A vestigial Facebook profile from high school that I’ve logged less than five minutes on; a Snapchat account to which I’ve long forgotten the passcode; a YouTube channel for which I prove mathematical theorems on a whiteboard; and a publication on Medium engulf the entirety of my social media footprint. Technically, I belong to the iGeneration, but, technologically, I am more similar to my grandpa. Illiterate in slang, memes, and most pop culture references, I’ve been left behind to float in space, lacking a category to conform to. On the up side, social media hasn’t lured me toward a stringent belief system. Although, biased reporting also permeates supposedly reliable news sources. Despite these unavoidable nuances, we must strive to be informed citizens who uphold the truth and reason in this era of perpetual manipulation. While embracing ideological remodeling, we should comb through various newspapers, instigate difficult conversations with family and friends, devour as many notable books as possible, and hear out perspectives from both sides. However, most Americans receive their news from social media (Shearer); more and more, I see irrational sentiments flood the internet. Several of my friends are convinced that you’re a racist if you advocate for anything less than abolishing the police. What about reforming the police? Out of the question. My friends are thoughtful, caring, and motivated to defend marginalized communities. But extremist and intolerant viewpoints will further polarize our country, ensuring that things will only get worse for everyone. Cancel Culture demonizes individuals that take objectionable missteps, prompting mass shaming and harassment campaigns; this indiscriminate rush to judgment relies on mob mentality, a highly problematic form of intolerance that plagues modern society.

Social media provides an invaluable platform for uplifting marginalized voices; Cancel Culture originated to shut down hateful, bigotted rhetoric. Although originally well-intentioned, this movement has spun out of control; we indiscriminately bypass fact for a fiction that’s easier to vilify; then we employ spiteful speech to shame easy targets with the same hostility and ignorance that we condemn. In 2013, Justine Sacco sent out this Tweet before boarding a plane: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” (@JustineSacco). When her plane landed, she opened her phone to see hundreds of thousands of Tweets like this: “Somebody(HIV+) must rape this bitch and we’ll see if her skin color can protect her from AIDS RT @JustineSacco” (@Phislash). People felt proud of themselves for punishing a common enemy. These moral supremacists, hypocritically, abandon their liberal viewpoints and promote misogynistic rhetotic: “rape this bitch.” Amongst the unbridled rage, nobody cared to seek out the truth: “Justine’s crime had been a badly worded joke mocking privilege” (Ronson 284). The smallest amount of sleuthing could have revealed this; Justine had recently posted several similar jokes mocking privilege. But the concocted fiction, that Justine is a stupid racist, is much easier to rally behind. Bill Maher suggested, “Americans need to find a better way to say, ‘I disagree with your position’ than ‘I’m going to kill you” (Real Time with Bill Maher). On both the hard left and hard right, we are not only intolerant of opposing ideologies but we discard human beings based on differing opinions. To a man who said “all lives matter” out of ignorance not racism or to a woman who wrote a book on immigration but isn’t an immigrant, does any rational human being believe they should receive threats of death and ultraviolence? It shouldn’t be beyond our capabilities to comprehend nuance, communicate without spewing hatred, and greet others with empathy rather than rush judgement and virtual decapitation. Opinion writer and editor Bari Weiss stated, “we’re the most privileged people in human history, objectively. And yet people are spending all of their time on Earth hurling pixels at one another. I find it a very, very strange use of people’s time” (Real Time with Bill Maher). We exist in a pivotal era for the future of our planet and all of its species, technology and internet privacy, foreign policy and nuclear warfare, the economy, and social justice. Situated at several tipping points, we are overwhelmed and coping self-destructively. In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson wrote, “in fact, it felt weird and empty when there wasn’t anyone to be furious about. The days between shamings felt like days picking at fingernails, treading water” (Ronson 89). It is miserable being well-informed of our dire situation and forced to watch from the sidelines as our elected officials fail us. It is much more fun to pinpoint an easy target, obliterate the common enemy with public shame, and pat ourselves on the back for a good day’s work.

