26. Fear of being cancelled, Part 2: Why you’re probably not cancellable

What if everything you think you know about being "canceled" is wrong?

Your fear of being canceled is based on two common misconceptions about how the world works. Today I'm addressing those misconceptions with evidence that might surprise you.

In this episode:

• Why being "nobody special" is your superpower — the math behind why cancellation attempts fail for most creators
• The attention span problem plaguing internet mobs — why even major controversies have expiration dates measured in days
• The comeback formula hiding in plain sight — what successful recoveries reveal about audience psychology
• Why good intentions aren't just nice-to-have — the practical protection that comes from genuine service 

Ready to stop creating from fear? This is part 2 of 3 in my series on overcoming the fear of being canceled once and for all. Enjoy this episode, and tune in next week.

Transcript

Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening.

Last week we explored how the fear of being canceled can actually lead to creative suicide. This is part two of a three-part series on how to overcome the fear of being canceled once and for all.

And last week I actually told you that it was going to be a two-part series, but I started working on the second part and I realized it was getting so long and it was all such good stuff. I was like, people need to hear this in two more parts so that each part can really sink in. So it's actually going to be the second of a total of three-part series.

So where was I? Right. So in the first part we talked about how to develop an unshakeable relationship with yourself because the first layer of the work of completely overcoming the fear of being canceled is to work on the relationship with yourself. It's psychological. You know that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "No one can hurt your feelings without your consent." I think it's very much the same thing. No one can cancel you without your consent.

So that said, today I want to go to the next layer. Today I want to give you some perspectives that will completely change how you think about the very idea of being canceled. Because a lot of people talk about it—oh, so-and-so has been canceled, so-and-so has been canceled, blah, blah, blah. But when you actually think about it, a lot of your fears about being canceled are likely based on some pretty flawed assumptions about how the world actually works.

So on top of encouraging you to not be driven by fear, I want to give you some reality checks. This is how the world actually works versus how you think it works when your brain is really scared. When your brain is like, "Oh my God, this horrible thing's going to happen," sometimes what it needs is reassurance. Sometimes what it needs is: "Look, even if the whole world hates you, you are okay if you have your own back. No one outside of you can abandon you if you don't abandon yourself."

Sometimes learning how to believe that is the work, but other times you need a splash of cold water in your face so you wake up from the scary visions that are truly just nightmares that you have at night. It's really frightening when you're being chased around by scary monsters and you're breaking out in sweats, but then you wake up and you splash water on your face and you're like, "Wait, that wasn't real. That was just a dream," right?

So reality checks, splashes of water on your face. That's what I want to give you today. We've got to distinguish between what's real and what's not, because when you realize what's not, a lot of the scary monsters lose their scariness.

So let's get into it.

Reality Check Number One: You Are Just Not That Important

You're not that important. You're pretty insignificant. Most of us are pretty invisible. The internet is massive. Billions of people are active online daily. You think you are at risk of being canceled? Guess what? You are competing with world leaders, Hollywood celebrities, major corporations. You're competing with all of these people for outrage bandwidth.

To put it in less polite words: no one really gives a shit about canceling you, and that's a good thing. Unless you're listening and you happen to be Kylie Jenner, then maybe you're an exception. But if you are not Kylie Jenner, no one gives a shit about you and no one gives a shit about me. And that's a good thing.

Because guess what? Your brain thinks you're the main character. We experience our own lives in first person, and so everything feels monumentally important to us. Every mistake we make feels magnified a trillion times. But to everyone else, you're just another data point in an endless stream of content. What feels like your career-defining moment is invisible to 99.999% of the internet. No one cares who you are.

What feels like your biggest, most embarrassing, humiliating flop on the internet is also invisible to 99.99% of the internet. No one cares. And I said if you're Kylie Jenner, maybe you're an exception to all this, but also I take that back. Because guess what? My mom doesn't know who Kylie Jenner is. My dad doesn't know who Kylie Jenner is. My auntie in Korea doesn't know who Kylie Jenner is. There are more people in the world who don't know who Kylie Jenner is than people who do know. That means the majority of people don't know and don't give a shit who Kylie Jenner is, and she's one of the biggest celebrities in the world, right?

That means if Kylie Jenner gets canceled, falls in disgrace, most of the world doesn't care. Doesn't know. It's not a thing. So are you as important, are you as well-known as Kylie Jenner? I don't think so.

