The History of Cancel Culture

Banned Histories of Race in America

Ok. First of all, I hate to tell you this, but cancel culture isn’t actually real. Just kidding. I love to tell you that. But seriously, while there is no such thing as cancel culture, there is such a thing as public shaming and it’s existed in cultures around the world for as long as we’ve recorded time.

There’s dishonoring and shunning. The Japanese have a thing called “losing face” that you probably heard about. Europeans used to have a practice called Charivari in which a whole bunch of villagers would form a little parade banging pots and pans and singing a song making fun of whoever had it coming.

Currently, in the US we like to pretend we’re against public shaming, but we certainly are not. On the contrary, we fucking love it. We drool over a good perp walk, or messy celebrity divorce. There’s a reason tabloids are right there at the checkout and you know damn well people don’t watch those daytime judge shows to learn about the law.

But if cancel culture isn’t real, why won’t we shut up about it?