If You Cancel Me, I Will Cancel You Back

Cancel culture will never stop with your preferred ideology--eventually, it comes for us all.

Note: I actually wrote this piece yesterday, RIGHT before the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation. Bad timing on my part, or great timing? Who knows. Late last night, I edited it to reflect that news, but if it reads a bit weird as a result (ie: Why are you talking about obscure cancellations of 2015 when we’re in a CRISIS?) that’s probably why.

I’m going to start this article by talking about something a bit unexpected—the 2000s-era British TV show Peep Show—but bear with me. Peep Show is an excellent show. It’s sort of a low-budget, deadpan, deliberately awkward British version of Seinfeld, following Mark and Jez, two thirty-something roommates and their various trials and tribulations around work, dating and friendship in London. In what might be my all-time favorite episode of my all-time favorite show, Jez’s friend from college, Merry, randomly gives him the deed to a pub she owns in what he later realizes is a psychotic break. Initially concerned for Merry, he and Mark work together to get her involuntarily committed to a mental hospital (known as “sectioning” in the UK.)

Realizing how simple it was to get Merry sectioned, Jez attempts to get another friend sectioned over a minor disagreement. When Jez and Mark visit Merry in the mental hospital, Mark suggests that ownership of the pub be returned to Merry since she wasn’t in the right state of mind when she handed it over to Jez. To stop him and keep the pub, Jez attempts to section Mark. Not sure what else to say, Mark turns to the psychologist and says, “They could section you for trying to section me!” Jez retorts. “If you section me, I will section you, so help me.” The psychologist, completely fed up, says, “Okay, we’ve had our fun with the sectioning.”

This is, more or less, what “cancel culture” has become. In the 2010s and early 2020s, the Left “sectioned” with impunity, sometimes over out-right bigotry but also over minor intra-left disagreements that didn’t reach what anyone could reasonably call “hate speech.” The Right, who claimed to be against cancel culture, are now getting people fired from their jobs for posting insensitive content about the murder of Charlie Kirk. Like the overzealous cancellations of the 2020-era Left, many of these cancellations are completely disproportionate to the offenses. Just last night, Jimmy Kimmel’s entire late night show was canceled, not because he celebrated Kirk’s death (he didn’t!) but because he made a joke about Kirk’s killer that was read as an insinuation that he was a Trump supporter.

I’m sure some on the Left will be quick to tell me that 2020-era cancel culture never really happened and yet, if it did, it was deserved and a good thing. Those on the Right will be quick to tell me that nothing the Right does to cancel people is at all comparable to the insanity of 2020. Let’s just agree that sometimes, people of any political leaning are disproportionately punished or blacklisted over one thing they said. Sometimes the things they say are genuinely bad, but the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, and the public shaming spins out of control and becomes disproportionate to the offense of a singular remark.

As someone who is a bit of an anti-public-shaming extremist, I’ve disliked cancel culture long before the Charlie Kirk cancellations, so I promise you I’m coming at this from a fairly non-partisan place. Just last week, I wrote about the Internet’s history with unjust public shaming campaigns. A few months ago, I wrote about the anonymous gossip app Tea, and how apps like these have more to do with salacious gossip and revenge than protecting women from predators. I’ve dealt with far too many angry comments from those on the Left accusing me of defending bigots and misogynists to fall victim to critiques from the Right about only caring about cancel culture when the Left is under the magnifying glass, so please spare me the “but imagine if the political parties were reversed?” thing. Trust me, I’ve imagined it.

The only way you can reasonably talk about cancel culture is to do so from a non-partisan perspective. Either you like it or you don’t (and most people, even people who don’t like it, will find some extreme instances where they think a cancellation is justified.) But ultimately, you cannot approve of dogmatic cancel culture only when it benefits your own side. Eventually, the monster you feed will come for you too.