Cancellations and Call-Outs, Oh My

gather 'round my friends, I have a story to tell

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(This week’s newsletter features a excerpts from my book.)

People keep punching me in the face on the Internet. Everything I post is problematic. Everything I am is vexing. When I post about my personal experiences within my varied marginalized identities on my personal Instagram account, I’m told I’m taking up space. I am not the “right” kind of disabled. I am not the “right” kind of former sex worker. I am not the “right” kind of queer. I am not the “right” kind of feminist. I have spent years apologizing for who and what I am. I have spent years trying to erase myself. I wrote a tweet once that said: “Some of you have never had to change and grow in front of hundreds of thousands of people and it shows.” Even those who follow me expect me to be infallible. I’m in the panopticon and my followers are in the guard tower. I can’t live inside this pressure cooker. I have always tried to be open and honest when I have fucked up, and yet, that’s not good enough. In the online world, you are either good or bad—there is no nuance, no in-between, no shapeshifting. I want to disappear. I want to be a bog witch nestled somewhere off grid where no one knows me and those who do can’t find me. Baba Yaga was misunderstood.

At its core, social media is meant as a distraction. It doesn’t like nuance, and it’s set up to add to our already hypervigilant and fragmented selves. Author Aurora Levins Morales writes, “We are a society of people living in a state of post-traumatic shock: amnesiac, dissociated, continually distracting ourselves from the repetitive injuries of widespread collective violence.” I understand the protective reasoning for people to continuously distract themselves, but it doesn’t help any of us. For example, pretending we aren’t all witnessing the Palestinian genocide at the hands of Israel and the United States on Instagram doesn’t disappear this pain and trauma. We owe it to humanity to look, to watch, to cry. Using social media in this way is subverting its intended use of distraction. We are instead practicing hyperawareness and attention.

When I think of the Internet these days, I immediately feel paranoid and unsettled in my body. My stomach swirls, my jaw clenches, my fingers freeze. Opening up Instagram stokes my ever-present hypervigilance. I don’t feel like I belong in these spaces anymore. Maybe I never did. I don’t know if I want to belong in the current digital climate. With callouts, misinformation, and feminist infighting, I’m feeling more ambivalent about my presence in online worlds. But if I can’t find belonging where I once used to, what does that mean? What does that say about me?

I gag at users with large followings who talk about what a great “community” they have. It’s not a community—it’s a performer with an audience. It’s a parasocial relationship. It’s not reciprocal on either end and there’s a clear hierarchy and power dynamic. We simply cannot use social media platforms as our only method of mobilizing and organizing. We can barely use it to disperse factual information, and these platforms are always changing. We can’t trust the algorithms. We can’t trust these systems that keep us in a holding pattern of staying on social media. The platforms will eventually die out. It’s far too dangerous to depend on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter for our ideas and our communication. Many of us use these apps to knowingly or unknowingly engage in distractive callouts, “cancellation,” and disinformation.

The fragmentation that occurs online spreads like frost. There are still entire groups of people committed to callouts as their brand of “activism.” A callout is attention-grabbing, both for the person being called out and any witnesses. It’s meant to be this way. It needs to be. Callouts aren’t all negative, though they’re often talked about like they are. They can be quite helpful in curtailing and/or ending harm caused by an individual. Callouts, when sincere and respectful of all parties, can be beautiful messy moments of learning and growth in real time. The issue with callouts on social media, however, is that the entire experience becomes a spectacle. Any audience, even a “feminist” or “social justice” one, loves a good spectacle. Hundreds, thousands, potentially millions of people are watching. It’s free entertainment that never ends, because social media apps don’t have open and close hours. I’m concerned that the Internet has made us all so detached and desensitized, we forget, or choose not to see, someone’s humanity.

