Cancel Culture is the modern form of public execution
Society's obsession with punishment and public shaming reveals a persistent cycle of power
If 16th century England taught us anything, it's that society will do anything to maintain “social order.” The order was often subjective—the royal authority leveraged religion and a legal framework to set whatever moral code and values they thought were right. This made their word gospel along with access to unlimited wealth and power; however, only one thing ultimately kept the social order intact: public execution.
Starting as religious persecution and an anti-treason measure, the form of capital punishment soon became something far greater; public execution served as the main punishment that was open to the general public, hoping to instill fear and trauma in their minds. It demonstrated what would happen if someone were to break the law, granting the monarchy authority and superiority over the peasants. In this way, the executioner/royal authority served as the perpetrators, the peasants were spectators, and the condemned was the victim.
The event also served as a form of control for the authorities, helping to centralize a divided state and enforce their morals as part of societal norm.
The life of a commoner often consisted of farming from sunrise to sunset on a small diet and low personal comfort, lacking much stimulation throughout the day. So, despite the intended threat, it was the most exciting event in a peasant’s life—comparable in scale to the modern-day Super Bowl. The spectators watched, enamored, with a mob mentality, symbolizing the event as true justice for the world. Norbert Elias' Process of Civilization argues that while the event served as a catharsis of happiness and anger, it acted as a way to redirect one’s violence to an external target: the wrongdoer.
It also helped that the monarchy turned these solemn and dull acts into a spectacle: the condemned would be paraded around the streets in a cart; the criminals would wear colorful yet symbolic clothes pertaining to their crime; the punishments would include an assortment of torture methods to extend the event and create suspense; executioners would many times botch a beheading (i.e., requiring more than one hit); and the condemned were allowed to deliver a final declaration before their death.
This tradition is exemplified in Paris in March 1792 when Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, a man who stole a wallet and killed the victim, was sentenced to the first execution by guillotine. On April 25th, the request was fulfilled, with his life ending swiftly; yet, the audience loathed this method of execution. Public outcry followed the event, as viewers waited for hours before the killing in anticipation of the newest invention, remarking that it was too “clinically effective” for entertainment and asking for “wooden gallows” to be brought as a means for hanging.
However, before judging, does this not reflect our lives today?
Take a look around us: people love watching others suffer. The UFC, where millions flock to watch two people fight until they faint. Social media, where fight videos and near-death clips garner millions of views. Television, where action and bloody scenes are popularized and loved. News media, where sensationalist and graphic images of human tragedy are watched on a 24-hour cycle.
At its core, witnessing suffering serves as a reflection of our inner fears. It is a reassurance that what viewers are watching does not reflect the life they have. The voyeurism is also not passive—it demands active emotional engagement, pushing engaged observers to comment and vocalize their opinions.
Through this, they are able to sit on the fence: social media users are able to participate in the collective condemnation of others while distancing themselves from the chaos, maintaining their position within the social order; the social media user is transformed into both the perpetrator and viewer, compared to the peasant’s spectator role.
But this fascination isn’t limited to physical suffering. Social media allows people to participate in shame and reputational destruction all through a screen.
Since we live in modern times, killing or ending a person’s life is not cool—but ending their life financially, socially, and psychologically is. While the practice of publicly rejecting and ending support of certain people is nothing new, the justice sought after accessibly by millions around the world in cancel culture is.
Cancel culture, the practice of mass withdrawal of support from a person/group started during the 2010s, begins when a user or group of people identify something wrong that someone has done. It can be anything. Insulting a group of people. Having dissenting opinions. For being weird.
The “wrong” is determined by a person or group, finding a disruption within their life and highlighting it to make the victim a symbol of what happens when people stray outside of the norm. The power to enforce societal norms shifts from an authority figure to the hands of the masses, democratizing control and decentralizing power.
While this is different from the ruler of England declaring a wrongdoer for an execution, they share the same function: the joint enforcement of societal norms through public disapproval.
As the condemned person would be paraded around the city, broadcast as a warning and an invitation to watch, the victim under cancel culture is similarly marched around social media. Internet-goers learn of and share the information of wrongdoing to a larger audience, often garnering millions of views and clicks, serving as a conduit for greater criticism and taste to see what else the person might have done.
The informants can disagree with the news or flat-out believe that there is nothing wrong, but due to a negative bias and a confirmation bias—seeing others believing it makes them want to as well—the viral nature of the content is exacerbated across the internet. Just as the peasants who cheered at executions, the participants of cancel culture channel their frustrations, anxieties, and sadness into a channeled act of condemnation and contempt, shunning the person from the public.
Once the story becomes mainstream and gains enough traction, it becomes entertainment.
As the accused becomes a target of ridicule, viewers and commenters alike find sadistic satisfaction in the person’s suffering, turning the justice into a public spectacle. Just as the condemned person’s proclamation is deemed as unsatisfying, any type of apology from the ‘canceled’ rarely suffices, ruining careers, devastating their mental health, and ultimately shuning them from the public eye.
In the end, cancel culture serves as a way of control: to reinforce conformity and conventional practice and punish any kind of dissent, often at the expense of change, fairness, and truth.
Cancel culture has become a moral performance—a way of virtue signaling to ultimately align oneself with the ‘right’ side of history. But for many, it’s an outlet for anger camouflaged as justice, similar to how peasants reveled in anger after an execution was botched.
How many more people need to be used as symbols for a greater cause for the internet to be satisfied?