Cancel culture is often discussed as a political phenomenon, but at its core, it is a sophisticated war for narrative control.
It functions as a loosely connected social movement that leverages virtue-signaling and collective or individual shaming to displace existing value systems.
By orchestrating ‘shame attacks’—ranging from social media deplatforming to professional termination—the movement seeks to enforce a new social hierarchy through the strategic use of virtuous frames, guilt, and judge authority.
To understand cancel culture is to understand the timeless mechanics of how individuals and groups use moral leverage to gain personal and social power.
In this article we’ll understand the underlying principles and learn new insights into social power dynamics, personal empowerment, and self-defense.
Contents
Intro
The cancel culture will eventually end, lose steam, or morph into something else.
What will remain, though, are the psychological and power dynamics underlying this movement.
So, in this website’s spirit of writing timeless articles, we use a more appropriate label that describes the effects of the cancel culture on its victims: “guilt-tripping”.
Guilt tripping is a movement that focuses on a group’s wrongdoings or supposed privileges only, ignores the merits and positive contributions, and blames it all on every single individual supposedly part of that group
The Positives of Culture Wars
It’s important to note that it would be simplistic to label all culture wars as positive or negative.
In most cases, it’s a mix of selfish and pro-social values and outcomes. And some culture wars can bring about positive change.
The first people petitioning for human rights were civil heroes. Crowds demanding the abolition of the monarchy in the name of equality were civil heroes. And the first woman who stood up for the right to divorce was a hero.
Guilt-Culture’s Dynamics
The underlying dynamics are always about power.
The attacker self-frames as the judge-authority for what’s right and good, while the victim is framed as ‘not good’ and unworthy of belonging to society.
At the higher level, culture wars are wars for frame control.
Setting the frame of morality that people and society should abide to. To defend yourself well, you must be aware of these dynamics, usually avoid defending, and use instead higher power frame control techniques.
Important elements in culture wars and guilt-tripping include:
Social Power & Narrative Control
Cancel culture is a form of ‘culture war’, and it’s nothing new under the sun.
It’s how loosely connected groups of people with somewhat of a common goal fight the war for influence and power.
The group that ‘wins’ gets to change the culture and the law in a way that best benefits the group.
Have vs. Have Nots: The ‘Bad Privileged’
Often under attack are a supposed class of ‘privileged people’.
The Power Dictionary calls it “privileged guilt-tripping”, and defines it as such:
The hostility or aggression, either overt or covert, directed towards certain groups of people who are accused of enjoying or exploiting an unfair advantage to the detriment of others.
The groups under attack are sometimes referred to as “privileged”. And if you are in any of those groups now considered “privileged”, you may be an easier target.
Shame Attacks
Guilt can be delivered with aggression, rightful anger and indignation directed at a target who supposedly behaved unethically when judged by the new standards of ethics.
The goal is to shame the victim, socially ostracize him—or make him feel like he’s being ostracized-, make him feel bad about himself, force him to apologize to the world, and if the attack is most effective, cancel him or push him towards self-canceling.
Manipulation for Power
Sometimes, of course, the anger can be called for, and the victim can be a real SOB.
But sometimes guilt-tripping and shame attacks are about power, manipulation, and self-manipulation. It’s aggression hiding behind the guise of fake social justice.
The more you can make others feel bad, the more those others will give up their rights and act submissive. And the more competitive advantage the guilt-inducers will enjoy.
Self-Enhancement
Guilt tripping is often delivered with a guise of virtue.
That virtuous frame provides two advantages:
- A virtue-cover for personal bitterness because anger alone comes across as nasty
- Reputational boost for ‘fighting the good war’
Double Bind
In a way, the guilt-movement is a big, society-wide form of double-bind.
This is how it works:
I despise you because you are abusing of your privileges to oppress me and bully me.
But you can’t despise me because, if you do, you confirm that you are oppressing me, and that I am right for despising you.
Be damned if you accept their finger-pointing, and be damned if you seek to rebel against it.
People who don’t see the double-bind and accept that frame end up feeling guilty and without any recourse—and often, without having done anything wrong-.
