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Should Speech Have Consequences?

image of speech bubbles surrounding iphone outline

Particularly in left-leaning circles, it has become fashionable to say that those who are targeted for various kinds of sanctions for their objectionable speech — unfriending, blocking, doxing, university investigations, terminations, threats of bodily harm or death, and so forth — are merely suffering the justifiable consequences of speaking in ways that harm or offend others. This was the line taken by many commentators concerning the recent controversy at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). There, an editor of the journal said in a podcast that “many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.” The outcry that followed led to the resignation of the journal’s editor-in-chief. Speech, indeed, has consequences.

We might put the principle as follows: “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences.” While this principle seems sound, in this column I want to explore some of its implications. It turns out, I think, that we have many reasons not to sanction others for their speech, however offensive or harmful it may be.

The first question we should ask about social sanctions against speech is whether we ought to think of them as forward- or backward-looking. In other words: are they justified because they are deserved by the speaker (backward-looking) or are they justified because of the beneficial effects of sanctioning (forward-looking)? Here are some familiar reasons why we ought to think of them as forward-looking.

First and foremost, any system of sanctions requires a principle of proportionality: a principle that tells us which punishment “fits” a given crime. Does a racist slur deserve a cold shoulder or a death threat? Beyond simply invoking our moral intuitions, it seems that reason has little to say about what a particular transgression deserves. By contrast, forward-looking considerations give us some rational metric by which to judge the severity of the punishment based at least in part on the nature of the “crime” and the nature of the “criminal.” We don’t punish shoplifters with death, for example, because this would give them the perverse incentive to do worse things than shoplifting, and because shoplifters are more likely to be reformed by relatively light punishments than by onerous ones.

Second, there are well-known puzzles about whether people are morally responsible in the desert-implying sense. We can bypass all of these problems by justifying sanctions not on the basis of desert, but on the basis of the effects of the sanctions.

Why, then, sanction speech? Most obviously, sanctioning speech is a form of deterrence: say this, and you will suffer bad consequences. In this way, the amount of bad speech is reduced. Relatedly, sanctioning is a way of encouraging or promoting the adoption of certain views. If the assertion that p is sanctioned, this will encourage the adoption of the belief that not p. Secondly, sanctioning speech has a signaling function: it means that certain kinds of speech are not to be tolerated, and it tells those who are offended or harmed by the speech that their suffering matters. Finally, it may have a reforming effect: the sanctioned person might, by suffering consequences for his speech, come to understand why that speech is not to be tolerated.

These are the benefits of sanctioning speech. What are the drawbacks? Sanctioning speech undoubtedly has a chilling effect. After all, we listed its chilling effect as one of its benefits! If we could all agree on a narrow category of speech that is sanction-worthy, perhaps this effect would be entirely beneficial. But it turns out, I think, that when society adopts the norm that allows sanctioning any offensive or harmful speech, this empowers people to sanction every kind of speech they don’t like. And in a pluralistic society, there is no agreement about what kind of speech is acceptable. This inevitably leads to instances of benign speech, like one’s expression of political preferences, being sanctioned. This might be why, according to a recent poll, 62% of Americans say they are afraid to express some political beliefs. It is noteworthy that this feeling crosses party lines. But democracies require speech in order to function properly; democratic deliberation is possible only when people are able not only to have opinions, but to voice them to their fellow citizens. The cost of allowing the widespread sanctioning of speech, then, is weaker democratic deliberation.

Nor does sanctioning eliminate the views it aims at effacing from public discussion. Rather, the effect of sanctioning, particularly if harsh, is often to cause those who hold the views to double down on them and to look for ways to have those views affirmed by others. Far from deterring these views, then, burdensome sanctioning may in many cases encourage their secret proliferation.

Sanctioning is also not a very effective tool for educating others or getting them to adopt certain views. In the JAMA case, it seems doubtful that anyone who does not already believe in the existence of systemic racism in medicine will adopt that belief simply because someone has been sanctioned for denying it. Sanctions are not arguments; they are in fact the opposite.

In addition to the costs of sanctioning speech, we ought to consider the benefits of tolerating speech. Expression is itself a good for the speaker, insofar as it is the exercise of their autonomy. So, tolerating speech contributes to the well-being of speakers. And as J.S. Mill pointed out, in most matters we are in a state of at least partial ignorance, so tolerating the free play of ideas can help us get closer to the truth. Furthermore, even in those areas where we are not ignorant, the free play of ideas can get us closer to knowledge of the truth by sharpening our reasons for holding our beliefs.

It is often said that toleration of offensive and harmful speech protects the powerful. Like all generally applicable principles, this is true: the universal prohibition on murder protects Elon Musk. But like that prohibition, the toleration of free speech can also protect the weak. The peaceful protests against police violence that were the hallmark of 2020 were possible only in a country where a content neutral principle of free speech is respected not only by government but by the vast majority of citizens, even those vehemently opposed to the aims of Black Lives Matter. Conversely, speech codes and other restrictions have often been used to oppress minority groups. A speech code at the University of Michigan that was struck down by a federal court in 1989 was used to punish one student for stating that Jewish people use the Holocaust to justify Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians. Another speech code complaint was lodged against a student who said that “he had heard that minorities had a difficult time in the course and that he had heard they were not treated fairly.”

One of the strengths of consequentialism is that it teaches us that everything in life is a trade-off or a balancing act among competing values. Sometimes, surely, there will be strong reasons to sanction a particular speech-act or -acts. For example, speech that is sufficiently frequent and malicious can create a hostile environment. In many cases, however, people are currently being strongly sanctioned for stray remarks or for offensive speech from a long time ago. As in the JAMA case, they are also being sanctioned for departing from the political orthodoxy of their community by, for example, questioning the existence of systemic racism. In these sorts of cases, the benefits of sanctioning are slight, and the drawbacks great. Sanctioning will create an environment in which people feel scrutinized for every indiscretion, and as a result, they will self-censor. Self-censorship is an intrinsic harm, and is also detrimental to the search for truth and the communication of political views, both essential in a functioning democracy. Finally, sanctioning will alienate the sanctioned; far from educating them or getting them and others to change their views, it will cause a defensive reaction that leaves their objectionable views intact, and perhaps more popular due to the perception that they are being suppressed.

Toleration of offensive or harmful speech comes with costs. So does sanctioning such speech. The question is whether, on the whole, the benefits of sanctioning outweigh the costs. In many contemporary cases, I would argue that the answer is no.

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Cancel Culture and the Possibility of Nuance

image of multicolored speech bubbles

In June of 2021, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie posted a short essay titled “It is Obscene: An Essay in Three Parts” on her website. Adichie, author of award-winning books like Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, was famously featured in the Beyoncé song “Flawless,” reciting a basic outline of feminist thought between the pop singer’s verses. Adichie’s essay explores her relationship with two former students, who she frames as poisoned by online cancel culture. She laments that her students (and many young people like them) possess

“an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care . . . language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others . . . a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.”

