generally a big fan of your work! this post did not resonate. while fully appreciating your natural inclination to defend your dear friend and business partner, there's something rotten in saying things like "If you’re fat, you better have BEEN fat. If you GOT fat, I don’t respect you."
yes, canceling sucks! so does saying things that are genuinely hurtful. both things can be true. i have close friends and family members who are overweight due to being on antidepressants or other health reasons that are out of their control. i can imagine them being a fan of your company, purchasing a product, and then being *actually saddened* to read such statements by its most visible founder.
i'm sorry - scout's response is not 'perfect.' what you perceive as 'charisma' might not read as such to everyone else.
being an edgelord and being a founder can end up being mutually exclusive, at least to some degree. when i purchase products, i do 'vote with my dollar' in the marketplace of ideals. kindness is chief among the ones i select for. to become an apologist for behavior like this is to alienate me. i have no desire to publicly cancel scout. i also now have no desire to purchase her products. i'm saying this as someone whose curiosity into fragrances was piqued by your recent posts, and who was looking forward to trying them.
perhaps the biggest shame is that the cancelation orgy, of which you are rightly critical, masks the perhaps silent majority of people who aren't trying to 'come for' scout but at the same time hope for a kinder world, in which comments like the above have no place.
I respect this response! To be clear, I didn't love all of Scout's jokes, and I hope that came across. Anyone who took a second on TikTok (or my Substack) to post about how they didn't appreciate her tweets is fine with me. But the response was so clearly disproportionate that the moral calculus to me is clear — the mob is trying to destroy her life. Society is much worse when this is the punishment for saying dumb things. And I do feel that her response is courageous in addressing the primary dynamic here: before, certain of her fans worshipped her, and now they're acting like she's a Literal Nazi, and the whole thing is unhealthy and extreme. I've seen people try to apologize to a mob before, and it gets you nothing, they just come back for more. They don't want an apology, they want to hurt you.
"I've seen people try to apologize to a mob before, and it gets you nothing, they just come back for more."
for the most vocal and 'outraged', yes that's true. but i have friends with larger audiences than scout navigate mob cancelations like this and come out fine on the other end. the starting point is usually some version of "i'm sorry i said some dumb shit, i was being a troll, those things don't represent my whole self." in one case this was the recommendation of their PR team; in others, it was a choice they made on their own.
honestly it's scout's response, of digging in and citing political persecution rather than treating the discrete posts she made that people are most taking issue with. her defense of her 'unexpected political beliefs' reads like a tacit defense of her statements.
fwiw, i'm a person in the entertainment industry with a decent amount of experience with PR. it's not the mob you need to appease, it's the larger audience of people to whose attention scout's posts have been surfaced, the people who constitute the bulk of your current or potential customers. like me, they're not looking to the mob for their marching orders.
I wonder what accounts for the variance here — we've spoken to many people who have been through this, including professional strategists, and what 100% of them said was "thank God she didn't give in and apologize, that always makes things much worse." To me, her response clearly doesn't read as "I'm awesome, please love everything I say," it's more "this dynamic is crazy." Which it is. But YMMV!
As I've mentioned below, I also think treating this as (at least partially) political persecution is entirely reasonable because those posts existed beforehand, they just weren't treated as proof that she is a Literal Nazi until she liked a right-wing meme, and then the comments were all, "i hope you have an ectopic pregnancy and die". If she were a male leftist comedian, I guarantee she'd have gotten a lot more slack.
the dynamic is crazy for sure. i was in the middle of working with one of the friends i alluded to when things blew up. it sends the nervous system into full tilt.
the fact that her liking the right-wing meme set off the mob certainly indicates a political element. likewise i'd agree that the left (or rather 'liberals' in particular, with whom i don't identify) has a greater penchant for cancelation mania. but (and i might be wrong here) if there hadn't been any fucked up comments to find, this would probably be much less of a nightmare. again, taking myself as an imperfect but perhaps useful representative of the 'silent majority', i don't care what scout's politics are, i just care that norms tend in the direction of decency rather than cruelty.
appreciate you engaging on this & genuinely wish you well as you navigate the storm.
I love the discourse you two just engaged in—truly classy. Switching gears: I think this whole situation might have played out differently if people weren’t so trigger-happy looking for someone to blame after Trump’s win. It feels like a lot of folks are taking up the hobby of randomly channeling their unresolved frustrations into others. Whether that frustration is about the election, confusion in their own lives, or cognitive dissonance in their own beliefs.
I wonder if it's helpful to imagine the mob as bots programmed to carry out “the thing.” It’s not a perfect analogy, but it helps create some peace of mind internally, keeping the focus on what matters.
Best of luck to you as you navigate all of this. I just ordered the sample kit—excited to try it out :)
I don't think her response is satisfactory. She implies she has right wing politics and she doesn't disavow or apologize for anything she's said. She - the critics are basically correct. And when part of what you are selling (with a fragrance) is your image, persona, the intangibles - it's perfectly fine for a consumer to decide that's a big ick. I appreciate that you're her champion and advocate - and also that you and she can't/won't win back everyone you may have alienated. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try - if you want to and if you don't want to be aligned with Trump and right-wing horror.
