One of the more prominent social phenomena to emerge in the past few years has been cancel culture. First coming about on social media platforms like Twitter, cancel culture is the practice of publicly ostracizing or "cancelling" people, often celebrities or other public figures based on things that they have said or done that others find offensive. Some people who have been cancelled in the year of 2020 alone include YouTubers Shane Dawson and Jenna Marbles, author JK Rowling, television star Ellen DeGeneres, and actor Sebastian Stan.

Oftentimes, people become cancelled after allegations are made about them, or videos or tweets emerge from their past (or present) where they say or do offensive things. Shane Dawson and Jenna Marbles were cancelled for making racially charged jokes on YouTube about 10 years ago, JK Rowling was cancelled for making transphobic comments on Twitter, Ellen was cancelled because of allegations of a toxic work environment at her show, and Sebastian Stan was cancelled for liking an Instagram post made by his girlfriend in which she and her friends dressed as Geishas and captioned the photos "Asian Night".

Some people who engage in cancel culture do so with the intention of bringing issues that plague our society to light such as underlying racism and biases. Some join in cancelling in order to signify to others that they are an ally to their cause, often in a performative way. Others still participate in order to make themselves feel superior to those who they have the power to cancel, or to punish those they see as violating social rules or norms.

Cancel culture is something that has been ingrained in our society for a long time. Thinking in terms of evolution, humans need other humans in order to survive. We have strong innate desires to belong to groups and therefore are willing to modify our own ideologies in order to create a stronger bond and sense of belonging within a chosen social group. The proliferation of social media in recent years has only served to further our ability to act on this desire to fit into a tribe of like minded individuals. We can now join groups specifically catered to our own identities and thought processes and create tribal mindsets about what is right and wrong, as well as what behavior is acceptable or unacceptable. If for example, someone shares a post advocating for protests for racial equality in a "suburban housewives for Trump 2020" Facebook page, administrators of that page could block the post, remove the member from the group, or allow other members to comment on the post effectively "cancelling" this member for sharing a thought that is incongruent with the collective ideology of the group. Similarly, if a racially insensitive joke made years ago is found on the internet by a specific group of people, they may cancel the person who made that joke as a response to their ideology of right and wrong being violated. What better way to punish someone than to deny them the basic human desire of connection, belonging, and influence? This is the essential premise that cancel culture operates under.

A common misconception about cancel culture is that it is a generational or partisan issue. Most people attribute cancel culture to young liberal people, however older people and conservatives can be just as guilty of participating in cancel culture. Looking back to a few years ago, we can all remember when Kathy Griffin was cancelled by Trump supporters for taking a photo with a fake severed Trump head. While Griffin said that the photo was a joke, she was removed from the New Year's Eve lineup and was effectively cancelled on social media for sharing that photo. More recently, Harry Styles has been cancelled by older right-leaning people for starring on the cover of Vogue magazine wearing a dress. He was shamed publicly on the internet for not being "manly" enough and was criticized for helping to "bring an end to masculinity" in younger generations.

So if cancel culture is ingrained in human nature, and is not limited to age or party, why are so many people seemingly concerned about it? I think that the main issue with cancel culture comes from the fact that oftentimes people are cancelled for things that they do on accident, or things that are taken out of context. For example, John Mulaney was cancelled earlier this year for a joke he made in his monologue hosting Saturday Night Live. The joke was that no matter who won the election, certain things would stay the same; the poor will suffer, the rich will prosper, and Jane Lynch will continue to book television gigs and excel at all of them. Mulaney was cancelled because he did not make any attempt to state that one candidate was better than another or to encourage people to vote. Recently, sportscaster Cris Collinsworth has been cancelled for commenting that he was surprised about how much knowledge women in Pittsburgh had about the technicalities of football, saying "Everybody [in Pittsburgh] is a fan. In particular, the ladies that I met. They have really specific questions about the game, and I'm like "Wow", you're just blown away by how strong the fans are here in this town". The quote came across as sexist to some who felt that Collinsworth was insulting women for not knowing about football, however he later apologized saying that he meant it as a compliment to the strong fanbase in Pittsburgh. In both of these situations, people were cancelled for saying something problematic that they did not intend to be offensive or derogatory. I think that this is where people take the most issue with cancel culture, because it often jumps at any chance to take someone down regardless of the context of their perceived error, or whether or not they have apologized for their comments.

I think it is also important to consider the fact that there is a difference between legitimate consequences for one's own actions and cancel culture. I'm talking about cases of individuals who break laws, say egregious things on purpose, or engage in blatantly offensive actions that are meant to intentionally harm a specific person or group of people. For example, the woman who called the police on a black birdwatcher claiming falsely that he was threatening her life, or Trump campaign lawyer Joe diGenova who suggested earlier this week that Chris Krebs should be executed for stating that there was no substantial evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election. These people were not so much cancelled as they were punished legitimately for their actions. People who post racist things on social media and are subsequently fired from their jobs are not victims of cancel culture. Joe diGenova was not "cancelled" by the Gridiron Club, but was instead forced out for calling for the execution of a cybersecurity official. There is a difference between unjustified cancellation for comments taken out of context and justified societal backlash for acting like a racist piece of garbage or calling publicly for someone to be "drawn and quartered" or "taken out at dawn and shot".

"Cancelling" like I discussed before, is part of how humans have operated for centuries. Those who broke from societal norms by harming others were cast out of society. When you think about it, our entire system of justice is essentially founded upon cancel culture. If you break a law, you go to jail and are separated from the rest of society. You are deprived of your societal influence and connections with the groups you previously belonged to. You are effectively "cancelled".

I think that part of recognizing that cancel culture is embedded in our human social response is also realizing that while cancel culture in some cases is harmful or uncalled for, it isn't something that's going to just go away any time soon. Perhaps people cancel in order to exercise agency over social media-an area where people have somewhat little control over what others say but have a large amount of control over what they interact with or choose to see. Maybe cancel culture is an extension of societal tendencies to punish those who violate laws by isolating them from society. If we are serious about the fact that cancel culture could potentially bring about the end of a functioning and healthy societal dialogue, the questions we must ask ourselves as a society now are where do we draw the line between expressing ideas and violating societal norms? How can we justify canceling some people and not others? Does everyone really deserve a second chance? If cancel culture bridges generational and political divides, is it really something that we need to worry about at all? And if so, what is the most effective way to cancel cancel culture itself?