15 Foolproof Ways To Get Cancelled
Getting cancelled is the hottest new way to ruin your life since cocaine. Sick and tired of working a 9 to 5? Use the examples in this list to quickly free up your days by becoming completely unemployable and possibly divorced. You too can become destitute!
Cancellations have been around since the dawn of time. Socially rejecting members of the herd is a nice way to let the evil-doer know that their behaviour is not above board. Over the years, humans have found ways to use ostracisation as a tool for punishment, whether it be locking someone to the stocks or hounding them online until they disappear forever. Back in my day, we called it cyber bullying but these days it’s been solidified into a culture of vigilante justice. It feels great being at the starting point of a thrown tomato. But with mobs unable to meter their ire, the crime can sometimes far outsize the punishment. Welcome to the wild world of crowdsourced punishment. Let’s get cracking.
1. Fat Shame the Prince of Wales
George “Beau” Brummell (1778 – 1840) was a famous Regency dandy who was a fashion icon of the era. Brummell is an important stepping stone in the evolution of men’s fashion. As well as a sharp eye, he had an edgy sense of humour. Humour is made to be enjoyed until somebody doesn’t enjoy it. In Brummel’s case, the person who didn’t like his particular brand of sick burns was the Prince of Wales himself (not the current one). He reportedly leaned to someone within earshot and loudly proclaimed in relation to the Prince “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”
Brummell was ejected from high society at this point, and his constant borrowing to maintain his extravagant lifestyle and gambling caught up to him. RIP
2. Own a Twitter account
At all times people hold the keys to their own demise in their pockets. Have an errant thought that is barely even worth telling your best friend? Chuck it on Twitter and watch your career crater. Twitter is the number one tool of choice when it comes to people wanting to get themselves cancelled. Its user friendly interface and low barrier to entry makes it a perfect venue for broadcasting how much of an idiot you are.
3. Forget people only read the headlines
Earlier this year, Burger King tried its hand at clickbait, boldly stating that “Women Belong In the Kitchen” as a bait and switch for their scholarship program which intends to tackle gender inequality in professional kitchens. Women make up 7% of head chefs, for example. However, Burger King’s good intentions didn’t mean a thing to all the people who only read the headline. This supposedly clever marketing ploy turned into a PR nightmare. Although on the other hand, you now know that BK likes to think of itself as the sort of place that has Head Chefs.
4. Put profits before wellbeing
You know what sucks? Googling “Most hated man in America” and having your face come up, with a handy little bio to boot. This is what Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli has to look forward to next time a warden lets him near a computer. In 2015, his company Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug, Daraprim. Shortly after, the price skyrocketed from US$13.50 to $750 per pill, a heady factor of 56. This move was criticised by every living being on the planet and a competitor made an alternative at $1 a pill.
While being a dick isn’t enough to get you thrown in prison, two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud is. Shkreli had to forfeit more than $7.3 million in assets and is currently serving seven years in prison.
5. Use idioms that are over 20 years old
Bonus cancellation points if your turn of phrase either hints at gender roles or is associated to women who must be protected. Former TOP party leader Gareth Morgan found this out the hard way when he referred to Jacinda Ardern as the lipstick on the Labour pig during a Twitter debate: “Jacinda should be required to show she’s more than lipstick on a pig.”
Much later during lockdowns, National MP Paul Goldsmith got in hot water for suggesting Jacinda should “stick to her knitting”. This was in reference to her getting involved in The Warehouse’s decision to lay people off after taking relief money during the lockdowns. When this first aired, I guffawed that the news articles went to the pains of explaining what the turn of phrase even meant. After quizzing my peers, I realised that in another 20 years I’ll be cancelled for animal abuse for beating a dead horse.
6. Play silly buggers with your pronouns
Gina Carano is the best example of #2. She was a beloved addition to The Mandalorian series as the ripped sidekick who could easily hold her own in a fight, no questions asked. You can’t be a Mary Sue with guns like those! Unfortunately for her, she played in traffic when she changed her Twitter bio to say “boop/bop/beep”. In hindsight, it COULD have been her talking in R2D2’s language, but here on Earth, it was seen as taking the piss out of pronoun designation. The rest, including her, is what we now consider history.
