A friend of mine quietly cancelled someone during 'The Pandemic'.
Not a celebrity. Not a politician. Just a friend — the kind that had occupied the same digital space for years, exchanging the usual social media pleasantries that pass for modern conversation.
He came from the media and technology world — a career spent around newsrooms, code and the machinery of information. She came from somewhere more incense-scented: a drifting blend of counterculture idealism and social-justice fervour.
Thirty years ago my friend would probably have been considered the radical. The kind of fellow who published newsletters questioning official narratives. The sort of character Hollywood caricatured in the film Conspiracy Theory — the guy in the corner connecting dots others refused to see.
Age, however, has a way of tempering certainty. These days he mostly watches events from the sidelines. Concerned perhaps, but aware that shouting into the storm rarely changes the weather.
Then his friend began posting.
Not the occasional opinion. A torrent. Anti-vaccine slogans. Pro-Trump declarations. Dark tunnels of QAnon mythology. Celebrity paedophile cabals. Deep-state bunkers. The internet’s entire conspiracy starter kit delivered daily to the timeline.
My friend tried to apply the digital equivalent of a calming hand on the shoulder.
“Maybe ease up a bit.”
But social media rarely rewards moderation. The gentle suggestion was met with the full fury of ideological certainty. Indignation flared. Lines hardened. And eventually my friend did what millions now do without ceremony:
He clicked Unfriend.
A small act perhaps, but one that reflects a much larger cultural shift.
Cancel culture is often framed as a phenomenon that destroys celebrities. Actors, comedians and public figures who say the wrong thing and find themselves digitally exiled by an outraged public.
But the more interesting transformation is happening among ordinary people.
Neighbours cancelling neighbours. Friends cancelling friends. Families quietly muting relatives across invisible ideological borders.
The great irony is that the social media platforms promising to connect humanity have instead become elaborate sorting machines.
Disagree too strongly and you are removed from the tribe.
Speak too loudly and the mob may arrive.
The real power of cancel culture is not the cancellation itself — it is the fear of it.
Many people who sense something wrong simply remain silent. Not because they lack opinions, but because they understand the cost of expressing them.
In this environment, social pressure becomes more powerful than law.
And then came 2020.
Suddenly the concept of “cancelling” leapt from the digital world into everyday life. Normal routines were cancelled. Work was cancelled. Movement was cancelled. Entire societies were sent home like schoolchildren instructed to sit quietly until further notice.
The language was revealing.
Before that year, nobody spoke much about “normal.” Life simply was what it was. But overnight the phrase “the new normal” appeared — a phrase that suggested our previous lives had somehow been revoked.
We were told to comply.
Most of us did.
Not because people enjoy obedience, but because the modern world has become deeply conditioned to collective narratives. Step outside them and you risk being digitally — and sometimes socially — erased.
Which raises a question worth asking in calmer moments:
Should people always comply with the dominant narrative in times of crisis, or should they retain the right to question it — even when that questioning makes others uncomfortable?
History suggests the answer is rarely simple.
But history also suggests that societies which stop asking questions rarely remain free for long.