Pregnant women are literally dying because they can't get treatment. Bleeding out in parking lots. This is the result of right wing policy and Trump, in particular. The right wing is clearly coming for more - they will try to reverse gay marriage, for example. They will slash anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs radically. It's all in print. This isn't just a game or a pose. So, if people thought they had an affinity for someone, and then realized they don't - and that someone apparently doesn't care. It's a shock and hurtful.
This shit is why, despite having radically left views on nearly every subject, I don't make many friends in those circles. Censorious, self-righteous, self-defeating ideologues. It's plain malice masquerading as virtue.
Worse, they aren't usually leftists if you scratch the surface. They tend to support anything merchandised to them as liberal/left without actually doing anything to make the world a more just place.
I followed Scout prior to recent developments and genuinely adored her content, I still do, she is clearly a remarkable and fascinating person hence why she was able to amass such a devoted following.
I don’t live in the US and none of Scouts political views bother in the slightest, I also hate cancel culture, especially the thrill people seem to get from seeing the demise of a successful person.
Saying that I think you gloss over the content of those tweets Scout made, some of which were truly dehumanising. Most reasonable people can appreciate an edgy jokes, but these were just hateful and that’s not funny.
I do think some kind of acknowledgement of how unacceptable the comments Scout made would be a good thing, if it’s genuine, for people out there who would like to reconnect with Scout’s content and your brand.
So, part of me is with you here. I do think it's obvious to anyone familiar with internet writing style that Scout's tweets were intended to be flippant, and it's significant that she posted them on a semi-anonymous account with a non-face profile picture, they were intended for friends who know she's not a hateful person. But flippant remarks can still be hurtful — I significantly limit the flippant remarks I make in public, knowing this. I get it.
But another part of me doesn't care about that much right now. To review what Scout's facing, the mob has:
–Twisted traumatic incidents from Scout's life into false rumors to hurt her
–Circulated entirely fabricated stories about her (wait till you hear the one about how Scout bullied a friend into committing suicide)
–Left dishonest product reviews on her products in order to try to destroy our business
–Sent her at least a dozen (at last count) death and rape threats
–Competed loudly for a week to see who could denounce her loudest
Really try and imagine how that would make you feel. Take a second. And then tell me that some flippant shitposts on a non-face account are anywhere near as bad? Like even in the same galaxy of personal harm? If you do, that is interesting, I'll listen to a case if you want to make it. But I do not believe these things are anywhere near proportional. So, being asked to address Scout's remarks feels, on some level, like being asked to support this nonsensical norm: "offensive remarks are bad because they hurt people, so if you go over a certain line, it's understandable that people are given carte blanche to be cruel and dishonest to you in return."
Moreover, I feel like over the course of my adult life, left-leaning culture has decided that the way to better race and gender relations is to be increasingly sensitive about tropes and jokes. I can understand why this was a plausible tack to take, I also bought into this line of thinking for a time. But at this point, it seems like the experiment was an abject failure — CF, minority voters moving to Trump. And in the meantime, our culture has taken a lot of damage, in the form of people living in fear of mob censure. Our popular media and discourse is way less interesting because everyone is afraid of being canceled, and they are right to be!
If we are putting all of that on the table, and acknowledging all of it, I will take a moment to say I feel Scout's humor sometimes veers towards cruelty sometimes in a way that isn't funny, and I have actually told her this previously. It's a perspective that is not alien to me. But man, cancel culture — what the fuck, you know?
I'm sorry to hear your friend experiencing death and rape threats. I've never been through something like that, but it seems like a very disorienting experience, one that is almost certainly not going to land someone in a place of greater empathy or compassion or whatever the purported goal of her online harassers are. I would like to point out, though, that your friend's jokes still have the power to do harm, and though I wish we had a better apparatus for expressing harm and the desire for accountability, the sentiment that anyone who feels hurt simply doesn't have a thick enough skin or is too middle-class is not a helpful one. It's dismissive of the real material/social/spiritual harm of ableism/racism/whatever your friend said (I don't actually know who she is--I only glanced at a few tweets before writing this and extrapolated based on the mention of Red Scare), and it does not help people become safer or more stable or less of whatever it is that drives them to become abusive online. But goodluck to you and your friend, I hope your business is successful.
In principle, I agree. But my feeling is that mass bullying and ostracization is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, and that this kind of algorithmic mob behavior is much, much worse for society than a couple of jokes in poor taste. It's worth mentioning that these tweets existed on the internet for awhile — nobody paid them much mind, because before the election, Scout was "that edgy cool girl we like," and that's someone you give slack to, whereas the moment her conservative politics were revealed, these jokes were treated as proof of her being a Literal Nazi, and grounds to instantly ostracize, however much lying that required.