When I started Guerrilla Feminism, I gravitated towards a call-out and mob mentality online. I’m not proud of this. I felt a rush whenever I participated in a call-out. I felt like I was doing something. I thought I was helping. I began to mistake this feeling of power for passion. As a white person, I felt like I was doing “the work.” I believed I was right (because, of course, there is a “wrong”). As feminists, many of us have managed to disrupt the gender binary, but not the binary of “right” vs “wrong” or “bad” vs “good.” Participating in a call-out by dogpiling, cross-platform stalking, and shunning is powerful, invigorating even.

It’s important for me to note that through all of the call-outs I’ve experienced (and witnessed), it has been mostly white women who exhibited excitement of a potential downfall; a potential for collective, lateral harm. Call-outs can be positive tools for change, but the intention of those initiating or participating in the call-outs matters. It also matters if the person (or people) doing the call-out is operating from a gaping wound. Many white women seem to lean towards the idea of call-out campaigns and “cancellation.” We seem to enjoy engaging in mob mentality. White women find solidarity with other white women through shared hatred disguised as passion for a cause. Many white women don’t have solidarity with each other, because we have no camaraderie. This is consistently demonstrated by how we (mis)treat and maim each other online. White women with large online followings (like myself) can haphazardly choose a target and command their followers to “attack!” Too many white women don’t think about or care about the dynamics of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability when initiating a call-out. I’m not saying that people with varied marginalized identities can’t inflict harm, of course they can. I’m saying that white women don’t take these identities into account when directing their following to “call out” another person. It’s reminiscent of the many stories I’ve read about white women “telling on” People of Color, specifically Black people. It reminds me of Emmett Till, a Black teenager who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, accused him of offending her in some way. In online spaces, I’ve seen white women Democrats go after Black women and Palestinian women who have posted about not voting in elections due to systemic racism. White women go after each other to score brownie points with people of color and consider this “doing the work.” Though we’re not killing each other, we might as well be.

I’ve talked to many white people online about why they participated in call-outs the way they did, and more often than not, I’m met with some variation of: “It felt good to be a part of something.” As white women, we seem to struggle to understand the fundamental truth that we don’t know how to collectivise without alienation, isolation, and ostracization. This inability doesn’t excuse anything, but it’s why we have a deep longing to feel a part of something. I’m reminded of white women suffragists who explicitly chose their race over their sex. During the first U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, suffragists advocated for the right of white women to vote. No Black women were even invited to the convention. Specifically, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were less concerned about getting the vote for Black women. Stanton and Anthony failed to take into account the intersectionality of marginalized identities that Black women exhibit. Since then, white women have sided with our race over our sex. We’ve been consistently renewing this agreement. Every time a white woman is at the helm of a call-out, a “cancellation” campaign gets its wings.

Call-outs can, at the very least, be neutral tools for stating harm caused, but white women don’t know how to use them without resulting in punitive measures that, as an abolitionist, I am fervently against. To be an abolitionist feminist means to be move “beyond binary either/or logic and the shallowness of reforms… these collective practices of creativity and reflection shape new visions of safety.” Many feminists still have difficulty thinking of expansive and imaginative ways to address harm without vengeance or punishment.

In 2020, comedian, TV host, actress, and writer, Ellen DeGeneres was “canceled” after many workers on her show called her out for creating and taking part in a toxic work environment. There were numerous news articles and Twitter threads calling attention to DeGeneres’s seemingly two-faced behavior. She eventually put out a statement accepting some responsibility and promising to do better. She was considered “canceled,” and yet, she didn’t actually lose anything or disappear. Forbes reported that she had a net worth of $414 million in 2020. So, how was she canceled? Regarding cancel culture, podcaster Dylan Marron tweeted: “Cancel culture is an imprecise term that falsely groups together three real but separate things: justified criticism, unnecessary pile-ons, and mob mentality." Most humans have difficulty being critiqued, and thanks to the internet and social media, we can critique each other all the time if we want to (and many people do just that). We have a disposability culture. We have an ostracization culture. We have a culture of people who enjoy alienating others for various reasons, some completely benign.

