I might be giving away that I'm a lawyer, but I think there's kind of a vague three or four part test towards determining if we're dealing with cancel culture. Let's use criticism or attempted cancellation of a football player to walk through the examples.
First, are the critics part of, or connected to, the group they're criticizing? The…
I might be giving away that I'm a lawyer, but I think there's kind of a vague three or four part test towards determining if we're dealing with cancel culture. Let's use criticism or attempted cancellation of a football player to walk through the examples.
First, are the critics part of, or connected to, the group they're criticizing? The people criticizing the player--are they fans of the team? Football fans in general? They have no connection to football at all except they heard about this guy's transgressions and they want to punish him? The more of a connection you have, the less likely it is to be cancel culture.
Second, is there a nexus between the proposed punishment and the action? With the football player, are you saying he needs to be kicked off the team because he's a bad player? Or are you saying he needs to be kicked off the team because of some off the field activity? The less of a nexus, the more likely it's cancel culture. This is why you always see people making tenuous connections--"how can you trust this guy to be a teacher when he's shown bad values and therefore might not be nice to all his children."
Third, is there secondary criticism going on? By that I mean, are the critics limiting themselves to going after the player? Or are they saying that if someone else (like the league, or the team) doesn't punish him, they'll punish that other actor? Or are they going another level removed, like going after the sponsors, to pressure the team, to pressure the player? Basically, where do we fall on the spectrum between "I personally will make different choices" and "I will force everyone else to make different choices." The more removed you get, the more it's cancel culture.
Fourth, and finally, is what they said or did really that bad? This is obviously the squishiest and least objective, but still, if you try to get someone fired for something pretty unobjectionable, that's more likely to be cancel culture than if they did something truly heinous.
There might be other broad guidelines, but I think that usually when you see people criticizing cancel culture, they're identifying that a critic falls into one or more of those buckets. And really, I should be clear that I'm kind of using "cancel culture" as a synonym for "bad" here. As in, I think if your criticism falls into those buckets, it's more likely to be a poor use of your time and a behavior I want to see less of in the world, and when I call something cancel culture, I'm really trying to send that signal of moral judgment, rather than identifying it in a taxonomy (this is a very common tactic in politics I think--assign some set of obviously bad actions a label, and then when you run into other actions that you don't like but are less obviously bad, you fit those new actions into the label and take advantage of the bad vibes associated with that label. Very similar to the noncentral fallacy Scott has discussed before). The discussion of an act's moral rectitude is I think a lot more important and interesting than whether it falls into the label of cancel culture, which is really just an argument about how to define cancel culture--and again referencing Scott's previous work, remember that categories were made for man, not man for categories.
One interesting thing is that you can have a reaction that only meet the fourth bit of the test, yet intuitively the response is not likely to be regarded as cancel culture in a pejorative sense. If a football player said "I'm a massive Nazi fan, I want a massive holocaust 2.0 where we kill almost everyone alive for being a subhuman. I also support all rapists and murderers everywhere and would encourage my fans to commit hate crimes and steal from their elderly relatives" Few people would find calling for his sacking objectionable- or even boycotting the team if they don't sack him.
I think there's a very important tricky bit hidden in with "[...] are the critics limiting themselves to going after the player? Or are they saying that if someone else (like the league, or the team) doesn't punish him, they'll punish that other actor?" The tricky bit is, are they pointing out the player because of perceived hypocrisy on the part of the league? Is their real goal forcing the league to change its standards, especially when it comes to other speech?
My recollection specifically with regards to the Colin Kaepernick affair, part of the complaint was that the league had cracked down on other players showboating and wearing unauthorized apparel and that by allowing only him to violate the rules for his cause, the league was in effect endorsing his cause. If the league had come out and ended the rule for everyone regardless of cause, the end result would have been less animosity overall. Colin Kaepernick himself is ultimately an entertainer. People are allowed not to like him for his public persona. As long as they can perform, plenty of athletes do very well with a hated public persona (they're called 'heels').
