No one that I know seems to be very worried about being canceled anymore. There’s concern about “optics,” or managing one’s online “brand identity.” And there is self-censorship, either because your co-workers or family can browse your social-media profiles, or because of a conviction that other people are not entitled to our personal information. But the overarching fear of cancellation appears to be a thing of the recent past.
Last month, the comedian Shane Gillis was invited to host Saturday Night Live, the very same show he was fired from in 2019, after audio clips emerged of him making racially charged jokes on a podcast. Kanye West’s new album debuted at No. 1, notwithstanding his professed admiration for Hitler. The social commentator Richard Hanania was outed for pseudonymous “race realist” writings he composed as a young man, but HarperCollins still published his book Origins of Woke. Vaush, a popular left-wing political YouTuber, was allegedly caught on a stream with pornography so bizarre and disturbing I won’t describe it here. The incident earned him an entry on the Web site Know Your Meme, an encyclopedia of online events, but he’s still streaming.