Though the two students are unnamed, the second student was quickly identified as writer Akwaeke Emezi, a young novelist who accused Adichie of transphobia on Twitter. Emezi, a non-binary writer whose debut novel Freshwater was critically acclaimed, has written extensively on black trans identity through fiction and memoir alike.

It’s a bit reductive to label this a “feud,” though many news sources (like NPR, to name one) have succumbed to the temptation. There is clearly animosity between the two parties, but “feud” implies something entirely personal, even petty. While their personal history does come up in Adichie’s essay, it’s more accurate to say that Emezi and Adichie embody diametrically-opposed moral stances towards cancel culture, an opposition partly rooted in a generational divide.

While many have applauded Adichie’s essay, accusations of transphobia have taken over the conversation about her piece. Some wonder if her essay is a smokescreen, an attempt to deflect attention from Emezi’s original condemnation of Adichie’s brand of feminism. Has “Condemning cancel culture has become a reliable way to obscure transphobia,” as writer Aja Romano suggests in their article on Adichie for Vox?

Adichie summarizes her controversial stance on trans women in a 2017 interview. She said in a response to a question about trans identity,

“When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women. But I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords a man, and then sort of change—switch gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.I don’t think it’s a good thing to conflate everything into one. I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about women’s issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women. What I’m saying is that gender is not biology. Gender is sociology.”

While some of these points are generally accepted (trans women indeed have different experiences from cis women), her response has been described as alarmingly close to TERF ideology. Not all trans women possessed much in the way of privilege before their transition, especially if they are people of color. Adichie has also faced criticism for an article she wrote defending J.K. Rowling, who peddles blatantly transphobic rhetoric in the guise of promoting gender equality. At the same time, many critics of Adichie have ascribed bad-faith motivations to Adichie’s actions where there seem to be none. For example, Adichie has come under fire for releasing her essay during Pride Month, even though Pride celebrations are still largely non-existent in Nigeria, and it’s unlikely that timing was a factor here. It’s also worth noting that TERFs tend to be more prominent in first-world countries, where the “feminism” part of the acronym is more palatable. In Nigeria, even garden variety feminism is considered suspect, let alone radical feminism. “Feminist” is less of a neutral descriptor than an insult in most parts of the country, as explained in an article for The New York Times, and many women still struggle to access their most fundamental rights. While she claims in the essay that she actively supports trans rights, the issue may seem alien or extraneous to Adichie. Her cultural background hardly excuses transphobia, but it’s important to consider that not everyone will be fluent in the occasionally dense and ever-changing vocabulary of trans issues in online spaces.

Adichie writes,

“[Emezi] knows me enough to know that I fully support the rights of trans people and all marginalized people. That I have always been fiercely supportive of difference, in general . . . Of course she could very well have had concerns with the interview. That is fair enough. But I had a personal relationship with her. She could have emailed or called or texted me. Instead she went on social media to put on a public performance.”

Claiming to support trans people and actually doing so are two different things, and she continuously misgenders Emezi, who has identified as non-binary for years. But there is still value in her larger point; what purpose did Emezi’s tweet serve? If the goal is to start a productive dialogue with someone and hopefully influence their views, is calling someone out on Twitter the most effective way to go about it? It’s unreasonable to ask trans people to educate every single transphobe they encounter, but in this case, the two had a pre-existing relationship, and as Adichie points out, Emezi could have used that as an opening.

At one point in the essay, she describes Emezi’s tweet as a “a public insult,” which succinctly gets at the problem with public shaming. We interpret such accusations as an attack, an insult; we experience a sense of powerlessness, especially if we aren’t media savvy, which may corner the accused into doubling down on their problematic views, shutting down a conversation before it can even begin. The performative brand of online wokeness Adichie dislikes requires a certain kind of knowledge, a list of phrases to be trotted out without any meaningful discussion of what those phrases mean. While most of this is well-intentioned, it can create echo chambers and ideological rigidity. Twitter, which is generally very American-centric, relies on a knowledge of this vocabulary that often excludes well-meaning older people, ESL folk, and those who aren’t from the West. At its worst, it encourages a culture of hostility to questions made in good faith.

Adichie notes,

“There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness . . . People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.”

Some of this may seem extreme, and it’s worth critiquing the conflict with Emezi at the root of this essay, but we should answer her call for nuance, and grapple with both the good and the bad in her piece. Deplatforming her, as Emezi has called for, only aggravates an already massive generational divide and saps humanity from online spaces.

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Is Fake News Dangerously Overblown?

photograph of smartphone displaying 'Fake News' story

“Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.”

—Alan Dershowitz, Finding, Framing, and Hanging Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and Freedom of Speech in an Age of Terrorism

Fake news, false or misleading information presented as though it’s true, has been blamed for distorting national politics in the United States and undercutting the faith that citizens place in elites and institutions — so much so that Google has recently stepped in to provide a tool to help users avoid being hoodwinked. It looks plausible, at first glance, that fake news is a widespread problem; if people can be fooled into thinking misleading or false information is genuine news, their attitudes and beliefs about politics and policy can be influenced for the worse. In a functioning democracy, we need citizens, and especially voters, to be well-informed — we cannot have that if fake news is commonplace.

A recent study found political polarization — left, right, or center — to be the primary psychological motivation behind people sharing fake news. It seems we aren’t driven by ignorance, but vitriol for one’s political opponents. It isn’t a matter of folks being fooled by political fictions because they lack knowledge of the salient subject matter, say, but rather that people are most inclined to share fake news when it targets political adversaries whom they hate. And this aligns with what we already know about the increasing polarization in American politics: that it’s becoming increasingly difficulty for people in different political parties, notably Republicans and Democrats, to agree on issues that used to be a matter of bipartisan consensus (e.g., a progressive tax structure).

In the face of the (alleged) increasing threat from fake news, some have argued we need stronger intervention on the part of tech companies that is just shy of censorship — that is, fake news is parasitic on free speech, and can perhaps only be controlled by a concerted legal effort, along with help from big technology companies like Facebook and Google.

But perhaps the claim that fake news is widespread is dangerously overblown. How? The sharing of fake news is less common than we are often led to believe. A study from last year found that

“[although] fake news can be made to be cognitively appealing, and congruent with anyone’s political stance, it is only shared by a small minority of social media users, and by specialized media outlets. We suggest that so few sources share fake news because sharing fake news hurts one’s reputation … and that it does so in a way that cannot be easily mended by sharing real news: not only did trust in sources that had provided one fake news story against a background of real news dropped, but this drop was larger than the increase in trust yielded by sharing one real news story against a background of fake news stories.”

