Why Cancel Culture Rarely Tells the Whole Story

Leticia Callista:

“We are all allowed one controversial favourite.”

That comment was said half-jokingly to me in conversation, but it captured something important about how backlash really works. For all the dread the word “cancelled” inspires in communications, real life is rarely that absolute.

Recent years have shown that public backlash does not always produce a corresponding collapse in legitimacy or desirability. In politics, we have seen figures such as Prabowo Subianto, who was reportedly dishonourably discharged from the military, return to a position of power as president, no less. In business, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was let go for a lack of candour in his communications, only to be reinstated despite the public’s view of him as highly controversial. Brands, too, can absorb severe condemnation and remain culturally relevant. Balenciaga’s 2022 bondage bear campaign controversy triggered global outrage, and yet the City bag is once again being described in fashion coverage as iconic.

None of this is an argument against accountability. Public scrutiny matters, and in many cases, it should. But communicators should be careful not to confuse visibility with verdict. The harder question is whether outrage is actually changing trust, legitimacy or behaviour.

Why communicators can misread the moment

Communicators are rarely neutral observers of controversy. More often, they are living inside it, surrounded by journalists, clients, peers and online commentary for whom the issue feels all-consuming. That makes it harder than it should be to judge what the wider public actually thinks, or whether it cares enough about the issue to have lasting consequences.

Part of the distortion comes from what is easiest to measure. Social media backlash and damaging headlines can be captured quickly and reported upwards. What is harder to judge is whether the reaction is concentrated among the audiences that matter most, and whether it is likely to shift trust or behaviour in any meaningful way. In that environment, visibility can start to look more important than consequences.

There is also a professional bias at work. Communications teams are often incentivised to treat every controversy as maximum severity, because underreacting and being wrong is usually riskier than overreacting. That can push teams into catastrophising before they have properly assessed the full picture.

The result is that optics often come before diagnosis. Under pressure to act, organisations move quickly to statements, apology language or symbolic gestures before they have properly defined the problem and decided what response is proportionate.

The more strategic question is whether legitimacy is truly weakening, or merely being contested in public.

What makes backlash stick?

Whether backlash lasts depends on more than its visibility, as the same level of outrage can lead to very different outcomes.

One reason some figures and institutions withstand controversy is that the audiences that matter most to them do not necessarily turn away. Core supporters often stay put. Sometimes, that is because they are loyal enough to discount the criticism. Other times, it is because they interpret it through a different lens. What looks disqualifying to one group may feel exaggerated, partisan or secondary to another. If the constituencies that sustain legitimacy remain broadly intact, the long-term effect is often more limited than it first appears.

Framing also matters. Reputational damage is shaped not just by the event itself, but by the interpretation that settles around it. Once a controversy hardens, it becomes far harder to contain. Whether it reaches that point often depends on how clear the original offence is. Some controversies stick because the offence is easy to grasp and difficult to defend. Others lose force because the facts are disputed, the issue is technical, or the moral stakes feel blurred once the first wave of attention passes.

Power also shapes what happens next. Some institutions have more capacity than others to absorb pressure, wait out the news cycle and reassert authority. That does not make them immune, but it does make them harder to dislodge, especially when they enter a controversy with deep reserves of legitimacy, influence or structural advantage behind them. In those cases, backlash does not disappear. It is just less likely to become decisive on its own.

Just as important is whether the backlash produces real cost. A scandal becomes harder to absorb when it changes behaviour among the people who can impose consequences. That might mean customers stop buying, employees lose trust, investors become nervous, political allies withdraw support, or regulators become more attentive. Until that happens, outrage can also remain intense without becoming materially dangerous.

Wider context matters, too. People do not encounter reputational crises in a vacuum. They bring to them their own experiences and assumptions about who deserves trust in the first place. As the Edelman Trust Barometer has shown for years, trust in institutions is not fixed. It varies across countries, sectors and demographics, which helps explain why the same backlash can feel existential in one setting and far more containable in another. That broader context shapes how much room there is for recovery.

On that note, trust is also more likely to recover when people believe the issue has been meaningfully addressed. That does not always require sweeping reform, but it does require more than apology copy or symbolic positioning. Where that is absent, the issue is more likely to linger and resurface.

What gives backlash staying power, then, is not outrage alone, but whether it hardens into a more durable problem of trust and legitimacy. That does not mean every crisis should be survivable, or even salvageable. Some failures are serious enough that the loss of authority is the right outcome.

What this means for communicators

The lesson for communicators is to judge more accurately what kind of problem is actually taking shape. That starts with making a few distinctions that are too often collapsed in the heat of the moment.

The first is between visibility and damage. A controversy can dominate coverage without doing lasting reputational harm. What matters is whether it changes behaviour among the audiences that matter most, or begins to alter the terms on which the organisation is judged.

The second is between survival and legitimacy. A figure or institution may retain power, allies and operational stability while trust remains fractured. Continuing to function is not the same as rebuilding confidence.

The final is between response and repair. A public response may steady the moment, but it does not by itself restore credibility. Repair begins only when people believe the issue has been understood and dealt with in a way that reduces the chance of it happening again.

The strongest communicators are not the ones who react fastest. They are the ones who can tell the difference between a moment of outrage and a lasting shift in trust and legitimacy.

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Leticia Callista is a Senior Account Executive at Curzon PR