I'm glad to see you supporting your friend, because I agree that what she is experiencing is probably one of the most singularly devastating social experiences, one that we shouldn't really be deploying at all, and certainly not in such circumstances. But my point was that I hope the violent noise doesn't crowd our the chance for reflection, not that the violent noise is remotely justified. I also see an incredible danger in it, but I see a much more imminent threat in the "edgy" humor that tends to spiral people into further and further Right-wing ideologies that have much greater economic and political power to back them. There are actual laws being enacted across the country to restrict marginalized people's rights, and there just isn't that kind of momentum on the left. I don't mean to imply intense and overwhelming online abuse is not real material or social harm, because it is, but this might be a moment to consider the real ways in which other people are being harmed by right-wing policies, and how those policies are made possible through our attitudes and behavior towards already vulnerable people. I can't speak to the people who thought your friend was cool and edgy and then flipped straight into literal nazi-- the tweets I saw were not to my taste, regardless of politics, and to me reinforces your point that these people are not motivated by justice but by some personal sense of grievance and using politics as a shield.
Kind of agree here, while death and rape threats are incredibly wrong, I'm still of the opinion people should reconcile with their harmful past/present. The people making these threats should be made to face real consequences. People perpetuating hate online should also face their biases and understand what harm may stem from their "edgy jokes". Can we find a way to reign in these horrible threats (on both sides) and have a conversation about what behaviors are stoking the fires of racism in this country?
Mariah - I would like to tell you a story about my first experience with cancellation and the sort of people who practice it.
I was a theater director in the 1990s. I was working on a piece with La Raza (a Latino theater organization). The piece was a political agitprop based on Joan Didion's writings about the 'Little Houses' in El Salvador. A famed Central American artist made the posters. It depicted a corrupt 'generalissimo' with a riding crop, riding on the back of a Campisana.
We were boycotted for being anti-feminism and racist, based on a poster for a show written by a woman, co-directed by a woman, that was a political attack on the atrocities the US government was committing against the people of El Salvador.
No one asked us for clarification. When we reached out to explain the show and the poster, no one would meet with us. They were high on power and self-righteousness, and they had convinced themselves they were 'leftists' - when, in fact, WE were the leftists, and they were the white, feminine faces of power and patriarchy. They could do as they liked, as their 'marginalization' was considered greater than the marginalization of actual victims of violence. They caused deep reputational harm to the (Latino, immigrant) actors and artists because they knew that they could.
Maybe that kind of behavior is also stoking the fires of all kinds of things in our country, hmmm?
Honestly, just, no, I really can't admit that there is real material/social/spiritual harm of somebody calling it Chinese mode when she pulls her cat's ears back. I fully believe we can immanentize the eschaton as far as it will ever be immanentized without anybody ever making amends for a crime such as that.
This is pretty bad analysis by my reckoning. Cancel culture isn't a purely left-driven culture (you even noted evidence of this). Maybe people are just addicted to reality tv-fication. What I'm more certain of is that claimibg others are driving them to shift their political views rightwards is cowardice and often artifice
I'd caution significantly more skepticism in your attribution of the nefarious behavior Scout received to the "Left"- you don't really know who these people are, or their irl political engagement. At the same time there's nothing wrong with wanting to disassociate with noxious political behavior. Yes, everything is political, always has been- your ambivalence is complacency & complicity. Thanks for all the insight over the years, be well.
This is a weird response given that I had a front row seat to this whole affair. I can tell you definitively that this was a left-wing mob, because half the comments were about Trump and fascism, and scattered ones were about Israel, Scout's purported homophobia, etc. There is such a phenomenon as right-wing cancel culture! I've been targeted by right-wing idiots before, and so has my wife! But there's no question that purity politics and group shaming are huge issues on the left, and that they've had a very large political cost, including pushing people to the right. The firing of David Shor comes to mind. For better and worse, the right seems less eager to toss out people who have said offensive things.
Hmmm, I appreciate the measured response. Perhaps it wasn't clear how critical I am of centrist/unaffiliated politics. Do we agree that corporate interests like to drape themselves in leftist/ popular politics for clout without the resume to match? These kinds of campaigns don't seem to be driven by any leftist political group or purpose, just the language is very often co-opted and used as a pitchfork the likes of your benedict arnold friend and competitors. (btw, I know nothing of this affair except what is on this page, so it may be merited to simply ignore this jellyfish).
My feel is left-wing cancel culture can be harshly and injustly puritanical, corporate cancel-culture is optics/money driven, & right-wing cancel culture is of the shoot-em up, suppression of civil liberties, (actually) criminalize of speech bent. It's hard to believe that if you think what happened to Scout was bad that you would go to the right-wing of this country- that does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny.