There are strong reputation incentives against sharing fake news — people don’t want to look bad to others. (Of course, the researchers also acknowledge the same incentives don’t apply to anonymous individuals who share fake news.) Humans are a cooperative species that rely on help from others for survival — and so it matters how others view us. People wouldn’t want to cooperate with someone with a bad reputation, thus most people will track how they are seen by others. We want to know those we cooperate with have a good reputation; we want them to be sufficiently trustworthy and reliable since we rely on each other for basic goods. As other researchers explain,

“[Humans] depend for their survival and welfare on frequent and varied cooperation with others. In the short run, it would often be advantageous to cheat, that is, to take the benefits of cooperation without paying the costs. Cheating however may seriously compromise one’s reputation and one’s chances of being able to benefit from future cooperation. In the long run, cooperators who can be relied upon to act in a mutually beneficial manner are likely to do better.”

Of course, people sometimes do things which aren’t in their best interests — taking a hit to one’s reputation is no different. The point though is that people have strong incentives to avoid sharing fake news when their reputations are at stake. So we have at least some evidence that fake news is overblown; people aren’t as likely to share fake news, for reputational reasons, than it may appear given the amount of attention the phenomenon of fake news has garnered in the public square. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t a lot of fake news in circulation on places like, say, social media — there could be substantial fake news shared, but only by a few actors. Moreover, the term ‘fake news’ is often used in a sloppy, arbitrary way — not everything called ‘fake news’ is fake news. (Former President Trump, for example, would often call a story ‘fake news’ if it made him look bad, even if the story was accurate.)

Overstating the problem fake news represents is also troubling as it encourages people to police others’ speech in problematic ways. Actively discouraging people from sharing ‘fake news’ (or worse, silencing them) can be a dangerous road to traverse. The worry is that just as former President Trump did to journalists and critics, folks will weaponize the label ‘fake news’ and use it against their political enemies. While targeting those who supposedly share fake news may prevent misinformation, often it will be used to suppress folks who have unorthodox or unpopular views. As the journalist Chris Hedges observed,

“In late April and early May the World Socialist Web Site, which identifies itself as a Trotskyite group that focuses on the crimes of capitalism, the plight of the working class and imperialism, began to see a steep decline in readership. The decline persisted into June. Search traffic to the World Socialist Web Site has been reduced by 75 percent overall. And the site is not alone. … The reductions coincided with the introduction of algorithms imposed by Google to fight ‘fake news.’ Google said the algorithms are designed to elevate ‘more authoritative content’ and marginalize ‘blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information.’ It soon became apparent, however, that in the name of combating ‘fake news,’ Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are censoring left-wing, progressive and anti-war sites.”

Perhaps the phenomenon of fake news really is as bad as some people say — though the evidence suggests that isn’t the case. In any event, we shouldn’t conclude from this that fake news isn’t a problem at all; we may need some form of policing that, while respecting freedom of expression, can empower voters and citizens with tools to allow them to avoid, or at least identify, fake news. But we can acknowledge both the need for fake news oversight and the need to significantly curtail that power.

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What Is Cancel Culture?

image of Socrates drinking hemlock

There has been much bemoaning of “cancel culture” in recent years. The fear seems to be that there is a growing trend coming from the left to “cancel” ideas and even people that fall out of favor with proponents of left-wing political ideology. Social media and online bullying contribute to this phenomenon; people leave comments shaming “bad actors” into either apologizing, leaving social media, or sometimes just digging in further.

It’s worth taking some time to think about the history of “cancellation.” For better or for worse, cancellation is a political tool that can be used either to entrench or to disrupt the dominant power hierarchy. Ideas and people have been “canceled” as long as there have been social creatures with reactive attitudes. Humans aren’t even the only species to engage in cancel behavior. In communities of animals in which cooperative behavior is important, groups will often shun members who behave selfishly. In other cases, groups of animals may ostracize members that do not seem to respect the authority of the alpha male. What we now call “cancel culture” is just one form of the general practice of using sentiments such as approval or disapproval or praise and blame to influence behavior and shape social interactions.

One of history’s most famous cancellations was the trial and execution of Socrates, who was “canceled” in the most extreme of ways because the influence that he had over the youth of Athens posed an existential threat to those with the power in that community. The challenge that he presented was that he might encourage the younger generation to reassess values and construct a new picture of what their communities might look like. At his trial, Socrates says,

“For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed.”

For this, he was made to drink hemlock.

Galileo was canceled for the heresy of advancing the idea that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around. This view of the universe was in conflict with the view endorsed by the Catholic Church, so Galileo’s book of dialogues was prohibited, and he lived out the rest of his life under house arrest.

In the more recent past, Martin Luther King Jr. was canceled — not only on his assassination, but prior to that, when many of his former compatriots in the struggle for civil rights broke ranks with him over his opposition to the Vietnam War and his battle to end poverty.

Through the years, people have been “canceled” for being Christian, Pagan, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, Gay, Female, Transgender, Communist, and Socialist. They’ve been canceled for speaking up too much or too little, for being too authentic or not authentic enough. Books have been burned, ideas have been suppressed, people’s reputations have changed with the direction of the prevailing winds. Cancellation belongs to no single political party or ideology.

Nevertheless, “cancellation” in the 21st century is presented to us as a new and nebulous phenomenon — a liberal fog that has drifted in to vaporize the flesh of anyone who harbors conservative ideas. But what does it mean, exactly, to “cancel” a person? Perhaps the most common use of the word “cancel” in an ordinary context has to do with events. If I get a cold and I cancel my philosophy courses for the day, then those courses are no longer taking place. Similarly, in the most extreme cases, to “cancel” someone is to get rid of them forever — to kill them. Socrates, Hypatia, and even Jesus were “canceled” in this way.

There are other cases of cancellation which are pretty extreme, even if they don’t result in death. Instead, the person or group might be imprisoned or otherwise punished by the government. For example, during World War II, many Japanese Americans were “canceled” and put in internment camps just for being Japanese during a time when Americans were prone to xenophobia against that particular group. Then, of course, there was the McCarthy era, when people all across the country had to worry about their lives or livelihoods being destroyed if it were discovered or even suspected that they were sympathetic to communism. This cancel culture witch hunt affected the careers of stars like Charlie Chaplin, Langston Hughes, and Orson Wells. Positive proof of membership in the party wasn’t even necessary. Of one case Joseph McCarthy famously said, “I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the agency…that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections.”

Thankfully, when we use the word “cancel” these days, we are usually referring to something less extreme. We tend to mean that a certain segment of society will no longer support the “canceled” person in various ways — they will not consume their products, enjoy their art, listen to their thoughts, or otherwise support their general platform. The most common cases are those of politicians and artists of various types. Many people no longer watch Kevin Spacey movies after learning that he frequently engaged in sexual harassment of co-workers.

