I keep hearing people talk/complain about cancel culture and I think there is a lot of nuance being lost in the conversation.

First let’s sort out the criminals. Sometimes a popular or influential person commits a crime so they lose both legal status and popular status. The compounding factor is that they may have leveraged their fame or authority to get away with more crime. A complication is that some activities that used to be legal aren’t anymore, or old crimes may fall outside of the statute of limitations, but still fails the court of popular opinion. Either way, they violated a legal code and must be legally punished and or socially shunned to set an example for the rest of society.

Then, consider that most people only have a small group of friends and family that are motivated to spend time with or even think about them. Even from that lowly status people are routinely canceled. Differences in politics, religion, choice of partners or even parenting style can get one kicked off a personal friends list. One bad wedding speech will get you a lifetime ban from invites to family events. People’s memories are long and those cancellations can last lifetimes, so the famous shouldn’t expect more.

Think about how many people there are in the world. A very few individuals have caught the attention of the larger multitude. A person may produce a popular piece of music, drama, comedy or literature or have excelled in sports or politics so that all eyes are on them for moment. It’s a lofty perch with a high turnover. Tomorrow’s breakout star will likely push today’s has-been off it, so what may seem like cancelling may be partly regular turnover.

Finally, we as a society are looking for heroes to emulate. We love a rags-to-riches story and there’s a bit of fantasy involved with fandoms. We’ve seen a character played that we imagine is like ourselves or our own plucky best friend. When that persona gets tainted by action or opinion outside of our ideal we wake up from the dream. There’s no going back to that feeling once you’ve separated the real person behind the character they have been playing. Once that friendly friend becomes a creepy creep, there’s no going back. The actor, comedian, politician or writer is sad that the money and fame hose has been turned off and is desperately trying to regain our trust. It’s too late, because we’ve moved on to the new distraction from our own dusty, disappointing lives.