“I’m morally against X… that person does X… I’m not going to associate with them.”
It’s a very old and effective tactic. Everyone does it.
This is essentially the primary moral tactic on the Religious / Right side of arguments. They’ve simply latched onto the term to describe when their opponents do it, trying to differentiate it from their own identical behavior. But it is ironically accurate to say that the religious right is trying to use their own “cancel culture” to “cancel cancel culture”.
The TERM “Cancel Culture” is typically used to describe the “purist moral” version of boycotting, where ANY sign of moral impropriety, real or not, justifies the harshest response.
In this form, it’s essentially a form of puritan extremism… basically, any morality without proportionality OR accuracy.
Or simply: lazy moral judgments with extreme responses.
So, the boycotting or cancelling isn’t the fundamental problem. We essentially perform this behavior any time we make a choice. Rather, seeking moral purity in conjunction with it is where it becomes a major problem.
“Cancel culture is SO toxic, you can’t even learn from your mistakes anymore because you’re not even allowed to make any.”
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