So, I get the vibe that you are an intellectual person, and thus might not be in tune with how most people form political affiliations. For most people, a lot of politics and philosophy is vibe and friendship based. And let's say you hang out with a broad group of people, from pretty far left to pretty far right — that describes both me and Scout. But then one day, you violate a group norm of the progressive half, and all of your friends from center to far left start bullying and excluding you in vicious ways. You naturally decide to hang out with the people who will still talk to you. What is likely to happen to your politics? It is likely that your politics will become more those of the people who are still treating you like a human being.
Sasha - I object to the misuse of the world leftist. These weren't leftists. We're too busy fighting against wars and trying to get people into housing. We don't have time to bully people online; we're busy scrolling doom posts from Gaza.
These are liberals. They are their own thing, and I find them to be the most horrid group of mean girl bullies on earth.
Cancel Culture is not only not specific to the Left, these kinds of politically-motivated boycotts have largely only been effective on the Right (eg Bud Light). His business will probably not suffer in the slightest in the long term, in part because we don't have a strong and effective Leftwing political sphere in this country, contrary to all of the complaints of Wokeism, or what have you. Had they been in a red-coded industry and one of them blurted out ACAB, they would experience the same backlash, but likely with more and longer-term material effects. I'm also disturbed by the easy equation of "The Left" with random TikTokers and Twitter users. A cursory experience with Leftist people and spaces IRL would show that a vigorous hatred of and effort against Cancel Culture. It's incredibly demoralizing to see the "brand" so effectively tainted that some people (not necessarily speaking of Sasha Chapin here) will abandon their purported principles almost entirely to avoid the schoolmarm-y aesthetics attributed to the Left.
There is, in the Baudrillardian sense, no such thing as an IRL left. I know that you probably personally know some leftists IRL, but for those of us who aren't literally in the tiny, tiny active in-person community, the only left that exists is the one that can be seen online or otherwise publicly.
I don't know what you mean by the Baudrillardian sense, you would have to elaborate, but I don't think it's true to say that the only Left that exists is the online left. However, I am an academic who isn't on social media at all, so that's the perspective I'm coming from. But to the extent that it is true, that the only power the Left has is online is extremely relevant to the discussion here.
Well said. This will pass. I just followed her on X; she’ll find support there. Cancel culture is so unhealthy and definitely contributed to the election rout.
the guy who's afraid of being cancelled himself, yet turns on someone to put the mob off his scent, wow there's a special circle of hell for those people
No wonder so many lifelong Dems hit the red button this election. Call it backlash, call it clarity—but one thing’s certain: when the rules make less sense than the rebels, people change teams. We need Scouts, more than ever.
He received less votes than in 2020. Less people showed up- you can call it apathy, call it muddying the waters, call it misinformation, call it suppression- their strategy worked. We need more caring, now more than ever.
Hey, why not turn this around? There's no bad publicity
Have you seen the troll ads that Tucker Carlson makes for his new nicotine product? Did you know JBP multiplied his reach tremendously via controversy? You can go viral in the conservative space if you take on a similar tactic
"They tried to cancel her? She came back unkillable... The perfumes that Woke Left doesn't want you to wear. Order now at scoutdixonwest.com"
P.S. I'm sorry she experienced the stress of death threats and chaos etc. I'm glad that she's tough enough to handle it well.
We've discussed the fact that this is a move, but being the BASED FREETHINKING UNCANCELABLE perfume brand also sounds tiresome, and doesn't reflect who we are...
But you could at least “retaliate better in self defence” by saying what you just said in this blog post on a podcast or three :) there’s a room for nuance here
A post like this used to make me angry. I would feel angry because it felt like this mob was winning. it felt like we were only ever seeing the woke agenda from the fake news media and that everyone was being cancelled and there was nothing that could be done. I now know that the Woke agenda and all the people that turn into a vicious angry mob every time their feelings get hurt or they think they need to save the world from ideas that are not "OK" with the radical left wing mob is no longer working. Now I cheer for people like Scout that are standing up to the mob. There are more people out there who are normal, and even former woke people and centre left people are abandoning this sinking ship. I will go and buy some of your perfume right now, so that every time I wear it I can smell the sweet smell of the radical left fizzling out to obscurity.
Reading the tweets just makes me laugh. There is nothing really that edgy in there at all! The fact that people respond with such intensity is actually quite pathetic. If you play this right it will help your business. She’s clearly a gifted and articulate person and the people attacking her are tiny, spiteful people. Also I know about your brand now and I didn’t before!
