No ‘Morning After’ for Victims of Cancellation
When you are canceled, you have a form of trauma that is in the past, in the present, and in the future.
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About the Author
George M. Perry is a sports performance coach, sports businessman, and writer in Houston, TX. Before going into the sports industry, he was a submarine warfare officer in the United States Navy and briefly attended law school.
Nellie Bowles concludes her memoir, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, by recounting an interaction with a former friend whom Bowles had targeted during her “revolution” phase. In the final chapter, titled “The Joy of Cancellation,” Bowles admits to reveling in the act of cancelling this individual. However, she later writes, “[t]here came a day when I didn’t cancel someone,” which prompted the ex-friend to confront her. “I knew what was coming when I saw her name on my phone... ‘Nellie, you say a lot of things, but you haven’t said anything about this one today.’ She very politely told me that I was a racist, then she said goodbye.”
Bowles closes her book with a reflection: “I never heard from my friend again after she said goodbye. I get it. She’s drawing the line. Part of me admires her for it.”
Over the past year, I’ve spoken with dozens of victims of cancellation, mainly from the sports industry. I’ve also consulted with a small group of clinicians, researchers, and lawyers, most of whom have themselves endured media humiliation and misrepresentation (MHM), a category that includes cancellation. Their experiences have led them to carve a quiet niche in their practices for helping those targeted by Bowles’ revolutionary fellow travelers.
Throughout the chapter, Bowles touches on many key experiences of victims of cancellation. However, right to the end, she consistently undermines her claim that she truly gets it. This article uses those vignettes as starting points to explore some of what I’ve learned about this “epidemic coming out of the pandemic.”
Media-Based Trauma: Post-Cancellation Stress
Bowles admires what she perceives as her ex-friend’s resolve in “drawing the line,” in contrast to her own self-described “hemming and hawing” moderate ways. Bowles “agonized... sweating in my apartment” over her pivotal decision to forego that last cancellation. She explains, “I sometimes get this bizarre psychosomatic stress response where my arms go limp in a panic. And all that day my arms were going limp.”
Magnify that experience to reach a more plausible explanation for her ex-friend’s silence. For that cancelled person, every mention of “Nellie Bowles” in articles, social media posts, podcasts, and on the big stack of yellow and red covers at bookstores might trigger trauma. Merely dialing Bowles’ number—without even pressing the “call” icon, let alone someday actually facing her—could represent a significant milestone in the ex-friend’s psychological therapy.
“Neal” recently learned that an ad hoc consortium, including his former employer, is opening a new inquiry into the accusations that precipitated his cancellation. “Cue sleepless nights, depression, spontaneous crying jags, fear, rumination, bad shits, twitchiness, fighting the desire to just get hammered, wondering who is saying what behind my back,” he wrote to me. Several months earlier, he said, “still to this day, I carry baggage about just turning on my computer and getting an email. I’m scared shitless of media and that public stuff. I would get registered letters in the mail from [the national newspaper that published the cancellation], because that way they could say, ‘We did reach out to you.’”
The symptoms he describes are recognizable as potential indicators of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Post-traumatic stress disorder is the only diagnosis in the DSM-V that requires an identifiable cause. The necessary trauma involves direct or indirect exposure to “death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence.” However, the cause-effect relationship is tenuous in both directions. Not everyone who experiences a DSM-listed trauma will develop PTSD—some may not even exhibit any post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Meanwhile, some people will satisfy all the symptomatic criteria for PTSD without having experienced a qualifying trauma.
Threat, not trauma, may be the cause of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Whether the threat manifests into a trauma could influence the severity of the consequent symptoms, but not their onset. This reframing alters both our understanding of these symptoms and the relationship between threat and trauma.
For social animals like us, social traumas often precede physical ones. Humiliation, for instance, entails a loss of status, which not only limits access to mates and resources but also heightens the risk of aggression from predators and fellow group members. Exclusion or exile from the group intensifies these repercussions.
This close link suggests that social traumas may inherently pose physical threats. It could explain the co-evolution of the neural structures and processes that handle these events, the threats that precede them, and the subsequent pain and consequences.
Both social exclusion and physical pain activate similar brain regions: the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula (AI).
Consider someone who claims to have a high pain tolerance. Although they perceive hot, sharp, or crushing sensations as intensely as anyone else, they are less bothered by them. This reduced affective response correlates with lower activity in the dACC and AI. Conversely, individuals who are more distressed by physical pain show higher levels of activity in these areas. This dose-response relationship carries over to social pain as well: the subjective experience of exclusion intensifies with increased neural activity in the dACC and AI.