The linchpin — and the feature that makes it tricky — is that cancel culture is one of the consequences of the display of people’s reactive attitudes. It is these very reactive attitudes — guilt, shame, praise, blame — that are involved in moral judgments. Such judgments also involve assessment of harm. People often point out, when attempting to hold a bad actor responsible, that the bad actor’s behavior is resulting in a serious set of bad consequences for their community. These kinds of considerations are important — they make the world a better place. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater; we don’t want to give up holding people morally responsible for their actions because we are too afraid of “canceling” the wrong person. There are cases in which cancellation seems like precisely the correct course of action. We shouldn’t continue to hold in high regard rapists and serial harassers like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. We shouldn’t support the platforms of racists and child molesters.

For these reasons, cancel culture shouldn’t be depicted as the emerging new villain in the plot of the 2020s. This culture has always been around and always will be, though, granted, it is amplified by social media and the internet. Sometimes it does some real good. The reality is that this has all been so politicized that it is unlikely that they’ll be much ideological shift on these issues. If we allow Socrates’ ancient ideas to “corrupt” our minds, we’ll keep asking questions: “Is this a power play?” “Should this behavior be tolerated?” “Is this a case that calls for compassion and understanding?” Improvement of the soul calls for nuance.

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The Ethics of Cringe

photograph of upset audiency members in a movie theater

Much has already been said about the ethical morass of “cancel culture,” but very rarely is the internet phenomenon of “cringe culture” given serious intellectual attention. Cringe culture is, on the surface, very straightforward. People deliberately seek out content online that makes them cringe, that gives them a visceral reaction of discomfort and secondhand embarrassment. This content can be screenshotted and shared on the subreddit r/cringe – a gallery of humiliation that currently boasts over one million member – or slotted into a “cringe compilation” video on Youtube – videos which consistently pull in hundreds of thousands of views. While cringe content was a more visual component of online culture in the mid 2010’s, it certainly hasn’t disappeared. Google Trends shows that the frequency of searches for “cringe” has been surprisingly steady since it peaked in 2016.

Cancel culture attempts to uphold morality in online spaces; when someone says or does something racist, sexist, or otherwise problematic, they are publicly shamed and their reputation in the community is blemished. Cringing at someone, on the other hand, just feels like an evolved form of middle-school bullying. But the two practices aren’t completely worlds apart; both attract large audiences, and both involve a spectacle of public humiliation (justified or otherwise). Despite their similarities, cringe culture is cancel culture’s more vulgar twin, the trashy daytime reality show to cancel culture’s CNN.

It’s worth examining why voluntarily cringing at strangers online is so popular, and whether or not this activity can be morally justified. It’s also important to further specify what exactly is meant by “cringe,” because this genre of content is surprisingly specific; something can be deeply embarrassing without being categorized as cringey. As Melissa Dahl says in her book Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, we cringe at ourselves whenever “we’re yanked out of our own perspective, and we can suddenly see ourselves from someone else’s point of view.” When we cringe at ourselves, the experience involves a sudden onset of self-awareness, the realization that our internal image of ourselves is different from how others perceive us.

But that isn’t exactly the kind of content you find on r/cringe. The three most popular posts of all time involve Trump blundering his way through speeches and interview questions (like his inability to name his favorite book, or an awkward attempt to plant a kiss on a clearly unwilling young woman). Another top post is a video of a group of white girls joyously singing along to a song containing the n-word. The camera pans to the only black man in the room, who looks deeply uncomfortable. (To be clear, the girls are framed as the cringey ones here, not the man.) None of these subjects, the group of girls or the former president, are visibly experiencing shame, or a sudden realization of how they are being perceived. Our nation’s perverse fascination with Trump stems, in part, from his famous inability to believe or to be embarrassed by what others think of him, apparent in the almost cartoonish bravado he displays in every speech and television appearance. While plenty of people post their own embarrassing teenage memories on r/cringe, the most popular content focuses on those who are unable to feel shame, though we feel that they should.

In his book Humiliation, Wayne Koestenbaum explains that “Humiliation involves a triangle: (1) the victim, (2) the abuser, and (3) the witness. The humiliated person may also behold her own degradation, or imagine someone else, in the future, watching it or hearing about it. The scene’s horror — its energy, its electricity — involves the presence of three.” But in these scenarios, we can’t imagine the cringeworthy subjects beholding their own flaws, because they seem oblivious to them. Their lack of self-awareness, coupled with the general immortality of their actions, almost allows us to laugh at their embarrassment without feeling cruel. They’re getting their comeuppance. Furthermore, there is no clear “abuser” or humiliator in these situations; the singing girls have humiliated themselves, not the person filming them. In the absence of a humiliator, the witnesses (or the viewer) asserts themselves more strongly in the situation, further expanding the distance between us and the humiliated subject. Most of us are repelled by humiliating moments, especially our own, but when the triangle is distorted, humiliation can exert a magnetic force.

But it’s also worth noting that what the internet considers cringey has changed wildly since it’s heyday in 2016. Back then, the targets of cringe compilation videos were clearly autistic or otherwise on-the-spectrum children, “angry feminists” (search “feminism cringe” to see many dishearteningly popular compilation videos), the poor, people of color who behaved in a “ghetto” way, and fat people. Those with social and political capital were completely absent. Anything that felt outside of white middle-class neurotypical values was considered embarrassing simply for existing.

There’s something self-indulgent, even soothing, about watching other people fail in spectacular ways. We may feel guilty about it, but we take comfort in knowing at least we aren’t the ones in the pillory. Public shaming reinforces which behaviors (racism, political chauvinism) are socially unacceptable, and reminds us (in more mundane cases) that no one is perfect, and that everyone does embarrassing things. But when it becomes a spectacle, as it often does online, cringe content can be a kind of moral junk food. It allows us to feel a burst of superiority, and demands no reflection in return. When we only focus on spectacularly tone-deaf examples of racism, we can easily lose sight of the more insidious forms of social inequality. Framing something as cringey allows us to distance ourselves from it, to disown it, which as the earliest phase of cringe content reveals, has the potential to do more harm than good.

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Freedom of Speech and the Self-Defense Argument

photograph of Alex Jones with megaphone reporting for InfoWars

As a philosopher, I especially value freedom of speech: the idea that everyone should be free to state their opinions and ideas, without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction — unless, of course, that speech incites violence. This is partly because I revel in odd, counterintuitive, and persuasive arguments that challenge my beliefs and assumptions. Here it appears freedom of speech norms are key to intellectual life: they allow disagreeing parties to express differing opinions without social or political reprisal. If those who disagree keep silent, then intellectual inquiry would stop — how could it not?