Mob cancellation, threats, and ruining someone's business is objectively wrong. Voting for Trump was also objectively wrong. Neither excuses the other.
generally a big fan of your work! this post did not resonate. while fully appreciating your natural inclination to defend your dear friend and business partner, there's something rotten in saying things like "If you’re fat, you better have BEEN fat. If you GOT fat, I don’t respect you."
yes, canceling sucks! so does saying things that are genuinely hurtful. both things can be true. i have close friends and family members who are overweight due to being on antidepressants or other health reasons that are out of their control. i can imagine them being a fan of your company, purchasing a product, and then being *actually saddened* to read such statements by its most visible founder.
i'm sorry - scout's response is not 'perfect.' what you perceive as 'charisma' might not read as such to everyone else.
being an edgelord and being a founder can end up being mutually exclusive, at least to some degree. when i purchase products, i do 'vote with my dollar' in the marketplace of ideals. kindness is chief among the ones i select for. to become an apologist for behavior like this is to alienate me. i have no desire to publicly cancel scout. i also now have no desire to purchase her products. i'm saying this as someone whose curiosity into fragrances was piqued by your recent posts, and who was looking forward to trying them.
perhaps the biggest shame is that the cancelation orgy, of which you are rightly critical, masks the perhaps silent majority of people who aren't trying to 'come for' scout but at the same time hope for a kinder world, in which comments like the above have no place.
I respect this response! To be clear, I didn't love all of Scout's jokes, and I hope that came across. Anyone who took a second on TikTok (or my Substack) to post about how they didn't appreciate her tweets is fine with me. But the response was so clearly disproportionate that the moral calculus to me is clear — the mob is trying to destroy her life. Society is much worse when this is the punishment for saying dumb things. And I do feel that her response is courageous in addressing the primary dynamic here: before, certain of her fans worshipped her, and now they're acting like she's a Literal Nazi, and the whole thing is unhealthy and extreme. I've seen people try to apologize to a mob before, and it gets you nothing, they just come back for more. They don't want an apology, they want to hurt you.
"I've seen people try to apologize to a mob before, and it gets you nothing, they just come back for more."
for the most vocal and 'outraged', yes that's true. but i have friends with larger audiences than scout navigate mob cancelations like this and come out fine on the other end. the starting point is usually some version of "i'm sorry i said some dumb shit, i was being a troll, those things don't represent my whole self." in one case this was the recommendation of their PR team; in others, it was a choice they made on their own.
honestly it's scout's response, of digging in and citing political persecution rather than treating the discrete posts she made that people are most taking issue with. her defense of her 'unexpected political beliefs' reads like a tacit defense of her statements.
fwiw, i'm a person in the entertainment industry with a decent amount of experience with PR. it's not the mob you need to appease, it's the larger audience of people to whose attention scout's posts have been surfaced, the people who constitute the bulk of your current or potential customers. like me, they're not looking to the mob for their marching orders.
I wonder what accounts for the variance here — we've spoken to many people who have been through this, including professional strategists, and what 100% of them said was "thank God she didn't give in and apologize, that always makes things much worse." To me, her response clearly doesn't read as "I'm awesome, please love everything I say," it's more "this dynamic is crazy." Which it is. But YMMV!
As I've mentioned below, I also think treating this as (at least partially) political persecution is entirely reasonable because those posts existed beforehand, they just weren't treated as proof that she is a Literal Nazi until she liked a right-wing meme, and then the comments were all, "i hope you have an ectopic pregnancy and die". If she were a male leftist comedian, I guarantee she'd have gotten a lot more slack.
the dynamic is crazy for sure. i was in the middle of working with one of the friends i alluded to when things blew up. it sends the nervous system into full tilt.
the fact that her liking the right-wing meme set off the mob certainly indicates a political element. likewise i'd agree that the left (or rather 'liberals' in particular, with whom i don't identify) has a greater penchant for cancelation mania. but (and i might be wrong here) if there hadn't been any fucked up comments to find, this would probably be much less of a nightmare. again, taking myself as an imperfect but perhaps useful representative of the 'silent majority', i don't care what scout's politics are, i just care that norms tend in the direction of decency rather than cruelty.
appreciate you engaging on this & genuinely wish you well as you navigate the storm.
<3
I love the discourse you two just engaged in—truly classy. Switching gears: I think this whole situation might have played out differently if people weren’t so trigger-happy looking for someone to blame after Trump’s win. It feels like a lot of folks are taking up the hobby of randomly channeling their unresolved frustrations into others. Whether that frustration is about the election, confusion in their own lives, or cognitive dissonance in their own beliefs.
I wonder if it's helpful to imagine the mob as bots programmed to carry out “the thing.” It’s not a perfect analogy, but it helps create some peace of mind internally, keeping the focus on what matters.
Best of luck to you as you navigate all of this. I just ordered the sample kit—excited to try it out :)
Really thoughtful replies, Tony. I learned a thing or two! And love this discourse.
"I just care that norms tend in the direction of decency rather than cruelty"
Absolutely.
I don't think her response is satisfactory. She implies she has right wing politics and she doesn't disavow or apologize for anything she's said. She - the critics are basically correct. And when part of what you are selling (with a fragrance) is your image, persona, the intangibles - it's perfectly fine for a consumer to decide that's a big ick. I appreciate that you're her champion and advocate - and also that you and she can't/won't win back everyone you may have alienated. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try - if you want to and if you don't want to be aligned with Trump and right-wing horror.