Political correctness is a necessary defense against harmful rhetoric, and it can be beneficial and effective. However, when intended to vilify rather than educate, ruthless persecutions only serve to alienate potential allies and stifle free speech. The Cato National Survey revealed that 62% of Americans are afraid to reveal their political beliefs (Etkins). We aren’t living in a totalitarian regime that purposefully stifles free speech, so what is the all-powerful fear factor intimidating Americans? The merciless witch-hunts for violators of political correctness, no matter how good-intentioned the violators may be. Winnipeg psychologist Dr. Matthew Bailly explains the shaming process: “it erodes a person’s sense of self-worth. And typically what goes along with that is an increase in anger and frustration and an increase in disconnectedness with others, which will lead to more of the behaviour that was being shamed in the first place” (Zoratti). Well-meaning victims of public shaming won’t be grateful for their savage flogging. They don’t emerge better educated by Tweets detailing how fellow liberals will track you down and murder you; they will retreat into the opposite direction. Over and over, our intolerance alienates potential allies. The cure is empathy: “we should be developing empathy—and actually encouraging empathy and connection—rather than stitching scarlet letter As onto them” (Zoratti). The cruelty we show violators of political correctness directly contradicts the original purpose: to reduce harmful speech and bigotry. Empathizing with individuals with differing viewpoints will end our ideological segregation and encourage unity.

One might argue that journalism is subjective to the evolving socio-political landscape; leaning left is simply a reflection of the times. But mainstream news sources no longer lean, they reside on the hard left, too frightened to stray even slightly. One leftist article can “cancel” a career for not being extremist enough. Bari Weiss’ infamous resignation letter to The New York Times exposes a startlingly intolerant atmosphere: “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor” (Weiss). The Cancel Culture mob has not only intimidated the American people but our, previously, most reliable new sources. Bari further describes her experience at the paper: “showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.” Coworkers would even “post ax emojis next to [her] name.” Targeting someone based on their political affiliation, their beliefs, embarks our country on a dangerous path. Bari’s coworkers are comparable to Torquemadas, taking conformity one step further: active persecution. Jon Ronson describes Twitter as a “flawed information-swapping service [that] was setting the agenda now—as if the mainstream media, already insecure about its place in the new world, was allowing social media to tell it what to think, before dutifully stepping into line” (Ronson 299). Journalism is already a minefield, with many more don’ts than dos. For a long time, public outrage signified the, otherwise entirely arbitrary, crossing of a line. In the age of Cancel Culture, that line has shifted about a hundred-million miles inland, narrowing publications’ territories even further. Rather than maintaining journalistic integrity, publications like The New York Times have caved, bowing down to the will of the ruthless mob. Polish sociology professor Barbara Pasamonik weighs in on the harms of bias in education: “we should instead teach students to think independently and to develop their skills for drawing logical conclusions” (Pasamonik). Upcoming generations are losing permission to think for themselves. Seeing so many brutal punishments for missteps occurring on the path of intellectual curiosity, young people are discouraged from taking that path. They don’t believe they are allowed to explore new ideas or deviate from the very narrow realm of socially acceptable ideology. How can we expect future generations to choose rational over extremist views when even our newspapers aren’t brave enough to do so?

Although the majority of Americans are Democrats or left-leaning independents, the Republican party recently controlled both the Senate and the House. Many attributed this red-colored political landscape to a shift in public opinion toward conservative ideals. However, I believe Cancel Culture is to blame. Bari Weiss remarked, “anyone that departs from woke orthodoxy gets a lot more heat, in my opinion, than the people on the actual right” (Real Time with Bill Maher). All the time, people on the left get taken down for not being leftist enough. Originating from the music industry, black squares were posted by millions on Instagram to honor George Floyd and express solidarity with Black Lives Matter. This well-intentioned trend quickly turned into a witch-hunt. Those who didn’t post the square were labeled “racist”; those who posted the square but returned to their usual content too quickly were insincere and racist; those who posted the square without the right caption were ignorant and racist. Patrolling the internet to cancel people who are being supportive in the wrong way is regressive. Bari takes it further, “offense-taking is being weaponized. It is a route now to political power. Saying that ‘I am offended’ is a way of making someone radioactive. It’s a way of smearing their reputation and making them a liability. Because once you tar someone—a racist or a misogynist or a fascist, whatever the word of the day is—it’s a way of taking them down a peg.” These labels are powerful enough to signal the attention of the mob. Given the chance to demonize, the mob will run rampant and destroy a reputation, a campaign, over a misspeaking or, in Biden’s case, invading someone’s personal space in a crowded room. In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Senator Tom Cotton wrote, “I’m alarmed by the extent of the left’s power on university campuses to censor speech and research and cancel people’s careers” (Cotton). A widespread trend prompted social media users, mostly college-aged, to demonize Joe Biden at a crucial point in his candidacy. They lost sight of the bigger picture: to remove Donald Trump from office. Armed with half-truths and article taglines, they began exaggerating Biden’s past. Biden has been in politics for nearly half a century; we are the products of our time; people change with time; these statements should be obvious, but Cancel Culture is insatiable, ferocious, and doesn’t want to be placated by logic or facts. Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act, he was a key player on gun control with the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban, he forced Obama’s hand by endorsing same-sex marriage, and he is an advocate for climate action. In the age of Cancel Culture, facts don’t matter; blood was in the water and the sharks were hungry. Bill Maher further described this phenomenon: “from ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ to ‘you owe me an apology.’ Republicans apologize for nothing; Democrats for everything. Can’t we find a balance? […] In 2016, conservatives won the White House, both houses of congress, and almost two-thirds of governorships and state legislatures. Whereas liberals, on the other hand, caught Steve Martin calling Carrie Fisher beautiful in a Tweet and made him take it down. I’m not making that up; it really happened” (Real Time with Bill Maher). There are countless examples of crucifixions that liberals were busy enacting while the polls were open. We became so fixated on paroling and demonizing our own party that we lost sight of the bigger picture. It is easy to forget that we determine what issues matter in our country; if we care more about political correctness than enacting policies, then so will our representatives.

