I don't think it's cancel culture in the way normal folks are tuned into it, but it's pretty similar. Writers aren't homogeneous in their beliefs, but a lot of

I don't think it's cancel culture in the way normal folks are tuned into it, but it's pretty similar. Writers aren't homogeneous in their beliefs, but a lot of writers and a lot of publishing/news industry folks all went the same schools for university, MFAs, writer-in-residences, and so on. The dynamic at those shared spaces is source code of wokeness. If you read that NYT article on Smith recently, that's the vibe and also the tip of the iceberg. What goes on is well meaning but emotionally immature adults hyper-policing each other. As they all sort of believe the same stuff anyway (vaguely left/progressive), there's an odd aspect of one-upsmanship to it. If you add in the stress of a career in the arts, I think power-seeking/insecurity is heavily involved as well: I'm going to make no money unless I really luck out, I'm going to go face a 0.01% chance of getting published, I won't have much medical or retirement savings, but I can control this aspect of my life and my community, so I'll do that. The end result is this wild form of cultural policing that has all the hallmarks of bullying. As it's a very tight network of a few undergrads and a few MFAs which produce a lot of the artists and folks working in publishing and journalism, you see it spilling out of their dorms and into corporations and profit spaces. The mainstream workforce gets a little bit of this through their HR departments now, but it's a different level in publishing. It's hard to describe without talking to someone that's done an MFA or similar, but hopefully that helps. Testimonies of professors who finally lost their s*t with their universities over this same stuff are also accurate, but because it's often an old white dude who's a comp sci professor doing the public pushback, they'll never be the right advocate to turn things around. That's what makes the Smith admin employee who's finally speaking out so interesting, as that's "one of their own."