I keep seeing people call everything 'cancel culture' when it's just consequences

There was a local baker in my town who posted a bunch of racist stuff on Facebook, and people stopped going to his shop. He lost business and had to close. Everyone in the comments said he was canceled, but nobody told anyone to boycott him. Customers just chose to spend their money elsewhere on their own. That's not a coordinated attack, that's just people making choices about who they support. Am I off base thinking we need to separate actual cancel campaigns from regular social consequences?

2 comments

2 Comments

karencampbell13d agoMost Upvoted

Start with that baker example and ask yourself what real cancellation looks like versus people just using their own judgment about where to buy bread. That's the core of the whole debate right there because most of what gets labeled cancel culture is just the free market working the way it's supposed to work. People see something they don't agree with and quietly decide to take their business somewhere else without any organized campaign behind it.

thomas_sanchez13d ago

Man, that's exactly how it plays out in real life though. You see it with everything from local restaurants to hardware stores where people just stop going if they don't like the vibe or the politics of the owner. @karencampbell nailed it because most folks aren't organizing boycotts, they're just quietly spending their money elsewhere and that's not a movement, that's just life.