Written by Arthur Floyd
The marginal unbelievability of cancel culture refers to the idea that as you cancel an individual more and more, it gets less and less believable each time. Or, more broadly, as the number of cancellations of prominent public figures increases, the believability of each one decreases. A relatively simple idea, and it’s one that you’re implicitly conscious of.
Think of the boy who cried wolf—it isn’t a perfect analogy, but it’s pretty close.
The first time the boy cried wolf, everyone immediately believed him and ran to his aid. The second time he cried wolf, he garnered a similar reaction. But, at a certain point, the boy cried wolf so many times that he lost credibility and it became difficult to trust him. The one time that there was a wolf, of course, no one responded to his cries and the flock of sheep with which he was trusted was eaten by said predator.
Another example to make it more clear.
You’ve probably heard of the show on Food Network called Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives—the one starring Guy Fieri. I’ve watched a few episodes (in hotels, when nothing else was on) and have noted that, without fail, Guy always loves the food and showers the chefs with compliments. I’m not saying that he’s lying or being disingenuous, but if every dish is “killer” and every place is “the bomb,” then, in essence, none of them are. It’s difficult to trust a food critic who’s enamored with every meal; admitting that a place isn’t that great every once in a while would actually lend credence to the restaurants that do receive high praise, as in that case the compliments would have inherent value by nature of being scarce. Obviously, one wouldn’t expect the Food Network to air an episode of Guy shredding an unsuspecting small business owner, but the broader logic applies.
Calculus—the mathematical study of continuous change, or rates of change—is central to these two anecdotes. When I increase X by one, how much does that increase or decrease Y?
The fact of the matter is that the more the boy cried wolf, the less believable his pleas were; the more restaurants Guy Fieri showers with praise, the less I can trust that each one is actually good.
Cancel Culture was well-intentioned and for a long time did what it set out to do. The endeavor of exposing privileged people for wrongdoing and holding them accountable is no doubt admirable and beneficial. I, for one, found this new societal initiative to be of great service, and was proud that we as a collective population were shining a light on injustices otherwise left in the shadows.
There was an inflection point, however, when cancellations became so commonplace that people not only stopped caring and paying attention, but they also stopped believing in their truthfulness. Is there concrete proof of this or a specific moment in time when this switch definitively occurred? It’s tough to say, but at a certain point it definitely felt like there were too many—too many to be true—and little question marks sometimes popped up in my head when I read reports of someone new getting canceled. A movement that once had absolute sovereignty soon featured an air of skepticism.
It goes almost without saying that former President Donald Trump motivated this line of inquiry.
They’ve been out to get him for almost a decade at this point, and polling data suggest that the marginal unbelievability of cancel culture may have started to increase at an increasing rate.
A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that about 46% of Latinos currently support Mr. Trump, despite that number only being at 36% in the 2020 Presidential Election. He won just 8% of the black vote in 2020 (according to the Pew Research Center), but a poll from GenForward had him at 17% in mid-March. In 2020, Biden was up 13 points against Trump amongst independents, but a 20-point swing in the former president’s direction has him now leading that group.
There have been so many accusations, allegations, convictions, and indictments levied against Donald Trump that it’s become borderline impossible to keep up with them all. The purpose of this commentary isn’t to purport innocence, but to highlight the fact that constantly trying to cancel Donald Trump has in and of itself guaranteed that it won’t ever happen.
The Democrats and the left have almost made him come across as sympathetic; Trump’s claims that he’s being targeted amidst his perpetual notion of “fake news” are now increasingly hitting home with American voters. Part of the reason why this is a problem, for those incentivized to see him go down, is because anything he does now that is indeed worthy of a “cancellation” won’t actually yield one. There are just too many claims to account for, and the ones that are truly deplorable get lost in the fray amidst all the other purportedly awful things he’s done.
These futile attempts at cancellation invite an interesting question: what would have happened if the left took a more careful approach, and only brought out the big cancellation guns in certain instances? Each one would have been more believable, by nature of being rarer, and those folks probably would have been significantly more successful at removing Donald Trump from the political stage. They cried wolf, and a lot of us immediately ran over to protect the sheep.