The dACC is notably overactive in individuals with PTSD, “lighting up” in neuroimaging studies in response to stimuli directly associated with trauma (e.g., sounds of gunfire) and those indirectly linked. An example of the latter is an abandoned car at the roadside triggering a fear or anxiety response in a combat veteran who previously survived an improvised explosive device detonating in a similar setting. These patterns of brain activity are detectable soon after the trauma and may help predict the onset and severity of PTSD. Taken together, these findings show the close spatial, temporal, and functional relationships in the brain between physical pain, social pain, and post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Social exclusion represents not only a social trauma but also, when viewed through an evolutionary lens, a potential physical threat. However, even the mere threat of social trauma can induce similar effects.
Social evaluations are unpleasant for many people because we know that if they go poorly we could be mocked, humiliated, reduced in social status (e.g., receiving a poor grade or being overlooked for a promotion), or excluded from future opportunities. When faced with tasks that involve evaluation by peers, activity increases in the dACC. Negative evaluations—a form of public humiliation—further heighten dACC activity. Across the cortex, the brain responds to humiliation more strongly than to happiness or anger.
Humiliation is a deeply social and interactive experience. Its intensity escalates with the number of participants and witnesses. Public cancellations represent the pinnacle of humiliation—how could something be more social, more interactive, with an essentially unbounded number of witnesses? The severity of a cancellation’s trauma—the “dose” in the relationship sketched above—is a function of clicks, views, and impressions.
These metrics are always increasing. The internet is, as we all know, forever. Those headlines and articles never go away.
Dr. Christine Marie, a media psychologist and consultant who specializes in media humiliation and misrepresentation, is lobbying for the American Psychiatric Association to recognize MHM as a precursor to PTSD in the forthcoming DSM revision. She emphasizes that the enduring presence of digital content is “the essence of the unique trauma of cancellation and media humiliation. When you are canceled, you have a form of trauma that is in the past, in the present and in the future.” That’s true even without explicit revictimization, such as the re-investigation Neal is experiencing.
“One of the most tragic things about this form of trauma is that it’s forward facing,” Dr. Christine* continues. “In PTSD or complex PTSD, your trauma is in the past and you have the present to work on healing. It’s very history oriented. You have to deal with triggers and all of the experiences that going through a trauma puts in front of you, but it’s not the same as still being in the moment of that trauma.” She adds, “The mental health impact of a person who goes through a cancellation is beyond what I believe the people who are doing the canceling can even fathom.”
Erasure and Counter-Narratives
“There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it...
[Bran the Broken] is our memory, the keeper of all our stories: the wars, weddings, births, massacres, famines. Our triumphs, our defeats, our past. Who better to lead us into the future?” ~ Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones (TV series)
Bowles highlights the revolutionaries’ morning-after clean up. “The rallying cries were being deleted from websites and memories,” observing that the progressive movement now abjures radical ideas such as abolishing the police and no longer finds sufficient edginess in the word “woke.”
Bowles goes one better than her former fellow travelers. Instead of trying to erase her past actions, she openly acknowledges them, despite not fully grasping the depth of their consequences.
Aware of being seen as a betrayer of the movement, she asserts control by writing a counter-narrative. Ironically, that is the one thing that cancellation victims often desire. As a successful writer, Nellie Bowles can simply sit down with her laptop to share her perspective of the past few years. Part mea culpa, part “but you see...,” part pledge to do better.
A cancelled ex-CEO expressed a similar need to me recently: “All I want is something out there that I can send to people and say, ‘Read this. I know what else you'll read about me. But read this, too.’”
The article that cancelled Neal centered around a specific, on-the-record accusation. But that accusation became secondary to a narrative about intimidation, disregard for athlete health and well-being, power politics from the level of the locker room up through national federations, and institutional corruption. Subsequent articles and think pieces went increasingly far afield with vague, context-free, and sometimes anonymous or awkwardly first-person denunciations.
Not one verified any claim against Neal. No one else ever made an accusation similar to the original. And Neal has never had so much as an administrative complaint filed against him.
Several years ago, “Maren” and “Abbie” were among the hundreds of thousands - maybe millions—who read that first article. Both women were coached by Neal. Neither recognized anything in what they were reading about a person, an institution, and a culture that shaped their lives and characters.
Maren reflected on the article for an afternoon and concluded:
There has to be some truth to this because it can’t just come out of nowhere. Is there a very good chance it’s not exactly as written? Absolutely. There’s some truth, and we’ll figure that out and reconcile it at some point. But it can’t be 100% correct, because I know this person. I’ve never seen anything like that in all the time that I have known him.
