The funny thing is that those who keep calling social ostracism cancel culture would probably be opposed to any kind of reintegration of people who have served their time. How many of them would praise George Zimmer's position of giving ex-cons a second chance at employment? I ask this in a rhetorical fashion obviously but it's important since cancel culture or social ostracism is as old as humankind. So in my view, the real problem isn't cancel culture, the problem is that we don't actually have a society that forgives. The Internet just put all that within reach of our fingertips. In the past, it was only the rich or powerful that could wield such control of in/out group action. Today, anyone can game trending algorithms on social media even though our laws have yet to catch up to that fact.

If there's anything that can be said it's this: our society needs to stop being vengeful, starting with our legal system. We need to repeal at-will employment or at least reform it. We need to actually support re-integration of ex-convicts as a side issue. And we need to stop being so chronically online.