Cancel Culture Clearly Defined

A culture is a set of habits of thought, feeling, and action characteristic of a social group. We usually refer to a specific group’s culture by turning that group’s name into an adjective and placing it before “culture.”

For example, Texan culture refers to the set of habits of thought, feeling, and action characteristic of Texans. You don’t need to be Texan to be impacted by Texan culture. You also don’t need to be Texan to embody the set of habits characteristic of Texans to a greater or lesser extent.

How a social group is grouped impacts how hard it is to talk about its culture. It’s usually easier to talk about the culture of groups who are grouped by something other than aspects of their culture. The people in the social group “Texans” are grouped by geography. If you live in Texas, you are a Texan, regardless of how much you embody Texan culture.

However, many social groups are grouped by aspects of their culture. This will seem circular until you recognize that habits are contagious and that habit transmission can form distinct groups out of broader populations.

Gamer culture, for instance, is the culture of a social group defined by an aspect of its culture. To be considered a “gamer,” you must play video games, but habitual gaming is an integral part of gamer culture. The habit of gaming preceded the social construction of the group “gamers.”

Cancel culture is also a culture of a social group defined by its culture. It is the set of habits of thought, feeling, and action characteristic of cancellers, or people who habitually cancel. You cancel when you advocate that a perceived wrongdoer be punished according to rules that, if standardized in a non-discriminatory way and applied to everyone, would render people you do not want to be punished as deserving of the same punishment as the perceived wrongdoer. Such advocacy qualifies as cancelling regardless of whether the perceived wrongdoer ends up being punished.

To illustrate, consider calls in 2020 for the punishment of then New York Times food writer Allison Roman for comments she made in an interview. She criticized Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo for, as she saw it, selling out their personal brands to make quick money off things like social media advertisements and low-quality goods. A number of people advocated that Roman be fired for what they described as a racist verbal attack by a white woman against two women of color. If the rule these people believed Roman violated was standardized in a non-discriminatory way that could apply to everyone at the Times’ actions, it would be something like “Don’t criticize women of color.” Everyone who advocated that Roman be punished, and would have opposed the punishment of anyone who criticized, say, Candace Owens, was cancelling.

People who deny the existence of cancel culture because they do not see enough cancelled people conflate a type of culture with a type of event. You do not have to be a successful gamer to be a gamer; you do not have to be a successful canceller to be a canceller. Believing cancel culture isn’t real because an insufficient number of people are properly cancelled is like thinking gamer culture isn’t real because too few people have reached a certain level on a game.