The Genesis of Cancel Culture

It is unclear when and where exactly the term “Cancel Culture” emerged into the public consciousness.
But the earliest usage of the word “cancelling” as pertaining to a person came, ironically, from a
misogynistic joke in a 1991 film New Jack City. In a particular scene, American actor Wesley Snipe’s
character Nino Brown broke up with his girlfriend because she cannot stand the violence he is causing,
by saying “Cancel that b*tch, I’ll buy another one” (Romano, 2020). Jumping into early 2010s, the culture
of calling out celebrities has also its roots from Tumblr blogs like Your Fave is Problematic where
fandoms discuss how their celebrity idols are imperfect (Greenspan, 2020).

On the other hand, American rapper Lil Wayne referenced Snipe’s quote from New Jack City in his 2010
song “I’m Single” where in his lyrics, he sang “Yeah, I’m single / n***a had to cancel that b*tch like
Nino.” But the popularity of the word “cancelled” gained traction when a December 2014 episode of
VH1 reality show Love and Hip-Hop: New York was aired, where a cast member Cisco Rosado told his
love interest Diamond Strawberry during a fight, “You’re cancelled” (Romano, 2020). According to
Goldsbrough (2020), since the airing of that episode, the term “cancelled” became trending among the
Black community in Twitter. For example, Twitter user @jessstar4 said in her tweet “Meg loves orange.
She's cancelled.” While user @scotty2thotty_ tweeted “ima start telling people "you're canceled, out my
face." On the other hand, user @badbyecozette responded to a Buzzfeed UK article about Ed Sheeran
saying that Nicki Minaj’s VMAs race argument is “redundant,” she said “Ed is canceled and deleted.”
User @themochalisa tweeted on September 2015, saying, “Travis Scott is homophobic trash. His music is
cancelled... He's cancelled guys!! If u still like him plz unfollow me” (Romano, 2020).

Although “cancelling” had its earlier roots in popular culture, the emergence of the term “Cancel
Culture” itself is arguably more recent. Greenspan (2020) said that one of the first usage of the term
came from a tweet from American author, TV critic, and assistant professor at Old Dominion University
Myles McNutt, where he used the phrase in February 2014 pertaining to the cancellation of some TV
series. "It's unfortunate how renew/cancel culture has made 'not renewed early' read as canceled —
'wait and see until pilots come in' is normal," McNutt tweeted.

Even though the term itself is relatively new, the culture of socially cancelling someone arose within the
Black community and signifies Black empowerment movements as far as the civil rights boycotts during
the 1950s and 1960s. Professor of African American culture and linguistics in University of California,
Santa Barbara, Anne Charity Hudley said to Vox, “While the terminology of cancel culture may be new
and most applicable to social media through Black Twitter, in particular, the concept of being canceled is
not new to black culture.” She also described cancelling as “a survival skill as old as the Southern black
use of the boycott” (Romano, 2020).

Between 2016 and 2017, Cancel Culture, as an internet phenomenon, attracted the public eye in social
media, mainly because of the rise of the #MeToo Movement, where women confessed about the sexual
assault and harassment that they experienced from their workplaces and industries, especially in the
entertainment industry. Cancel Culture became a tool to hold accountability to Hollywood entities like
the producer Harvey Weinstein (who was sentenced to 23 years in jail for rape and sexual assaults),
financier Jeffrey Epstein (who died inside his jail while waiting for his trial for sex trafficking in 2019),
actor Kevin Spacey (where his Tv series House of Cards was cancelled from airing because of his sexual
offenses), and comedian Louis CK (who had a successful return in stand-up comedy in 2018 despite of
his admission of sexual misconducts) (Goldsbrough, 2020).

Meanwhile, Greenspan (2020) added that Insider conducted a research where they discovered that
there are fewer than 100 tweets and threads on Twitter with the phrase “Cancel Culture” before the
year 2018. They also found out that most Twitter users who used the term “Cancel Culture” referred to
that phrase in a negative connotation. For example, user @brownskinangel tweeted on November 2017,
saying, “Cancel culture is SO toxic, you can't even learn from your mistakes anymore because you're not
even allowed to make any. And most of the time people don't even f*cking care about the ACTUAL issues
they're just searching for f*cking rts. And that's the f*cked up part” (Greenspan, 2020).

Within 2020, Cancel Culture also became an instrument for the rebirth of the Black Live Matter
Movement (BLM) after the murder of George Floyd in the hands of two Minneapolis police officers on
May 2020. Protesters in USA and around the world began a massive campaign of toppling down and
vandalizing the statues of some racist historical figures such as Confederate generals and slave holders
like Robert E. Lee (Burnett, 2020), colonizers like Italian explorer and slave-holder Christopher Columbus
(Brito, 2020), and British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (Mohdin, et al., 2020). Despite of being vilified and
antagonized by the ring-wing media, BLM Movement still endures and its Cancel Culture by calling out
racist remarks on social media will never go away for now (Malik, 2020).

Bibliographies:

Romano, A. (2020, August 25). “Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture.” Vox. Retrieved from
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate

Greenspan, R.E. (2020, August 6). “How 'cancel culture' quickly became one of the buzziest and most
controversial ideas on the internet.” Insider. Retrieved from https://www.insider.com/cancel-culture-
meaning-history-origin-phrase-used-negatively-2020-7

Goldsbrough, S. (2020, July 30). “Cancel culture: what is it, and how did it begin?” The Telegraph.
Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/cancel-culture-did-begin/

Burnett, J. (2020, October 6). “Confederate Statues Come Down Around U.S., But Not Everywhere.” NPR.
Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/919193176/confederate-statues-come-down-around-
u-s-but-not-everywhere

Brito, C. (2020, September 25). “Dozens of Christopher Columbus statues have been removed since
June.” CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-columbus-statue-
removed-cities/

Mohdin, A., Adams, R., Quinn, B. (2020, June 17). “Oxford college backs removal of Cecil Rhodes statue.”
The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/17/end-of-the-
rhodes-cecil-oxford-college-ditches-controversial-statue
Malik, N. (2020, September 20). “Despite being vilified in the rightwing media, Black Lives Matter will
endure.” The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/20/black-lives-matter-rightwing-media