7. Come out of the closet a little too conveniently
Kevin Spacey had a sudden fall from grace when allegations of misconduct cropped up via a Buzzfeed interview with actor Anthony Rapp. Spacey tried to cool the heat by using the limelight to announce that he was gay. Unfortunately, his poor timing meant that the LGBTQ+ community wasn’t about to grant him any sort of special immunity. Nice try, buddy. He was unceremoniously cut from Netflix’s pride and joy House of Cards and court battles are ongoing (for misconduct, not for using the queer community as some sort of shield).
8. Be a statue
Don’t move! Time’s marching forward and it turns out slave owners aren’t as cool as they used to be. Into the river with you.
9. Get hands on with your co-workers
“How am I meant to be able to hug all the ladies at work if I’m just going to get in trouble with everybody? It’s PC gone mad!”, my wife says to me in a deep drawl, aping someone from work. “News flash dude! Nobody wants their work day to include hugging Barry from accounts!” she concluded. I felt that it was an elegantly made point.
Personally, I’d cancel people just for speaking to me if HR would start taking my reports seriously again.
10. Be against war
Before ‘cancel culture’ was solidified as a term, conservative country fans were busy doing it to The Dixie Chicks in 2003. Nine days before the impending invasion of Iraq, country music trio The Dixie Chicks landed on the wrong side of their primarily right-leaning fanbase by speaking out against the war. Vocalist Natalie Maines told an audience in London, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”.
Within two weeks of this being reported, their single Landslide landslid from #10 to nowhere in the Billboard Top 100 charts. Drinks manufacturer Lipton cancelled a deal with them and droves of former fans destroyed their CDs. George Bush commented on the fiasco, “The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say… they shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out… Freedom is a two-way street…”
This blowback had a chilling effect on the music industry which continues to this day. Contemporary political music is a neutered shadow of its Vietnam War era counterparts. These days The Dixie Chicks go by just “The Chicks”.
11. Start an insurrection
Here’s the facts. Trump said some stuff. Afterwards, some people did some stuff. Yeah, that stuff included looting the Capitol Building, but what’s a little rioting among friends? Despite having casual nuclear standoffs with North Korea via Twitter for years, this was the bridge too far for Big Tech. Trump was finally cancelled for realsies after four years of wall to wall cancellations.
12. Cash in on domestic abuse
A pizza joint called DiGiorno Pizza decided to get itself a little extra publicity by leaving a cheeky tweet on a trending hashtag #WhyIStayed: “#WhyIStayed You had Pizza”. They didn’t read the room or the thread apparently. If they had, they would have known that the hashtag was dedicated to stories of women sharing their experience of domestic violence and why they continued to endure it for so long. The pizza joint realised its slip up, deleted the tweet and issued an apology. As well as that, they have written personal apologies to everybody who tweeted at them since.
13. Let people know you’re OK
The OK gesture was an unfortunate victim of cancellation after 4chan popularised the idea that it was a racist hate symbol. It sucked in everybody enough for it to literally become a hate symbol after far right-groups took the claims seriously and started adopting its use. That’s one way to own the libs I guess. I’m still upset Pepe the Frog met a similar fate. I come across too many situations where a sad frog is the perfect emote.
14. Do your job
Acting is about pretending to be somebody you aren’t. Scarlett Johanson missed the memo that this is out of vogue now. Pretending to be a caucasian version of a Japanese robo-babe assassin in Ghost in the Shell may not have been a good idea. The only part that offended me was that the movie wasn’t even that good.
15. Write a list on how to get cancelled
The first rule about Cancel Club is don’t talk about being cancelled lest you be canceled yourself. Being cancelled is actually viral, as anybody on the friends list of someone getting cancelled can attest to. The crimes of the perpetrator can easily be transposed onto any casual passer by who isn’t vocal enough in their opposition of the transgression. I can only assume that my editor has had enough of my shenanigans and wants to take firing me out of his hands and into the readers. I would like to officially condemn everybody in this list. Especially the Dixie Chicks. Maybe if America had invaded Iraq quicker, they would have found all those WMDs.