A lack of organization, rules and nuance have long plagued our ritualized public scorn. How can we expect it to be taken seriously?

By Candice Frederick | Published Nov. 6, 2023

This is the second story in our weeklong series on cancel culture.
Read the other stories here .

Incoherent is one way to describe the state of cancel culture today, when anyone and anything is being canceled, both seriously and unseriously, for an indefinite period of time or just until the next ill-fated headline drops on Twitter, er, X. Which should be in the next few hours.

Unsustainable is another.

And yet, as New York Times journalist Ligaya Mishans terrific deep dive into the matter in 2020 proves, this type of collective and extremely public scorn has existed for centuries.

But cancel culture catapulted around the same time both #MeToo and #TimesUp did, at a point in our recent history when powerful public figures in corrupt establishments, including Hollywood, had failed to act appropriately. It had become the peoples issue to see that those offenders were properly disempowered.