Cancel Culture or Voting With Our Wallets?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

 So, there has been a lot of debate recently about how "cancel culture" is bad for businesses and the economy and represents how politically correct snowflakes are unreasonably hurting companies that are just trying to create jobs (although I have seen cancel culture used by all parts of the political spectrum--I have just heard the term more in the conservative media).

First, what is "cancel culture"? If one uses the definition from the Urban Dictionary, then I would have to agree that cancel culture is a bad thing. According to this website, cancel culture is "A modern internet phenomenon where a person is ejected from influence or fame by questionable actions. It is caused by a critical mass of people who are quick to judge and slow to question. It is commonly caused by an accusation, whether that accusation has merit or not. It is a direct result of the ignorance of people caused communication technologies outpacing the growth in available knowledge of a person."

We see evidence of this every day if you're on social media. This is a more extreme and negative form of voting with your wallet that I often tell you to do. Voting with your wallet revolves around having facts and making decisions about the most appropriate place to spend your money based upon those facts and using your buying power to encourage companies to make their services and products more socially responsible.

If I find that a company's values do not match my own because they produce an unsafe product or do not treat their employees in a way that acknowledges their worth, then I feel the decision not to buy their product or services is justified. But I do some research first. 

I recently had a person tell me they don't worry about social responsibility when purchasing because every company has something wrong with it and they just don't have time to research everything they buy. I had a similar response in a graduate class I was teaching on ethics. (I do have to say many changed their minds to some degree about this by the end of the class, however.) 

I find people are more likely to say they buy from certain companies for a positive reason than they don't buy for a negative reason. Most of us probably do a mixture of both. 

To conclude, spreading unsubstantiated information or encouraging people not to buy a product or service without checking out whether the information has any validity isn't a good thing. But if you are acting on your convictions and feel you have the correct facts, put your money where your mouth is and vote with your wallet.