The Dirty Little Secret of Cancel Culture
By Tim O’Brien
Cancel culture isn’t a singular thing. It’s a collection of strategies and tactics, each designed to use the power of the collective against the individual. Typically, the cancel mob starts with some attacks on Twitter or Facebook. This could escalate into dramatic and accusatory videos on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, and then goes on from there. Sooner or later, and this is the goal, the news media gets involved, validating those attacks by taking them as legitimate.
Your First Mistake
The first mistake you can make when the cancel mob comes knocking is to presume it is indeed a mob of actual people with genuine concerns. That it represents a significant share of the population, or even your constituents. Chances are good it doesn’t. It’s more likely that the people involved aren’t even those you would normally deal with under any scenario except for this one. Even more hideous, there is a strong possibility that those social media posts attacking your company aren’t from individual people at all.
... The dirty little secret behind cancel culture is that it derives its power from your lack of commitment to your own values and standards. It derives its power from lack of resolve and lack of loyalty. The more weakly you adhere to your own cultural values, the stronger the cancel culture’s influence over your organization will become. And once the cancel culture mob gets a taste of that, it can’t resist the urge to come back for more.
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