If you want to trigger me, tell me that cancel culture doesn’t exist. And if you want me to have a meltdown explain to me why cancel culture is morally justified right after you said it didn’t exist. Something that’s driven me up the wall lately is seeing otherwise intelligent people succumb to survivorship bias in the cancel culture discussion. Many of the people who regularly point out policies and systems that disproportionately affect lower-class people are the same people who seem to think cancel culture only happens to multi-millionaires.
For every Dave Chappelle or J.K. Rowling, there is a countless amount of unknown people who have lost everything. Due to survivorship bias, you have no idea who they are.
So, what inspired this current piece you’re reading? It was the following video from Olayemi Olurin and the accompanying caption:
Olayemi believes the only people who are canceled are the rich celebrities she hears about, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m living proof of that.
Her and many others from the “cancel culture is a myth” camp have no clue who I am or what my story is. And I’m not the only one.
I love Olayemi and agree with most of her takes. She’s also educated me on a lot of stuff through her political commentary, and I respect the hell out of her. In no way do I think she’s a bad person, but I think her ignorance of the topic and/or lack of understanding of these biases have affected her opinion.
Olayemi and many of my fellow progressives believe cancel culture is a myth, and it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Why? These are the people who regularly argue that policies and systems disproportionately effect lower-income people.
For example, JUUL vape pens were recently banned by the FDA. Now, there’s talk of cracking down more on smoking, and there’s always been more scrutiny around menthol cigarettes. Many progressives correctly point out that aside from this taking away human agency and self-determination, these policies target low-income people as well as minorities.
If you want to learn more, Kyle and Krystal did a great segment on this. Fortunately, these two aren’t part of the cancel culture denialists, but this is just an example of something most progressives would agree with.
So, why does this not click for progressive commentators when it comes to this one specific topic of cancel culture? I’m not entirely sure, but I have a theory.
Cancel culture has become a talking point of the Right and some really shitty people who say some really shitty things. People who have said (or continue to say) extremely racist, transphobic, homophobic, or other discriminatory things try to justify it by saying “Ah! I’m being canceled!”
This is the same for so many other terms. Remember when taking the red pill was just an extremely spot-on Matrix reference about seeing the truth of how the world works? And remember how it came from the allegory of the cave from Socrates that was formed thousands of years ago? Now it just means that you’ve become a right-wing douchebag.
I think the other issue with the term “cancel culture” is that we have yet to nail down a clear, concise definition and parameters. This makes it easy for people to say they’ve been canceled while also making it easy for people to deny it exists.
Meanwhile, people like me are caught in the middle. As mentioned, I’m a progressive lefty, and I can’t even mention being canceled without the fear of people instantly assuming I’m some MAGA cultist.
But I digress. I could go on and on about defining cancel culture, but that’s for another day.
Let’s get back to why Olayemi and so many others don’t realize how cancel culture is impacting the people they regularly try to protect. I’m actually going to discuss a few biases that cause this, but we need to start with survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias
“But my point is, you will have another day…but I haven’t seen anyone who’s been ‘canceled’. It hasn’t shown up yet.”
This is a quote from Olayemi at the end of that clip, and it’s precisely the problem. Again, I’m not here to attack Olayemi. She’s awesome. But this short clip is a primary example of the issue at hand.
I’m sure many of my readers are fully aware of survivorship bias and what it is, but just in case, it’s story time.
In World War II, the U.S. military hit up this awesome mathematician Abraham Wald, and they were like, “Hey. Our airplanes keep getting shot down. We need better armor, but we can’t put it everywhere because the planes would be too heavy. Where should we put this limited amount of additional armor?”
Wald was like, “Challenge accepted.”
Something major that Wald noticed was that when the planes would return, the military was mapping out where all the bullet holes were and then reinforcing the armor in the most common spots.
Wald says, “Hold up. Why are you analyzing where these surviving planes were shot if we’re trying to save planes that are being shot down and aren’t surviving?” Wald realized that these bullet holes were clearly the best parts of the plane because they could get shot in these areas and not crash into oblivion.
