Cancel Culture

She had just earned the job of her dreams. Alexi McCammond was hired to be the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. Then her past caught up with her. McCammond had posted some incendiary comments on Twitter about Asians back in 2011. On learning of her past tweets, 20 members of the staff of Teen Vogue expressed their outrage over her posts to the CEO and Chief Content Officer. The situation became very tense, to say the least. Finally, McCammond resigned her position days before she was supposed to start. What makes this situation all the more surprising is that McCammond was 17-years-old when she made the tweets.

Sometimes we call it “cancel culture,” the desire to ruin, to “cancel” someone over a grievance. Now, we have arrived at a situation where tweets made ten years ago by a person who was 17 at the time are determinative of character. This is a destructive development. How many of us have said things at 17 that we would find utterly repugnant now? How many of us would want to be held accountable for every terrible thing we uttered as a kid? There is a reason teenagers cannot vote, or consume alcohol, or smoke, or buy a gun. We know teenagers’ brains are not fully formed. They are not fully adults. While this does not excuse bad behavior, it does mean we take bad behavior in context. When we see a person who has become a solid citizen and who has demonstrated no racism as an adult, are we to think they are racist because of a terrible tweet made in their adolescence?

I hope McCammond’s resignation is the lowest point of cancel culture. I hope this incident gives us pause. I hope it will be the end of cancel culture. I am afraid it will not be. What I keep seeing is when a person makes a mistake there is an automatic, reflexive effort to ruin them. It is not enough to get an apology from them. No, the person must be ruined even if that means they lose their job and reputation.

The cancel culture mentality even extends to matters of opinion. Let’s be clear, saying racist things is wrong and harmful. Now, however, cancelling goes to even having a different opinion on political or theological matters. Watch how menacingly social media companies patrol their content over the last election and the pandemic. At what point is it ok to voice a minority opinion? What kind of society allows social media companies to be the arbiters of truth?

Years ago, therapist Edwin Friedman argued our society was in regression because of the “herd mentality.” The herd, he argued, always pushes for conformity. Societal progress only happens when non-conformists engage the world in different ways and have the freedom to express their views. What Friedman could not anticipate was the power the herd would gain in social media. Now the herd not only can use emotional force or manipulation as was the case when he wrote, the herd has real, painful consequences it can inflict in real life. You do not dare cross the herd. You could be sued out of business, you could be harassed into silence, you could be doxed, and you could definitely lose your job. To say the situation is becoming Orwellian may actually be an understatement.

There are two things missing in all of this. The first is self-differentiation. The second is grace. Self-differentiation results in having the ability to own one’s own thoughts without having to surrender to another way of thinking. In short, I do not have to make someone think what I think. If someone thinks differently about an issue than you or I think, it has to be completely fine. The reverse is also true. In fact, if we cannot tolerate others thinking differently, then we are not fully formed as people, we are not self-differentiated, and we are not whole selves. It is only the weakest and sickest among us that need to argue to the death and force conformity about everything.

Missing also is grace. Would it not be nice if when someone made a mistake and apologized for it, others could just move on? It is not like McCammond has any personal history that would suggest she is a racist now. No, despite her age at the time and her work since, a tweet from long ago means she must be ruined. There are many people who fear the wrath of God, and some think the God we Christians proclaim is a vindictive God who must be feared. This description of the angry God is what Freud might call “projection.” God is not an angry God. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is forgiving. The mercy of God is ever new. The grace of God forgives and wipes away everything sinful thing we do. God gives mercy. It is humans who are bent on wrath. It is humans who want to destroy. It is humans who are utterly remorseless in their desire to ruin an offender.

This is a dangerous point we have reached. I hope we step back. My hopes, however, are dim.