information to the void of the internet. The public figure is being cancelled, or may already have been cancelled.
As defined by Dr. Utpal Dholakia, Professor of Marketing at Rice University, “canceling is an individual's volitional act of publicly rejecting and actively pursuing harm against a perceived transgressor.”
He continues by saying that there are two parties involved in a cancelling episode: the canceler and those that are cancelled. The canceler engages in three psychological processes to cancel the person to be cancelled.
identify / become aware of the transgression and internalize it as something important
experience strong negative emotions (this can include, but is not limited to “outrage, disgust, fear and anger”)
act punitively to harm the cancelled-to-be in a public rejection response but also private actions (like via direct messages or emails)
linked in the description of this episode is Dr. Dholakia’s graphic of the cancelling process, as well as the article that these processes were defined in.
Relative to other forms of rejection, such as ghosting and boycotting, the canceler’s actions appear disproportionate to the magnitude of the transgression and there is no “innocent until proven guilty,” but rather the cancelling is based on the judgement of the canceler.
According Dr. Valerie Fridland, Professor of Linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department of the University of Nevada, the word “cancel” is different from the words “boycott” or “reject” is that in it is weaved a “communal sense of morality and accountability.” By implying so, a person is obliged to signal, or even “alert,” others in what is the event of social cancelling.
seg 2 - what is social cancelling
Subsequent this personal “cancelling” is the “culture” aspect, where now other people that share the same negative emotion to the transgression and have acted in some way to harm the cancelled-to-be, or at this point perhaps even the cancelled, use some medium, like social media, to collectively denounce the transgressor and reject this person.
By using social media and amassing a following against this person, harm is amplified and possibly, if not already disproportional to the severity of the transgression when it reaches the cancelled.
A danger of social cancelling is the lack of tolerance for opposing views, possibly censoring or coercing those with opposing views, thus restricting free speech, all of which were pointed out by Dr. Dholakia.
As he notes, anyone can be cancelled at any time.
But as noted by Vox, even public figures that have been cancelled aren’t completely blacklisted either, nor do many of them face serious repercussions.
Some male public figures that were cancelled in the Me Too era still have a career ahead of them, their “them being canceled” episode lasting only a few months.
Many beauty YouTubers have been cancelled. They post an apology video. People make fun of said video. Days to months later, the “cancelation” becomes forgotten and just a “hey, remember that time?” conversation starter.
These “cancelled” episodes have also caused increases in sales. J.K. Rowling’s support of a trans-exclusionary radical feminst in a recent tweet has actually caused an increase in sales of her books in Great Britain. R. Kelly and Michael Jackson’s music have increased in sales and streams following documentaries that explored allegations of sexual assault.
By recognizing the toxicity of cancel culture, sympathy is sometimes shown towards the cancelled and can victimize said person, painting them as collateral damage of society’s mob mentality.
There are more examples where those that are cancelled aren’t really cancelled, and rather gain attention from the media, so what’s the consensus on cancel culture?
seg 3 - discussion with rachel
Have you heard of cancel culture?
Do you know of a recent incident where a celebrity had been canceled?
conclusion
Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode! Today, you hopefully learned something new about cancel culture and how we internalize moral transgressions in the age of social media. Visit our website, https://apopofpsych.wixsite.com/psych, linked in the description for our resources and scripts on this episode and past episodes. Feel free to send in audio messages through Anchor or contact us through the chat feature on our website. See you guys in two weeks!
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