Michael Mitchell: Archive

Business logos represent brands, so changing them "defiantly" can be the perfect passive-aggressive way to take the power back when the inmates start running the asylum, to avoid being a victim of your own success.

I don't know the proper terminology, but brands are all about ownership and reputation, your relationship with your customers, followers, fans, etc. If you try too hard to please them, if you'll go so far as to change who you are, who you want to be, then who really owns your business or product(s)? Controlling people see that weakness and uncertainty and then they pounce, just like aggressive people do to passive people every day in personal relationships.

Smart owners figure it out eventually, before it's too late to reverse course. They realize they can't make decisions, that businesses can't function co-dependently, just like people can't, even with the instant feedback provided by social media, which actually makes unhealthy relationships worse.

That's the psychology motivating "cancel culture": pussy-whipped brands acting like bitches, so to speak. It's not about standards and quality, which is a personal issue. It's about integrity, about standing for your personal beliefs.

The last season of Game Of Thrones, for instance, was almost universally panned, but it wasn't because its quality dropped, it was because people didn't like how it ended. They didn't approve of how the writers chose to conclude all their favorite storylines. When did so many people become so petty? When we bought into the belief that our input actually matters.

That's the bullshit, both sides of it. How can producers please everyone? How can they not? If I decide to kill off one of my characters, should I test it in some Twitter poll before I do? What if the vote is 60-40? Do I decide against my idea because I may lose 40% of my viewers? I just learned 60% of them agree. There's no answer to such questions. It's thinking like this that causes the problem.

"Cancel culture", a term I disgree with, powered by social media, is dangerous to the actual culture. It depends on the context, on your personal preferences and beliefs. If businesses are targeting a certain demographic, and they have access to instant feedback, how do you know they're not just selling you snakeoil? Demogoguery? It doesn't matter. Businesses won't last long if they practice deceit. Apply that same producer/consumer relationship dynamic to politics and religion, though, not to the marketplace of physical goods and services, which any of us are qualified to judge, but to the marketplace of ideas. Your favorite restaurant or TV show is easy to discern, but when education and laws and regulations and political representatives are the product, then is someone mindlessly catering to the greatest number of people really in any individual's best interest? Is that the best way to regulate our lives? Should our lives be regulated at all? By any means? By anyone?

The phenomenon of "cancel culture" appears to be directed against economic power in order to suppress or promote political views, but it's that method of gaining political power that's the real threat. There's a reason why governments regulate businesses and not individuals. It doesn't appear to harm us, to affect our personal lives, but every cost and loss is passed on to us just the same, otherwise the businesses would fail, so we naturally think the reverse is true, that if we take away someone's business or platform, then we'll eliminate their ideas as well.

In order to really make sense of this issue, you have to see yourself in both roles, producer and consumer. Millions of people disparaging someone for their personal views or actions in order to harm their business is not the same as simply not buying their product. It sends the wrong message. It's a political issue effectively used to deny someone's rights. It may not be illegal in a free country, because there's no use of force involved, but it's not consistent with a free country's ideals, either. It's a democratic form of tyranny, of the suppression of free speech, because most people will respond to the emotions and not the ideas.

There's a crucial difference between ideas and individuals, between disagreement and hate. Hating the haters, rather than the ideas, actually covers up all the ideas. It leads people to censor themselves rather than face their personal beliefs. The practice itself is the result of a bad idea: unlimited majority rule. The best ideas can't beat the worst ideas if they're not heard.