How to Cancel Yourself
Everyone is entitled to total economic and social obliteration no matter who they are or their current standing.
There’s a saying that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Today you can add being cancelled. In fact, between the countless tax loopholes out there and the always developing wonders of medical science, being cancelled may be the only true certainty.
With all three you definitely want to do it on your own terms. Whether passing at home surrounded by your loved ones or preventing the IRS from seizing your assets, it’s always better when you’re in control. Getting cancelled is no different. Ideally you’ll want to go down in a ball of flames lit by your own match and fueled by your own gasoline.
Rather than being something you dread, getting cancelled should be something you look forward to. Think of it as an inoculation. For instance, upon taking office in 2008, incoming New York State Governor David Paterson and his wife made public their various extramarital affairs. In doing so, the power couple preempted anyone attempting to blackmail them or damage their reputations and careers. But self-canceling isn’t simply about inoculation and transparency. It’s about justice. And justice isn’t only about murderers and criminal courts. It’s about you and a bunch of elite Northeast college sophomores with a Twitter account.
Self-canceling is a process, and with any process comes growth. Self-canceling is a catharsis and the first step in the long road to spiritual liberation. Returning for a moment to the case of the murderer, someone who has committed first degree manslaughter but has not yet been apprehended may technically be free but is not living their best life. No matter how bright the road ahead, consequence is always somewhere in the rearview mirror, hovering overhead, lurking around corners.
You, of course, are a sinner waiting for the other shoe to drop. You are a massive vault of long buried malapropisms, faux pas, awkward utterances, and innocent quips that no longer cut it under today’s all-encompassing retroactive personal electron microscope. True freedom requires incarceration. Yours is imminent so long as you embrace the process and pull the trigger. Everyone is entitled to total economic and social obliteration no matter who they are or their current standing. Whether you know it or not, you want to be cancelled. You need to be cancelled. You deserve to be cancelled. Because you suck.
For some of us, self-cancellation may represent an enormous psychological hurdle. We are generally not racist, homophobic, transphobic or misogynistic. Our social media accounts are few and seldom used, and then only for posting family vacation memories and aerial casserole shots. We have avoided political flame wars and online death threats. Thorough automated searches of our accounts and emails dating back a decade or more turn up no N-words, F-words, or even thinly veiled discussions of public men’s room etiquette. We may unfortunately be uncancellable, sentenced to a life of unredeemed Karen status. Fear not.
Most likely you’ve saved a crate full of old paper memories. You weren’t quite sure why, but today you thank yourself because that moldy cardboard box sitting next to the cat litter is a treasure chest of cancel ammo. That wasn’t a Kodachrome photo of you coming back looking filthy from swimming in the local pond. That was a shot of you in blackface. Those weren’t your old cowboy and Indian costumes. Those were your despicable attempt to perpetuate a 400-year system of oppression of indigenous peoples.
That wasn’t a second grade Valentine’s Day card to the cute girl who sat in front of you. That was solicitation of a minor. Even the ashtray you made for Father’s Day is incontrovertible evidence that as early as nine years old you were willfully and consciously doing the unholy bidding of the American tobacco lobby.
Should you somehow come up empty-handed following your childhood tchotchke deep dive, do not panic—self-cancellation is not a privilege, it’s a right. People are here to help. Your friends and relatives carry reminiscences of your early years that you’ve tried to ignore or even expunge but which today represent nothing less than your salvation. Get fellow military veterans to sign affidavits documenting the politically incorrect colloquialisms you blurted out under fire in Bosnia. Attend high school, grade school, and even sleepaway camp reunions searching for middle-aged men and women willing to attest in writing or on camera to wedgies, panty raids, and spontaneous drag parties in which you were a knowing participant.
Should even these earnest attempts at self-cancellation fail, understand that under the 1967 Freedom of Information Act you have a guaranteed legal right to FOIL your own school records. The 1971 school psychologist’s previously sealed file on your propensity as a kindergartener to fondle yourself may today qualify you as a registered sex offender.
Finally, should you for some bizarre reason take the self-cancellation collar after all these at-bats, there are the Akashik records. These are not a written record in the formal sense but rather an ethereal imprint of universal consciousness encompassing all human deeds, thoughts, and impressions dating back to the Big Bang. A library card won’t get you in, but a reputable psychic with a working 900 number will. Tell him or her to scour all planes of reality—in this life or a previous one—for any potentially insensitive reactions you may have had during skin flicks, burlesque shows, or being diapered by your older sister when your mom wasn’t home, and please provide a current credit card number including three-digit security code and expiration date.
Once you have the goods on yourself, post away and wait for the onslaught to begin. It may take a minute or two but before long, anger consumed, self-righteous, semi-employed folks in think tanks you’ve never heard of and glass houses so fragile you could blow out a pane by farting will share your unforgivable infractions to the viral outer limits of the interwebs thereby ensuring the only buck you make during the balance of this lifetime is in the form of a coupon book for gubment cheese.
With self-cancellation and the messy details of your former life finally behind you, you can finally focus on self-hatred, self-flagellation, and the ceaseless drafting of apology letters to outraged people who weren’t yet born when you played cops and robbers as a kid and placed your six year old multiracial next door neighbor under house arrest or repeatedly drafted your tough Hispanic friend when choosing up sides for pickup football. In the competitive sport they call life, preemptive self-annihilation isn’t simply a goal. It’s a mandatory own-goal and the only way to win.
This is brilliant. It belongs in the New York Times. Where it would generate scorn and contempt, with outright calls to CANCEL you.