I just added the following to the OP as a postscript:
I was recently reminded that I used to collect pieces about cancel culture. Here is a list of some of the better pieces I’ve seen over the years. All were written by people who had strong commitments to the social justice movement rather than external critics.
• Firstly, here are two that I mentioned in the post above: “Liberal Bullying,” from 2012, is by Ariel Meadows Stallings, founder of the “non-traditional” publishing company Offbeat Empire. https://offbeatempire.com/liberal-bullying/
The other is from 1976, before I was born, titled “Trashing: the Dark Side of Sisterhood,” written by feminist activist Jo Freeman and published in Ms. Magazine. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
• In 2025, longtime blogger Jonathan Korman wrote “‘Cancel culture’ and criticism.” As he notes, concerns about cancel culture have often been dismissed within the movement because they come from people that the social justice movement perceives as enemies. https://miniver.blogspot.com/2025/10/cancel-culture-and-criticism.html
• In January 2020, the trans vlogger Natalie Wynn created a YouTube video called “Canceling” on her channel ContraPoints. As I later wrote in my post celebrating the final event in the XOXO Conference series, Wynn originally debuted the talk at XOXO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
Very few people are willing to stand in the way of a lynch mob, even an online one, and almost everyone is looking after themselves and maybe, but only maybe, their close family. Words like honor and loyalty are rarely used these days, and most of those who use them don't live up to them, what they think honor is equals following orders or their in-group.
When the pack picks a target, when blood is drawn, even metaphorically, people want to get out of the way.
You see this even in simple childhood bullying. It is very rare for anyone to stand up for the victim.
In terms of being nice to your face, in my experience, people often are. They're performative bullies for a crowd. Picking on someone, and canceling someone is just that, is a way of increasing status and signaling who'se in-group and who's out. It increases the bully's standing with the rest of the group, "I am attacking our enemy, showing my disgust and anger for violations of shared norms."
If you step in and defend, you are in danger of being tarred with the same brush, you risk your in-group membership and your high status.
But unless the person is psychopath who enjoys cruelty for its own sake (the sort who likes torturing small animals) they will normally be kind to you in one-on-one situations. Maybe act a little embarrassed and tell you it was nothing personal.
Most people are neither good nor bad, they are weak. They go the easy way, the perceived way, they run with the pack and do everything they can not be thrown out of the pack. Even the "leaders" are just running ahead of the pack and if they see it shift direction, they will run in the new direction to get ahead.
If you can find two or three or perhaps four people you can truly trust then you're dong well, and honestly, that's all you really need.
But never expect packs or crowds to act like anything but packs or crowds. They will act well only if led by strong leaders who have honor and principles. I have seen it. It does happen, but in our society at this time it is rare.
The exception to all this is groups lead by strong leaders with honor and principles and guts. This exists. I have seen it. It is rare, especially in our current society, and is even more rare in online communities (most of which now aren't, the old carefully moderated forms are mostly gone.)
"In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Re realizing most people don't have actual principles: yup. It's tribalism all the way down for a worryingly large percentage of the population, both right and left. The one upside of Internet politics wars is that it's very easy to find examples in a way that used to be difficult.
Re virtue signalling: you thinking 90% of people backed up their virtue signalling is...it may be the most American thing I've ever seen someone do. People virtue signalling are boasting. Boasting is something you should rarely believe. Americans love it for some reason, and they are fools to do so. The guy who says how wonderful he is? Is lying. Or delusional. But it's one or the other. The big-talking American loudmouth who isn't half as competent as he pretends is a stereotype for a reason.
Why this is a pretty solidly understood principle in other Anglosphere cultures but not in modern America I don't know. You can find historical Americans pointing it out, so it wasn't always this way. But...yeah. The louder people talk about their belief in things, the less they are to be trusted about them.
It's even in the Bible. Matthew 6:5: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
Who knows if it was meant as a compliment or not at the time! ;)
I have a very vivid memory of watching a British director/comedian explain how for meetings with Americans he has to make sure to be unrelentingly positive and not express any doubt about anything whatsoever or the Americans get freaked out and worried because someone went 'well let's hope it goes well.' Can't shake the feeling the two things are symptoms of the same issue.
I'm not sure if I blame Reagan, Hollywood, or corporate groupthink, but damn it it ain't right.
For what it's worth, I was a reader and commenter on Internet feminism blogs back in 2011, including yours, and I didn't think you did anything wrong. The only reasonable complaint someone could have made (and which Maia in fact did) was that you were perhaps being too trusting and forgiving, but the rest is ridiculous. In hindsight, I wish there was more I could have done to help and push back against the people being toxic at you.
