cancel culture

With roots in Black Twitter, cancel culture is an unavoidable mainstay of our infotainment age. In an era of too much everything—TV, opinions, news—we’ve come to rely on a vocabulary of consolidation: likes, tweets, emoji. Cancel culture is one of these argots—a governor, a self-regulatory device I have come to wield with pride (if infrequent recklessness). In the collective, the gesture is absolute: we can’t. We’re done. And so we asphyxiate support from a notable cause or figure. Roseanne Barr referred to Valerie Jarrett as an ape? Cancelled. Harvey Weinstein was outed as a sexual predator? Cancelled.