This is an all-too-common thinking error that’s now known as “survivorship bias”. A brief definition is as follows:
Survivorship bias, survival bias or immortal time bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to incorrect conclusions.
I’m one of the many planes that didn’t survive.
Let’s look at some more of Olayemi’s quotes from this clip. Again, although it’s short, we can learn so much from it.
"Listen. At the end of the day, if you’re truly canceled, I wouldn’t even be caring about it. Very often when people say, ‘Oh, I’m being canceled’, they’re saying it from their media posts telling you how they’ve been canceled. They have an op-ed in the New York Times.”
Olayemi and so many others are only seeing the survivors who have the fame and the money to get the attention. As the clip ends, the only “canceled” person she can think of is Jeffrey Epstein because…well, he’s dead.
Think about that for a second.
Can you not name people who have legitimately been canceled because it doesn’t exist? Or can you not name them because cancel culture worked and they’re no longer in the zeitgeist?
We all know the media cycle is fast as hell. If you took less than an hour of your life to look at stories of people who have been canceled in the last 10 years and checked to see how they’re doing now, most have never recovered.
We just don’t realize this because they were covered in the media for a day, and then we all moved on.
Now, think of all the people that didn’t get a single ounce of media coverage. How many stories do you think received 0 attention because the media didn’t think it’d make them money? People like Olayemi should know this because she does work for media like The Hill. She’s without a doubt seen how many stories they decide to not cover because the higher-ups don’t think it’ll make for a good story.
Robby, bless his heart, pushes back against Olayemi, but for a completely different reason. He says, “Just because you’re able to get your message out about the harm you suffered doesn’t mean you didn’t suffer harm.” Great point, but he’s falling into the same trap and not realizing that he’s only aware of a tiny portion of those who have suffered from this experience.
Why this matters for low-income people
Before moving to the other biases associated with this flawed view of cancel culture, we have to discuss why this matters for low-income and lower-class individuals.
I’ll use myself as an example because I experienced it, and it destroyed my life in 2019.
By the way, if your first thought was, “Destroyed your life? You’re clearly alive, so you’re fine,” you need to reevaluate your thinking. If your bar is set at “well, as long as they didn’t kill themselves, they’re doing alright”, then we have a major problem.
When I was canceled, the New York Times wasn’t covering my story. Fox News didn’t care about me being canceled. Republican senators like Jim Jordan didn’t mention my name when discussing cancel culture in congress.
There’s a 90% chance that if you’re reading this, you have no clue what happened to me because I’ve had to completely rebuild. And you’re part of the new audience.
Because I’m a nobody and people couldn’t profit from my story, I didn’t get the coverage that Olayemi and others seem to believe everyone gets when they’re canceled.
One major aspect of cancel culture for lower-class people like myself is misinformation. There were countless accusations made about me with 0 evidence. At the time, it was profitable to make YouTube videos about me, so people would say anything just to get the views and ad revenue from it.
Here are just a few of the accusations made against me:
I was accused of SWATting a critic’s house (this is when you call the police in an effort to get the SWAT team to go to the house because they think there’s a hostage situation, bomb threat, or something else extremely dangerous and life-threatening.)
It’s also important to note that this critic was later found to not only not be credible, but he was discovered to be a child predator.
I was accused of calling in a wellness check on a mentally ill YouTuber
I was accused of telling subscribers with depression that they should kill themselves
I was accused of saying I had credentials that I didn’t have
Again, these are just some of the false accusations that were made against me. Although there was no evidence, it did not stop people from believing it and destroying my livelihood.
Right before this happened, I was a full-time YouTuber and at the height of my career. I was making enough from YouTube ad revenue to survive. But do you know what I didn’t have money for? A lawsuit.
Low-income people like me have no resources to combat misinformation. I regularly thought about cashing out my savings and selling my car and other belongings just to file lawsuits for defamation. Even then, I realized I’d have nowhere near the amount of money it would take to accomplish this.
