Jon Ronson wrote a great book about this. Meghan Murphy didn't read it. She'd much rather tell you how she feels about "cancel culture" anyway, because she feels that she is vulnerable to it - which hey, top two comments here are, in fact, "cancelling" her.

The meat of her argument is a journalist and a dude with a sign, neither of which are particularly vulnerable to being "cancelled" because they were never "on air." The lady in the park who decided to call the cops on the Black birdwatcher who told her to leash her dog? She wasn't "cancelled" as no one had ever heard of her before anyway. JK Rowling? Yeah, there's definitely a move afoot to "cancel" her.

Because that's the thing: social media is media, and celebrities often say one thing to the media and another thing to social media, and the rest of the social uses that dichotomy to "cancel out" the media statements. That's the mechanism at play here: the mob using the statements of a public figure to nullify their privileged voice. Am I a fan? No - but if you're going to say one thing in public and another thing in private, best be sure it's actually in private, dumbass. Unfortunately nobody ever expects to raise a million dollars with the help of budweiser so we say dumb shit on Twitter.