(One thing I did do after a while is stop reading Amanda Marcotte's blog after I recognized it as a toxic "outrage of the week" blog that was more interested in being angry than in telling the truth about the things that she was angry at.)
Wow, thank you for reading over such a long timespan and for saying something now. I really appreciate it.
I didn't want to get too into the weeds for the "Canceled" article above, but I think there is a genuinely interesting problem for feminism here. A big part of feminism is about helping women achieve safety from abusive men. I think both the original cancellation, and also the cancellation for my later relationship with Curtis and the dissident right, were driven by people experiencing some combination of anger and fear because they thought I had a huge blind spot around a certain kind of abusive guy and was making excuses for those guys. In retrospect, they were totally correct that I had this blind spot (which included being too trusting and forgiving, and also some other behavior).
This blind spot ended up causing more problems for me than anyone else, tbh. (And also, I think there are far more compassionate methods to try and bring attention to people's blind spots than the method of cancellation.) But, I think there was a real common thread and a real critique in the two cancellations. One of my hopes moving forward is that I can do a better job embodying solidarity with that critique, but ideally, a non-toxic form of solidarity.
Identifying and dealing with people that are causing harm is a genuinely hard problem and one that I personally have no particular expertise in or talent for. In my personal life I do think I tend to be a bit more trusting and forgiving than most people think is wise, but I can live with getting taken advantage of more often than the median person. And sometimes channeling Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson actually works: https://youtu.be/mJICrhJD4-M?si=_DyC5XvBwayK410p
> This blind spot ended up causing more problems for me than anyone else, tbh.
That also makes sense to me; I think a lot of people would find it easier to run the risk of someone taking advantage of them personally than take that same risk if the potential victim was a third party instead. (For example, they might be more reluctant to leave someone alone with their child than to be alone with that person themselves.)
I just added the following to the OP as a postscript:
I was recently reminded that I used to collect pieces about cancel culture. Here is a list of some of the better pieces I’ve seen over the years. All were written by people who had strong commitments to the social justice movement rather than external critics.
• Firstly, here are two that I mentioned in the post above: “Liberal Bullying,” from 2012, is by Ariel Meadows Stallings, founder of the “non-traditional” publishing company Offbeat Empire. https://offbeatempire.com/liberal-bullying/
The other is from 1976, before I was born, titled “Trashing: the Dark Side of Sisterhood,” written by feminist activist Jo Freeman and published in Ms. Magazine. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
• In 2025, longtime blogger Jonathan Korman wrote “‘Cancel culture’ and criticism.” As he notes, concerns about cancel culture have often been dismissed within the movement because they come from people that the social justice movement perceives as enemies. https://miniver.blogspot.com/2025/10/cancel-culture-and-criticism.html
• In mid-2020, the activist adrienne maree brown wrote a piece titled “unthinkable thoughts,” discussing their concerns about this phenomenon as the COVID-19 pandemic began. https://adriennemareebrown.net/2020/07/17/unthinkable-thoughts-call-out-culture-in-the-age-of-covid-19/
• In January 2020, the trans vlogger Natalie Wynn created a YouTube video called “Canceling” on her channel ContraPoints. As I later wrote in my post celebrating the final event in the XOXO Conference series, Wynn originally debuted the talk at XOXO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
• “Excommunicate Me From The Church of Social Justice” is a 2017 essay by the queer, trans, Chinese American scholar Frances Lee. https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church-of-social-justice-386640/
• “Exiting The Vampire Castle,” from 2013, is by the radical writer Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Fisher later died by suicide. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/
Very few people are willing to stand in the way of a lynch mob, even an online one, and almost everyone is looking after themselves and maybe, but only maybe, their close family. Words like honor and loyalty are rarely used these days, and most of those who use them don't live up to them, what they think honor is equals following orders or their in-group.
When the pack picks a target, when blood is drawn, even metaphorically, people want to get out of the way.
You see this even in simple childhood bullying. It is very rare for anyone to stand up for the victim.
In terms of being nice to your face, in my experience, people often are. They're performative bullies for a crowd. Picking on someone, and canceling someone is just that, is a way of increasing status and signaling who'se in-group and who's out. It increases the bully's standing with the rest of the group, "I am attacking our enemy, showing my disgust and anger for violations of shared norms."
If you step in and defend, you are in danger of being tarred with the same brush, you risk your in-group membership and your high status.
But unless the person is psychopath who enjoys cruelty for its own sake (the sort who likes torturing small animals) they will normally be kind to you in one-on-one situations. Maybe act a little embarrassed and tell you it was nothing personal.
