Cancel Culture is the Exercise of Consumer Power. Brands Need to Get Used to It.

It wasn’t Kanye’s announcement that he was running for President that led to this defense of “cancel culture”, but it could have been.

Nor was it Facebook’s role in the demise of democracy and perpetuation of hate, or the empty and performative stance against “racism of any kind” by so many brands over the last weeks, but it could have been.

It’s that we’ve begun conflating the cancelling and breaking up with brands (and people) with intolerance, when instead it’s an illustration and exercise of consumer power, today.

I’m not defining cancel culture as the President has so flippantly, because I think it’s more important than that, especially because it is the exercise of consumer power. I’m defining it as a filter on what brands we bring into our lives; on what and who we choose to allow to pay no rent in our mind; and on what and who we choose to buy from and allow into these hallowed grey halls. If I were to sum up why I defend cancel culture in four words they would be: because life’s too short.  

This isn’t about an intolerance for a difference of opinion. It’s about an impatience for a better world. I can accept that brand X has a different opinion and set of values than I do. But in a world torn asunder like ours, why would I pay them heed let alone dollars? I wouldn’t and neither would an increasing number of people.

On June 18th, the New York Times Opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig tweeted “there’s just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness.” There is, and there must there be room for legitimate second acts, the atonement and forgiveness Ms. Bruenig writes of.

But breaking up with people, institutions, and brands that don’t fundamentally share our values is a good kind of cancel culture, and a brand’s fair warning. Again, life’s too short.

In a world where product and service commoditization and alternatives abound, why give a moment’s thought to those whose positions we cannot abide; those who neither stand with us nor for us, especially when there is so much else to choose from?

I don’t think, as popular press would have it, that this is a bad thing, allowing that we leave room for both atonement and then forgiveness. We all vote with our wallets, ears, eyes, and attention paid, and we are surrounded by worthy alternatives, or at least even trade-offs.

 And in this world populated as it is by increasingly conscious consumers, brands need to be more worthy, and (forgive me) to authentically prove that worthiness across a broader spectrum of actions than ever before. Why? Because people are paying attention like never before, and they will not pay for that and those who do not stand with them.

The time for brand fence-sitting is over. The fence-sitter’s concerns that taking a stand is complicated; a risk; that it would show we’re not perfect; that “Republicans buy shoes too” —those days are gone and no longer stand as a reason to not do what’s right, at least as you see it.

Fence-sitting is the new moral equivalence and will lead almost as quickly to being cancelled as sitting on the wrong side of said fence, and irrespective of whether your fence leans left or right.

The adage has come true and we do indeed live in interesting times. And in these times, when “normalcy” has been shed like a snake’s skin and when all kinds of status quo are up for grabs, we the people are impatient (perhaps desperate) for a better world. So we too are equally impatient with those brands (human and otherwise) who stand between us and that, by their actions or inactions.

Life is short and the shelves, literally and figuratively, are stocked aplenty with good-enough alternatives. So why compromise when you can cancel? That’s how we can influence change, and that’s a good thing.

After all, I have but one life to give and I will not give it to Kanye, or to brands that don’t recognize what’s expected of them in a world like ours.

P.S.

The origins of the phrase “cancel-culture” go back to black culture and the film New Jack City. There’s a good Vox piece on the origins of the phrase here.

P.P.S. This article first appeared in Adweek.