Checking my criticisms of cancel culture

Over the past four months I've been doing research for "First Blood, Last Blood" a set of women's stories. Holding space for such stories is something that's very dear to my heart. One of the amazing things about this project is that it has enabled me to interview women and people who experience periods from a vast range of age groups, cultures and belief systems. I feel truly privileged.

The other day, I was interviewing a couple of people, one of them my age, the other significantly younger. They were smart, articulate human beings who not only answered my questions with a candidness and clarity I found breathtaking, but also challenged me to look at a number of things in a completely different light.

I'm not exactly sure how it drifted this way, but the conversation landed on the subject of Cancel Culture.

Many years ago, a writer friend of mine named Ron Jagodnick and I worked out that we belonged to one of the earliest years of the Generation Xers. And I've lived quite comfortably with that label and my GenX sensibilities ever since.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think our generation's thoughts on the matter of Cancel Culture were pretty succinctly summed up by Mark Manson in "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k." Manson states, "Part of living in a democracy and a free society is that we all have to deal with views and people we don't necessarily like. That's simply the price we pay - you could even say it's the whole point of the system."

I think my Sesame Street generation views on the subject very much took that slant.

"Grow up! Debate with people you don't agree with, maybe try to change their opinion if you care enough about the subject. Live and let live. You don't have to Cancel someone if you don't agree with what they're saying."

However, I grew up during the birth of the internet when there were four billion people on the planet. I was well into my working life when Mark Zuckerberg developed the earliest iterations of Facebook. The news I watched was driven by a set of principles that forced reporters to research and present balanced stories.

This was not the experience of my GenZ friend.

"I'm sorry to hear you think that way about something that wasn't meant to be a negative thing," they said of Cancel Culture, "it's just that there are so many opinions, media outlets and influencers, and some of those people are really toxic! I have to go to uni, and fight to get a job with a million other uni graduates, and try and find a way to jump over the almost insurmountable obstacle of earning enough to buy a home, or even just pay rent. I have to wade through this torrent of propaganda and social media apps and find what I align with," they passionately explained, "and I have to do it quickly! I don't have time to debate with people. There are people of certain beliefs and political persuasions I just wouldn't let into my house. So why would I let them into my mind?"

It hit me like a Mac truck. All I could see was this river full of garbage, and my friend was in it, trying to paddle to some barely defined destination through this torrent of crap.

The world she'd grown up in was full of Fox and Sky news, of opinion dressed up as fact. It was a world where every basement dwelling troglodyte with a phone had the right and the means to crush their fellow human beings with critical words, of people touting the virtues of everything from positive psychology to the benefits of starving yourself so your cheekbones looked better in selfies.

Cancelling some of those opinions, removing them from one's feed - especially the more pervasively awful ones, was a weapon. One of the most effective ones they had in their efforts to move through the polluted water of our culture without drowning.

It put cancel culture in a whole new light. It also kind of broke my heart.

The idea that my lovely friend, and all Gen Zedders were so inundated with this rubbish and the pressures of their daily lives was sickening. But it's interesting, because at the core of what is an immense problem, they are creating a solution. By not allowing toxic opinions and people past the gate keeper, by Cancelling them, they're removing themselves as followers, wealding the ultimate capitalist sledgehammer; "I don't buy this."

In this virtual world, time is money.

Every free game you play, you pay for by watching ads or other click bait. And so it stands to reason that by removing your attention, by not giving certain people or opinions your time, you're deleting their influence, and that's a good thing.

It took my GenX head a minute to get around that thought, but I think I've got it now and I'm very thankful to my friend for the update.

So thanks for your time and attention. I hope you found something worthy of those precious commodities in my words. I think I'll always want to discuss and debate things but I'm off to defrag my social media apps and my mind.