Sure, maybe if I was Dave Chappelle or J.K. Rowling I could afford it, but clearly, I’m not. Actually, these people wouldn’t have to worry about misinformation because the major publications covering them most likely couldn’t publish misinformation. So most of the stuff they were accused of actually happened.
Obviously, I care about how misinformation affects elections and major issues, but I started caring about the topic because it played a huge role in what happened to me.
“But you have a platform”
The other thing cancel culture denialists love to say is, “If you have a platform, you’re not canceled.” This is terrible logic. If I could write something on a piece of paper and tape it on the sidewalk here in Las Vegas, would you say that I have access to adequate means of defending myself because of it? Of course not, so stop being silly.
Again, since people like me aren’t rich and famous celebrities, we don’t have the same platform to defend ourselves or even get a modicum of attention.
I used to get tens of thousands of views for every video that I uploaded on YouTube. Some of my videos even got hundreds of thousands of views.
When this all happened to me, my average views dropped to just a couple thousand. Meanwhile, most videos against me received tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even over a million views.
Something most of you reading this also know is that social media algorithms are outrage fuel. Social media profits off of this. The YouTube algorithms promoted and recommended the hell out of videos against me while my channel slowly died.
So, the cancel culture denialists want to tell me that people like me are on a level playing field with the multi-millionaires when it comes to having a platform?
Do you honestly think anyone asked me to be a part of the infamous Harper’s Magazine “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”? Of course not. J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, and most of the others don’t give a fuck about me.
But due to survivorship bias, these are the only people you know of and it’s used to rationalize the idea the cancel culture doesn’t exist.
More biases and heuristics skewing the picture
Now, let’s discuss some of the other biases we’re up against when dealing with the cancel culture denialists.
The availability heuristic
Description: The availability heuristic is the tendency to estimate the probability of something happening based on how many examples readily come to mind.
Much like survivorship bias, the availability heuristic involves the stories that readily come to mind. As mentioned earlier, there are countless stories of people who have been canceled that you don’t remember because they fell out of the news cycle. So, we only remember the ones that easily come to mind.
Every other day, I see #IStandWithJKRowling on Twitter. Is it any wonder she’s the first person to come to mind for most when we discuss cancel culture?
I don’t know if it’ll work, but give my experiment a try. Maybe it’ll help you realize what’s actually going on.
Find a couple of stories of non-celebrities who were “canceled” that are more than two years old. See if you can see how they’re doing now. Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean. And if you can’t find any information on them, that’s more than likely because the cancelation worked.
Confirmation bias
Description: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.
This should be a no-brainer. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: This is the most common and most important bias to be aware of.
Nobody likes having their beliefs challenged, and more than that, nobody enjoys being wrong. This is why we regularly look for confirming evidence of what we already believe.
Countless studies throughout years of research show that we have to put in the effort to try and disconfirm information that agrees with us. So, if every time you see a celebrity or someone with a lot more money than people like me on the news and think, “See. They’re fine,” take a step back. Ask yourself, what information would disconfirm this?
In this case, it’d involve you seeing if you can find anyone out there who has been absolutely fucked by cancel culture.
False consensus effect and conformity bias
Description: The false consensus effect is the tendency people have to overestimate how much other people agree with their own beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and values. The conformity bias is the tendency people have to behave like those around them rather than using their own personal judgment.
I was watching a YouTube video the other day that was saying cancel culture doesn’t exist and crowd psychology is also a myth. The logic he used to explain why crowd psychology is a myth? Well, because Gustave Le Bon’s motive while coming up with the original idea was to help the powerful control the masses.
Terrible logic.
We have years of research showing how we’re ridiculous in groups despite the origin story of where the idea comes from.
Due to the false consensus effect, we believe everyone agrees with us. We also discount how much influence our peers have on us. Then, you throw in the fact that we isolate ourselves in bubbles of like-minded people, and you have a hot mess.