Pregnant women are literally dying because they can't get treatment. Bleeding out in parking lots. This is the result of right wing policy and Trump, in particular. The right wing is clearly coming for more - they will try to reverse gay marriage, for example. They will slash anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs radically. It's all in print. This isn't just a game or a pose. So, if people thought they had an affinity for someone, and then realized they don't - and that someone apparently doesn't care. It's a shock and hurtful.
This shit is why, despite having radically left views on nearly every subject, I don't make many friends in those circles. Censorious, self-righteous, self-defeating ideologues. It's plain malice masquerading as virtue.
Worse, they aren't usually leftists if you scratch the surface. They tend to support anything merchandised to them as liberal/left without actually doing anything to make the world a more just place.
fantastic write-up because most of this can be reduced to the fact that people hate women
I followed Scout prior to recent developments and genuinely adored her content, I still do, she is clearly a remarkable and fascinating person hence why she was able to amass such a devoted following.
I don’t live in the US and none of Scouts political views bother in the slightest, I also hate cancel culture, especially the thrill people seem to get from seeing the demise of a successful person.
Saying that I think you gloss over the content of those tweets Scout made, some of which were truly dehumanising. Most reasonable people can appreciate an edgy jokes, but these were just hateful and that’s not funny.
I do think some kind of acknowledgement of how unacceptable the comments Scout made would be a good thing, if it’s genuine, for people out there who would like to reconnect with Scout’s content and your brand.
So, part of me is with you here. I do think it's obvious to anyone familiar with internet writing style that Scout's tweets were intended to be flippant, and it's significant that she posted them on a semi-anonymous account with a non-face profile picture, they were intended for friends who know she's not a hateful person. But flippant remarks can still be hurtful — I significantly limit the flippant remarks I make in public, knowing this. I get it.
But another part of me doesn't care about that much right now. To review what Scout's facing, the mob has:
–Twisted traumatic incidents from Scout's life into false rumors to hurt her
–Circulated entirely fabricated stories about her (wait till you hear the one about how Scout bullied a friend into committing suicide)
–Left dishonest product reviews on her products in order to try to destroy our business
–Sent her at least a dozen (at last count) death and rape threats
–Competed loudly for a week to see who could denounce her loudest
Really try and imagine how that would make you feel. Take a second. And then tell me that some flippant shitposts on a non-face account are anywhere near as bad? Like even in the same galaxy of personal harm? If you do, that is interesting, I'll listen to a case if you want to make it. But I do not believe these things are anywhere near proportional. So, being asked to address Scout's remarks feels, on some level, like being asked to support this nonsensical norm: "offensive remarks are bad because they hurt people, so if you go over a certain line, it's understandable that people are given carte blanche to be cruel and dishonest to you in return."
Moreover, I feel like over the course of my adult life, left-leaning culture has decided that the way to better race and gender relations is to be increasingly sensitive about tropes and jokes. I can understand why this was a plausible tack to take, I also bought into this line of thinking for a time. But at this point, it seems like the experiment was an abject failure — CF, minority voters moving to Trump. And in the meantime, our culture has taken a lot of damage, in the form of people living in fear of mob censure. Our popular media and discourse is way less interesting because everyone is afraid of being canceled, and they are right to be!
If we are putting all of that on the table, and acknowledging all of it, I will take a moment to say I feel Scout's humor sometimes veers towards cruelty sometimes in a way that isn't funny, and I have actually told her this previously. It's a perspective that is not alien to me. But man, cancel culture — what the fuck, you know?
I'm sorry to hear your friend experiencing death and rape threats. I've never been through something like that, but it seems like a very disorienting experience, one that is almost certainly not going to land someone in a place of greater empathy or compassion or whatever the purported goal of her online harassers are. I would like to point out, though, that your friend's jokes still have the power to do harm, and though I wish we had a better apparatus for expressing harm and the desire for accountability, the sentiment that anyone who feels hurt simply doesn't have a thick enough skin or is too middle-class is not a helpful one. It's dismissive of the real material/social/spiritual harm of ableism/racism/whatever your friend said (I don't actually know who she is--I only glanced at a few tweets before writing this and extrapolated based on the mention of Red Scare), and it does not help people become safer or more stable or less of whatever it is that drives them to become abusive online. But goodluck to you and your friend, I hope your business is successful.
In principle, I agree. But my feeling is that mass bullying and ostracization is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, and that this kind of algorithmic mob behavior is much, much worse for society than a couple of jokes in poor taste. It's worth mentioning that these tweets existed on the internet for awhile — nobody paid them much mind, because before the election, Scout was "that edgy cool girl we like," and that's someone you give slack to, whereas the moment her conservative politics were revealed, these jokes were treated as proof of her being a Literal Nazi, and grounds to instantly ostracize, however much lying that required.
