Can we cancel the ‘cancel culture’ channel?
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- March 7, 2021
- 824
Does anyone else sign up for trial periods of things? I can’t count the times I wanted to watch a show or movie and it wasn’t on any of the hundred streaming platforms I currently pay for. Sure, I’ll sign up for a free week’s trial of Shudder so I can watch that movie (opens phone and puts in a reminder with alarm to cancel in several days). They’ve made it abundantly easy to watch what you want and abundantly easy to cancel.
I thought when I bought a Roku I was going to slim down my budget and be an active cord cutter. I may have cut the cord, but the cable channels decided to reroute a new one. I’m now the proud owner of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max and the newest addition (thanks for the free year, Verizon) of Discovery+. If in one year I forget to cancel that Discovery+ freebie, I’ll be charged a monthly fee like it’s going out of style. Here’s hoping I notice the charge.
I do this with magazine subscriptions as well because George can’t live without his Architectural Digest. I’m always finding a discounted subscription for $5 through Amazon, and it always comes attached with a “yearly auto-renew” that inevitably nabs $36 out of my account before I catch it. They’re quick to refund, but I’m annoyed I have to pick up the phone and talk to a live human to reverse it. I accept responsibility for this but am glad I can cancel something that isn’t needed.
Ah, the art of the cancel. About 12 years ago when our oldest daughter started college, I remember them starting to use the phrase “you’re canceled.” If I would say something mom-ish, they’d shriek with laughter and tell me I’m canceled. There’s always a new phrase to get used to the kids saying. This one simply meant “that’s dumb” or “lol, stop it,” which we use every day in random conversations anyway. I mean you can’t cancel an actual person or concept.
Anyone remember when we used the word “doy” and “gag me with a spoon” back in middle school? It didn’t really mean how it sounded, but language and the concept of what a word means, as well as the creation of new words, can and does change over time.
Canceling something isn’t a new concept. We cancel credit cards because we don’t want to rack up new debt, or we cancel subscriptions to things because they’ve outrun their usefulness and no longer interest us. Books can be canceled at the library when they aren’t checked out anymore, and classes can be canceled for a snow day.
I don’t like the turn of phrase “cancel culture.” I think it was co-opted from the youths and their vernacular to stir up a great big mud pie of nothingness. If we really want to cancel something that hasn’t ever been useful, let’s do racism and white supremacy. Cancel my subscription to those shows.
If we need a definition for “cancel culture,” let’s say it’s not canceling anyone; it’s simply not putting up with things that have no place in society: Nazism, rape culture, patriarchy, domestic terrorism and unbelievable conspiracy theories. It takes more energy to maintain this indignant kind of rhetoric than seeing the error of our ways.