I recently read with interest Eve Ng’s Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis, which isn’t really all that critical but does provide a useful history of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, it does not offer a clear definition or explanation of what has been going on, merely a profusion of examples. My goal here is to correct that deficiency, by providing a simple theory of cancel culture, based on an analysis of the underlying social dynamics.
In order to get going on the discussion, the first thing that needs to be made clear is that the origins of cancel culture are neither political nor cultural. Cancel culture arises from a structural change in the dynamics of social interaction facilitated by the development of social media. This is reflected in the fact that its basic features (manifest in what Ng refers to as cancellation practices) have been observed in countries all over the world and have been mobilized by individuals with a wide range of different political orientations.