While cancel culture is often framed as punishment or collective social correction, a deeper look reveals something more ritualistic—something older than social media. Behind every public shaming, boycott, or hashtag storm is a pattern of behavior that resembles traditional rituals used by societies to manage moral tension, reaffirm group identity, and restore a sense of social order. Cancel culture, in this sense, is not just digital outrage; it is a modern ritual adapted to the algorithms and hypervisibility of the online age.
Cancel Culture as Ritual
Anthropologists define rituals as repetitive, symbolic actions performed by a community to express collective values and maintain cohesion. Cancel culture mirrors this structure. First, there is the violation—a perceived moral wrongdoing. Then comes exposure, confession demands, collective judgment, symbolic punishment, and eventual social exile or reintegration. These steps parallel old purification rituals, except now they're performed on screens, timed by trending cycles, and amplified by algorithmic incentives. The digital world creates a stage where millions participate in ritual behavior without naming it as such.
Emotional Pressure and Identity Fatigue
In the era of constant connectivity, individuals—especially influencers, students, and public figures—bear a unique kind of emotional weight. The pressure to maintain an acceptable public identity becomes part of daily labor. Every post becomes a performance, every silence a risk, and every mistake a potential crime. Over time, this produces identity fatigue—the exhaustion of constantly curating oneself to avoid moral scrutiny. When cancel culture erupts, this fatigue intensifies, turning digital life into an anxious space where people feel watched, judged, and always one step away from social punishment.
The Role of Algorithms
Cancel culture thrives because platforms reward outrage. Algorithms elevate content that triggers fast, intense engagement—anger, shock, and moral judgment. This creates ritual cycles: outrage goes viral, users join in to feel seen and righteous, and a collective moral “cleansing” takes place. Researchers at MIT Media Lab and the University of Pennsylvania have shown that content expressing moral-emotional language spreads up to three times faster online. Thus, the digital ecosystem doesn’t just host cancel culture; it fuels it, shaping it into a loop that repeats whenever a new offense emerges.
Case Examples
A student in Seoul once described feeling suffocated after a minor comment she made in class was posted online without context and spiraled into accusations. What began as peer criticism evolved into a public ritual of shaming, leaving her socially isolated for months. In Mumbai, a fashion influencer faced moral policing after an old photo resurfaced, leading thousands to participate in attacking her character. These examples show how digital rituals can move rapidly from critique to moral drama, where individuals are cast into symbolic roles: villain, victim, purifier.
Historical Parallels
Cancel culture might seem new, but public shaming as social control has deep roots. The stocks, scarlet letters, and purification rites of older societies served to reassert shared values. What’s different today is scale and permanence—digital records rarely disappear, and the audience is global. Yet the psychological intent remains similar: communities reaffirm moral boundaries through symbolic punishment. According to Yale psychologist Molly Crockett, moral outrage online becomes a performative act that gives users a sense of virtue without requiring meaningful action.
Identity, Power, and Reshaping Norms
Cancel culture exposes power dynamics. Marginalized communities sometimes use it to challenge oppressive behavior, while others weaponize it to silence dissent. This duality makes the phenomenon complex. It can be restorative—bringing attention to injustice—or destructive, collapsing nuanced conversations into binary judgments. As a digital ritual, it shapes what is socially acceptable and marks the limits of public discourse. But its speed often sacrifices context and empathy, transforming accountability into spectacle.
Moving Forward
To address cancel culture’s harmful dimensions, society needs better digital literacy, slower judgment, and stronger restorative practices. Understanding cancel culture as a ritual helps explain why it persists—and why ending it entirely is impossible. Humans seek moral order, social belonging, and shared rules. But by recognizing the ritual structure, we can reshape how we participate—replacing symbolic punishment with meaningful dialogue.
Cancel culture is not just a digital trend—it is a ritual of the online world, born from ancient patterns of moral behavior and fueled by modern algorithms. Whether harmful or helpful depends on how we choose to engage with it. Recognizing it as a ritual gives us the power to interrupt harmful cycles and create space for empathy, accountability, and collective growth.