I'm glad to see you supporting your friend, because I agree that what she is experiencing is probably one of the most singularly devastating social experiences, one that we shouldn't really be deploying at all, and certainly not in such circumstances. But my point was that I hope the violent noise doesn't crowd our the chance for reflection, not that the violent noise is remotely justified. I also see an incredible danger in it, but I see a much more imminent threat in the "edgy" humor that tends to spiral people into further and further Right-wing ideologies that have much greater economic and political power to back them. There are actual laws being enacted across the country to restrict marginalized people's rights, and there just isn't that kind of momentum on the left. I don't mean to imply intense and overwhelming online abuse is not real material or social harm, because it is, but this might be a moment to consider the real ways in which other people are being harmed by right-wing policies, and how those policies are made possible through our attitudes and behavior towards already vulnerable people. I can't speak to the people who thought your friend was cool and edgy and then flipped straight into literal nazi-- the tweets I saw were not to my taste, regardless of politics, and to me reinforces your point that these people are not motivated by justice but by some personal sense of grievance and using politics as a shield.
Kind of agree here, while death and rape threats are incredibly wrong, I'm still of the opinion people should reconcile with their harmful past/present. The people making these threats should be made to face real consequences. People perpetuating hate online should also face their biases and understand what harm may stem from their "edgy jokes". Can we find a way to reign in these horrible threats (on both sides) and have a conversation about what behaviors are stoking the fires of racism in this country?
Mariah - I would like to tell you a story about my first experience with cancellation and the sort of people who practice it.
I was a theater director in the 1990s. I was working on a piece with La Raza (a Latino theater organization). The piece was a political agitprop based on Joan Didion's writings about the 'Little Houses' in El Salvador. A famed Central American artist made the posters. It depicted a corrupt 'generalissimo' with a riding crop, riding on the back of a Campisana.
We were boycotted for being anti-feminism and racist, based on a poster for a show written by a woman, co-directed by a woman, that was a political attack on the atrocities the US government was committing against the people of El Salvador.
No one asked us for clarification. When we reached out to explain the show and the poster, no one would meet with us. They were high on power and self-righteousness, and they had convinced themselves they were 'leftists' - when, in fact, WE were the leftists, and they were the white, feminine faces of power and patriarchy. They could do as they liked, as their 'marginalization' was considered greater than the marginalization of actual victims of violence. They caused deep reputational harm to the (Latino, immigrant) actors and artists because they knew that they could.
Maybe that kind of behavior is also stoking the fires of all kinds of things in our country, hmmm?
Honestly, just, no, I really can't admit that there is real material/social/spiritual harm of somebody calling it Chinese mode when she pulls her cat's ears back. I fully believe we can immanentize the eschaton as far as it will ever be immanentized without anybody ever making amends for a crime such as that.
That wasn't the tweet I was referencing.
This is pretty bad analysis by my reckoning. Cancel culture isn't a purely left-driven culture (you even noted evidence of this). Maybe people are just addicted to reality tv-fication. What I'm more certain of is that claimibg others are driving them to shift their political views rightwards is cowardice and often artifice
I'd caution significantly more skepticism in your attribution of the nefarious behavior Scout received to the "Left"- you don't really know who these people are, or their irl political engagement. At the same time there's nothing wrong with wanting to disassociate with noxious political behavior. Yes, everything is political, always has been- your ambivalence is complacency & complicity. Thanks for all the insight over the years, be well.
This is a weird response given that I had a front row seat to this whole affair. I can tell you definitively that this was a left-wing mob, because half the comments were about Trump and fascism, and scattered ones were about Israel, Scout's purported homophobia, etc. There is such a phenomenon as right-wing cancel culture! I've been targeted by right-wing idiots before, and so has my wife! But there's no question that purity politics and group shaming are huge issues on the left, and that they've had a very large political cost, including pushing people to the right. The firing of David Shor comes to mind. For better and worse, the right seems less eager to toss out people who have said offensive things.
Hmmm, I appreciate the measured response. Perhaps it wasn't clear how critical I am of centrist/unaffiliated politics. Do we agree that corporate interests like to drape themselves in leftist/ popular politics for clout without the resume to match? These kinds of campaigns don't seem to be driven by any leftist political group or purpose, just the language is very often co-opted and used as a pitchfork the likes of your benedict arnold friend and competitors. (btw, I know nothing of this affair except what is on this page, so it may be merited to simply ignore this jellyfish).
My feel is left-wing cancel culture can be harshly and injustly puritanical, corporate cancel-culture is optics/money driven, & right-wing cancel culture is of the shoot-em up, suppression of civil liberties, (actually) criminalize of speech bent. It's hard to believe that if you think what happened to Scout was bad that you would go to the right-wing of this country- that does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny.