Cancel Culture contributes to the rise in groupthink. Professor Barbara Pasamonik wrote, “political correctness can suspend free reflection on the differences inherent in otherness, which is the subject of tolerance, and creates an ideology of the generalized, abstract Other” (Pasamonik). Political correctness and Cancel Culture divide society into the self-righteous and the wronged. The self-righteous attack and savagely crucify largely well-meaning people who took a misstep. Those potential allies become wronged. This alienation polarizes our country and increases animosity between the poles. Cotton wrote, “the intolerant left is not seeking a battle of views; they seek to erase opposing ideas” (Cotton). Reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition, the self-righteous commit the most horrific acts because they believe it is God’s will or for a “good cause.” It’s okay to threaten to rape and murder her because she’s a racist. By demonizing and degrading the person, their ideas become dangerous, even socially banned, eradicating freedom of thought. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which was praised by fascist dictators, was written by Gustave Le Bon. The nineteenth-century French polymath wrote that “a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. Exaggerate, affirm, resort to repetition, and never attempt to prove anything by reasoning” (Le Bon). Rather than thoughtful debates, Cancel Culture promotes “excessive sentiments” and discourages proving “anything by reason.” Crowd psychology, also known as mob mentality, hungers for a common enemy, which provides much more stimulation than a common goal. The mob exaggerates and repeatedly affirms the enemy’s offense, no matter how irrational, then shames the enemy until the mob is satiated.

Corrupt analytics companies, like infamous Cambridge Analytica, are utilizing social media to destabilize our country, yet I believe that we are playing an even bigger role in polarizing ourselves. Pasamonik defines tolerance “as a social virtue and a political principle that allows for the peaceful coexistence of individuals and groups that hold different views and practice different ways of life within the same society” (Pasamonik). The supposedly tolerant liberals have become wholeheartedly intolerant of views that deviate from the hard left; they have intimidated the regular left and moderates into submission; and they have shamed and alienated the right into extremist ideology. Cancel Culture has destabilized our country by making everyone feel unwelcome and defensive: a madman became President, mass shootings are commonplace, regressive policies are being enacted, and an insurgence took place that attempted lynching. The Pew Research Center revealed in a pre-election survey that “only 4% of registered voters in states with a Senate contest said they planned to vote for Trump or Biden and a Senate candidate from the opposing party” (Desilver). People are no longer voting by policy or candidate; instead, they are voting by party. Reason and the frontal cortex are being dethroned by tribalism and the amygdala. In The Human Stain, the protagonist laments, “thrown out of a Norfolk whorehouse for being black, thrown out of Athena College for being white” (Roth). He is a professor who refers to a ghost as a “spook” and his reference is misinterpreted as a racial epithet. He is thrown out of the college “for being white” and, elsewhere, he is discriminated against “for being black.” Stuck between two inflexible parties, he has no home. Moderates are becoming a rare breed as Cancel Culture subdues ideologies that deviate from the extremist poles. This prevents unity, fundamentally endangering our country.

Until the late fifteenth century, “humane” was interchangeable with “human.” It is synonymous with compassionate, benevolent, and inflicting minimum pain. Although we do exhibit those traits, the most dangerous creatures on Earth are humans. We are animals with a moral compass hoping to better the world by sacrificing common enemies for the greater good. In the process, mob mentality permits us to unleash our darkest impulses and abandon all reason. This zero-tolerance movement has spun out of control, endangering journalism, politics, national stability, and our freedom. We are deflating serious issues and alienating one another by refusing to acknowledge nuance and scale. I’d like to think it’s possible to use unprecedented social media engagement for good. We can both elevate marginalized voices and nurture constructive discourse between individuals with differing opinions, without resorting to indiscriminate, unempathetic aggression that does more harm than good.

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