The British philosopher, John Stuart Mill, held something like this view, when he defended the instrumental (and personal) value of freedom of speech:

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”

Antiquated language aside, Mill is offering an intellectual reason in defense of freedom of speech: without this liberty, we couldn’t really have an intellectual discussion; there would be viewpoints we may disagree with that wouldn’t be expressed. How can I know I’m right in my political, moral, or religious views, if I don’t know why there are other folks who disagree with me? Notice too this argument applies to cultural and societal norms, and not just the state. If we’re against freedom of expression, as a society, it won’t matter that the state allows.

Despite intellectual reasons for freedom of speech norms, critics have offered compelling moral reasons against it: words can hurt, and hurt badly. Verbal abuse, by example, can leave lasting psychological scars; freedom of speech can, and often is, used as a cudgel against marginalized and minority groups in society. There’s a sense in which freedom of speech can marginalize, control, and even erase individuals and groups that society deems other: folks too different from the rest of society to have a point of view worth heeding. Or we can see how freedom of speech norms can be a permission slip for folks to discuss views antithetical to the moral standing of members of marginalized groups. As some critics of the logic of freedom of speech argue (discussing freedom of speech on campus; but the logic generalizes):

“This logic expects members of marginalized groups to debate their very humanity. As a queer faculty member, it means I am expected to engage in a discussion about the validity of my identity: whether it is real, whether it might be symptomatic of demonic possession or perhaps a mental illness. Students and faculty of color, similarly, are expected to debate the reality of their experiences and their right to equitable systems.”

The logic of this argument — call it the self-defense argument — is that it would be wrong to prop up freedom of speech norms when free speech can be used to question the validity of members of marginalized groups. When supporters of free speech point to the instrumental values of our freedom of speech — for, say, preserving rigorous intellectual discussion — they often leave off that words can do serious harm. And the reply, by freedom of speech supporters, that harmful speech should be met with more speech may not be convincing to someone who, day in and day out, has to hear, either explicitly or in a subtle way, that their rights and identity aren’t really a thing. Perhaps freedom of speech is good for rigorous debate, but only when parties to that discussion are on comparable social footing — a thing people in marginalized groups oftentimes lack.

However compelling the self-defense argument against freedom of speech norms is, it functions as a philosophical double-edged sword. The self-defense reasons one can offer against freedom of speech norms can be rejiggered to support them too. First though, consider an insight from the famous Chinese general, Sun Tzu, who observed the following about war:

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near […] Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”

How are deception and war related to freedom of speech? Banning or restricting speech, and especially speech from individuals and groups who use their power and influence to challenge the validity and identity of marginalized group members, forces such individuals to hide what they really think and believe, and perhaps only express their views in select company. And even if this mostly silences their oppressive speech, it has a nasty by-product: we have a far poorer idea of who holds repugnant and morally objectionable views, and what those views are, than we would if they were allowed to (largely) speak their minds without fear of reprisal.

It is likely good to know whether folks are prejudiced and bigoted, for no other reason than we can keep an eye on them. And that appeal to self-defense should appeal to everyone, especially folks most at risk from freedom of speech abuses. They have a right to know who among them has bigoted and close-minded views, rather than being in the dark about what their neighbors, co-workers, and whatnot actually believe about them. Learning this can be painful, of course, but so is not knowing whether moral objectionable beliefs are pervasive — just as we should prefer, for practical reasons, clumsy and recognizable Nazis over the charming and subtle ones, to illustrate with an extreme case. As the saying goes: ‘forewarned is forearmed.’

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Under Discussion: Five Arguments Against the Harper’s Letter

photograph of computer screen displaying Harper's Letter

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: The Harper’s Letter.

On July 7, 2020, Harper’s Magazine published an open letter warning that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted” by a set of “moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” The letter obliquely refers to several incidents in which, in the eyes of the letter writers, individuals have been subjected to disproportionate or inappropriate social sanction for perceived transgressions against left-wing norms of thought and speech. “Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class….” Signed by some 150 prominent educators, intellectuals, writers, and artists, the letter provoked a swift backlash by the left-leaning press. That reaction has crystallized around a set of arguments against the letter’s position that I propose to assess in this column.

The first argument, best articulated by The New Republic’s Otisa Nwanevu, is that the moral (and legal) right of free association gives private organizations, including newspapers and private colleges or universities, the right to decide what ideas they are and aren’t interested in promoting and what people they believe will or will not be an asset to them. Hence, no individual has the right to use such an organization as a platform for expressing their ideas, and these organizations, in turn, have no duty to be maximally permissive of ideas with which they disagree. The argument is surely correct that, for example, Tom Cotton had no right to be published in The New York Times, and The New York Times had no duty to publish him. Yet the wrongs that worry the signatories of the Harper’s letter are not, it seems, grounded in these alleged rights or duties. Instead, they are at least in part grounded in the conception of certain types of organization as aiming at certain morally worthy ends. For example, it can be plausibly argued that the role of private colleges and universities, just as much as public ones, is to generate knowledge and serve as forums for debate about pressing political issues. But these commitments seem to ground an obligation to promote debate and discussion. And while this obligation does not require giving a platform to any particular individual or group, it does require giving a platform to some individuals or groups that represent relevant, if ideologically heterodox views. Similarly, in cases of wrongful termination, the idea is not that the organization had a duty to provide a platform for any idea, no matter how offensive; rather, it is that termination of individuals who are not guilty of the offenses of which they are accused is wrongful.

The second argument is that the signatories overplay the importance of a handful of relatively isolated controversies, even if the latter do, in fact, involve wrongdoing on the part of left-wing activists or Twitter mobs. It is undeniable that most critical discussions of progressive identity politics focus on a handful of anecdotes, perhaps mainly because there is no central database of incidents from which to draw. However, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) does compile large databases of free speech-related incidents and policies on college campuses, including disinvitations, free-speech codes, and so on. Whether these databases, together with the anecdotes, amount to a troubling cultural trend is for the reader to decide.

The third argument, which is even more dismissive than the second, is that the consequences faced by victims of so-called “cancellation” are relatively minor, particularly given the signatories’ elite status; moreover, they are usually deserved. As Jessica Valenti put it in a Medium.com article, the signatories “want to be able to say whatever they want without consequence and paint themselves as the victims even as they wield more institutional and systemic power than anyone criticizing them.” The Atlantic’s Hannah Giorgis agrees, writing that “facing widespread criticism on Twitter, undergoing an internal workplace review, or having one’s book panned does not, in fact, erode one’s constitutional rights or endanger a liberal society.” However, the anecdotes that seem to prompt worries about left-wing censoriousness feature consequences to individuals that go far beyond mere criticism, as the stories of wrongful termination referenced above attest. These individuals are usually not members of the cultural elite. Moreover, undergoing an internal workplace review, which is the outcome of so many of these cases, is very different from facing public criticism; it represents a potential threat to one’s livelihood. To have one’s livelihood threatened because of one’s personal speech is bound to have a chilling effect. Finally, there is a distinction between legitimate criticism of one’s ideas and attacks on one’s reputation or threats to one’s safety, tactics often wielded by social media users on both the left and right. These are serious and often disproportionate forms of social sanction, even when directed at powerful members of society.

