Cancel culture is an example of how the psychology of crowds normalizes judgment at a large scale. It serves to cull the unproductive individuals from society. It accepts the premise that we should be defined by and judged for our worst mistakes.
But, we must ask which mistakes are forgivable? Which are not? If you cancel people for even the tiniest infractions, it becomes meaningless to be exiled.
Whether we see it in these terms or not, social media has given us a way to put typically fleeting thoughts into a permanent record that signals who we are. With “investigative journalism” (digging through someone’s social media history), it’s hardly surprising that we’re afraid to step wrong (or reveal that we have stepped wrong in the past) and to be judged harshly.
It’s why we carefully craft our public image by erasing the digital trail (or trying to) before the crowd notices. It’s why we regulate access by keeping our conversations and our accounts private. It’s why we are becoming increasingly reticent in public and, as a side effect, increasingly vocal in private. Speaking on social media, particularly about contrarian points of views, then becomes only for the confident and the brave.
But it shouldn’t be.