NEW YORK (RPT) - Yesterday, a group of university students published an open letter canceling a group of public intellectuals who wrote a letter earlier this week proposing to cancel ‘cancel culture.’ “We simply object to people not liking unpopular ideas,” says the earlier letter - signed by a veritable who’s who of aging public intellectuals. The public intellectuals called for an end to ‘cancel culture,’ the online public shaming of individuals for committing social transgressions, and demanded a return to the good old days when public shaming involved sign wearing, public lashings, stockades, and being forced to repeatedly write something on a blackboard.
In their response letter, the students called for an end to letters calling for an end to cancel culture. “We just want to be able to unfollow people who say stuff we don’t agree with,” one student signatory of the letter told RPT, “and, of course, make them feel an acute level of psychological pain from social exclusion that they haven’t felt since they were unpopular teenagers in the 1970s.” The student letter also proposed declaring a new national holiday ‘Cancelation Day,’ when everyone will be encouraged to unfollow famous people and Canadians, and the nation can come together in a celebration of social ostracism.
After the students published their response letter, the public intellectuals further countered by counter-cancelling their cancellation of canceling ‘cancel culture.’ “We’re against ‘cancel culture’ in general,” said a representative of the public intellectuals who wrote the counter-counter-response letter, “but I think we can all agree that these students are being really annoying and whiny, so we’re unfollowing all of them. Actually, I don’t think we were following any of them in the first place. To be honest, I’m not even sure how you follow or unfollow someone on the Twitter.”
