You know I had a theory about this that I file under to possible reasons for why culture itself has gone insane.
#1. Outrage generates attention and yields results which has encouraged more and more ridiculous demands to push the envelope.
or,
#2 Typical day to day life has no conflict, nothing to rally for or against. So people are literally inventing ways to stand behind/against a thing. Which has continued across lines to the point of absolute satire.
Why wasn't thing a problem in the 1940's? WW2. Why wasn't this a problem in the 90's? Desert Storm. 00's? Iraq. Always a villain, and in the last 15 or so years, there hasn't really been that. So the villainy has become culture itself.
Could be, but as to why cancel culture exploded, and how, I'd posit the following, based on everything I've read and seen:
-First, cancel culture is as old as time, even if we haven't called it that. Shaming for beliefs/association/suppression of ideas? Hardly new. Even in living memory, we have examples of it - it was before my time, but remember the Satanic Panic? Violent films and games? Moral puritans not content with criticizing the stuff, but actively trying to get it removed? Cancel culture. As I've said, the right wields cancel culture as readily as the left. However, what's going on now, I'd argue is a conflux of numerous factors:
1: Millennials have had it tough in the US - wages have stagnated, cost of living has gone up. I say in the US, because most of what we're discussing is in the US, and is emanating from the US, and has so far 'infected' the UK.
2: Most of the activity comes from late Millennials and Gen Z. These are people who grew up with the Internet, which, ipso facto, made it easier to find like-minded people, and to filter out opinions they disagree with. Furthermore, intellectual diverisity at universities has plummeted since the 1960s. I can't remember the exact figures, but when people say the universities are liberal/left-wing...well, they are. This isn't some Republican talking point, this is statistically true. It's arguably always been true, but the result means that students going to uni in the 2000s and 2010s would be exposed to fewer ideas than they might have been in the past.
3: Culture of safetyism. Again, this is based on what I've read (again, see Coddling of the American Mind), but something shifted in the 90s - fear of crime went up, as rate of crime went down. You raise a group of people in fear of danger, and they're going to start seeing danger everywhere.
4: Come the 2010s, and we get our first warning signs with Gamergate (well, warning signs for me at least), where we see a mini culture war brewing online. Two years later, Trump's elected, and it's been argued that a lot of that was driven as backlash to Obama, which in turn, delivers backlash from the left. Because to be frank, the US is in a culture war. That isn't just my take, nor hyperbole, it's a take that I've seen backed up from numerous sources, when you look at voter polarization, media fragmentation, and the like. Only recently there was a book published (forget its name, sorry) about the idea of there being "four Americas," with each 'group' having such a different view on the country they're irreconciable. There's the people in the middle, but there's also the people on the fringes. On one side, "America is great, God is great, any criticism is sedition, don't like it, leave," and on the other, "the country was founded on genocide, it's rotten to the core, we have to burn it down and start over again." In this environment, you're going to see 'your side' as "good," and the 'other side' as "bad," and when you enter that mindset, all bets are off.
5: So come average Joe who's dealing with the daily shit of daily life, who has very little power, who, if they fall into either of the extreme sides, might feel completely helpless. Perhaps they're angry that Donald Trump hasn't been persecuted, and is still walking free. Or perhaps they're angry that they're constantly told that they're racist, sexist, and privilaged, despite not feeling any of that, or having done anything that could be called that. They can't change the wider world, but they can gang up on the little people. I can't take Donald Trump down, but I can take down this one person who said this one thing and make their life hell, and do so with a bunch of like-minded people, because thanks to the Internet, I have the power to do so. Because that's what really sucks about cancel culture, at least in its modern form. The less influence you have, the easier it is to be cancelled. And to those doubting this, look across this thread, and ask how many people were in positions of actual power? I'd wager, not many.
Of course, this is just me, compiling various theses from various sources. I could be wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if someone quotes this and tells me how wrong I am. And hey, I at least have the option of 'opting out' from the online culture war, but that doesn't help people who can't.
No longer can show's like Married With Children happen. No more can stand-up comedy be freeform. American Pie? Jay and Silent Bob? 40-year-old Virgin? Superbad?
Everything must now be washed out, with no personality no flavor, it has to be as vanilla as possible otherwise there is a risk of offending someone. Could Tarrantino make Django today? Pulp Fiction?
Whatever the argument, it's destroying art. Movies, comics, tv shows, stand-up, these are the main forms of modern art and art should be the one thing that can truly be free. But it isn't. A culture that can't laugh at each other....is dead.
Well, okay, but there's the flipside of this as well.
Ghostbusters 2016? Last Jedi? Battlefield V? Star Trek Discovery? There's countless examples where works of media carry out any deviation from the 'norm,' and are lacerated for it, with people screaming everyone from "the feminist agenda" to "forced diversity" (FFS, what even IS forced diversity?)
Said it before, and I'll say it again, SJWs and SQWs are two sides of the same coin. So on one side, you get stuff like The Heights, where people force Lin Manuel Miranda to apologize for there not being enough Afro-Latinos. On the other, you get Last Jedi, where manbabies did a "men's only cut" because they were that insecure. And it's just...so...tiring.