Most people are neither good nor bad, they are weak. They go the easy way, the perceived way, they run with the pack and do everything they can not be thrown out of the pack. Even the "leaders" are just running ahead of the pack and if they see it shift direction, they will run in the new direction to get ahead.
If you can find two or three or perhaps four people you can truly trust then you're dong well, and honestly, that's all you really need.
But never expect packs or crowds to act like anything but packs or crowds. They will act well only if led by strong leaders who have honor and principles. I have seen it. It does happen, but in our society at this time it is rare.
Long reply cut off the last words:
The exception to all this is groups lead by strong leaders with honor and principles and guts. This exists. I have seen it. It is rare, especially in our current society, and is even more rare in online communities (most of which now aren't, the old carefully moderated forms are mostly gone.)
This post prompted three notable thoughts for me.
"In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Re realizing most people don't have actual principles: yup. It's tribalism all the way down for a worryingly large percentage of the population, both right and left. The one upside of Internet politics wars is that it's very easy to find examples in a way that used to be difficult.
Re virtue signalling: you thinking 90% of people backed up their virtue signalling is...it may be the most American thing I've ever seen someone do. People virtue signalling are boasting. Boasting is something you should rarely believe. Americans love it for some reason, and they are fools to do so. The guy who says how wonderful he is? Is lying. Or delusional. But it's one or the other. The big-talking American loudmouth who isn't half as competent as he pretends is a stereotype for a reason.
Why this is a pretty solidly understood principle in other Anglosphere cultures but not in modern America I don't know. You can find historical Americans pointing it out, so it wasn't always this way. But...yeah. The louder people talk about their belief in things, the less they are to be trusted about them.
It's even in the Bible. Matthew 6:5: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
😹 thanks for the comment. I have been described as very American!
Who knows if it was meant as a compliment or not at the time! ;)
I have a very vivid memory of watching a British director/comedian explain how for meetings with Americans he has to make sure to be unrelentingly positive and not express any doubt about anything whatsoever or the Americans get freaked out and worried because someone went 'well let's hope it goes well.' Can't shake the feeling the two things are symptoms of the same issue.
I'm not sure if I blame Reagan, Hollywood, or corporate groupthink, but damn it it ain't right.
For what it's worth, I was a reader and commenter on Internet feminism blogs back in 2011, including yours, and I didn't think you did anything wrong. The only reasonable complaint someone could have made (and which Maia in fact did) was that you were perhaps being too trusting and forgiving, but the rest is ridiculous. In hindsight, I wish there was more I could have done to help and push back against the people being toxic at you.
(One thing I did do after a while is stop reading Amanda Marcotte's blog after I recognized it as a toxic "outrage of the week" blog that was more interested in being angry than in telling the truth about the things that she was angry at.)
Wow, thank you for reading over such a long timespan and for saying something now. I really appreciate it.
I didn't want to get too into the weeds for the "Canceled" article above, but I think there is a genuinely interesting problem for feminism here. A big part of feminism is about helping women achieve safety from abusive men. I think both the original cancellation, and also the cancellation for my later relationship with Curtis and the dissident right, were driven by people experiencing some combination of anger and fear because they thought I had a huge blind spot around a certain kind of abusive guy and was making excuses for those guys. In retrospect, they were totally correct that I had this blind spot (which included being too trusting and forgiving, and also some other behavior).
This blind spot ended up causing more problems for me than anyone else, tbh. (And also, I think there are far more compassionate methods to try and bring attention to people's blind spots than the method of cancellation.) But, I think there was a real common thread and a real critique in the two cancellations. One of my hopes moving forward is that I can do a better job embodying solidarity with that critique, but ideally, a non-toxic form of solidarity.
Identifying and dealing with people that are causing harm is a genuinely hard problem and one that I personally have no particular expertise in or talent for. In my personal life I do think I tend to be a bit more trusting and forgiving than most people think is wise, but I can live with getting taken advantage of more often than the median person. And sometimes channeling Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson actually works: https://youtu.be/mJICrhJD4-M?si=_DyC5XvBwayK410p
> This blind spot ended up causing more problems for me than anyone else, tbh.
That also makes sense to me; I think a lot of people would find it easier to run the risk of someone taking advantage of them personally than take that same risk if the potential victim was a third party instead. (For example, they might be more reluctant to leave someone alone with their child than to be alone with that person themselves.)
banger ❤️
❤️❤️❤️
Every time I read your articles about your life I am both impressed and amazed! Very interesting read fo sho.
Thank you!!