Why do some people get cancelled and others do not?

In front of over a billion people, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2021 Oscars. I saw it, and so did the rest of the world. I expected outrage from the public and kickback from the media against Smith, but none came. I thought Smith would be ‘Cancelled’. At about the same time, in Australia, there were a couple of very similar political stories in the news which ran within a few weeks of each other. In one of those stories, the individual involved was ‘cancelled’, while the other was not. 

Then, my wife and I moved to Dallas, Texas. I work from home and found myself hooked on the Johnny Depp / Amber Heard trial, which was broadcast on YouTube. Here was an example of a man – Depp – who had been ‘Cancelled’ based simply on Heard’s accusations. The trial made it clear that Depp had suffered so much financial and personal loss due to her claims.

The question I found myself trying to answer is – by what rules are we living today? What is Cancel Culture? Who gets cancelled, when, and why? How is it that some people are cancelled even for very similar mistakes while others are not? What criteria were used to decide, and what incentives exist to drive and explain this behaviour?

My research introduced me to several interesting topics. In the following articles, I have tried to tie them together to explain the answer to those questions.

What follows is, I suppose, a hypothesis. I am trying to tie together a rationale for what I see happening in the news and around me. Social Media seems to have created a place where people spend their time and incentives to cause substantial emotional responses – especially outrage – in others. 

Having taken a stab at the models which appear to be employed to navigate this maze, I then looked at examples from the past and present to see if the ‘rules’ I’d detected met the criteria of the hypothesis I’d formed.

There is a simple set of rules used to determine who is cancelled. The rules are underpinned by two different models of human behaviour, which, like Cancellation in its various forms, have been around for some time. 

As I’ve said, this is a hypothesis. It fits the facts currently available to me, but I am open to the idea that tomorrow, or sometime soon, one of these assumptions will change the algorithm, and what I am asserting here will be ‘broken’. I hope it is because what appears to be happening now seems, very clearly on the face of it, unfair.

How and why people are cancelled:

  • The Hierarchy Of Victims Model (HoV): 
    Life is complicated, and people use models to simplify their view of the details. The Hierarchy Of Victims model is one such approximation that people use as a shortcut. Society has selected groups of people and assigned them different levels of victimhood status. Some members of society are seen as privileged, ‘the root of the problem’, and ‘toxic’, while others can do no wrong. But who decides who the victims are, and how absolute are those designations? Read article 1.
  • The Hero Villain Victim Model (HVV): 
    We tell each other stories, often simple representations of a hard-to-understand reality. The best stories – think of any Disney film – have a Hero, a Villain, and a Victim. The reasons we assign these roles seem, from psychological experiments, to be deeply rooted in our evolution. The real world is almost always more complex than these reductive roles, but there is truth to them, and that can make them convincing; they tie into the primary drivers of human belief. Read article 2. 
  • Cancel Culture: 
    ‘Cancel culture’ is a way of society policing itself. It can be a good thing – like the #metoo movement. It can be harmful – such as when the threat of Cancellation discourages debate. To Cancel someone, the HoV and HVV models are tied together, sometimes with evidence, and the Villain is cast out. But If we’re going to cancel people, with the significant impact on individuals like Depp that can have, shouldn’t we make sure we have all the information we need? Read Article 3.
  • Clout: 
    Outrage is often the business model of Social Media websites. The research shows that emotionally charged posts get more clicks and likes. Clout is one way of valuing your internet reputation points, a modern currency. As a result, the incentives in place on Social Media cause people to post things that will gather the most outrage. Sometimes, they will use the HoV and HVV models to ‘Cancel’ a celebrity. Attacking a globally recognised individual makes the accused the villain and has the potential to make the person doing the accusing famous – and rich in Clout. Read article 3. 
  • The book “To Kill a Mockingbird”:
    Reflecting the fact that the HoV and HVV models have been around for some time, one historical, literary reference talks to the problems associated with pre-formed ideas about justice and who society is vilifies is the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.” We’ve just changed who plays the role of Villain and Victim since it was written. The whole point of the book is that thinking about the HoV and HVV models is wrong. Read article 4.
  • The Johnny Depp / Amber Heard trial: 
    The real-life example of how Clout, Cancel Culture, the HVV and HoV models work together to force injustice. Read article 5.
  • When the Outrage Machine Fails: 
    The circumstances under which someone is not cancelled, despite apparent wrongdoing – some examples which seem to meet the criteria of the hypothesis. This article juxtaposes two recent examples of Cancellation and examines the differences to form a view of the rules which operate ‘behind the scenes’ in determining who is and who is not Cancelled. Read article 6.