I don’t believe we have a “Cancel Culture”–at least, not for white, big-name celebrities. They seem to do just fine anytime the public calls them out and “cancels” them. I do think the idea of Cancel Culture works a bit differently with ordinary people. While people are negatively affected by online call-outs in ways that are often punitive and disconcerting, the term “canceled” posits an ending, a finality. For most people who are “canceled,” they’re not gone–not forever, anyways. Cancellation is about loss, but not the forever kind. A cancellation campaign may result in someone losing their job, their social status, their online platform(s), or any future opportunities for a time. However, everyone loves a good comeback story. Celebrities and their publicists do this quite well. There’s always an “apology tour,” which is just another way for celebrities and their managers to continue making money while also profiting off of the harm they’ve caused. In 2017, various women came forward accusing comedian Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct. C.K. issued a half-assed apology and said he would be taking some time off. He was back on stage a mere nine months later. In 2020, he self-released a comedy special, “Sincerely Louis C.K.” This special won him the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album in 2022. He continued to make money (and still does). He was never “canceled.”

When this happens to ordinary people, most of us don’t have publicists or a team of people helping us behind-the-scenes. Most of us aren’t use to fucking up in front of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. Most of us aren’t rich, and can’t run off and hide in our piles of Scrooge McDuck money. When a celebrity is effectively “canceled,” they usually take a break and are right back at it. When an ordinary person is disposed of, real, tangible loss can and does happen. This is the difference: celebrities/rich people have power-over; the rest of us don’t–at least, not in the same way. So, what do we call it when we incessantly organize punishment online (and sometimes offline) against people not in power or people who don’t have power over others? It’s carceral ostracization.

We live in a society that gets off on ostracizing each other. It’s a big part of living in a capitalist, punishment-driven culture. Our culture thrives on surveilling each other, and social media has made this only more efficient. We’re poised to react, respond, and attack at any time–and we often do. This hyper surveillance can lead to call-outs and then ostracization. Most of us have been ostracized offline, and know how isolating and painful this can be. Clearly, we don’t know how to be in conflict with each other offline, so how can we be expected to know how to do this online? While calling-out a celebrity online might be our only recourse for harm caused by the celebrity, certainly we can choose a different path for each other–those we’re in community with and those we’re not. But also, should we be calling out people we’re not in community with? How can we expect people we don’t know who don’t know us to take accountability? We can’t demand accountability. We can’t “hold” people accountable. The accused person needs to want this as well. It’s a reciprocal, consensual relationship.

I don’t remember the first time I was ostracized online. It has happened too many times to recall. I also don’t remember the first time (or last time) I ostracized someone. In the past five years, I’ve worked hard at changing this behavior. It’s still difficult and frustrating sometimes, but I’m doing better. Because of all of my experiences (and witnessing) of ostracization, I especially don't believe white people should ostracize other white people. It's not helpful nor conducive to correcting our behavior. When white people do this to each other, instead of taking the time to actually talk to the person about what they did and how it was harmful, it doesn’t change the behavior. There is a high likelihood that this white person will then further harm People of Color. We can't actually get rid of people–we try this consistently with our creation and use of prisons. If we throw away other white people, those white people will inevitably continue their harm and a person of color will end up having to deal with them when it should be us (white people) dealing with them.

One of the major problems with call-outs and demands for accountability online, especially within social justice spaces, is that there is incentive to act this way. The more volatile you are when initiating a call-out, the more “likes” and social currency you receive. I’ve seen it time and again. It’s actually quite impressive how some Twitter and Instagram users have been able to grow their following exponentially because they initiated a call-out. Even when the person deserves to be called-out, it’s gross how many “likes” or “hearts” you can get. I once called-out a white woman for being racist and treating a Black woman terribly. She had a fairly large following. Though this woman deserved some type of call-out, my way of doing it afforded me over 11,000 “likes” on an Instagram post, and probably hundreds of new followers. Our egos are in overdrive, especially when we’ve created a tweet or post that goes viral. I did reach out to this white woman privately and ask if she wanted to talk about the situation. However, at this point, why would she take me up on talking when I essentially ordered my nearly 250,000 followers at the time to attack her? She eventually blocked me anyway. In an era where people have receipts on everyone in the form of screenshots, why would anyone want to privately chat with a stranger online? The Black woman received fame-level status almost overnight because of this entire incident. Did anyone win, though? Now there’s just more white people following a Black woman thinking that’s enough and that’s “the work,” and the Black woman is faced with being even more inundated by white people’s feelings and their thinking that they are all “above” the silly white woman who got called-out. Who would even want to take accountability in this type of environment?

