Cancel Culture: The Hunger Games of Social Media

From Torches to Tweets: The Lynch Mob Goes Digital

Cancel culture is the sacred cow of our enlightened era. Over the last half decade (around 2020), social media has turned into a digital colosseum where the mob gathers to decide who lives and who is fed to the algorithmic lions. Our social media networks have become a draconian courtroom, where the prosecution is Facebook, the judge is TikTok, the jury is X (formally Twitter), and the evidence is a biased Google search. Our digital landscape has become a modern-day Salem, with crowds armed with zero facts but endless feelings determines guilt by volume alone.

This is not a new appearance of an old idea but rather the umpteenth evolution of our most ancient instincts. To form tribes, to publicly shame those outside our tribes, and to feel the Machiavellian rush that comes with the power of destroying someone else behind a keyboard. In place of tar and feathers, we now have X threads. In place of torches, we have TikTok influencers.

Virtue Signaling’s Most Dangerous Weapon

At its core, cancel culture is moral grandstanding weaponized into digitalized excommunication. It masquerades as justice but thrives on dominance and destruction with victims ranging from celebrities and corporations to the unlucky private citizen who happened to post something slightly off-script in 2012.

Imagine “Mean Girls” but with global reach and a 24/7 news cycle. Instead of a burn book, we have YouTube exposés with dramatic music and screenshots labeled “receipts.”

How a Tiny 1% of Psychopaths Creates Mass Outrage

What makes this spectacle even more absurd is that the entire operation is largely controlled by a microscopic slice of the digital population. Research suggests that only about 1% of people exhibit psychopathic traits such as callousness, manipulation, and lack of empathy. Yet they’re the loudest voices in this digital purge.

The online world has become a breeding ground for the most maladaptive, impulsive, and destructive personalities. In any well-functioning community, they would be socially sidelined for their pathological behavior. But the internet has completely inverted this dynamic, where anonymity shields them from consequence, while virality rewards their worst impulses.

And when the most resentful, least conscientious people dictate the cultural narrative, you get an artificially engineered moral panic on a never-ending loop of outrage and retribution; precisely what we have now. Worse still, the media has become an amplifier, elevating this dysfunction as if it were a legitimate reflection of the collective will. The News’ appetite for clicks has become a contributing force that is tearing apart the fabric of rational discourse and replacing it with a grotesque, self-perpetuating theater of hysteria.

Trial by Hashtag

Now, you could argue that cancel culture has its place, especially holding the powerful accountable. And sure, there are cases where it has worked. Harvey Weinstein deserved every ounce of ruin he received. But for every Weinstein, there’s a Johnny Depp, a person who’s innocent but caught in the crossfire, their name dragged through the mud before the truth had a chance to surface.

What’s left in its wake of this cultural inquisition is fear to speak, disagree, or question. Free speech is replaced with self-censorship out of pure survival instinct, dismantling freedom of expression brick by brick, and getting replaced with the tyranny of fragile egos and digital witch hunts.

Notable Cancellations

Over the past half decade, many have faced significant backlash and professional consequences from their actions or statements. These instances highlight the impact of public scrutiny and the consequences individuals can face when their actions or statements are deemed offensive or inappropriate.

But while high-profile cancellations often make headlines, everyday individuals have also faced severe consequences as well for statements that garnered public backlash. Here are some notable examples of both:

J.K. Rowling (2019–Present): Faced backlash for her tweets and essays on transgender issues, which critics viewed as transphobic. Harry Potter books, films and related projects (Hogwarts Legacy video game) saw boycotts called for by many. Some of her co-stars from Harry Potter distanced themselves.

Donald Trump (2021): Banned from Twitter (now X), Facebook, and YouTube following the January 6 Capitol riot due to allegations of inciting violence and spreading election misinformation. Many businesses cut ties, and Congress impeached him the second time (he was acquitted in the Senate).

Joe Rogan (2022): Faced calls for Spotify to remove his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, after spreading COVID-19 misinformation and past videos resurfaced of him using racial slurs. Musical artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have cut ties with Spotify and removed their music.

Rosanne Barr (2018): Fired from the reboot of Roseanne on ABC after tweeting a racist remark about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. The network scrapped her programme and retitled it The Conners without her.

Colin Kaepernick (2016–Present): Blacklisted from the NFL after kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. The conservative media, Politicians (Including Trump) and fans labelled him as ‘unpatriotic’. Even after getting a deal with Nike, he still hasn’t managed to get an NFL team.