So whatever you think might happen or has happened, you can just pick up where you left off and keep going because you are just not that important. You're not important enough to cancel. Even Kylie Jenner is not important enough to cancel, so you can just keep going.

Reality Check Number Two: The Mob Has Very Limited Attention

Okay, you can say, "Okay, Simone, maybe I'm not important enough to cancel in the first place, but what if I did somehow capture some of the Internet's attention in a negative way? What if that destroys everything I built?"

That brings me to the second reality check, second splash of cold water in your face, which is that the mob has very limited attention and any kind of cancellation is always absurdly brief.

Have you ever noticed the internet outrage machine moves from one target to another very quickly? Even if you did get canceled, everyone's going to move on in two seconds.

Tell me who's the world's single greatest pop star right now? Who's the person who changes entire economies of entire cities, who has a fan base so loyal and so passionate that other people kind of low-key fear them? If you guessed Taylor Swift, you guessed right. She and her mighty army of Swifties.

She is so monolithically popular and powerful in 2025 (which is when I'm recording this) that it's almost hard to remember that she actually weathered multiple cancellation attempts throughout her career. Do you remember what happened in 2016? The whole Kanye West phone call controversy? Oh my God, everyone hated her. She was portrayed all over as the ultimate vicious, racist white woman villain that smeared a black man and was super manipulative about it.

And the whole of the internet was posting snake emojis and article upon article about how terrible she was and how over she is. And at the time, it genuinely felt like a career-ending moment. And where are we now? Within a few years, she kind of went underground for a minute and then she released Reputation. By 2019, she was breaking records again, and today she is the most monolithically powerful person in pop, if not generally one of the most powerful people in the world.

And the mob moved on to new targets. Forgot that she was canceled. There's probably Gen Z today that don't remember that she was canceled in 2016. And her fan base just kept growing and growing and she's just got more and more powerful. And what happened to Kanye who took her down? He's totally... well, you know what I mean.

Here's what you've got to know: Online mobs suffer from collective ADHD. Imagine the person with the most severe ADHD you know, and then multiply that by a thousand. That's online mobs. They need constant stimulation, fresh controversies. Next thing, the next thing, the next thing. Two seconds. Two seconds. Two seconds to sustain their energy.

A person can dominate headlines for days or even weeks, trending across platforms in a seemingly endless barrage of controversy and criticism, only to be completely forgotten when the next scandal emerges. The outrage that once felt all-consuming and permanent simply evaporates completely.

Case Study: James Charles

I did some research to find other examples of people who got briefly canceled and reemerged. James Charles, one of the biggest makeup influencers on YouTube, went through one of the most dramatic falls from grace in YouTube history. In May 2019, his mentor, Tati Westbrook, posted a 43-minute video called "Bye Sister" that accused Charles of sexual predation, manipulating straight men, and general disloyalty.

This video instantly went viral and Charles lost over 3 million subscribers in just a few days. Just imagine: 3 million subscribers in days. It was the fastest subscriber drop ever recorded at the time. The whole beauty community turned on him completely overnight. Other influencers who had been friends with him publicly distanced themselves from him overnight. Brands dropped sponsorships overnight. His career seemed finished. He went from 16 million to under 13 million subscribers almost overnight, and the hemorrhaging continued.

But Charles didn't let himself believe that he was canceled. He fought back strategically. He posted his own response video methodically debunking the alleged lies with receipts and screenshots and evidence. And he kept showing up and he kept working. Gradually public opinion shifted. Other creators began questioning Westbrook's motives, especially when it emerged that she was launching her own competitor brand.

By 2021, Charles had not only recovered his lost subscribers, but surpassed his previous numbers, reaching over 25 million. Today, he still remains one of YouTube's biggest beauty creators, while Westbrook largely faded from prominence.

Case Study: Dave Chappelle

In more recent memory, even if you're not into niche topics on YouTube, you might have heard about what happened to Dave Chappelle. He faced intense backlash in 2021 over his Netflix special "The Closer," where he made jokes about transgender people that were viewed by many, including myself, as offensive. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups organized boycotts, Netflix employees staged walkouts. It was a big thing. There were calls to remove the special from the platform.