Collective Guilt
Whenever guilt tripping doesn’t attack individuals with shame attacks, it seeks to shame them by association.
For example, if powerful white men are supposedly oppressing others, then being a white man makes you ‘guilty’ by association.
This is an aspect of ‘collective psychology’ that we reject. It’s fortunately been long rejected by legal systems around the world, fortunately.
Read more:
Modernity & Out of Control Guilt
Today, we have all kinds of people wanting you to feel guilty about all kinds of issues:
- Guilty for polluting
- Guilty of having exterminated animals
- Guilty for global warming
Rejecting guilt doesn’t mean rejecting responsibility for being good citizens.
I believe it’s a generational duty to protect shared resources and maintain a good Earth for future humans.
But taking care of others and the environment is supposed to free you: you’re doing your part.
Guilt is not only useless, but it’s also unhealthy.
And, naturally, the species that becomes the most dominant will drive a few other species to extinction. Being emotionally mature also means accepting that there are certain trade-offs in life.
And it’s either lions, bears, and tigers roam the planet as they please, or you roam the streets in safety.
Our responsibility is to avoid any unnecessary animal suffering. But it is not to preserve any single species on earth, no matter what.
Anyone who disagrees and doesn’t want to be a hypocrite should lead by example and go back to living in a cave.
Great is both part and victim of guilt-culture.
Why Now?
I cannot think of any other time in human history that we’ve been inundated with so many messages about how bad we are.
Why now?
In a way, it’s a sign of opulence.
As we live in a world largely free of major risks, people have enough time and resources to dedicate mental cycles to abstractions like “fairness”, “equal opportunities”, “animal rights”, etc.
And, by and large, it’s a great thing we are tackling these issues.
This is the pinnacle of human enlightenment: taking responsibility not just for us but for the planet and the other living creatures as well.
But it should be done rationally and intelligently.
Finger-pointing and guilt-tripping are neither intelligent nor helpful ways of going about it. They are abusive ways of going about it.
If you allow it, that guilt-culture is going to disempower you.
So now let’s discuss the effects of guilt-tripping and then some solutions.
Attackers’ Profiling
While culture wars can be positive, they often tend to simply seek change. Change that often benefits them, but that may or may not be good for society.
For example, it feels that today’s culture wars may be less driven by the will for positive change given that most basic rights are in place for all, in the West.
So some attackers may be more driven by less noble and darker and more self-serving motives, including:
- Ego-protection against personal failure, blaming the system or someone else’s privileges
- Finding meaning in a novel crusade to find a sense of meaning and purpose while also feeling good
- Competitor-removal: removing a competitor from a group, or a company
- Manipulative warfare (social sexual competition): I make you guilty so that you become more submissive, less assertive, and easier to control and win against
- Quest for power and status: construct a made-up enemy, lead the charge against them, and win easy accolades
Case Study: Oppressive Men?
This Oprah’s speech is a good example of that last one:
Oprah: She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.
Their time is up?
Whose time? Powerful men? Men in general? That’s messed up. Many powerful men are good people.
If she was targeting men who abused their power, then she’d be right. But it was crucial to be accurate there.
Because the way she delivered it, she’s attacking a whole class of people, instead of individuals.
The dynamics at play in Oprah’s speech are dangerous. They’re no different than historical scapegoating that caused massive grief for millions of people.
You could turn Oprah’s speech into any speech that, throughout history, led to mass prosecution.
We don’t need more people fanning small flames of discontent into a huge fire. We need more conciliatory men and women to build bridges.
Don’t fall for the war rhetoric of the charismatic leader.
Supporters’ Profiling
Among the supporters of the main leaders are:
- Passive Supporters Want to Keep Group Access: Many intellectually disagree, but seek or gain with group/leader acceptance. Once cancel culture reaches a tipping point, it may become the main culture, at least among certain circles, so agreeing is a precondition for acceptance
- Supporting Women As Sexual Strategy: Some seek to win the favor of the charismatic leader and/or of the group members. For example, some male feminists support the movement in the hope of gaining women’s attention
- Honest believers: Finally some people, especially younger idealists, truly believe in the cause
Victims of Cancel Culture
Victims aren’t just the people directly attacked, but also the people who feel guilty for being privileged.
