Some critics argue that cancel culture has a chilling effect on public discourse, that it is unproductive, that it does not bring real social change, that it causes intolerance, or that it amounts to cyberbullying.
[27] In 2020, Ligaya Mishan wrote in The New York Times:"The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking, intimidation and harassment. ...
Those who embrace the idea (if not the precise language) of canceling seek more than pat apologies and retractions, although it's not always clear whether the goal is to right a specific wrong or redress a larger imbalance of power.
[37] Cancel culture has been described by media studies scholar Eve Ng as "a collective of typically marginalized voices 'calling out' and emphatically expressing their censure of a powerful figure".
Clinical counsellor Anna Richards, who specializes in conflict mediation, says that "learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism" helps call-out culture work productively.
[44] Former US Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote in a 2021 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article that cancel culture is a form of free speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Harvard Business Review cited the incident as an example of an attempt to "resonate with younger, more socially-conscious audiences", but that it "generated downstream adjustments from retailers and distributors" that negatively hurt the product's performance.
[47][48] Ng defines cancel culture as "the withdrawal of any kind of support (viewership, social media follows, purchases of products endorsed by the person, etc.)
for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues.
[50] This is closely related to John Stuart Mill's criticism of public shaming: he argued in On Liberty that society "practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
[27][57] In July 2020, former U.S. President Barack Obama criticized cancel culture and "woke" mentality on social media, saying: "people who do really good stuff have flaws.
"[58] Former U.S. President Donald Trump criticized cancel culture in a speech in July 2020, comparing it to totalitarianism and saying that it is a political weapon used to punish and shame dissenters by driving them from their jobs and demanding submission.
[59] Trump made similar claims during the 2020 Republican National Convention when he stated that the goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society.
[60][61][62] Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, states that social activism does not just involve going online or going to a protest to call someone out, but is work entailing strategy sessions, meetings, and getting petitions signed.
[9] UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak included cancel culture, where one group "are trying to impose their views on the rest of us", among the contemporary dangers of the modern world.
[63] Philosopher Slavoj Žižek states that, "cancel culture, with its implicit paranoia, is a desperate and obviously self-defeating attempt to compensate for the very real violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long suffered.
[9] Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer for The New Republic, states that people are threatened by cancel culture because it is a new group of young progressives, minorities, and women who have "obtained a seat at the table" and are debating matters of justice and etiquette.
[65] Dalvin Brown, writing in USA Today, has described an open letter signed by 153 public figures and published in Harper's Magazine as marking a "high point" in the debate on the topic.
[27] The letter set out arguments against "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty".
[12][c] Indigenous governance professor and activist Pamela Palmater writes in Maclean's magazine that, "cancel culture is the dog whistle term used by those in power who don’t want to be held accountable for their words and actions—often related to racism, misogyny, homophobia or the abuse and exploitation of others.
[78] A poll of American registered voters conducted by Morning Consult in July 2020 showed that cancel culture, defined as "the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive", was common: 40% of respondents said they had withdrawn support from public figures and companies, including on social media, because they had done or said something considered objectionable or offensive, with 8% having engaged in this often.
[81] A November 2021 Hill/HarrisX poll found that 71% of registered voters strongly or somewhat felt that cancel culture went too far, with similar numbers of Republicans (76%), Democrats (70%), and independents (68%) saying so.
[82] The same poll found that 69% of registered voters felt that cancel culture unfairly punishes people for their past actions or statements, compared to 31% who said it did not.