A couple of years ago, I witnessed a “community accountability process” on Instagram. It was done by using the livestream function where you can instantly be seen and heard by whomever is on Instagram at the time. It is not private. It is not for a few people. The person leading the process “went live” with the person who had caused harm to a community member. These two people and the survivor were all in community together offline. The thousands of people who watched were not. Only the two people on video are seen and heard, but others can type comments. Hundreds of people watched. I remember feeling like I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. It felt like we were throwing tomatoes at the person accused of harm-doing. As you watch a livestream, you can tap the heart button which sends a cascade of colorful hearts for all to see. It made me uneasy to watch people send their flurry of hearts during this extremely vulnerable and important conversation. I eventually left the livestream, because I felt so bad participating as an audience member. This process was all done in the name of “Accountability,” and for the demand that as a “community,” we hold this person accountable. It didn’t feel good (or helpful) as I watched, and it felt triggering as a survivor. The person who caused harm seemed completely disconnected, and potentially dissociating, from what was happening. The entire thing seemed more like a punishment than anything else.

Doing an “accountability process” on a social media app that is tracking our every move, and essentially acts as the “town hall,” isn’t a good idea. The space isn’t appropriate nor adequate for addressing interpersonal and intra-communal harm. I question whether anyone can effectively, sufficiently, and caringly lead or participate in an accountability process on platforms that rely heavily on disconnection and power differences. Social media platforms often refer to themselves as micro-communities. In reality, these spaces function as theater: there are performers and there are audiences. The “show” never really ends. As author Jia Tolentino writes in her book, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion: “In physical spaces, there’s a limited audience and time span for every performance. Online, your audience can hypothetically keep expanding forever, and the performance never has to end.”

If we now understand social media to not be a community, then we can glean that any potential for an accountability process on these platforms would not work. If we are hoping to create an accountability process online, perhaps there doesn’t need to be an audience. Perhaps we shouldn’t use social media. Maybe by using audio and/or video applications like Skype or Zoom, to make things accessible (and, because, afterall, we’re still in a pandemic), but on social media platforms? No way. On applications like Twitter and Instagram, where we are constantly commodifying ourselves and being sold to, even attempting a community accountability process seems laughable and completely antithetical to the cause. If we want to heal and repair our communities, we need to heal ourselves, and we can’t do this with capitalist structures.

The state wants us to dispose of each other. The state wants us to rip each other apart. We are strong in numbers, and the state knows this. If we stop eating our own, and start working through lateral conflict and harm, maybe then we will dismantle the oppressions in this world.

I don’t think there is a way to continue with social justice work on social media platforms mostly because of the rampant mis- and disinformation. Especially since Meta, Twitter, and TikTok are not doing anything to prevent it. I realize that this will continue to negatively impact disabled folks, specifically homebound folks who rely on social media spaces to engage with activism. On-the-ground activism is still unfortunately inaccessible for many people. I’ve read far too much about organizers not enforcing mask-wearing during a global pandemic, and thus, making their events and protests harmful to disabled and immunocompromised folks. We simply have to do a better job of making outdoor activism accessible as well as creating more authentic and purposeful spaces for online activism—away from social media platforms.

I don’t think we can utilize public social media spaces to educate and inform. Perhaps we’ll start seeing a resurgence of private message boards or private social media accounts that vet folks who join. Either way, things will need to shift and change. Continuing to rely on social media platforms for our collective organizing and education is going to lead to scary, untenable situations.

