CanceledPeople.org is a new online data base that tracks society’s outcasts who have been punished or “cancelled” for the crime of speaking their minds and exercising their right to free speech.
David Schor, the creator of the web site said the purpose of the site was not just to build a data base of cancelled people.
Our purpose is to better understand cancel culture itself as a phenomenon. How does it manifest? How is it evolving? How does it affect societal norms around free speech that enable democracy to function and flourish? By consolidating as many well-sourced data points as possible, we hope to give researchers and others the tools to explore and draw their own conclusions.
With a database of over 200 entries and growing, the site is set up like a Who’s Who in cancel culture casualty land. Each entry on the data base page includes the cancelled individual’s name, organization, position, offense and the result of their offense. Each entry also includes a link to a documentable source for all this information.
The data base is peopled with names you will recognize who are actors, performers, editors and politicians. Names like Roseanne Barr, Megyn Kelly, Gina Carano, and Donald Trump.
Cancel culture cuts to the Left as well as the Right, however, which explains why Kathy Griffin, the rhino plastic comedian who got dumped by Squatty Potty after she posted a bloody Trump head video is listed as one of the web site’s cancel culture victims.
Schor believes the site should be nonpartisan.
In a free society, speech, opinions, and expression should be allowed to be as broad as possible, even if a majority disagree with it.
These days it is easy to believe you need to be a Somebody in order to get cancelled by someone. The lists of victims we see on social media seem to contain only the names of notables.
Cancel culture, however, claims other victims. These victims are not rich or famous, but they are notable for the simple fact that they have been deemed to be offensive and need to be punished.
Maybe this is what makes CanceledPeople.org so intriguing. As you read thru the entire data base of people who have been cancelled, one thing becomes clear.
Cancel culture does not discriminate.
Granted CancelPeople.org does list plenty of individuals who are rich, famous, infamous and influential. Their various public offenses have resulted in cancelled book deals, death threats, and assassinations. They are public figures we recognize who have been demoted, de-platformed and defamed.
They are court judges, board chairmen, Nobel Laureates, executive editors of newspapers and magazine publications, network commentators and morning anchors who were forced to resign or step down.
There are, however, just as many ordinary people, individuals we have never heard about who are listed in the data base. They too have been deemed unfit, rendered unemployable, or financially ruined.
They are funeral directors who get fired for wearing the wrong outfit or a janitor just doing his job. They are teachers who have been pushed out of their jobs for liking someone else’s tweets.
They are small business owners who are being boycotted or have been driven out of business. They are professors who have been investigated and reprimanded for classroom comments, and they are high school principals placed on administrative leave for a Facebook posting.
The data base of cancelled people is one that is diverse and inclusive.
The janitors, the vaccine experts, the delivery drivers and a former president of the United States listed in the data base are different people who have been shamed and censored in different ways. What they all have in common, however, is that each has had something stolen from them.
That something is free speech.
As paradoxical as it may seem, free speech, the very thing that allows democracy to flourish, is today the very thing that feeds cancel culture.
Cancel culture keeps expanding and shows no signs of slowing down. Sadly, the data base on CancelPeople.org will only continue to grow until a way is found to fight back.
And unless we find a way to speak back to cancel culture and tell it to “kiss my ass,” we are all just one step away from becoming another line on an online data base.