Ellen DeGeneres (2020–2022): Criticized by conservative groups for LGBTQ+ advocacy for years, but in 2020, she faced broader backlash over allegations of a toxic workplace culture on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The decline of Ellen’s show was also celebrated by right-leaning commentators, while its show cancellation in 2022 was equally spun onto the political scoreboard by various political actors.

Jeffree Star (2020): The beauty influencer faced backlash after past racist content and accusations of bullying resurfaced. Consequently, major retailers like Morphe dropped his product line, and he experienced a decline in his online following.

Chris Harrison (2021): The long-time host of “The Bachelor” faced criticism after defending a contestant’s attendance at an antebellum-themed party. His comments were seen as dismissive of racism concerns, resulting in his departure from the show.

Zhang Zhehan (2021): The Chinese actor was “canceled” after photos surfaced of him visiting Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war criminals from World War II. This led to loss of work and removal from social media platforms in China.

Denis Finley (2018):

Position: Executive Editor at The Burlington Free Press
Incident: Finley was terminated after tweeting comments that drew heavy criticism from Twitter users.

Aaron Calvin (2019):

Position: Reporter at The Des Moines Register
Incident: Calvin wrote an article highlighting past racist tweets by Carson King, a local fundraiser. Following the article’s publication, Calvin’s own offensive tweets surfaced, leading to public backlash.
Outcome: He parted ways with the newspaper shortly after the controversy.

Felicia Sonmez (2022):

Position: National Political Reporter at The Washington Post
Incident: Sonmez publicly criticized a colleague’s retweet of a sexist joke, leading to internal disputes.
Outcome: She was dismissed for “insubordination” and “violating the Post’s standards on workplace collegiality.”

Marko Elez (2025):

Position: Staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
Incident: Elez resigned after the Wall Street Journal revealed old social media posts promoting racism and eugenics linked to him.
Outcome: He resigned but was later reinstated by Elon Musk, who emphasized the importance of forgiveness.

These instances highlight how individuals, not just public figures, can experience significant personal and professional repercussions from actions that attract public scrutiny.

Here lies the tragedy. The same culture that preaches tolerance has become utterly intolerant of dissent, and the people who shout “inclusion” the loudest are the first to ostracize anyone who dares think differently. We have turned morality into a zero-sum game, where the only way to elevate oneself is to destroy someone else.

What to Do If You Get Canceled

So, you’ve been canceled. You may have tweeted something 10 years ago which has now resurfaced, or you may have talked about an opinion that is out of the latest ideological narrative. Now the digital mob has come along with their pitchforks, asking for your job, your reputation, and, in some cases, your ability to live at all. What do you do? First and foremost, don’t apologize for being you! You won’t be able to help them, or yourself by doing that. The moment you bow to the mob, you are finished. Apologies do not appease the outrage machine; they fuel it.

Those calling for your downfall are not seeking a peaceful resolution, they want to dominate you. Instead, stand firm. If your words were misinterpreted, clarify them. If you are being deliberately smeared, call it out. No matter what, don’t back down from the mob; you see, the only way to stay alive from cancel culture is to not submit to it. They can only ruin you if you let them.

Tying it all Together

Cancel culture is not justice. It’s punishment masquerading as righteousness. In reality, it is a tool wielded by bitter, envious people who contribute nothing of value, so instead, they dedicate themselves to destroying those who do. The greatest trick cancel culture ever pulled was convincing the world that 1% of the population—a group of emotionally unstable, perpetually offended lunatics—represents a reasonable sample of society. It doesn’t. Not even close. This is a small, hyperactive minority that thrives on performative outrage. They aren’t interested in truth, debate, or discussion. They don’t care about justice. They only care about power, control, and destroying anyone who refuses to bend the knee. And when cancel culture becomes the norm, society turns into a dystopian nightmare where exile replaces due process and the mob decides who deserves to exist.

But parasites can only survive if you let them. The truth is that cancel culture holds no real power over you unless you submit to it. The solution isn’t compliance, it’s defiance. If people stopped apologizing to professional outrage addicts, if corporations stopped firing employees over internet tantrums, if the silent majority stopped being silent, the entire apparatus would collapse overnight. The mob doesn’t have strength, it only has volume.

The lesson is clear: stop feeding the beast. The only way to kill cancel culture is to starve it. And that starts by refusing to participate, refusing to comply, and refusing to let the most fragile, maladjusted members of society dictate the terms of acceptable speech and thought. It’s time to stop cowering. It’s time to stop letting broken people run the world. And it’s time to put cancel culture in the grave where it belongs.

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Jourdan Rombough

I’m Jourdan, and Vussio is one of my many websites. This site is a place for put together topics i find interesting, along with my thoughts and perspective on random topics outside of my expertise of SEO.