The fourth argument is that there are much more pressing threats to free speech upon which the writers of the Harper’s letter ought to have focused their attention, such as violence against journalists, economic threats to journalism and academia, and so on. Logically speaking, this is not really an argument against concern about threats to free speech from the left. To see this, consider the argument that charity X ought to focus more attention on tropical disease Y rather than tropical disease Z, since the former kills five times the number of people. This is not an argument against addressing tropical disease Z, but an argument for proportioning attention and resources appropriately. Furthermore, it does not seem fair to claim that the letter itself does not acknowledge the threat from the right, or that those behind it have ignored that threat. At a number of points the letter alludes to the right-wing threat to free speech, although clearly the issue it squarely addresses is the threat from the left. Thomas Chatterton Williams, who spearheaded the letter, recently called President Trump the “Canceler in Chief”; and Yascha Mounk, a prominent signatory, has written that the primary threat posed to liberal democracy is from the populist right.

The final argument is similar to the last: it is that there are much more pressing political issues than the threat to free speech from the left. As Tom Scocca of Slate puts it, referring to Tom Cotton’s op-ed, “[i]n the world of the Harper’s letter, the threat that mattered was the one to the careers of veteran editors—not the threat that had bullets and bayonets behind it…” Again, this is not an argument against concern about the threat to free speech from the left, and it seems uncharitable to claim that simply because the letter concerns this issue, it is therefore the only issue that matters to its signatories.

The fourth and fifth arguments can also be interpreted as attacks upon the signatories’ motives. Giorgis writes that “it’s telling that the censoriousness they identify as a national plague isn’t the racism that keeps Black journalists from reporting on political issues, or the transphobia that threatens colleagues’ lives.” On Giorgis’s view, what this tells us is that the signatories don’t care, or at least don’t care enough, about the issues she identifies. But arguments about the motives of one’s interlocutor have no bearing on the merits of their position: if they don’t care about these issues that may make them morally bad people, but it does not mean that there is no threat to free speech from the left. In any case, it again seems uncharitable to conclude that they don’t care about some other issues simply because they’ve chosen to focus a certain amount of attention upon this one.

To conclude, my view is that among the arguments in the popular press against the Harper’s letter, the most difficult to answer is that worries about the threat to free speech from the left are overblown. It is simply difficult to tell when a series of incidents becomes a trend, and how concerned we should be about that trend. Beyond this, the arguments miss the mark for the most part. Of course, this does not mean that the letter’s claims are valid, and I have not defended them in this column.

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California’s “Deepfake” Ban

computer image of a 3D face scan

In 2018, actor and filmmaker Jordan Peele partnered with Buzzfeed to create a warning video. The video appears to feature President Barak Obama advising viewers not to trust everything that they see on the Internet. After the President says some things that are out of character for him, Peele reveals that the speaker is not actually President Obama, but is, instead, Peele himself. The video was a “deepfake.” Peele’s face had been altered using digital technology to look and move just like the face of the president.

Deepfake technology is often used for innocuous and even humorous purposes. One popular example is a video that features Jennifer Lawrence discussing her favorite desperate housewife during a press conference at the Golden Globes. The face of actor Steve Buscemi is projected, seamlessly, onto Lawrence’s face. In a more troubling case, Rudy Giuliani tweeted an altered video of Nancy Pelosi in which she appears to be impaired, stuttering and slurring her speech. The appearance of this kind of altered video highlights the dangers that deepfakes can pose to both individual reputations and to our democracy more generally.

In response to this concern, California passed legislation this month that makes it a crime to distribute audio or video that presents a false impression about a candidate standing for an election occurring within sixty days. There are exceptions to the legislation. News media are exempt (clearing the way for them to report on this phenomenon), and it does not apply to deepfakes made for the purposes of satire or parody. The law sunsets in 2023.

This legislation caused controversy. Supporters of the law argue that the harmful effects of deepfake technology can destroy lives. Contemporary “cancel culture,” under which masses of people determine that a public figure is not deserving of time and attention and is even deserving of disdain and social stigma, could potentially amplify the harms. The mere perception of a misstep is often enough to permanently damage a person’s career and reputation. Videos featuring deepfakes have the potential to spread quickly, while the true nature of the video may spread much more slowly, if at all. By the time the truth comes out, it may be too late. People make up their minds quickly and are often reluctant to change their perspectives, even in the face of compelling evidence. Humans are prone to confirmation bias—the tendency to consider only the evidence that supports what the believer was already inclined to believe anyway. Deepfakes deliver fodder for confirmation bias, wrapped in very attractive packaging, to viewers. When deepfakes meet cancel culture in a climate of poor information literacy, the result is a social and political powder keg.

Supporters of the law argue further that deepfake technology threatens to seriously damage our democratic institutions. Citizens regularly rely on videos they see on the Internet to inform them about the temperament, behavioral profile, and political beliefs of candidates. It is likely that deepfakes would present a significant obstacle to becoming a well-informed voter. They would inevitably contribute to the sense that some voters currently have that we exist in a post-truth world—if you find a video in which Elizabeth Warren says one thing, just wait long enough and you’ll see a video of her saying the exact opposite. Who’s to say which is the deepfake? The results of such a worldview would be devastating.

Opponents of the law are concerned that it violates the first amendment. They argue that the legislation invites the government to consider the content of the messages being expressed and to allow or disallow such messages based on that content. This is dangerous precedent to set—it is exactly the type of thing that the first amendment is supposed to prevent.

What’s more, the legislation has the potential to stifle artistic expression. The law contains exemptions for the use of deepfakes that are made for the purposes of parody and satire. There are countless other kinds of statements that people might use deepfakes to make. In fact, in his warning video, artist Jordan Peele used a deepfake to great effect, arguably making his point far more powerfully than he could have using a different method. Peele’s deepfake might have resulted in more cautious and conscientious viewers. Opponents of the legislation argue that this is precisely why the first amendment is so important. It protects the kind of speech and artistic expression that gets people thinking about how their behavior ought to change in light of what they viewed.

In response, supporters of the legislation might argue that when the first amendment was originally drafted, we didn’t have the technology that we have today. It may well be the case that if the constitution were written today, it would be a very different document. Free speech is important, but technology can cause harm now in an utterly unprecedented way. Perhaps we need to balance the value of free speech against the potential harms differently now that those harms have such an extended scope.

A lingering, related question has to do with the role that social media companies play in all of this. False information spreads like wildfire on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Many people use these platforms as their source for news. The policies of these exceptionally powerful platforms are more important for the proper functioning of our democracy than anyone ever could have imagined. Facebook has taken some steps to prevent the spread of fake news, but many are concerned that it has not gone far enough.

