Panic World - Is cancel culture canceled?

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

From Aziz Ansari to Adam22, especially since the proliferation of the internet and social media, there’s no shortage of people who have gotten canceled. But what is the state of cancel culture today? We’re joined by leading experts in the cancellation field, Cancel Me, Daddy hosts Katelyn Burns and Christine Grimaldi, to look back at some of the biggest moments in cancel culture, its presence in society now, and ask if we can use cancellations to actually create change. Our guests are Katelyn Burns and Christine Grimaldi, hosts of Cancel Me, Daddy. For more conversations like this, check them out here or wherever you listen to podcasts! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quick note before we start, a bit of news unfolding during the recording this episode, uh, took it in directions we were not exactly expecting. We will get into that in a bit, but just, you know, don't like listen and then get grumpy that we're not giving it to full attention. It deserves. We were literally recording as some news was breaking. It happens. Don't leave a comment mid-listening to the episode. You can leave your comment after? Just in general. Yeah, you should, you should listen to the whole thing and then you get the privilege of being a commenter. It's nice to meet you both. Hi. I want to kick things off with a simple question. I think you guys would be experts in answering, which is if being canceled actually

existed, like if it was real, who would you like to see genuinely canceled? And bonus points for the pettier answer, I would say. Let's go really petty. Oh, Jesus. Oh, I'm going to go really cliche in St. Donald Trump, honestly. Oh, that would be great, wouldn't it? You know? This is a cathartic answer, isn't it? Although I'd argue that in a way, he already has been canceled,

not in the fact that he's faced consequences or that he has no power, but in the fact that he, like, has prompted the largest public protests in the country's history. Yeah, we were having a whole discussion about whether, public outrage could count as cancellation. Like, is that enough of consequence? Well, I guess, like, maybe this is important to set up now. Like, what is your academic definition of cancellation? Oh, God.

Um, I would say a reduction in public reputation based on something about you that you either did or said. Um, okay. And I think that is the truest definition of it. I think it's been twisted in a lot of ways. For your listeners, you don't know, our show very much examines kids with culture from the perspective of the left. Okay, yeah. Let me intro you here.

So today, this is an episode of Panic world. I should introduce the show. This is Panic War. My name is Ryan Broderick. Sometimes you'll listen to our producer Grant pop in from time. time he has not been canceled yet, but he lives a so it's only a matter of time. Don't tell people

where I live, Ryan? And you can believe it if you want, but like, it's a good joke, I'd keep it in. And with us today are the co-hosts of Cancel Me Daddy experts on the Cancel Culture Age. Caitlin Burns, Christine Grimaldi, welcome to the show.

How are you feeling about the state of cancel culture broadly? Do you feel like it's working? So yeah, we have some nice audience overlap between our two shows from what we can see. But for our listeners, we don't know, can you tell them a bit about your show? You know, when we first started, we very much mocked everything because of cultural-related. Yeah. And then we started doing shows where it was more nuanced.

So I don't know if any of you remember the attack helicopter story, controversy where there was a trans author who was like very newly out as a trans person. They wrote the story about identifying as an attack helicopter as a representation of gender. And a lot of trans people online thought it was like a shit post or like making fun of trans people. But in actuality, it was actually this intellectually brilliant treatise on how capitalism and the military industrial complex exploits marginalized bodies. So we had Emily St. James on, who is a former culture writer at Vox, one of my favorite people. Yeah, she's the best.

And we have this really great episode about this person was genuinely canceled for it. Nobody knows who she is now because she's not a public figure. She wasn't even back then. But according to Emily, she like stopped transitioning. because of the public backlash to that. So I think that was a turning point for me where I was like, yeah, actually, like, cancel culture is a thing. It's just not what everybody is making it out to be, in our opinion. Yeah, I mean, like the first person I thought of when we were talking about this episode was Matt Lauer.