The idea of “Digital Sandcastles” is that our online landscapes, specifically on social media, are precarious. Many of us have spent time, effort, energy, blood, sweat, and tears crafting our online worlds. This is obviously near and dear to me since I created Guerrilla Feminism on Facebook in 2011 and then the Instagram page in 2013. The issue with digital sandcastles is that they were never meant to last forever. They were never meant to be used as “archives.” [Side note: people really love using that term when they don’t know what it means!] They have no permanent infrastructure. Besides the impermanence and precarity, these spaces repeatedly hide anything that the company doesn’t want to show its users. Currently, we are seeing this with how Meta is purposely suppressing any sort of “pro” Palestine post.

Posting through a genocide feels incredibly bleak and dystopian, and yet, what else can we do in the current moment? Organizing and attending in-person protests is great, but what about those who are homebound or have other disabilities that inhibit them from attending these protests? Clearly, a digital component is needed and necessary. I have personally learned so much from Palestinians who have been able to record video and take pictures of what is happening on the ground in Gaza. All I feel I can do (aside from give money and attend local protests) is to repost all of the injustices I see from the people living through them. Digital sandcastles, like a regular sandcastle, will eventually get washed away and destroyed.

I am tired of fighting with social media platforms who are tits-deep in corporate greed. I am tired of asking for crumbs. I am tired of seeing celebrity nonsense get the most visibility. Everything is an ad and I don’t want to see our movements become further fractured by commodification. What is the point in having a following if no one even sees my posts? What is the point in feeling beholden to a platform who has not done anything for its users? What is the point of creating an informational carousel on Instagram when it just seems to go into a void? I have more questions than answers related to the future of posting through horrific times. Questions I’m thinking about and asking myself:

1. How can we ensure that voices from marginalized communities or those posting about issues that affect marginalized communities, will be listened to and seen?

2. Where should we be archiving digital resistance efforts?

3. How should we be communicating these things with others committed to the same causes as us?

4. Are there other digital spaces or structures that we could collectively inhabit that have less precarity?

5. Are there ways to circumvent suppressive digital tactics? If so, how can we share information about this?

Sometimes the internet is good, sometimes it's terrible. Either way, we can’t depend on it for our mobilizing, organizing, and activism. We have to meet elsewhere online and off. If we truly want to get free, if we truly want liberation for all people, we have to be willing to build community offline. We have to talk to each other in person. We have to divest from corporations. We can’t rely or depend on Meta, Twitter, and TikTok to amplify our needs. We have to create options for how people can get involved. Relegating our activism to one sphere minimizes our collective power.

I am still toying with the idea of deleting my Instagram. I am still trying to figure out what to do or where to go next. I don’t want to be an influencer or a social media creator. Although, I still long for community and belonging in any way I can get it, and there is a lot of it on online spaces. This chaotic internet playground is vastly different from the one I first played on. The rules and people are different. I don’t want us to be lost to each other when social media apps eventually disappear. My desire for belonging has shifted over time, and I’m sure it will shift again. The belonging I’ve spent my entire life searching for has always brought me back to myself.

Maybe the internet is bringing us back to ourselves. Perhaps it’s our innate humanness that continues hunting and prowling for each other.

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3. The Global March to Gaza ended in violence. Activists remain undeterred - Jenna Martin

4. Mamdani’s Massive Victory Should Show Democrats Where the Party’s Future Lies - Sam Rosenthal

5. The Case For A Metastrategic Pragmatism To Counter Climate Doom - Alyssa Battistoni

6. A mother and child bond in an unusual prison visitation space in this poignant portrait - Pete Quandt

7. ‘They're Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls - Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron

8. The Bad Science Behind Trans Medicine Bans - Joana Wuest and Briana S. Last

9. How Exactly Did Hunter-Gatherers Sleep? On Rest and Relaxation in the Prehistoric Era - Merijn van de Laar

10. This song: