Sort of thinking out loud here, but one of the things that marks "cancel culture" as a moral panic for me is the term "culture." It implies that something has changed in the population at large when the phenomenon is primarily the result of the specific structures of Twitter.

But am I wrong about that? It's hard to separate the right-wing framing of "cancel culture" as a national crisis from the very real challenges of being a public figure online.

Like, I'm not convinced by the idea that Americans suddenly became more punitive and less capable of nuance. I think what we've actually seen is the emergence of platforms that make it easier for the people with the most extreme opinions to spread those ideas and organize.

But I don't think this is quite right either. There's been a wave of left-leaning public figures that have sent (genuinely!) bad tweets but then experienced months of disproportionate criticism. It often goes beyond mere accountability quite quickly. https://twitter.com/en_passant_77/status/1385283935618445312

My argument is that the vast majority of people, even on the internet, are capable of forgiveness and grace for those public figures, but Twitter's structures tend to elevate the people who feel the strongest. A few hundred people can it seem like someone is "canceled" at large