How do we think about cancel culture?

Cancel culture exists to promote a ruthless mob mentality

Question: How do we think about cancel culture?
Position‹3 of 4›: Cancel culture must be cancelled
Argument‹3 of 8›: Cancel culture exists to promote a ruthless mob mentality

Cancel culture promotes a ruthless mob mentality that celebrates intimidation. It exists solely to victimise not only public figures, but anyone who happens to draw the ire of the mob.

The argument

Proponents of cancel culture refer to it as a form of activism. But this method of activism is wholly misguided. Activism aims to enact positive change felt throughout society. But that is not what cancel culture accomplishes. What it does accomplish is something much more sinister. Cancel culture promotes a ruthless mob mentality that celebrates intimidation. It exists solely to victimize, not to correct. When a larger population decides for themselves that a certain individual is “evil,” they exact their own brand of vigilante justice on them by isolating or insulting them. Frequently, attacks are indiscriminate, without careful deliberation or consideration of the target. Social media users jump onto bandwagons to tear down their victims without wanting to engage with the issues they are fighting for. Cancel culture’s activist spin is just a front. For many, the appeal of cancel culture is in its thrill as a blood sport rather than an opportunity for positive change. For them, the point is not justice, but to satisfy their own wrath. The result is a sort of lawless judgment across the internet, and across the world at large.

Premises

[P1]Proponents of cancel culture call it activism, but genuine activism aims at positive social change, whereas cancel culture instead exists to victimize rather than to correct. [P2] It promotes a ruthless mob mentality that celebrates intimidation, with social-media users piling on indiscriminately for the thrill of a blood sport rather than out of a desire for justice, producing a lawless vigilante judgment. [C] Because it fuels a vitriolic mob mentality rather than real change, cancel culture must be cancelled.

Counter-arguments

This argument tries to paint the targets of cancel culture as helpless victims. In reality, cancel culture targets powerful, influential people who spread harmful ideas. Such people need to be held accountable for their words and actions. But no one else will make them take responsibility; except the common people who unite against them.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise defines its way to the conclusion. Activism is stipulated to aim at positive change and cancel culture stipulated to exist in order to victimise, so the contrast follows from the definitions rather than from anything observed — and the term is applied here to everything from mass pile-ons to ordinary public criticism, a distinction the argument never draws. [Rejecting P2] Motive is imputed without evidence. That some participants are cruel does not establish what the practice exists for, and the same conduct is described by its defenders as accountability for people who hold real power, which is the counter's point and goes unengaged. The conclusion is also unclear in a way that matters: 'cancel culture must be cancelled' asks for public criticism to be suppressed by the very collective pressure the argument condemns.