Abbie defended Neal by defending the history she knew.
How dare [that reporter] try to take our good memories away from us? Why does he have the right to stomp on a program he knows nothing about? It wasn’t an unbiased article. When people gave him positive feedback about the program, he ignored it. I don’t understand exactly how journalism works, but I know he was seeking a certain type of story, and he was going to ignore parts that didn’t fit his narrative.
Maren, Abbie, and hundreds of others keep those parts of the story—the parts that the media are not interested in reporting, despite occasional blips of interest. Maren expressed her frustrations in her first message to me, saying, “I’ve spoken with many news places over the last few years. To date, nobody has published anything I have to say because it doesn’t fit with the narrative that was shared.”
“Graham” echoed this sentiment at the beginning ofour call, stating, “I’ve been waiting two years to have this conversation.” It had been two years since the reporter who cancelled his coach asked him slanted questions and shifted into “full attack mode” when he rejoined with basic questions about her premises and who else she had spoken to.
Graham is an Olympic gold medalist whose coach was cancelled in a similar manner as Neal. Like Maren, the first thing he did upon reading the article was ask himself if he had ever witnessed anything like the accusations printed under an internationally respected nameplate. He then cross checked his memories with his friends and mentors who had known the coach for decades longer.
With a lot of these [cancellations], the closer you get to the target’s inner circle, the more you hear ‘Yeah, there were these signs. Things were happening.’ Here, the closer you got, the less people recognize the allegations that are being made. In all that time, not so much as a rumor in a place notorious for rumors.
Graham is still deeply unsettled by what he described as the “mind virus that thinks this is OK... It’s a gleeful excoriation of his legacy. There’s something sinister about it.” He also referred to the situation as “wanton destruction” and “a conviction.”
“I was angry at a level I’ve never been before,” Graham said, yet “[my coach] wouldn’t want me being angry or vengeful.”
Instead, Graham chooses to honor his coach's influence by fostering the same character traits in others through his own coaching and volunteer efforts (at an international program started by another of his coach’s Olympic medal winners).
The one thing he could do is convince you that you could achieve things you never thought possible. For four years, he was telling me “When you're an Olympic champion...” It was like he was dragging me forward as I was actively f---ing it up. I try to bring that part of him to the people I work with, encouraging them to accomplish great things.
Cancellations founder when they encounter those who truly know the person targeted—those who have shared in the weddings, births, triumphs, and defeats with them. The article that cancelled Neal “didn’t cancel out 20 years,” Maren said.
Neal and his wife lived by example and modeled for us young 20-somethings how we might want to live our adult lives in our careers, as parents, as citizens, how we make decisions, and how to go through life. It’s a no-brainer for us to try to set the record straight about how he has influenced the type of people we have become, and in ways that have nothing to do with sport.
Dr. Christine acknowledges that while counternarratives may not completely overturn cancellations, they play a critical role in the recovery process. Even a counternarrative that remains largely private and reaches only a fraction of the audience that the original cancellation did can be a lifeline, offering psychological relief and possibly paving the way for professional rehabilitation.
Restitution and Rebuilding: Years After the Revolution
“We should discuss my retainer. $30,000 to start. And if it goes to trial, add a zero... [But] you don't really have a legal problem - you have a sunlight problem.” – The Report
Even the strongest counternarrative or exoneration by national media cannot offset the years of lost income, along with the accumulated legal, medical, and PR expenses. Cancelled people find themselves permanently locked out of jobs they were once eagerly recruited for. After all, who would want to interview—let alone hire—someone a Google search labels as a racist, sexually harassing, transphobic enabler of toxic work environments?
The thought of suing is tempting. As the revolution winds down, Bowles tells us “And then came the lawsuits. Many young adults started suing the doctors who treated them as adolescents [at “gender transition clinics” like Tavistock]. Businesses suing the cities.” But none from people who suffered cancellation.
Dr. Christine writes, “Few private individuals have the resources to fight a fair battle against the media. Even if an individual wins a lawsuit against a media organization, it does not fully erase the damage done. The imbalance of power between media institutions and individuals is vast.”
For the cancelled, legal fees typically range from $50,000 to $100,000. Mental health treatment costs can surpass $50,000. One individual spent over $100,000 on digital reputation management alone, striving to ensure that his-name-dot-com finally appears in search results above the articles that ruined his reputation.
