What to Do If You're Being Canceled, Part I

On the second anniversary of the tweet that changed my life trajectory, some advice on what to do when the mob comes for you.

As I mentioned in my last post, my book—which is now in the copyediting process—underwent some restructuring. Part of this involved streamlining chapters, but it also chopped one entire chapter, on what to do if you’re being canceled. It’s a solid piece of writing, but my book ultimately is about the illiberal takeover of legal education and commensurate warping of the legal profession, so it didn’t quite fit. But it fits perfectly fine here on Shapiro’s Gavel, where I’m breaking it up into two parts for easier consumption. Appropriately, it also comes exactly two years after I unintentionally became a poster boy for cancel culture. (You can also read my first-anniversary post.) —IS

It can happen to anyone. A bad tweet, a viral video, something you say (or text or post or email or Slack) at school or work that gets blown out of proportion. Then there’s an official investigation where the process is the punishment—sometimes there’s even an actual punishment like job loss—or there’s not but you’re ostracized in assorted ways. Cancel culture, or disproportionate and mobbish punishment for politically incorrect speech or thought, is real.

The precise definition of “cancel culture” is disputed, because there’s very much an “I know it when I see it” quality to it. Those who deny its existence insist that it’s a smokescreen for people who don’t want to accept the consequences of bad actions, but it’s not about that: you do the crime, you do the time. But expressing an unpopular opinion or uncomfortable truth, wearing a cringey Halloween costume, or any number of things for which people have faced extreme “consequences”—shouldn’t make it impossible for people to live their lives. Even President Obama has warned about “the dangers of cancel culture” and that we can’t just go around “condemning people all the time.” “The world is messy,” he said in a speech back in 2019. “There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”