One of the unsatisfying, "neither/nor" stances on the conjecture of cancel culture is based on the flight of big players from accountability. That is, insofar as it exists, CC exists as a strategy to push backlash down the social ladder and away from connected institutional players in the media game.
So per this account, it's not "cancel culture" when an abusive customer gets recorded abusing a customer service worker, but it is kinda cancel culture that the worker is abandoned in this scenario
Not sure how I feel about this claim. I'm open to criticism.
I think part of what makes it unsatisfying is that it doesn't guarantee any symmetry of righteousness/evil.
It also relies on a nearly illusory distinction between those higher up and those lower down.
Even if this view is only true in small part, I think we would be wise to adopt the credo "Shit rolls downhill, so don't be that shit."
Buuut this also has the advantage of being completely consistent with everything else going on in the social sphere, such as:
- collapse of little remaining social trust
- self-preserving behavior of few remaining institutions
- elites adapting to threats from scandal
Hell, you even have a small phrasebook of phrases that big accounts will use to pin the blame on little people: EG
"The intern responsible for that tweet has been fired." etc