Oh, sure, yeah. Because he is just living with his bigillian T dollars that he got for sexually harassing and assaulting women at NBC News. And every once in a while, he'll pop up and complain about how he's canceled and he can't get a job. He's living with a bigillianty dollars in the Hamptons. He's fine. And honestly, if he really wanted to get a job, he probably could because look at the Cuomo brothers. Like, they're doing just fine. Chris does not seem to want to go away, which I think is sort of, I mean, I guess to set this up for today's episode, it does feel like we are very much in.

a second, if not third era of this stuff, where, you know, right as we're recording it, Aziz Ansari has a new movie out that he's been canceled a second time. Like, he's amid a second cancellation for performing in Saudi Arabia. And he's still trying to promote this movie that is bombing. And so it is interesting. I've always sort of thought of cancellation as something, hear me out, something similar to doxing in the same sense that it is a, effectively like using someone's data trail to to attack them. And I'm not saying if it's right or

wrong, what I'm saying is like it is a unique thing of the internet age to be able to go back through someone's old post or someone's old history or use social media to expose their old behavior and create some sort of like populist mass movement against them, which, you know, would have taken years, if not centuries, you know, before the internet to accomplish. Along with more traditional forms of journalism, traditional forms of, you know, legal frameworks. We talked about this in an episode about the post Me Too era, the sort of idea of like, how do you actually use this stuff to create change? You know, Kate, I thought of you the other day because of the guy who's the oyster man,

who's running. I was writing about this yesterday, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think those tweets or posts or Reddit or whatever. Yeah, I think it's relevant. But to your point, you know, it's a digital trail that probably would have taken months, years, whatever, to uncover. And how is it being used?

Is it being used for accountability? Is it being used to shame him? You know, what do you owe the public when it's a former version of yourself? But also, like, there are really some horrific things that he said. So how do you also show that you are not that person anymore or maybe you are? I don't know. Well, you haven't seen the news this morning, have you? Oh, well, fuck me, Kate.

What did you do now? You're talking about the Nazi tattoo? I was looking into this. I cannot find any evidence that that exists. See, this is what happens when I try to give like a nuanced view on cancel culture. There's a fucking Nazi tattoo. Let's table this for now, but I have to do, yeah. But no, actually, I think this is a good example, right?

Because this is all my blue sky timeline is talking about this morning. this morning and I've been busy. I've been, you know, editing a previous episode. I haven't had my eye so closely on the news and yet I have made a statement about Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo, quote unquote. And this is sort of how cancellation in the modern age will work. I found a lot is misinformation gets out in front of verification, right? It's the old adage of will get around the world before the truth gets puts on its pants. I think that's actually the phrase. And this is commonplace in a lot of quote unquote online cancellations that you see,

particularly when a lefty figure is involved, right? We saw it with Dylan Mulvaney, right? The right wing freak out about Dylan Mulvaney where they claimed that Bud Light put out like thousands of cans with her face on it. And in actuality, it was just one can that they made special made for a promotion on Instagram. It just happens over and over and over again. And this is an example of, you know, people on the left, not really verifying. You know, it could be that he has one, right?

Could be. We won't know. He's a Marine from Maine. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, be super shocked. It's an interesting conversation to have because. we actually don't know how it's going to work out. I do think it dovetails really nicely into like one of my favorite things I've ever read about cancel culture, particularly on the left.

And it was written about Tumblr in 2017, kind of the, the, the fertile crescent of cancel culture in the modern age. And it was from a username Rootsworks who wrote, I'll paraphrase it because it's kind of long. But basically they tell the story about how they used to work at a local homeless community center. and they would clean the bathrooms. And every night, they'd clean it, and then they come back, and it was completely trashed. And they couldn't understand why the people at the community center would trash the bathrooms of all things every single day. And they went on to describe this as sort of a metaphor for how they see particularly leftist and socially progressive spaces, where it's usually a lot of teenagers, or used to be teenagers.

now they're adults, but it's a lot of the same. My theory is it's the same people. Metaphorically or literally? No, I mean, I believe that a lot of teenagers on Tumblr are now adults who are acting the exact same way on the internet. Specifically on blue sky. Yeah. Specifically on blue sky.

But basically they use this as a metaphor to sort of describe like the bucket of crabs effect you'll see in a lot of spaces with vulnerable communities and powerless people who will attack each other because it's easier and close. and simpler than, and I think a lot of times, especially when you're up against something like the Trump administration, it is so vast and so impenetrable and you feel so powerless that it is, I think, a lot easier to cancel somebody for using DoorDash on Blue Sky and ordering a brito than it is to, you know, go through mountains of pages of Project 2025 to explain who project, to explain who Russell Vaugh is.

