It’s been a great month to be a controversial comedian with a large and passionate fanbase. The music streaming giant Spotify has chosen to stand by their star podcaster Joe Rogan, despite a recently uploaded video that shows the comedian saying the n- word dozens of times over the years.
On Friday, it was announced that Dave Chappelle, another insanely popular comedian known for generating controversy and outrage, would be producing four comedy specials for Netflix. The announcement comes less than five months after the streaming giant chose to stand by Chappelle despite protests from the company’s LGBTQ+ employees who felt targeted by what they perceived as anti-trans rhetoric in Chappelle’s most recent stand up special, “The Closer.”
So despite endless tweets, video blogs, and opinion pieces, Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan will continue to work and make money. Whether or not that’s a good thing, we’ll spend the rest of our lives needlessly debating.
“Does cancel culture really exist?” If you ask leftists they’ll likely say no. If you ask conservatives they’ll likely tell you that not only does it exist, but it’s the greatest existential threat to everybody’s first amendment rights. Personally, I imagine that the answer lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Which is usually the case.
I think the reason we can’t seem to agree on whether cancel culture is real or not is because we can’t even agree on what it actually means. Is it when you get piled on by social media? Is it when you get fired from your job? Is it when no company will work with you? Until we can agree on a clear cut definition (which I’m certain we never will) we’re gonna keep having these unnecessary arguments.
I do think that cancel culture exists, but it’s reserved almost entirely for extremely clear cut cases. Let’s take for example, disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein. At one point he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Now he will likely be spending the rest of his life behind bars. I’d say that’s a pretty clear cut case of cancel culture. Yet why does no one ever say that Harvey Weinstein got “canceled”? I’d argue it’s because everybody seems to unanimously agree that he deserved to be canceled.
In cases where the infraction is less severe than those of Weinstein’s (which the majority of cancel culture cases tend to be) the arguments tend to be the result of strong opposing opinions over whether the person being “canceled” deserves what is happening to them. What people tend to forget is that in most cases the court of public opinion only has so much power.
Despite the outrage against Chappelle and Rogan being fairly widespread, nothing bad can be done to them for two reasons. The first reason is that what they’re doing is not illegal. The second and more important reason is that despite not being liked by a chunk of the population they still bring in lots of money.
Money is ultimately the final boss when it comes to cancel culture. You can feed the outrage machine all you want. Yell, tweet, and blog whatever you’d like about why a person deserves to be canceled but if the money isn’t on your side you can only expect your outrage to accomplish so much.
About Post Author
