You're Canceled, See Ya

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault — this episode also touches on transphobia, antisemitism, gun violence. After months of talking about it, we finally delivered the episode discussing cancel culture. Buzzword alert, don't get triggered. We start with a warm up question: name someone who got canceled and came all the way back versus someone who never did. The gap between those two answers says more about power and privilege than anything else. Then it's rapid fire time with ten real cases and three answer choices: cancel, not cancel, or complicated. Cait Corrain faking reviews to sabotage rival authors. Kanye's antisemitism. Alex Jones and Sandy Hook. Kaepernick and the NFL's convenient cowardice. The Sydney Sweeney ad discourse. Conor McGregor headlining UFC after a civil sexual assault verdict. JK Rowling. From there, why any of this works on us: moral outrage addiction is a real researched dopamine hit, and social rejection lights up the same brain regions as physical pain. We get into tribalism, the Pew data showing Americans can't agree what cancel culture even means, and a 2024 study showing people's verdicts track their political team way harder than their stated values. We draw the line between cancel culture and the quieter call-in version (Tyson's James Gunn example, old tweets resurfaced, he owned it, survived it), then ask the harder question: does canceling even work? Michael Jackson and R. Kelly's listenership went up after documentaries detailing abuse. Chris Brown just got a Grammy nomination. Verdict: it punches down way harder than it punches up. We close in the literary space, drawing a hard line between book banning (dangerous, always) and the newer trend of accusing indie authors of using AI based on detection tools that flag real human writing constantly, tanking careers off an unappealable percentage score, which is especially rich given every major AI company is currently being sued for training on stolen books. Comment your own cancel or not cancel verdicts. Fight amongst yourselves. Intro Music: Synthetic Prayer by JKN Music Fan Art: Samantha done by @lcleanforheichou on Reddit Check out our sister Kari's art (and tattoo work!) on TikTok: @markari.ann Tune into future episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts! Business email: [email protected] Source List Pew Research Center, "Americans and 'Cancel Culture'" (2021) Diether, Yi, Argyle & Busby, "The Political Psychology of Cancel Culture: Value Framing or Group Identity?", Political Research Quarterly (2024) Traversa, Tian & Wright, "Cancel culture can be collectively validating for groups experiencing harm," Frontiers in Psychology (2023) Adeyemi, "The Psychological Impact of Cancel Culture," Premier Journal of Psychology (2025) Norris, "Closed Minds? Is a 'Cancel Culture' Stifling Academic Freedom...", HKS Working Paper (2020) Adrian Daub, The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global (Stanford University Press) — feature via Stanford Humanities & Sciences Kennedy, "Networked Justice: The Actions and Effects of Cancel Culture on YouTube," a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (2025) The College Fix, Campus Cancel Culture Database, 2025–26 year-in-review Hailey Gibbs, "What is 'Cancel Culture' if not just 'Consequences for Your Actions?'", Medium (2020) The Authors Guild, "Can AI Detectors Be Trusted? The Authors Guild Put Five of Them to the Test" (2026)