In a tremendously short period of time, technology has transformed our perception of what’s possible. In light of this, we have an obligation to future generations to help them learn to navigate the very challenging information literacy circumstances that we’ve created for them. With good reason, people believe that they can trust their senses. Our academic curriculum must change to make future generations more discerning.

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Ellen, George W. Bush, and the Duty to Be Kind

photograph of Ellen Degeneres relaxing on couch

In early October, Ellen DeGeneres – host of the eponymous daytime talk show Ellen – stirred up controversy when she was seen sitting next to, and sharing a few laughs with former President George W. Bush at a football game. That the two would be sitting next to one another and acting congenially came as a surprise to many, not only because Bush is a controversial figure, but especially because of his public stance that same-sex marriage should be illegal, one that DeGeneres vehemently opposes. While it was then odd to see the two together, what some found ever odder was DeGeneres’ explanation, which she stated on her talk show as follows:

“Here’s the thing, I’m friends with George Bush. In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have. We’re all different and I think we’ve forgotten that that’s okay that we’re all different…When I say, ‘Be kind to one another,’ I don’t mean only the people that think the same way I do. I mean be kind to everyone.”

As an example, DeGeneres stated that while she does not think that people ought to be wearing fur, she is still friends with people who wear fur, despite their difference in views. Here, then, is one lesson we might think we should draw from DeGeneres’ explanation: disagreement on principles should not preclude one’s obligation to be kind to others.

Is DeGeneres right? Is it the case that we ought to be kind to everyone, and perhaps especially to those who disagree with us?

There is something very appealing about this line of thinking, especially when there appears to be so much division across political lines in America. One might think that fostering a general spirit of kindness towards people with differing viewpoints would help counteract some of this divisiveness, and that our default stance towards others should just be this kind of kindness. What’s more, all of us have likely had experiences where we thought the best course of action was to be kind to those who disagree with us, especially when it comes to family and friends. A principle of universal kindness – be kind to everyone, regardless of your disagreements – might then sound pretty good.

Presented as a general principle, though, to say that we ought to be kind to everyone seems clearly to be false. Cases in which I don’t have any obligation to be kind to others are easy to come up with: I don’t owe you kindness if you’ve consistently been a complete jerk to me, for example, nor does it seem like I’m obligated to be kind to you if you’re a genuinely awful person. As some commenters have suggested, Bush’s actions during his presidency may very well put him in the latter category, and thus deserves little in the way of kindness. One worry with showing kindness to even to those who have done morally egregious things is that we might be giving off the message that those transgressions should be forgiven, or at least that they are not that big of a deal.

We might also think that there are problems with saying that one ought to show as much kindness to those with whom one has minor disagreement as to those who have done morally egregious things. Molly Roberts at The Washington Post summarizes the concern as follows:

“Owning a mink…is different from orchestrating a historic foreign policy failure punctuated by a secret torture program and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. There exists a sliding scale of badness determining who deserves complete and total cancellation. You can probably hang out with fur person on one end and you absolutely can’t hang out with neo-Nazis at the other. George W. Bush falls somewhere in between.”

Of course, some might want to argue about the nature of Bush’s presidency: how morally culpable we should find him, and whether we should, overall, classify him as a genuinely awful person. And we still do, of course, have the problem that a failure to show kindness to one’s political and moral opponents could be seen as fostering further divisiveness: if Ellen were to snub Bush’s offer of friendly banter, for example, that might be seen as a more general snub towards Bush supporters and Bush-friendly Republicans. Indeed, Chris Cillizza at CNN writes that chumming around with Bush was actually well in-line with DeGeneres’ left-wing politics:

“What DeGeneres is advocating there is sort of anti-Trumpism in its purest form. Because what this President represents, more than any issue stance or policy position, is the idea that people who disagree with you are to be mocked, to be villainized, to be bullied. If you disagree with Trump on, well, anything, you are his enemy. The only way to be in his good graces — and therefore, in the good graces of those who support him — is to agree with him on absolutely everything.”

According to Cillizza, then, it is a form of anti-Trumpian defiance to show kindness towards one’s opponents, as Trump would never show such kindness to those who disagree with him. Failing to show such kindness, then, would again risk siding oneself with the forces of divisiveness.

Failing to show kindness, however, does not require the kind of mockery, villainizing, and bullying that Cillizza ascribes to Trump: the options that one has when interacting with those one disagrees with are not limited solely to either acting like old friends or viciously attacking them. While there are many potential courses of action in between, one obvious action one could take when presented with someone of morally questionable character with whom one fundamentally disagrees is simply to ignore them.

That is not to say that this is what one should always do – there may indeed be many cases in which showing kindness to one’s opponents is the best course of action. However, it will certainly not always be the case that a failure to show kindness will be equivalent to sowing the seeds of divisiveness, or mockery, villainizing, or bullying. Perhaps, then, Ellen should have just sat somewhere else.

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Busch Light and Carson King: The Good and the Bad of Cancel Culture

Image of "CANCELLED" stamp in red

Two weeks ago, Carson King, after soliciting money with a sign that read “Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished” and his Venmo username, received more than one million dollars, most of which was donated to the University of Iowa Stead Family Childrens’ Hospital. In response to the attention King received, Anheuser-Busch promised to match the donation as well as send a year’s supply of personalized beer with King’s face on it to him. However, after racist tweets posted by King seven years ago resurfaced, Busch rescinded the latter part of their offer, and many have decided to boycott King as a means to shame him for his past problematic behavior, a phenomenon termed ‘cancel culture.’ King did issue a public apology after his tweets were brought to the public eye, saying “I am embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was a 16-year-old.” (In an interesting twist, the reporter who dug up King’s racist tweets was also found to have posted multiple offensive tweets in the past, and now no longer works for the paper.)

With the development of social media platforms contributing to rapid global communication, many believe that one use to which technology ought to be put is the educating of others on their seemingly problematic behaviors (i.e. actions that are racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.). Others believe that unsolicited shaming is often unnecessarily harsh and incapable of fostering meaningful moral dialogue or even establishing clear, universal boundaries of unacceptable conduct. While the ideal of “calling someone out” intends to promote the public expression of ethical beliefs and dissuade problematic behavior, many still think that this fad is actually counterproductive to the ends it aims to achieve (for discussion see Byron Mason II’s “Cancel Culture“).

Cancel culture has many obvious advantages, namely that calling someone out and “cancelling” them for problematic behavior holds them accountable for unethical behavior. King himself claimed that he was unaware of his past racist beliefs and behavior until the seven-year old tweets resurfaced. Often times, however, victims of “cancelling” are unmoved by public backlash which seems to suggest cancel culture does not actually hold individuals accountable for their actions.

