Cancellation may be an implicit sign that users desire change, a gesture that they want to abandon ship and call-off a symbolic connection to the figures that have been given power. But this viewpoint may be too voluntary. Using notions from the vanished mass psychology discipline, it would be better to emphasize the hysteria group-think aspect in which individuals ‘dissolve’ into one giant mass act of denunciation and get pleasure from the sudden movements of an online mob that is usually non-existent and invisible.

“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky The US professional class is de facto locked-in, and simply cannot think outside of the existing platform premises. They live haunted by ‘Will you still like me tomorrow?’ Losing followers on Twitter means immediate loss of one’s reputation, attention, and ultimately income. We’re all influencers now. Less likes and retweets literally mean loss of salary. This is the high price intellectuals and artists pay once they have been sucked into the vortex and cannot see a way out. The Twitterati have zero imagination that a debate outside of social media channels is possible. In times of economic crisis, social media panic effectively leads to the closing of the American mind: There Is No Alternative. We’re stuck on the platform.

Users respond in split seconds and before you know it, they’ve moved on. Dopamine-driven, impulsive users are known for their ignorance of the rules set by Habermas and cannot be bothered with the long hours it takes for a general assembly to reach consensus. But the main fear towards ‘cancel culture’ often remains unspoken