Defending Canceled Friends

Here's the truth: many of my genuinely fabulous friends are folks who have garbage reputations on the internet. Plenty of people will go to bat to defend cancel culture, claiming that people who have "caused harm" deserve to be entirely stripped of their material security and community; I don't want to be friends with those people AT ALL. While those same folks run the other way when they find out someone has a website dedicated to calling them out (in?? lol) I don't. Today, I want to explain to y'all why my canceled friends are actually very emotionally literate, brilliant, and compassionate humans despite what the internet says about them. At the risk of being called an abuser apologist, I'd defend any of them over the good pious liberals who dedicate their evenings to ruining stranger's lives, here's why:

Humility And Empathy

I have no doubt there are some real piece of shit people out there who've been canceled, but none of the folks I've become friends with fall under that category. The people in my circle have been canceled for reasons that range from not handling a relationship well to sexual assault allegations to using outdated language to posting on Instagram at the wrong time to drawing something problematic almost a decade ago. None of them are Weinstein-ian monsters, they are garden variety folks who made mistakes (or were accused of making mistakes) while making a living on social media and as a result were prime targets for woke punishment gluttons. I'm not here to create a hierarchy of cancellation, but let's be clear that the people who probably deserve to be canceled (Bloomberg, Bezos, Musk, and every ass hat politician who siphons money from the middle class into the military and police) are rarely the targets. When it comes to cancel culture, the woke almost always punches down.

What unifies my friends is that they have all experienced their human failings exploding into narratives of villainous intent. They've had dozens if not thousands of folks they've never met dissect their personal lives and words. If you've never been in this situation, let me assure you that it's jarring to have strangers projecting their assumptions on you with no desire to hear your perspective. Being told that people who have absolutely no involvement with the situation know better than you, and demand "accountability" for something you didn't do or that's been massively misconstrued is maddening. As a result, my friends understand better than anyone how to not get involved in other people's personal shit. They respect individual autonomy because they've had theirs stripped and taken away. I like friends who are able to take a step back and recognize they don't need to get involved rather than entitled assholes who believe they deserve input because they're bored and like the drama.

No Growth Without Being Wrong

I like friends who are deep and interesting. But being deep and interesting comes at a cost: you're gonna be wrong a bunch. You can't form radical ideas and you can't grow without being willing to tread through the unknown, and when you're uncertain you will make mistakes. Correlating rightness with morality inhibits discovery. If you're a villain for expressing thoughts that are wrong, you'll likely never push yourself to understand things that are complicated. Cancel culture stunts our growth. When we care more about how other people will interpret our actions or words than we care about the pursuit of knowledge, we slide back into rigidity. I have no time for that.

I prefer friends who are willing to express opinions that may be incorrect. And I want friends who feel safe enough around me to say unpolished things that they are still working to understand. Being wrong doesn't make you an abuser. And the only way to learn is to talk through previously held beliefs. That never happens if you're terrified of being ostracized for uttering something problematic. To me, people's ability to embrace uncertainty makes them safer than folks who consume and regurgitate doctrine without critical analysis and vilify those who don't. So often, folks on the internet confuse "doing the work" with conformity. It's super easy to say the same shit that's been spoon-fed to you by others. It's much harder to dive into a topic and push yourself through your initial biases and shallow understanding. If you want to be good, good for you, I'm not interested in playing that game.

Nothing To Lose, Nothing To Prove

To a certain extent, friends who have been canceled have already lost their social capital.  And while those experiences are absolutely devastating, there is freedom from the unrealistic obligations of perfection once they come out the other end. My canceled friends aren't living to placate other people anymore. It makes me so happy to be able to participate in friendships with folks who are authentically themselves. They know it's completely pointless to try appeasing a mob that's constantly looking for their next victim. The truth of the matter is, you can't win. If you hinge on your sense of self and your success on social media, you will be destroyed. And it takes destruction to let go. While most of us are still working on social (to various extents) we don't give a shit. about our reputations anymore because we know we can't win.

Within our friendships, that lack of necessity to be "likable" means that we are real with one another.  Social media forces us to create these polished personas, that create a psychological schism between our reality and personality. If you abide by those conditions, you're always forced to self-monitor, you doubt your reality constantly, you're constantly worried about offending others, and you become full-on paranoid. I hate that. No one can thrive under those conditions. Having been through repeated pile-on, I understand the pain of being told you're wrong and worthless by strangers and friends alike. I refuse to do that. As a friend, I don't expect my friends to be perfect. When they fuck up, do weird shit, hurt me, hurt others, or say stupid nonsense we can address that without burning them at the stake. I want friends who don't feel like they have to alter themselves to "win" my friendship. I want people who can show up as themselves and who can negotiate boundaries with me so we can create optimal relations with each other most of the time.

Healing Paranoia Together

Being canceled is traumatizing. I don't say this lightly. My canceled friends are traumatized. I'm traumatized. Working on social media is a fucking nightmare (if you don't understand why we do it, I don't blame you, but read this). When you realize that your work environment is terrorizing, it's really hard to feel safe in general, and my canceled friends understand this reality in ways that others don't. There is solidarity and consistency that grows out of being treated as disposable. My friends who've been thrown in the trash without the ability to make amends or explain themselves don't do that to others. They are loyal, fallible, and healing. Because we all struggle to trust that other people will treat us nicely, I find that we are protective of each other, and extend compassion for mistakes while also encouraging self-reflection. Those are the types of friends I want. I have little use for superficiality or friends that are only there when I'm perfect.

I've personally found that the people who show up for me when shit hits the fan are the people who've been accused of being problematic, heartless, assholes. Fine. End of the day,  we're creating a sewer coalition and I have zero desire to go back and join the good woke cancel culture advocates. You can think my friends and I are shit, and you're entitled to your opinion, we'll just be minding our business, supporting each other over a bowl of lentils in the backyard. And if you ever step out of line and experience your own cancellation, you know where to find us.

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