For weeks, it seemed like Dave Chappelle might face serious consequences in his career. There were canceled shows, controversy dominated headlines. It seemed like he was going to get canceled. But Netflix stood by him, the special remained on the platform, and within months, the outrage largely subsided and people kind of moved on. Chappelle continues to sell out arenas, remains one of comedy's highest-paid performers, largely because his core audience never abandoned him.

I could say this about actually several comedians who got "canceled" but are continuing to do fine because the people who canceled them were never their core audience in the first place.

The Key Insight

Here's the thing: it's not that cancellations can't happen in the moment. What I'm illustrating is how creators with loyal audiences, strong content, and a standout brand survive the initial mob fury and rebuild stronger than before.

Politicians are actually a great example of this because it shows us how temporary the nature of public opinion is. Political careers are very long and voters have very short memories. Politicians benefit from tribal loyalty that can shield them from cancellation. What should logically end someone's career often just becomes another partisan talking point that energizes their base rather than destroys them. The outrage becomes predictable and loses its power when everything's already being filtered through a polarized lens.

What I'm NOT Saying

Let me take a minute here to be really clear about what I'm NOT saying. I'm not celebrating that harmful people don't face consequences. I was keeping up so closely with the whole Puff Daddy trial for weeks, and after the verdict came out, I was so depressed about it. He's probably going to come back and everyone's going to forget that he did all these horrible things and he's probably going to have a huge comeback, and I am just going to die inside every time I see it happen.

So I'm not saying it's good that people evade consequences. I'm not saying that it's good that the public moves on so easily from legitimate criticism that should be remembered. I'm not saying that accountability doesn't matter. When someone causes real harm—whether through abusive power, violence, or spreading dangerous misinformation—the fact that they can so easily rebuild their platform isn't something to celebrate. It's actually one of the very frustrating realities of our attention-deficit culture.

And I'm definitely not suggesting that you should go out and be deliberately provocative or do terrible things or be polarizing just because you can probably survive it. You probably could, but that is not in any way what I'm saying. That is the opposite of what I'm saying.

The Safety Net for Good Intentions

But what I do want you to understand is that, strangely enough, this same cultural pattern also creates an incredibly strong safety net for people with good intentions who are trying to do meaningful work.

The internet mob is actually terrible at distinguishing between different types of controversy in the heat of the moment. When it comes to the internet, people are generally terrible at discernment. But over time, I do think people generally naturally tend to be able to sort out who deserves ongoing criticism and who was just caught in a temporary storm. Collective wisdom, collective discernment in the long run eventually kicks in.

When you are genuinely trying to help people, when your motivation comes from genuine service rather than ego, when you're willing to learn and grow from legitimate feedback—these things matter. These things create layers of protection that most people don't even realize exist. Your community sees these things and they rally around you differently. Other people, peers, other creators defend you differently. Even critics, over time, soften their stance and turn themselves around when they realize that you are not the villain they initially thought you were.

The internet definitely has a way of self-correcting when it comes to people doing good work. You see examples of this all around: activists who face initial backlash over their methods or their positions, but in enough time, they see their movements grow stronger because they were the ones who were ahead of their time. Entrepreneurs who get criticized for disrupting industries, but they in time get vindicated because their solutions were ahead of their time.

So you have to have the long vision to believe in what you are doing, and believe in your own good intentions and believe in your own resilience to keep going and to persist. Know that you are building your core base of fans and supporters, and whoever is not there yet, eventually they're going to come around if you keep it up long enough.

Doing good work with good intentions creates its own protection. That's the ultimate lesson.

Okay, so we've established now that you're probably not important enough to get canceled, and even if you were canceled, the mob is going to move on very quickly. But here's what I know you might still be worried about: "But what about the impact on people who do see my content and value my business? What about the impact on my customers and my business? Won't any kind of controversy hurt my bottom line?"

So next week we're going to dive into that and put that fear to rest once and for all. I'm going to show you why your haters have nothing to do with your business success, how to tell the difference between criticism worth listening to and just hateful noise you should ignore, and how to show up for your most important work despite the fear of social discomfort.

Because creating from fear and creating from love produce completely different results, and you get to choose which one drives you, and I hope you'll choose love.

Until then, just remember: most of the world doesn't know you exist. Most of the world doesn't give a shit that you exist, and that's a good thing.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.