Women may be particularly at risk for having higher empathy, more fluctuating and socially-dependent self-esteem, and being more prone to guilt (Roberts and NolenHoeksema, 1994; Romert et al., 2026; Torstveit, 2016).
In general, good and highly conscientious individuals are also at higher risk.
Example: Cameron Russell
Model Cameron Russell amassed 24 million views on a speech that felt more like a therapy session:
Cameron Russel: I’m on the stage because I’m a pretty white woman.
(…)
But mostly, it was difficult to unpack the legacy of gender and racial oppression when I am one of the base beneficiaries.
She says she is the beneficiary of a culture that makes her privileged. Instead, I see self-inflicted emotional anguish that has no reason to exist.
To begin with, she is most likely selling herself short by saying she is only pretty.
And most of all, she is blaming herself for all the “gender and racial oppression”, something she had no part in.
Plus, she seems like a good person.
Jenna Marbles’ apology felt very similar.
Antidotes to Guilt & Culture Wars
Life Isn’t Fair: Accept It
Behind much of the guilt-fever, there is the wish for fairness.
Fair is good.
Unfair is bad.
And if you got an “unfair advantage”, you should feel bad.
It’s good to strive towards fairness. But an emotionally mature approach also accepts that the world is an inherently unfair place.
Until we evolve into a different species, we are also an inherently unfair species.
And that’s OK.
As you strive to treat people fairly, you also must know that you are not responsible for life’s unfairness.
Three Antidotes to Guilt
Three antidotes to guilt:
- Healthy sense of entitlement
- Focus on using your privileges for value-adding goals
- Individual responsibility, reject collective guilt (not your group, your tribe, your ancestors, etc.)
I was reminded of the importance of healthy entitlement when I read a post on Facebook.
Someone asked a group of digital nomads if they felt a national belonging, or if they felt like world citizens.
Look at some of the comments:
She feels privileged to have a strong passport, and someone added crying faces.
Another one chimed in that “he’s not a citizen, but he’s a “guest”. How nice of him, tiptoeing his way through life.
It’s good to be warm and kind -see: mix power with warmth-. But you should not feel like a nuisance when you are not being one.
Don’t confuse privileges with rights -or with what you can safely claim as a right-.
In this example, instead of seeing a strong passport as a privilege, why not seeing it as your right?
Hopefully, you’re not a thief but a value-adding human, and you’re bringing money to whichever country you visit.
You should be entitled to travel, see, and meet people from all over the world as an equal.
Only Accept Individual Responsibility
Never feel guilty for supposed ‘privileges’ you received, such as:
- Being born in the West
- Being born in the middle class or above
- Being attractive
- Being a man
Always reject collective guilt if you’re not personally guilty
Writes Eckart Tolle in a particularly disheartening passage of his best-selling “The Power of Now”:
Of course, there’s something wrong with you, and you are not being judged. Don’t you belong to the human race who killed over 100 million members of its own species in the 21st century alone?
-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
This is an incredibly disempowering mindset; reject it.
🙋♂️Lucio’s Take: National guilt is weak, embrace empowered individualism
Lucio:
My ex-girlfriend and her progressive friends felt bad for German nazi past, things that she had no control over.
That was accompanied by the guilt-induced feeling they needed to repent and make it up… But there was no way to make it up, of course. So they were trapped in their feelings of guilt.
At times, it was becoming an issue in our relationship.
Abandon collective psychology, embrace empowered individualism.
Agentic Solution: Do Your Best Towards Your Goal, Ignore Privileges
An empowered mindset doesn’t think about the “privileges” it’s got.
An empowered mindset thinks about how he can do more with whatever he’s got.
Strong passport? Great, how can I use it? Poor passport? Too bad, how can I change it?
Rich family? Great, how can I leverage these resources? Poor family? Too bad, how can I change it?
Leave the guilt behind, and start focusing on doing something good with your advantages. Because the ultimate sin is having a chance to do something good, but wasting it.
