There is an option on Substack – as there is on Patreon – to give feedback when you choose to unsubscribe from a publication. On Patreon, there are boxes you can tick – “my financial situation changed”, is one option; “Joe Blogs wasn’t as active as I expected” is another – but there’s a text field, too, where you can elaborate on your reasons.
On Substack, there are no boxes to tick. Rather, there is just the text field, which you can choose to leave blank, if you’d prefer not to share your reasons for taking your money elsewhere.
Most people take this road. They unsubscribe quietly, without much fanfare, leaving the text field blank and (I imagine) closing the window without a backwards glance.
By and large, those who do take the time to fill it out use the opportunity to apologise, to make sure I know that it’s not a personal thing.
A recent entry read:
“I’m so sorry to be cancelling but I’m returning to work after maternity leave and facing a childcare bill of €2k per month so I’m having to cut back everywhere. I’m very sorry to be missing your writing but hopefully I’ll be back as a subscriber soon.”
Another wise owl said:
“Longtime subscriber and lover of Rosemarys writing. Just taking a break from all subscription services and will see what ones I miss. I hope that's okay. i'm spending a fortune on them all.”
But a recent one joined a very exclusive club, comprising people for whom their cancellation is, in fact, very personal.
I remember, on Patreon, someone once unsubscribed and commented, “disagreed with offensive views shared”. Full stop.
I agonised over what “offensive” views these could have been (although I did not doubt, for a second, that I had shared them). I have never allowed the potential for offence to prevent my sharing of my opinion, although, as I’ve got older, I like to think that I am marginally less offensive for its own sake, and more considered in my opinion-sharing.
I thought about emailing the person to ask them, not because I had any notion of apologising or changing whatever views I had espoused, but because I hated the not knowing of it all.
(The feedback is technically anonymous, but you can often figure out who said what by narrowing down who unsubscribed on which day, and when it was posted.)
Most recently, someone unsubscribed from my Substack citing, “Our views on johnny depp v amber heard do not align.”
How weird, I thought, that my views on a celebrity trial – and a defamation trial, at that – are enough to put someone off reading my writing. Then I remembered that I had gone on to Instagram and unfollowed anyone I previously followed who “liked” Johnny Depp’s celebratory Instagram post.
Is this cancel culture? Is that what this is? Cancelling, unsubscribing from, unfollowing someone because you do not see things the same way they do; turning away from people whose views do not align with yours, and allowing that one subject, that one diverging road, to govern all of your interactions with that person (or, even, ensure that you have no further interactions with them).
I was asked, recently, what I thought about “cancel culture”. I hate the question, but I answered it anyway.
“Cancel culture is not a thing,” I said. Look at Louis CK, back telling jokes on stage; Roman Polanski’s The Palace, starring Mickey Rourke and John Cleese (not exactly big names in PC circles, but big names all the same), is in post-production; JK Rowling, said to have been “cancelled” over her TERF-y views on trans rights, is still barrelling along, with the latest film in the Harry Potter franchise being released just last year.
“You don’t have a right to an audience,” I said. “And if the audience you do have decides to go elsewhere because of something you’ve said or done, that’s okay – you haven’t been cancelled. The people who used to pay attention to you have just decided not to listen to you any more.”
“That’s an over-simplification,” said my friend, “But okay.” We talked about something else.
I like to think it’s a sign of my own maturity that someone can tell me I’m over simplifying something and change the subject without my insisting on hashing the whole thing out.
The thing is, she was – she is – right. That is an over-simplification. Cancel culture is about more than just choosing not to engage with someone whose views you disagree with; it’s about trying to whip up a frenzy, usually on social media, and instigate a collective cancellation, a collective unfollowing, a collective choice, often not without a small dollop of peer pressure to go along with it.
There’s an episode of Buffy (of course) titled The Pack in which Xander and a group of his fellow high school students are infected by a cursed pack of hyenas when they engage in a spot of bullying in precisely the right place, at precisely the right time and start to take on the characteristics of the hyenas themselves.
Aired in 1997, The Pack pre-dates cancel culture. It pre-dates Twitter, by almost a decade. But it shares some attributes with what we know now as cancel culture, as meted out (usually) on social media.
In order to instigate a pack-style attack, the victim of choice doesn’t even need to be a “weak link”, so to speak. The strength is in the power of the pack; no one, no matter how strong (or, in high school terms, popular or athletic), is safe. (Although, inevitably, the infected students in The Pack start off by choosing the path of least resistance.)
To be clear: I don’t think the person who unsubscribed from my Substack, citing my “objectionable” views on the Depp v Heard trial, is attempting to “cancel” me. Their choice to unsubscribe is not emblematic of cancel culture, but in a way, it could be, if they took to Twitter and found a cross-section of users who were both subscribers of mine and Johnny Depp stans. (That’s a big if.)
I don’t think people should, necessarily, be “punished” for expressing their views, no matter how much I might disagree with them (within reason; I am not defending people’s rights to be racist or transphobic, for example). But it’s a tricky one, because I also fully respect an individual’s decision not to support someone whose views they find objectionable.
During the campaign to repeal the 8th amendment, for example, I was determined not to support businesses who were found to be donating to the Iona Institute (or similar); though I have been to the White Moose Cafe before, once owner Paul Stenson held up a sign saying “I believe in Santa Claus”, “riffing” “hilariously” on the “I believe her” posters that had been seen at a protest against the “not guilty” verdicts doled out at 2018’s Belfast rape trial, I decided that I would never again give them my custom.
I will not watch Woody Allen films. I would never go to a Louis CK gig. I wouldn’t buy a new JK Rowling book – nor one by Robert Galbraith, the pen name under which she writes crime novels (but I will let our children read and watch Harry Potter, so am I a hypocrite? probably). I wouldn’t buy – or wear – anything by D&G, although I was still buying Chanel perfume (and coveting Chanel bags) even after I knew about Karl Lagerfeld’s fatphobia.
It’s all incredibly complex, isn’t it? Knowing which principles to stand by and which to let slip for the sake of giving your children the magic of Hogwarts, for example, or giving yourself the magic of quilted calfskin handbags. Figuring out whether you’re buying into cancel culture by boycotting some business or another, or whether your tiny, individual stand even makes a difference.
For what it’s worth, it was previously proven in a UK court that Johnny Depp assaulted Amber Heard and put her in fear of her life. The idea that her description of herself as a “domestic abuse victim” was defamatory to Depp is laughable – regardless of whether she also physically assaulted him at any point; whether or not she took a shit in his bed (the evidence suggests she didn’t, by the way); whether or not she ‘goaded’ him or taunted him or whatever other accusations were levelled at her.
The UN, by the way, defines domestic abuse – “also called ‘domestic violence’ or ‘intimate partner violence’ as:
a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone.
If that assertion means I’m cancelled, or makes you take your subscription money elsewhere, that’s okay. It’s no more (or less) than I would do.
"Our views on johnny depp v amber heard do not align."