Cancel culture” is a phrase that’s getting used a lot lately. What is it, exactly, and how do you think it’s harming us?

Cancel culture is malevolent, it is divisive, but most importantly, it’s ineffective. It’s the little people who actually get canceled. We’re canceling people who really can’t fight back, and we’re not actually reaching the actors who are causing the most harm—those who have been offered a chance to change and have chosen not to. 

That is when calling out is a great tool. We want to stop people with power from causing harm, and find people harmed by that power to build community and maybe even produce change with public shame and pressure. But most of the cancelations are not achieving that. We’re silencing people. We’re making young people afraid to speak up for feat that they’ll put something on the Internet that will damage their lives forever. So, they’re walking around on verbal eggshells. People can’t give their honest opinions anymore. Cancel culture is causing far more harm than solving problems. –Loretta J. Ross