Although some younger conservatives may believe that cancel culture has existed for a very long time, it is only relatively new in British history. Before my own cancellation, online comments related to one’s work were not considered related to keeping a placement. Although posting like things may cause them to be deleted and/or be excused, it has never been regarded as a criminal action. That all changed ten years ago.
In 2013, I served as the chief professional officer of Business Insider. When the company announcement business was only a 20-person operation when I was appointed as its chief engineer in 2010, I oversaw a three-person tech team. By the late 2013 year, Business Insider had grown to a 200-person organization with 25 employees on my technical staff. We were flying high, and I was working long hours, our agency’s achievements was extremely pleasant. I and my staff were able to support the entire company in carrying out its duties to expand and keep the website up and running. I admired the custom content management system we had created, which gave the company an advantage over established rivals in the business news industry, like Forbes and Bloomberg.  ,
I used to work in advertising and media adjacent areas at the time, as many other people did. No one at the time believed that Twitter was a part of the real world. Online users posted with disrespect and merely tossed off tweets to please their friends. I posted a mix of business information related to my work and some eschewedly liberal studies and fun. Twitter was a little smaller site back then in public, with a more upbeat feeling.
Fired for a Tweet
However, in a culture of fear, a shadow fell over Online in 2013 and covered that ignorance.
The incident that caused that dark, as it became known as, was” Donglegate.” A female technology missionary for Sendgrid named Adria Richards was at a meeting and overheard some man tech workers joking biologically about the word “dongle” and she took offence. She attempted to have them fired from their jobs and the entire market by posting a picture of them to Twitter. People on Twitter was able to contribute to this incident, and that only made it more substantial. One of the people lost his job, but a reaction against the surveillance and bullying resulted in Richards being fired because well.
On the subject of perceived animosity toward women in technology, which in those days also had a bit of an irreverent boys ‘ club attitude, barrels of ink were spilled on the subject. Women who demanded tech handle its hidden sexism published editorials for Business Insider. After voicing my own antagonism to this tale freely to my acquaintances within the office, I was asked to write an essay sharing my view.
The digital female activist contingent was enraged when I wrote that essay, which was published afterward. A columnist for Valleywag, a writer for the Gawker house, looked through my old comments to find something that was relevant to the issue at hand that she could use to undermine me. She created the book strategy of withdrawal as a way to condemn me.  ,
She discovered some of my long-forgotten trendy jokes that I had previously posted three years prior, in 2010, before starting work at Business Insider, and when I only had a few hundred subscribers. She published an article that quoted them without any perspective, labeling me in the article” Your New Tech Bro Nightmare,” and quoted them without environment. Mainstream media outlets, willing to publish articles critical of perceived discrimination in the software industry, jumped on the account, and within 24 hours I had been forced to resign from my position, eventually to be blacklisted from any further employment in the industry. The website removed the original article I wrote that started the scandal.
Tactic Spreads
I became one of the first people ever fired for tweeting, and sadly, far from the last. Cancel culture had been established.
Cancellation is a covert strategy used to silence political opponents by focusing on their employers or professional backgrounds. This shaming tactic leverages politically incorrect internet content the victim has written that is wholly unrelated to their actual job. This information may have been posted under a pseudonym occasionally. Sometimes the content was posted a long time ago, or while the victim was just a child, or it has since been deleted but found in an archive. Often cancellation seizes upon messages that were sent privately, or to a limited group, and that were never intended to be made public. Cancellation frequently capitalizes on jokes that the attackers pretend were taken seriously or that are used to imply that they mean something that was never intended at the time. The agitator uses this information to stoke an online mob, not just against the victim but also against their employer or professional affiliates, to make them retaliate against them.
This tactic of seeking professional repercussions over conduct unrelated to the job was deployed many times over the next decade. Twitter had turned into a place of fear.
