Help, I'm Being Repressed!

You can't say anything anymore.

This is something usually said by a stupid person right before or after they have just said something, probably pretty racist/misogynistic or derogatorily using the word "retarded" and then standing there waiting for the applause to wash over them. To our discredit, sometimes it does. Thankfully this effect is only really measurable within the gravitational range of the greater Austin area. You might counter with "yeah, but someone told those apes about the internet and microphones and now they're all polluting the interwebs with terrible podcasts!" which I'd then be forced to counter-counter by reassuring you that podcasts don't actually exist. They're a thing invented to scare you or keep your mind distracted with just the thought of the idea, like cryptids or Area 51. The fact that so many podcasts want to talk about cryptids and Area 51 is all the proof you need. It's an ouroboros made out of hot dog casing, stuffed with more hot dog casing.

Of course the complaint about "not being able to say anything anymore" is a great hook for an entire career based on not being funny or interesting or artistically relevant but touring the country talking incessantly, without ever any fear of disruption or denial, to paying audience about how you're not allowed to say anything anymore. There's a whole second show business built around it now. It crops into public view every time anything gets too many eyes on it that Ted Cruz thinks is "woke" so they have to produce some kind of alternative to the mainstream thing that is actually good. Unfortunately that second show business turns out to be entirely made up of Kid Rock and Rob Schneider, but if you can sell an ad or one piece of merch for it, it counts as an industry in the United States of America. It's good to know as we approach 250 years of existence, we still have at least that as a rock-solid principle to stand on.

Just claiming that the woke thought police exists and then building your entire public persona and career around it isn't a guarantee of success. There are whole groups of comedians, some of whom were always terrible but others who had longstanding careers, even if they were as grinders scraping by as dedicated road-dogs and cruise ship acts. You find a lot of them in the Rogan orbit in the aforementioned Austin environs, being given every opportunity under the cover of the Rogan shadow to try out their grievance-based material, which is kind of cheating because what is funnier than naked self-pity? The best news though is that when they inevitably fail miserably, they can always just claim to have been "cancelled," which is of course great news because you have a built-in title for your next shitty self-produced YouTube special.

Recently we've been more willing to experiment with a fuller form of cancellation, involving the whole-ass US government coming after you and your employers for saying things it doesn't like, but even that has its limits. So far it has been either an invitation to a robust (and likely successful) resistance or a doorway to another thing. Disruptive yes, but existential?

The only cancellation that exists is death. But honestly, in the rules of capitalism as written, even that is hit or miss.