The thing about cancel culture is that we all have done things or have opinions that are cancel worthy.
There are always blasphemy laws in any culture, even a libertine culture, where it is blasphemy to say, “That is immoral”, or “Maybe you should have self-control,” or, “Do you really need another cookie?”. All those who oppose cancellations from the current 'Woke' culture fall into the trap of believing that neutrality could exist in a nation. That is, we thought a society based on a secular public sphere, allowing a freely expressed marketplace of ideas was possible. But this was always a lie, and this is why such a society didn’t last very long.
@Aether Well I'm Hoppean and I realize that "physical removal" is just cancel culture on a micro-scale. I think the difference with that is that there will always be a community that accepts your lifestyle/ideology.
I just never understood why people would waste time digging through people's decade old tweets, blog posts, comments, forum posts, etc just to have their career ruined. Are people now assuming that society was always woke and people always had these woke views? Do they realize that they may have said or done something that is cancel worthy? Don't they realize that they can respect someone's work without condoning their views or actions?
I realize that one reason people do this is because for whatever reason they like drama. People really do enjoy drama.
I notice that the KiwiFarms and Encyclopedia Dramatica types pretty much use the same tactic of digging up old tweets, forum posts, user accounts, etc but for different reasons. It's normally for bullying by bringing up someone's dark past that they forgot to erase from the Internet, not necessarily things that are cancel worthy, but rather things that people want to move on from.
As far as they are concerned we are living in the "unexpected present" that is haunted by the past. Derrida refers to this as Hauntology.
When you read the Player Character's of our liberal ruling classes writings they believe that the past is haunted and full of evil spirits that are haunting the present. When you have a materialist world view and start from the view that everyone is equal, you need an explanation for the inequality.
As a result they develop this Gnostic worldview where reality is imperfect and they are being denied the perfect reality by these evil spirit from past events. Hence they need to exercise these spirits from the present to achieve their perfect world.
That is why they talk about the civil rights movement or slavery like it occurred last week, those spirits are attributed to the current "imperfections" in the world. At the same time they do not talk about their failures, e.g. Holodomor or deaths by communism, as they view them as ancient history because they can not see how those spirits are with us.
As a result any transgression from the past will be judged in the present as they feel it is a spirit that needs exercising and you need to be punished and forced into compliance.