Justine Sacco, a communications director for the company that owns Match.com, was fired from her position just a few months after my firing for a contentious joke. She had made the joke and then gotten on an intercontinental flight with no internet service. The Twitter user turned into a giddy digital lynching. People were waiting at the gate recording her reaction to the viral response, and others were counting down the seconds until her flight landed.
Other examples abound. After the mainstream media leaked a memo James Damore’s internally published memo recommending solutions for the lack of women in the technology sector, it was fired by Google. Later, activists plotted to deter him from getting a second job in the field by threatening to hire him as a partner.
” Papa” John Schnatter was ousted from the national pizza company he founded over comments leaked from a role-playing exercise. Racist remarks he critical quotes were leaked and attributed to him as if they had been made out of thin air and used against him to oust him from the business.
After an internal team email about him discussing the team’s African American fanbase was leaked to the media, Bruce Levenson, the former owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, was forced to sell his team.
Nicholas and Erika Christakis resigned from their positions at Yale after Erika sent a mass email to students regarding politically incorrect Halloween costumes, which turned into a campus wide-controversy and major national news that resulted in Nicholas being subject to a modern struggle session before both of their resignations.
Curt Schilling, the reigning World Series winner, was fired from his ESPN analyst position after making a Twitter meme that was deemed “anti-Muslim,” and was later fired entirely after sharing a Facebook post that was deemed “anti-transgender.” There are many more illustrations.
Chilling Effect
As people began to realize that their unrelated comments could be used against them by both professional and personal enemies, a chill began to set in the country. The corporate news media reveled in each firing as the outrage machine continued on without an end in sight. The” crimes” committed were inconsequential, but lives were destroyed over these minor incidents of perceived racism or sexism.
The stage has been set for a reversal now that Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration and Elon Musk’s launch of his Department of Government Efficiency have been announced. A progressive journalist with a pro-activist background began looking through DOGE employees for objectionable content. She discovered a deleted Twitter account once owned by a young DOGE employee named Marko Elez that had contained comments about Indians and minorities that she considered racist. He was quickly forced to resign after she broadcast these remarks in The Wall Street Journal.
Significant backlash followed from Trump supporters. Trump, political pundits, and Silicon Valley luminaries including Musk himself had indicated that Trump’s election victory signaled the end of wokeness and cancellation, but here it was rearing its head within that very administration. Trump’s supporters made their voices heard as they grew weary of political dissidents being fired for having politically incorrect views and jokes.  ,
Backlash
Now the Republican outrage matched the progressive voices. The issue was whether an employee’s past comments, whether or not they were offensive or true, were grounds for dismissal. Elez’s firing caused the anger and dissatisfaction of Trump-supporting groups to become public, and Musk was asked in a poll to ask if he should reconsider. Vice President J. D. Vance personally weighed in and recommended that Elez be reinstated, as did many other prominent figures in tech and politics such as Balaji Srinivasan and Christopher Rufo. Musk announced that Elez would be forgiven and rehired shortly after the poll’s conclusion, with 78 percent of the voters saying that Elez should be reinstated.
It appears to many observers as though the power of cancellation and shame has finally been lost on a prominent target. The sight of prominent figures like Vance and Musk standing their ground against the media cancellation industry, and Elez being rehired, is an important moment for free speech and American culture.
The majestic cancellation machine is now slack-jawed, spitting gears, and bringing the media hall monitors to a halt, oblivious to its appearance. It only needed a steadfast “no” from those in charge of hiring and firing people. They have finally put their collective foot down and said” No more”. The activists and journalists who are causing outrage by themselves have no power; it was just fear of shame that caused some to do their bidding.
Although it’s still unknown whether cancellation will continue to be a force in American life, this is the first piece of the puzzle, and I for one am incredibly appreciative of being present to witness it. Let’s hope it can be buried for good, and the climate of fear ended once and for all.
Up until 2013, Pax Dickinson served as Business Insider’s chief technology officer before becoming patient zero of cancel culture. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, as a tech founder, writer, and entrepreneur.