The problem is that it's hard to identify when someone is using the situation to force the institution to change its policy, because admitting to doing so weakens your case. These issues are paid attention to because of the amount of furor people generate over being offended.
I might be giving away that I'm a lawyer, but I think there's kind of a vague three or four part test towards determining if we're dealing with cancel culture. Let's use criticism or attempted cancellation of a football player to walk through the examples.
First, are the critics part of, or connected to, the group they're criticizing? The people criticizing the player--are they fans of the team? Football fans in general? They have no connection to football at all except they heard about this guy's transgressions and they want to punish him? The more of a connection you have, the less likely it is to be cancel culture.
Second, is there a nexus between the proposed punishment and the action? With the football player, are you saying he needs to be kicked off the team because he's a bad player? Or are you saying he needs to be kicked off the team because of some off the field activity? The less of a nexus, the more likely it's cancel culture. This is why you always see people making tenuous connections--"how can you trust this guy to be a teacher when he's shown bad values and therefore might not be nice to all his children."
Third, is there secondary criticism going on? By that I mean, are the critics limiting themselves to going after the player? Or are they saying that if someone else (like the league, or the team) doesn't punish him, they'll punish that other actor? Or are they going another level removed, like going after the sponsors, to pressure the team, to pressure the player? Basically, where do we fall on the spectrum between "I personally will make different choices" and "I will force everyone else to make different choices." The more removed you get, the more it's cancel culture.
Fourth, and finally, is what they said or did really that bad? This is obviously the squishiest and least objective, but still, if you try to get someone fired for something pretty unobjectionable, that's more likely to be cancel culture than if they did something truly heinous.
There might be other broad guidelines, but I think that usually when you see people criticizing cancel culture, they're identifying that a critic falls into one or more of those buckets. And really, I should be clear that I'm kind of using "cancel culture" as a synonym for "bad" here. As in, I think if your criticism falls into those buckets, it's more likely to be a poor use of your time and a behavior I want to see less of in the world, and when I call something cancel culture, I'm really trying to send that signal of moral judgment, rather than identifying it in a taxonomy (this is a very common tactic in politics I think--assign some set of obviously bad actions a label, and then when you run into other actions that you don't like but are less obviously bad, you fit those new actions into the label and take advantage of the bad vibes associated with that label. Very similar to the noncentral fallacy Scott has discussed before). The discussion of an act's moral rectitude is I think a lot more important and interesting than whether it falls into the label of cancel culture, which is really just an argument about how to define cancel culture--and again referencing Scott's previous work, remember that categories were made for man, not man for categories.
One interesting thing is that you can have a reaction that only meet the fourth bit of the test, yet intuitively the response is not likely to be regarded as cancel culture in a pejorative sense. If a football player said "I'm a massive Nazi fan, I want a massive holocaust 2.0 where we kill almost everyone alive for being a subhuman. I also support all rapists and murderers everywhere and would encourage my fans to commit hate crimes and steal from their elderly relatives" Few people would find calling for his sacking objectionable- or even boycotting the team if they don't sack him.
I think there's a very important tricky bit hidden in with "[...] are the critics limiting themselves to going after the player? Or are they saying that if someone else (like the league, or the team) doesn't punish him, they'll punish that other actor?" The tricky bit is, are they pointing out the player because of perceived hypocrisy on the part of the league? Is their real goal forcing the league to change its standards, especially when it comes to other speech?
My recollection specifically with regards to the Colin Kaepernick affair, part of the complaint was that the league had cracked down on other players showboating and wearing unauthorized apparel and that by allowing only him to violate the rules for his cause, the league was in effect endorsing his cause. If the league had come out and ended the rule for everyone regardless of cause, the end result would have been less animosity overall. Colin Kaepernick himself is ultimately an entertainer. People are allowed not to like him for his public persona. As long as they can perform, plenty of athletes do very well with a hated public persona (they're called 'heels').
The problem is that it's hard to identify when someone is using the situation to force the institution to change its policy, because admitting to doing so weakens your case. These issues are paid attention to because of the amount of furor people generate over being offended.