Masking Abuse As Criticism: A Warning About The Toxicity Of Endless Accountability and Cancel Culture Regarding Lindsay Ellis.

Generally when you see or hear about cancel culture, it’s usually some right wing political extremists complaining about Twitter terms of service. If you ask ten people to define the term cancel culture, you’ll get eleven definitions, which allows these right-wing extremists to play the victim, and deflect from their radical political takes. I am no stranger to these sorts of right wing followers using the term “cancel culture.” Many fans of a booktuber viewed a situation where I was banned from that Booktube’s Discord for politely disagreeing with some conspiratorial rhetoric on the results of last year’s Georgia Senate election as me participating in cancel culture for talking about being banned and my political disagreements with this booktuber publicly.

However, every once in a while, there is a high profile case of something that seems different than social media terms of service complaints, or right wingers coping with their unsubstantiated conspiracies getting criticized, but a case of something that could be actual “cancel culture.” These types of leftist infighting cancellations bring me back to Mark Fisher’s 2013 essay “Exiting The Vampire Castle,” which I’m not sure we’ve fully absorbed yet. “We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree — on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.” Generally, these types of toxic cancellations involve criticism of a tweet or short video clip that was taken out of context or interpreted so uncharitably.

One of these sorts of events happened last week when video essayist Lindsay Ellis wrote an essay titled “Walking Away From Omelas,” informing her audience that she would no longer be making videos due to constant and unending backlash, saying, “My life ended nine months ago — What has been taking up bandwidth ever since has been a ghost” Her essay to her audience went on to say, “My favorite are the people who dismiss any potential harm I might have incurred as justified because I am a “wealthy, white woman” (I am not Wealthy), while these same people’s hearts positively “bleed” for Britney Spears.”

There will always be anti-fans, but now with Twitter, it’s easier than ever for the anti-fans to edit or cut a video in a dishonest way and go viral. I couldn’t imagine someone defend themselves better from an onslaught of nonsense than Lindsay Ellis did in her video nine months ago. That’s not to say her video was perfect, but given the circumstances, I could not have imagined a better video. However, it is difficult for someone with a large following of fans and anti-fans like Ellis to keep up with all these smears, rumors, and outright lies, as there will always be another smear right around the corner.

There are three main things that we should recognize about ourselves when it comes to these instances of online leftist infighting. The first is that regardless of what the drama is, who is involved in the drama, or how important the drama is to society, social media sites have perfected the art of getting the drama to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible. The second thing is that we have to recognize that people who adopt the rhetoric of inclusion and social justice aren’t always good people, and will sometimes dishonestly adopt the rhetoric of social justice to attack someone or something they don’t like, or defend someone or something they do like. The third is that most people love drama, regardless of how much they claim they hate drama, which I find most noticeable and quite comical when watching ABC’s hit show The Bachelor. Everyone who watches or participates in The Bachelor claims they can’t stand drama, which begs the question, why are you watching The Bachelor.

It actually is tough to determine when backlash is or is not acceptable if you know nothing about the parties involved. After all, a common defense of both racist people and nonracist people in the face of accusations of racism is to claim that they are not racist. While there is an online industry made to monetize the “accusations of false racism are the worst thing in the world” market, sometimes there are actual false accusations of racism. While I don’t always agree with Lindsey Ellis, I don’t think anyone in their right mind could possibly see any of her content as racist, unless they were explicitly looking to smear her. When you notice this sort of abuse and harassment disguised as criticism, lend your support to the person getting dogpiled in whatever way you feel comfortable with. Send likes and retweets, and maybe supportive comments if you feel so inclined.

The person getting dogpiled may have a bad reaction and do or say things out of fear and frustration, but you, as a neutral third party observer, can avoid all these mistakes by being more detached from the actual drama. There will be many hyperbolic claims from the dogpilers, and you shouldn’t counter their hyperbolic claims with equally hyperbolic claims. If you do, your counterattacks can lead to hyperbolic counterdogpiles that can be equally toxic and unproductive. Instead, you can point out the lack of charitability given to Ellis by her critics, or point to the plethora of progressive videos Ellis has made. Do not let the talk devolve into personal attacks or attacks on motives, even if there are clear clout chasing motives to the Ellis haters to take every opportunity, reasonable or unreasonable, to hate Ellis. Another person’s motives are impossible to prove, but their claims are easy to discredit.

The problem often is that if you are not aware of drama, you may not be sure if you are defending a racist pretending to be not racist, or a progressive who is getting an online harassment campaign from their haters. Usually if you say something like, “you are being uncharitable,” the person has the opportunity to explain themselves further, but if you attack their motives, then there isn’t an opportunity to clarify anything. Also, keep in mind that communities like Ellis’ anti-fan community are well versed in a long list of alleged wrongs Ellis has done over the years. In Ellis’ case, the response will be more uncharitable nonsense that has nothing to do with racism. Generally basic questions like, “what does this random 2010 Ellis Tweet have to do with racism?” Additionally, if you can find the debunk to the smear that they are spewing, their arguments will crumble. Also, feel free to stop responding and walk away if the conversation is getting too crazy; your chill response to unhinged criticism is more than enough. Just do the normal things that you would do to support any other online creator.

In this situation, my disagreements with Ellis do not matter. No one should get treated the way she has, and the constant charitability and falsehoods spread about Ellis help no one. You should show some solidarity with creators that go through these sorts of attacks if you can, and you certainly shouldn’t participate in attacking them. Save your online activism for actual racists like Steven Crowder. If you must disagree with Ellis or someone like that, feel free to also denounce some of the insane criticism she is getting from her anti-fans. Cleaning up the unhinged criticism will make any actual criticism more potent. Most importantly, taking the side of the harasser empowers their toxic hate fueled behavior, which will cause them to be more toxic and more hateful when they inevitably attack another solid progressive content creator.