 | | Illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times |
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I made a promise to myself. Having had the privilege of appearing on “The Daily,” and having used that privilege to discuss “cancel culture” over the course of not one, but two episodes, I would not write about the phrase ever again. |
Then I got an email from a colleague who kindly asked me if I would write this newsletter. |
If you listened to the episodes, you know that I started thinking about the phrase “cancel culture” in 2018. That year, the word “canceled,” which had originally circulated as a joke on Black Twitter, began to be used more widely to describe a dynamic frequently playing out on social media. A person would say or do something that was offensive to others, and those people would call out the offender. |
Lisa Nakamura, a professor I talked to then, called it a “cultural boycott” — an agreement not to amplify, signal-boost or give money to the person who’s been canceled. In some cases, as the phenomenon developed, “cancellation” could turn punitive, even causing some offenders to be fired from their jobs. |
People tend to see cancellation as either wholly good — there are new consequences for saying or doing racist, bigoted or otherwise untenable things — or wholly bad, in that people can lose their reputations and in some cases their jobs, all because a mob has taken undue offense to a clumsy or out-of-context remark. Personally, I think it’s best viewed not as either positive or negative, but as something else: a new development in the way that power works — a development brought about by social media. |
I’ve long been fascinated by the way that social media shapes our experiences, to a degree we’re still struggling to understand. When people are canceled, we are getting a glimpse into how social media has scrambled the way that power is distributed. Everyone, potentially, has an audience of seemingly infinite social media users who could tune in to what they are saying. And if those followers are upset, they have more power to take quick and meaningful action than ever before. |
These platforms also let people form groups fluidly and with ease. In groups, individuals’ voices become louder than they were. What those groups do with their new power is up to them — and they have done some extraordinary things. |
The Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, bypassed traditional media gatekeepers and ensured participants’ voices were heard online, starting after Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in 2014. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was used on Twitter and Instagram consistently over the next six years, never fully leaving the conversation. Embedded in that hashtag was an idea — one that was logically sound, emotionally evocative and, thus, politically powerful. |
By the time George Floyd was killed in police custody this spring, in a video that quickly went viral, the movement had become the context for understanding the significance of Mr. Floyd’s death. As a result, Mr. Floyd’s killing was widely understood not as a tragic and isolated encounter, but as part of a systemic pattern of racist policing with deadly consequences — one that needed to change. Millions of demonstrators marched in the streets, in what may have been the largest protest movement in American history. |
People do not tend to link cancel culture and contemporary protest movements in their minds, but social media fuels them both. Social media allows people to band together to hold institutions and people accountable, and to challenge dominant narratives. Can groupthink on social media have bleak consequences as well as inspiring ones? Yes. As we tried to demonstrate in the two episodes, social media, and Twitter in particular, is not an ideal venue for hosting complex conversations about nuanced issues. |
The phrase “cancel culture,” too, makes those complex conversations more difficult, grouping varied situations together under one term. I’m still interested in the variety of ways that social media is changing social behavior. But the phrase cancel culture is too vague — a distraction from a deeper examination of power in society. For this reason, I — like my friend Zeeshan Aleem, whom we heard from in the second episode — don’t plan to use it anymore. And I really mean it this time. |
Crisis, confusion and community |
 | | Aug. 7, 2020. A man slept outside destroyed apartments in the Quarantine neighborhood of Beirut.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times |
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| “When the world stopped cracking open, I couldn’t see at first because of the blood running down my face. After blinking the blood from my eyes, I tried to take in the sight of my apartment turned into a demolition site. My yellow front door had been hurled on top of my dining table. I couldn’t find my passport, or even any sturdy shoes.” — Vivian Yee |
Last week, Vivian Yee, our Beirut correspondent, survived the devastating explosion that tore through the city, killing at least 200 and leaving 300,000 homeless. Somehow, after spending hours wandering the streets in search of a ride to the hospital, she found time to write an intimate account of her day amid the wreckage — and of the kindness of strangers. |
When trying to figure out how to cover the blast, The Daily team was stumped. There were still so many unanswered questions: “We weren’t sure what we knew of the explosion. Or whether there could be a story told about who was responsible for it. But we did know that one of our reporters there, Vivian Yee, was hurt,” Jessica Cheung, a producer, said. |
So Jessica offered to call Vivian. Within moments of hearing her on the phone, we knew we had our episode. “She painted such a vivid portrait,” Jessica said. “It was unlike any other episode we’ve done with reporters, in that, the whole time, you followed her very closely, as if holding her hand through a fire. You were holding the hand of someone who had survived a blast but had not fully understood what had happened yet.” |
In the days since the explosion, more news has emerged surrounding the blast — who knew the ammonium nitrate was in the warehouse, what warning signs were ignored, and why protesters were now demanding to oust Lebanon’s ruling elite. But as the story continues to unfold, Vivian’s account preserves what so many felt that day in Beirut: crisis, confusion, and, for some, community. You can listen to the episode here. |
Tuesday: In Part 2, Jonah speaks with a progressive politics writer about his experience with public call-outs, and why he got an email with the subject line: “Cancel Culture Canceler.” |
Wednesday: How did Joe Biden settle on Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate? We ask Alexander Burns about the historic decision. |
Friday: Julia Bond, an assistant apparel designer at Adidas, has spent every day of the last three months protesting in front of her employer’s Portland headquarters. We spoke to her about why. |
That’s it for The Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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