I think it is a useful framework that I've come back to over the years of when I come across like an influencer who's like being devoured by their own community for doing something. And I'm like, right. Okay. Like this makes sense to me. Yeah. Well, there's this element of powerlessness in it. We had a really great episode with Megan Greenwell who wrote a book about private equity

and venture capitalism. And it's like, am I going to order my random piece of crap that I need from Amazon? Am I going to order it from Walmart or Target? Like, what's better or worse when we're up against like these really like just johns? corporate conglomerates. One last thing here before we set up the actual show today. But my sort of big, and you talked kind of about like how your thoughts on cancel culture have shifted over the years.

And mine have as well. And weirdly enough, I even suggested to Grant for my topic today to talk about, but I'll just paraphrase basically like being dad was a moment for me where I just went like, I think it was a combination of like, I wasn't living in the U.S. of the time. So I was a consuming U.S. internet culture from outside the country, which is always kind of a weird vibe. It was also lockdown still, largely. It was sort of the

end of lockdown or like the second lockdown. And I just remember thinking, like, what are we doing here? Just for people who don't remember Bean Dad, he was a guy who wrote a Twitter thread about forcing his daughter to eat beans and then he was canceled for child abuse.

That's sort of the most concise. This way I can summarize that story. But I just remember thinking like, if you think of like Justine Sacco as the first large public cancellation and then you think about the whole story of cancel culture to Bean Dad, I'm just like this has gotten outrageous. That's not to say all of cancel culture is nonsense. It's just like it is interesting how these things fragment and fracture and become smaller and more niche over time, you know, in any online movement, any online behavior, I think.

Justine Sacco, what a callback. I mean, I think she's the first. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but I remember that 24-hour news cycle just being absolutely mad. We're like no one kind of had any sense of like what was going to happen next. One thing that we've looked at on the show is that cancellation has always kind of been a thing, although it's taken many forms over time. We had a really fascinating episode with medievalist Eleanor Yaniga about medieval cancellations. Oh, that seems like you'd probably die, right?

Off with your head. They'd probably cut your head off. It was execution of execution, exile, or excommunication. I almost said delay, deny, depose. Different deposing. But one of the most common factors in a quote unquote cancellation is powerful people are getting consequences from people who they deem below them. So if it's a king or a queen who's getting a consequence in the medieval times of one of these three things,

it's coming from people beneath them in the social structure like lords or clergy or sometimes commoners, although that's very rare back then. And I think what you see is the same thing happening in modern times, where it's Barry Weiss at the New York Times. know, editorial, or op-ed department, opinion department, excuse me, opinion section, where, you know, she's getting pushback from people she deems beneath her. Right. To the point where she quits and pretends that she was fired and then uses that attention to launch the free press.

So now we're here where she's editor-in-chief of CBS News. And you see, you know, Madaglacius was online. the other day talking about being canceled and that guy for what has never really faced a consequence no i mean people think he's an idiot yeah like nobody likes him but like that's not being canceled i would say his take on the batman was my last draw i was really with him yeah that was the one up until he said there wasn't enough enough detective you know it's funny i actually fell for matt eglacius take years and years ago that has kind of stuck with me where i was like actually that's a good point where he wanted to abolish time zones and just switch the whole world to UTC.

And I was like, yeah, all right, let's do that. And that was my first and last interaction with him in a serious way. I unfortunately shared an office with him at one point when I was working at Fox. I'm so sorry. And that was very awkward. And that's a story for another day. That room probably smelled crazy. Anyways.

