Takeaways from Natalie Wynn on Cancel Culture

WNYC’s On The Media sat down with the “Contrapoints” host to discuss cancel culture — and being cancelled.

Contrapoints’s Natalie Wynn

Like so much internet slang, this use of the word “canceling” started out on black Twitter where a few years ago people, well, mostly women, would tweet “cancel R. Kelly” and things like that. You know, it started out as this vigilante strategy for bringing justice and accountability to powerful people who previously had been immune to any consequences for their actions. For example, the Me Too movement promised to use social media shaming as a way to topple sexually abusive men in power who couldn’t be held accountable in any other way.

The promise of canceling was that it was going to give power back to people who had none, and bring justice to prominent abusers. It’s, in a way, the 21st century version of the guillotine-the bringer of justice, the people’s avenger. But, also like the guillotine, it can become a sadistic entertainment spectacle. And I wanna make the case that we do have, well, a teensy bit of a Reign of Terror situation on our hands, gorg.

Now there’s a version of this conversation that’s already been had to death, and it goes like this: On the one side are a bunch of male comedians who constantly bitch about how cancel culture is out of control, you can’t joke about anything anymore without these Millennial jackals trying to get you in trouble. And the other side is mostly progressive think-piece authors who argue that there’s no such thing as cancel culture, t’s just that powerful people are finally being held accountable for their actions and they can’t fucking handle it, so they go around bitching about cancel culture.

Now unfortunately, neither of those viewpoints is quite as correct as some people might hope. So, it’s a good thing I’m here to deliver The Truth.

The seven tropes of cancel culture

Two other interesting takeaways

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World traveler & foreign affairs enthusiast. GenX. Lawful neutral. I write gags and titles . Smoke if you got ’em. www.ctliotta.com

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CT Liotta

World traveler & foreign affairs enthusiast. GenX. Lawful neutral. I write gags and titles . Smoke if you got ’em. www.ctliotta.com