So, I get the vibe that you are an intellectual person, and thus might not be in tune with how most people form political affiliations. For most people, a lot of politics and philosophy is vibe and friendship based. And let's say you hang out with a broad group of people, from pretty far left to pretty far right — that describes both me and Scout. But then one day, you violate a group norm of the progressive half, and all of your friends from center to far left start bullying and excluding you in vicious ways. You naturally decide to hang out with the people who will still talk to you. What is likely to happen to your politics? It is likely that your politics will become more those of the people who are still treating you like a human being.
Sasha - I object to the misuse of the world leftist. These weren't leftists. We're too busy fighting against wars and trying to get people into housing. We don't have time to bully people online; we're busy scrolling doom posts from Gaza.
These are liberals. They are their own thing, and I find them to be the most horrid group of mean girl bullies on earth.
Cancel Culture is not only not specific to the Left, these kinds of politically-motivated boycotts have largely only been effective on the Right (eg Bud Light). His business will probably not suffer in the slightest in the long term, in part because we don't have a strong and effective Leftwing political sphere in this country, contrary to all of the complaints of Wokeism, or what have you. Had they been in a red-coded industry and one of them blurted out ACAB, they would experience the same backlash, but likely with more and longer-term material effects. I'm also disturbed by the easy equation of "The Left" with random TikTokers and Twitter users. A cursory experience with Leftist people and spaces IRL would show that a vigorous hatred of and effort against Cancel Culture. It's incredibly demoralizing to see the "brand" so effectively tainted that some people (not necessarily speaking of Sasha Chapin here) will abandon their purported principles almost entirely to avoid the schoolmarm-y aesthetics attributed to the Left.
There is, in the Baudrillardian sense, no such thing as an IRL left. I know that you probably personally know some leftists IRL, but for those of us who aren't literally in the tiny, tiny active in-person community, the only left that exists is the one that can be seen online or otherwise publicly.
I don't know what you mean by the Baudrillardian sense, you would have to elaborate, but I don't think it's true to say that the only Left that exists is the online left. However, I am an academic who isn't on social media at all, so that's the perspective I'm coming from. But to the extent that it is true, that the only power the Left has is online is extremely relevant to the discussion here.
Well said. This will pass. I just followed her on X; she’ll find support there. Cancel culture is so unhealthy and definitely contributed to the election rout.
the guy who's afraid of being cancelled himself, yet turns on someone to put the mob off his scent, wow there's a special circle of hell for those people
Sorry to hear it Sasha. If Scout wants to talk to a woman who’s been there, feel free to drop me a line.
You just got a new customer
This is sad and unfair and makes me really angry.
No wonder so many lifelong Dems hit the red button this election. Call it backlash, call it clarity—but one thing’s certain: when the rules make less sense than the rebels, people change teams. We need Scouts, more than ever.
He received less votes than in 2020. Less people showed up- you can call it apathy, call it muddying the waters, call it misinformation, call it suppression- their strategy worked. We need more caring, now more than ever.
How is erasing someone for liking a meme, thereby harming their business -- caring? Take stock of your hypocrisy.
?
Hey, why not turn this around? There's no bad publicity
Have you seen the troll ads that Tucker Carlson makes for his new nicotine product? Did you know JBP multiplied his reach tremendously via controversy? You can go viral in the conservative space if you take on a similar tactic
"They tried to cancel her? She came back unkillable... The perfumes that Woke Left doesn't want you to wear. Order now at scoutdixonwest.com"
P.S. I'm sorry she experienced the stress of death threats and chaos etc. I'm glad that she's tough enough to handle it well.
We've discussed the fact that this is a move, but being the BASED FREETHINKING UNCANCELABLE perfume brand also sounds tiresome, and doesn't reflect who we are...
Yeah, that makes sense.
But you could at least “retaliate better in self defence” by saying what you just said in this blog post on a podcast or three :) there’s a room for nuance here
A post like this used to make me angry. I would feel angry because it felt like this mob was winning. it felt like we were only ever seeing the woke agenda from the fake news media and that everyone was being cancelled and there was nothing that could be done. I now know that the Woke agenda and all the people that turn into a vicious angry mob every time their feelings get hurt or they think they need to save the world from ideas that are not "OK" with the radical left wing mob is no longer working. Now I cheer for people like Scout that are standing up to the mob. There are more people out there who are normal, and even former woke people and centre left people are abandoning this sinking ship. I will go and buy some of your perfume right now, so that every time I wear it I can smell the sweet smell of the radical left fizzling out to obscurity.
Reading the tweets just makes me laugh. There is nothing really that edgy in there at all! The fact that people respond with such intensity is actually quite pathetic. If you play this right it will help your business. She’s clearly a gifted and articulate person and the people attacking her are tiny, spiteful people. Also I know about your brand now and I didn’t before!
Mob cancellation, threats, and ruining someone's business is objectively wrong. Voting for Trump was also objectively wrong. Neither excuses the other.
Voting for Biden / Harris would have been just as wrong unless one is ok with genocide and endless bodies of small children blown to smithereens.
Enjoy the third act of your morality play. Chekhov's gun was openly presented in the first act. Let's see how it turns out.