Neal has become The Guy You Need to Call for individuals facing imminent cancellation. He has provided support and guidance to hundreds, primarily coaches, across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom as they navigate the “acute stage” of cancellation—everything leading up to their firing. Once fired, they enter what he describes as the “chronic stage.” Neal tells them to expect $5,000 to $10,000 in upfront costs to secure a resolution that might protect their professional reputation, though it offers no guarantee of social survival in neither the physical nor digital world.
These costs arise alongside sudden and prolonged unemployment. Despite the odds and expenses, counter-cancellation lawsuits are beginning to make their way into the courts.
In one such case, Jennifer Couture is suing social media influencer Danesh Noshirvan for tortious interference in federal court in Florida. Noshirvan, a TikToker with over 1.5 million followers, allegedly led a dox-and-cancel mob that cost Couture business contracts and client relationships.
The court noted that Noshirvan’s “niche is cancel culture... People pay Noshirvan for this doxing service.” If a single TikToker can carve out a niche business as a crowd-sourced cancellation hitman, it signals that the corporate media, with assistance from Big Law and DEI-focused institutions, have constructed a new industry vertical over the last five to eight years around crowd-sourced cancellation services.
Two higher profile legal actions are coming from professional women's soccer. Former professional soccer coach James Clarkson is suing the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), the NWSL Players’ Association, the law firms Covington & Burling and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and several associated individuals. He alleges defamation, tortious interference with prospective contracts, and conspiracy. Clarkson contends that public statements made by the defendants, particularly those related to investigations of misconduct by other NWSL coaches—not him—have “injured Coach Clarkson in his occupation, harmed his reputation, exposed him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and financial injury, and deterred others from considering him for a comparable coaching position... [all of which] caused him significant mental pain and distress.” (Disclosure: Mr. Clarkson and I work for the same sports club, but I did not speak to him for nor about this article.)
An even bigger legend in the game of soccer, Jill Ellis, is also counter-attacking. Ellis, who coached the US Women’s National Team to World Cup victories in 2015 and 2019 and was named FIFA World Women’s Coach of the Year in those same years, became president of the San Diego Wave in the NWSL in 2021.
In early July 2024, a former employee of the Wave alleged via social media that Ellis “compromised countless lives to advance her narcisstic personal agenda, fostering an environement where abusive behaviors... are allowed to flourish.” The accuser also claimed that “the league has failed to fully address and implement recommendations” from the reports that led to Clarkson’s and others’ removal. The former employee demanded the NWSL “take immediate action to remove Jill Ellis from both the San Diego Wave and the league entirely to finally protect the staff and players... Jill Ellis has no place in this game, and she has been excused for far too long.”
By the end of July, Ellis had filed a lawsuit stating that that these allegations were not only false and defamatory but were also based on communications exchanged through fake email accounts and burner phones.
Their legal filings stand as some of the few public statements that outline the repercussions of cancellation. So far, pull quotes from these filings are the only acknowledgments by major or corporate media of the consequences of cancellation. But these accounts are superficial and broad. It’s nearly impossible to grasp the full extent of the damage inflicted by this “epidemic coming out of the pandemic,” as the former CEO described it, without direct interaction. Speaking with a victim of cancellation—perhaps by setting aside personal biases and reaching out to an ex-friend—can open the door to a deeper understanding.
Lawsuits like Ellis's and Clarkson's might do more to alleviate cancellation victims’ sunlight problem than their individual legal and financial troubles. This exposure—not a breezy declaration by a reformed revolutionary—might signal an actual morning after, years delayed, for victims of cancellation.
* She goes by “Dr. Christine,” partly because searches for her last name bring up all the articles from her own media humiliation.
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Here's an opportunity to support a cancelled filmmaker, Vaishnavi Sundar. Once held in high regard by the likes of Sundance Film Festival, she was abruptly dropped from several film festivals when the topic of her series, Dysphoric, was judged to be "inappropriate" by the woke film expert class because we aren't supposed to recognize and profile detransitioners. This Friday, her film about trans widows and the children of men who suddenly claim to be 'mothers' will premier on Sundar's only platform, Lime Soda Films YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frffv2sB8zE
This is a timely and well researched article on the destructive impact of "canceling" people. I think it would have been helpful to break the article into two, one focusing on the psychological impact of cancelation and one on the potential legal remedies.
I would add my observation that when women I know engage in this behavior they have broad smiles and glinting eyes. At last, the mean girls get to act out their most aggressive impulses with open displays of pleasure and without inhibition. It's basically a blood sport rationalized by the claim that one is a warrior for a righteous cause.
Part of the destructive impact of mob violence on a culture wide scale is that the entire population is forced to gaze long and deeply at the most disgusting, despicable aspects of being human.