Suzy Weiss: The Internet Ruined Their Lives. Now, They’re Back. What does life look like after cancellation? James Frey and Lee Tilghman on public shame, letting go, and leaning into being outsiders.
Getting canceled “can also be freeing,” writes Suzy Weiss. “It immunizes you to shame.” (Illustration by The Free Press, images via Getty and @LeeFromAmerica)
I was an early casualty of cancel culture. It was 2013. I was 17, and I had written a story for The Wall Street Journal about getting rejected from college that went viral. I bemoaned not having “killer SAT scores” and “two moms,” and the whole thing was a joke. Except, it attracted millions of reactions, most of them bad, that were chronicled all over the internet, but mostly on a website that I’d never visited before called Twitter. “I wish I could meet Suzy Lee Weiss so I could punch that whiny bitch in the face” is a representative tweet about me from around this time. Overwhelmed, though deeply grateful my braces had already come off, I went on the Today show to clear my name, and hoped that after I did, I would never have to talk about the ordeal again. Reader, I’ve been talking about it for over a decade. But I’ll save the whole story for another day. This article is featured in Suzy Weiss on Culture. Sign up here to get an update every time a new piece is published. Getting canceled like this, a thoroughly modern phenomenon, is something we’ve written about many times here at The Free Press, and for good reason. Cancel culture ruins individual lives, but it also puts all of us on tenterhooks. By making an example of one person, it sends a message to everyone else: “Stay in line, or you’ll be next.” Being torn apart online, which has rightly been likened to social death, is brutal. Trust me...
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