“Cancel culture doesn’t exist. Look around on my social media feeds filled with like-minded individuals. They all agree with me, and so does everyone else.”
Well…not everyone.
Better than average effect
Description: The better-than-average-effect (BTAE) is the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared with their average peer.
Sure, there are people who don’t agree with you that cancel culture is a myth, but clearly they just aren’t as smart and rational as you. For you see the world as it truly is, and anyone who disagrees must be ignorant, dumb, or dishonest.
What’s the solution?
I can write about this all day, and I’ve been debating on writing a follow-up to my 2019 book about my story. That experience is what set me on the path to better understand human behavior and why we become so irrational. I never used to read, and now I read hundreds of books each year just to have some idea of what the hell is going on in the world because people make no sense.
Fortunately, educating myself has helped me understand that people like Olayemi aren’t bad people. And going through my experience, I empathize with others who have their livelihood destroyed by cancel culture.
My hope is that by reading this, you have a better understanding that cancel culture isn’t limited to the rich and the famous. People like me are overlooked precisely because we’re not rich and famous.
I lost so much in 2019. I virtually lost all of my income overnight, and it was a struggle to support my son. The psychological effects are something I can’t even put into words. I was suicidal and on the brink of relapse after 7 years of sobriety. I had to do intense therapy and go to 12-step meetings just to maintain a sliver of sanity.
To this day, I still get the most hateful comments. I’m terrified of it happening again. I have people who have begged me to come back to YouTube because my content helped them so much, but the fear has held me back.
It’s been three years, and I still have to worry about potential employers or coworkers Googling me and finding the most vicious attacks on my character that are largely based on misinformation. And for a lack of better words, after three years, I still get triggered. This still has a huge effect on my mental health even after all of the therapy I’ve gone through, but fortunately, I cope with it in a healthier way.
On top of all of this, I have to regularly defend myself from cancel culture denialists who try extremely hard to find the moral justifications for what happen to me. I can’t express what this does to me. To have someone come at you and explain why it may have been justified that your life was destroyed due to misinformation, false accusations, and algorithms is soul-crushing.
The cognitive dissonance that sets in with cancel culture is something I’ve never seen before.
If you came to me and said, “Chris, for one year you have to convince the following groups of people to change their mind about a ridiculous topic. You can eliminate one from the list.
QAnon believers
MAGA stolen election people
Flat Earthers
COVID deniers
Vaccine conspiracists
People who believe in lizard people
People who believe rich elites drink baby blood
Satanic panic folks
Cancel culture deniers”
Without even hesitating, I’d take the cancel culture deniers off the list. I’ve never dealt with a more stubborn group that experiences massive cognitive dissonance along with moral justifications.
This is probably a terrible way to end this piece because I often like to leave people with some solutions and a little hope. So, maybe it’s just because this topic is so personal to me, and it’s the one debate I can’t have with people without letting my emotions take over.
If nothing else, I hope this piece got through to someone who now realizes survivorship bias has made them think cancel culture only happens to the rich and famous. Again, those people don’t care about people like me.
There’s a never-ending number of people like me who don’t have the money, resources, or fame to bounce back. And as much as the rich people who get canceled say they care about people like me, they don’t.
Even the people who agree with me that cancel culture is a problem won’t give people like me a platform. We’re completely alone in this aside from the few close people who stay in our lives. If it weren’t for them, most of us wouldn’t survive this.
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OK, but what exactly does "cancel culture" mean? Kicking people from their jobs or platforms is obviously bad or rarely (too rarely to count) justified. But the fired and the deplatformed have the right to seek new spaces as much as the woman fired for having a Kerry bumperstick. Cancel culture is not new.
Cancel culture is not even its own thing. It is what people have been doing at least since the days the National Legion of Decency was launching boycotts on "immoral" movies and Hollywood was kneeling before Joseph Maccarty, blacklisting communist sympathyzers and parading its new-found patriotism.