Mr. Doyle runs a parody Twitter account about identity politics and cancel culture. He said his work has been described as “racist” and “misogynist.” (“I’ve had one friend literally scream at me in the pub,” he said.)
He reached out to Lisa Hardcastle when her similar Twitter account was suspended in 2018.
Now they, too, are friends, and attend shows at a comedy club Mr. Doyle founded, where the operating ethos is “no self-censorship.”
“In any witch hunt, the people who get the worst treatment are the ones who try to defend the witches and not the witches themselves,” he said. “Anyone who’s read ‘The Crucible’ knows that.”
Cancellation does present a question about power, and who has it.
“The biggest problem we have as a culture is that we can’t define who the establishment is,” Mr. Tavana said. “Is the establishment the woke media people who own 99 percent of the keyboards in the country, or is it the old, canceled guys in media? Who’s the punk rock band and who’s the corporate rock band?”
Mr. Rubin imagines a near future where everyone is canceled for 15 minutes.
“The woke progressives are going to implode, and pretty soon they’ll destroy everything,” he said. “It’s just a matter of how much will they take down with them. They’re going to cancel Barack Obama one day, because Obama ran against gay marriage at one time.”
Mr. Shapiro said, “Our culture is dying because we have no capacity for forgiveness or discussion.”
That Which Does Not Kill Them
“There have been attempts to cancel me, but I cannot be canceled, because I refuse to be canceled,” Ms. Herzog said