Cancel Culture is also believed to further develop the moral beliefs of people who witness the backlash against problematic behavior by promoting discussion about the underlying moral principles behind such behavior. In “cancelling” King, individuals sent the message that public figures and people in general should be held accountable for their past actions, and that tweets like King’s were morally unacceptable. Using the public shaming and “cancelling” of King as a platform to dissuade racist jokes, individuals involved in cancel culture expanded the space to discuss moral issues in general. This aim of promoting moral discussion and fostering a more morally conscious community is only achievable if the calling out does not leave the individual “cancelled” unwilling to be held accountable for his actions and does not shut down dialogue as a whole because of the self-righteous, overwhelming barrage of imposed values to the public. Perhaps cancel culture can never escape these problems.

Many still support King and continue to donate in spite of his problematic tweets. It may seem unfair to call out King in such an aggressive way as to “cancel” him largely because of lack of context of King’s background. It may be unfair to label someone as racist or morally reprehensible because of a singular action of their past. That is, it may seem wrong to judge King based solely on two tweets he posted at the age of sixteen because that single action of tweeting fails to fully capture who King was and who King is now. However, some might argue that King should still be criticized because any action no matter how minuscule or temporally distant affects his character as a whole.

Under the guise of moral discussion, however, cancel culture itself seems to be problematic. In addition to ignoring context, intent is also often irrelevant to those “cancelling.” After posting a picture of herself in a qipao – a traditional Chinese dress – at prom, eighteen-year-old Keziah Daum similarly faced the backlash of cancel culture. Daum has stated that she meant “no harm” by wearing said dress, and some would say she received unnecessarily harsh consequences for her appropriative behavior.

Additionally, it seems as though cancelling is ineffective at changing public opinion, especially if one grants that those “cancelling” usually belong to a group with niche moral intuitions that the general public has not yet caught up to. As Damon Linker of The Week explains, cancelling may not be fostering the kind of moral dialogue we might hope for. When “activists … demand that transgressors against … nascent norms be cast out,” they impose their own morality onto a culture that lacks a moral consensus and has not yet fully accepted the views of activist ethics. In such cases, those “cancelled” are more than likely to be unresponsive to such “cancelling.”

Cancel culture appears to have many advantageous consequences, and, in its ideal form, strengthens moral beliefs in general. But when applied poorly, cancel culture can have many unforeseen consequences largely because of the generalization of a single, isolated action to the humanity of an individual being “cancelled.” Perhaps cancel culture is only permissible in its ideal form, and cannot be applied practically. Whether or not one believes “cancelling” is morally permissible, it may be imprudent to say cancel culture always fosters a more morally-conscious society and always holds the person being “cancelled” accountable. Rather, cancel culture is only good when moral conversation is promoted in a civil, positive, and productive way.

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Cancel Culture

close-up image of cancel icon

“Cancelled” is a term that millennials have been using in the past few years to describe people whose political or social status is controversial. Celebrities, politicians, one’s peers—even one’s own mother could be cancelled if someone willed it. If a person is labeled as cancelled, they are no longer supported morally or financially by the individuals who deemed them so. It’s a cultural boycott. But is cancelling really as simple as completely cutting someone off because of their beliefs or actions? The term itself—being cancelled—presents a larger argument. What does it accomplish? Is this “cancelling culture” something that can be beneficial or is it just a social media fad?

In 2018, rapper Kanye West not only endorsed the controversial President Donald Trump, but also said that slavery was a choice in an interview with TMZ. West received a ton of backlash from the black community and some people declared Kanye West cancelled and vowed to no longer listen to his music. On one hand, canceling Kanye West can be viewed as something positive depending on one’s political stance. It questions the impact that celebrities have in a political realm and it holds celebrities responsible for their actions by placing them under scrutiny on a viral scale. But at the same time, is Kanye West really cancelled? People still listen to his music. Even after his slavery comment, his most recent album debut at the top of the Billboard chart. West has also been hosting what is now known as Sunday Service, where West and a group of singers go into a remote location and perform some of his greatest hits. Social media has been loving it, so much that Sunday Service was brought to Coachella. It’s current sentiment about West that brings into question the impact of cancelling someone.

Can West be un-cancelled if he does something that most of social media enjoys? Is cancelling someone then just based off general reactions from social media? If one person declares an individual cancelled, does that mean everyone should consider them cancelled? The obvious answer would be no, but the act of “cancelling” almost works like the transitive property. If you don’t cancel someone that everyone else does, you yourself might risk being cancelled. Can cancelling be just another way to appear hip and knowledgeable–staying up on trends and the news but challenging those who create them? If so, cancelling could simply be interpreted as social media users wanting to stay relevant and maybe even go viral. If such a situation is the case, it would only take agency away from the act of cancelling.

Although cancel culture is heavily associated with celebrities, the hierarchy of who is cancelled can become a bit more complex. Per Billboard, it was revealed that Philip Anschutz, owner of entertainment conglomerate AEG, the company that overlooks Coachella, has supported anti-LGBTQ and anti-climate change foundations. Anschutz has also shown support to the Republican party. Coachella is one of the most highly coveted events to attend for millennials, and LGBTQ rights, climate change, and liberalism rank high in their agendas. When major news outlets first began writing about Anschutz and his support for anti-LGBTQ and anti-climate change foundations back in 2017, it was also revealed that Beyoncé would be headlining Coachella as well as popular rap artists such as Kendrick Lamar. Janelle Monáe, a popular hip-hop/R&B singer who identifies as queer, has also performed at Coachella. What do we make of this? Yes, Anschutz is “cancelled,” but is Coachella? Some vowed to no longer support Coachella after learning of the foundations that Anschutz supported, but when tickets went on for sale after it was announced that Beyoncé would be headlining, they sold out in three hours. So… probably not. But is Janelle Monae “cancelled?” Kendrick Lamar? Is it even possible to “cancel” Beyoncé?

The benefits of cancelling Anschutz seem minimal when there is still mass support for Coachella. Perhaps in such a case, cancelling does seem like a social media fad because one could interpret cancelling Anschutz as a way of easing their own conscience. After all, individuals who support LGBTQ still go to Coachella. But again, cancelling could be a way for social media users to prevent themselves from being cancelled. Condemning controversial topics on social media might make one appear favorable and keep them from being shunned on social media. But maybe such an idea is a key to “cancelling” and its overall impact on the social sphere. Yes, cancelling can sometimes have a large impact in some instances. Public pressure on companies and celebrities can often influence their decisions. But sometimes, “cancelling” can be just some random social media users venting their frustration in the endless void that is the internet. Maybe once and awhile, their words go into the void and resound with another user and gain virality. But is Kanye West or whoever else is cancelled really seeing these cancelling posts? Some of them only have a few retweets, so they are unlikely to get too much traction. In addition, saying someone is cancelled can often be used a joke. The distinction, especially on social media, between a user being serious and being facetious can often be blurred. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain the agency that cancel culture truly has. However, it does attest to the power of social media and the users who pump content into it.