I think the way you phrase it, like using the attention is really interesting because is if you sort of think about, you know, as I said, like, if this is the second or the third wave of this stuff, you know, if you think about it as sort of like, you know, era defining, right? We're now so far beyond, you know, the beginnings of this that it is kind of like factored into how people use the internet. And we were interviewing the Congress in Maxwell Frost a couple weeks ago. And he talked about how, like, a major strategy for young Democrats running right now is how do you use the attention in the spotlight for when you're a quote unquote canceled on. the right. Like it's something we're seeing with Grand Platner right now. Like they all kind of know what's going to happen. It is a very interesting sort of meta wave to this. We're like everyone kind of knows if you've been online long enough it's going to happen. So like what do you do? And so after the

break, we're going to talk about a guy who has been very, very good at using this attention for evil. But first, a word from our sponsors. Um, the tiny, care in the corner of the room. I was going to say Target's LGBT brand. What has been canceled? Bud Light. You know, yeah. So we've both picked a favorite quote unquote

a cancel person, someone that we're both fascinated by. The cancel person that I am most fascinated by is Adam 22. Adam 22, his real name is Adam Grand Mason. He is currently married and sometimes doing

porn with his wife, Lena the plug. He is covered in tattoos. You've definitely probably seen his videos. He gets canceled, quote unquote, like once a week. But let me give you some background. So in 2006, he was a BMX biker who started a website called the comeup.com. And basically was just like a YouTube aggregation site for like cool bike videos. Oh, so wait, it was spelled C-O-M-E.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't get into porn until later. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Good question.

actually. Did you do a fast Google or did you just or just once? I think you figured it was the bike thing. Okay. Okay. So I first came across Adam 22 who's now using that as like his username everywhere on the bridge nine message board, which was a message board for Boston hardcore. Not the music. Once again, not pornography. Okay. He was a prolific troll on the bridge nine message board. That's that's how I encountered him. And you know, back there he was canceled a bunch for allegedly. being inappropriate with underage users and, you know, being racist. He was just like the worst guy. In 2011, he finances the launch of a music site. He calls No Jumper, which was originally hosted on Tumblr.

And it's like a rap blog, basically. Danny Brown is kind of like an early fan. Here's the rapper Danny Brown. And in 2015, he decides to expand. the No Jumper brand. He turns into a podcast that becomes focused on rap. And I show you like any videos of this, but like honestly, it's boring dog shit. It doesn't matter.

It sucks. But he keeps diversifying what he's doing online. And that's where his girlfriend at the time comes into the story. She was also making content too. Grant, you have a clip of what Lena was up to at this time. there's a commercial playing because Ryan won't pay for you should pay for YouTube premium. I pay for YouTube premium for me. I'm canceling you for workplace.

What's up guys? It's a love of the plug. And today's video is called, if you think he's a boy, he probably is. The point is, it's very boring. It's like her just like sitting on a bed and just talking about stuff and vlogging. But, you know, it's useful because like people realize that she makes poor. and then they go and they find the porn. So they aren't just being provocative online.

They aren't just sort of like causing problems. They're also very savvy about using the attention that comes after they've pissed everybody off. So this is from Hot New Hip Hop. They write, Lena's numbers are currently going way up due to a piece of footage that hasn't yet made it online. Once she hits one million followers, she promised to drop a sex tape. There is one more stipulation.

The man who will peer with Lena in the tape also has to attain one million YouTube subscribers he happens to be a fairly prominent YouTuber himself lena's boyfriend and the star of the prospective sex tape goes by adam 22 so that's like that's sort of the world that they're swimming in in 2017 it works they make a sex tape and this becomes a large part of their brand the two will create a podcast together where they talk to porn stars and sex workers and then after have sex with those porn stars and sex workers and he's successful enough that he gets the you know rolling stone influencer piece written about him. And I'm going to read you a bit just so you get a full sense of his whole deal.

And they write a 6'3-225-pound shaved head, heavily tattooed white 33-year-old who loves talking about drugs and threesomes, a professional hustler who's already had several lifetimes worth of guises, graffiti artists, online poker player, drug dealer, high-profile BMX blogger. High profile feels like it's doing a lot of work there. Grand Mason finds all of his different sides coalescing brilliantly with no jumper and insanely popular YouTube channel that's distinguished by two things. Freewheeling interviews with Up becoming hip-hop acts and his chronicling of the random dumb shit

he does in his free time. And then it makes it clear that Adam is also very romantic. So they write, hey, you remember those two girls in the podcast? Yes, sleepily. I so could have had a threesome last night. But I was so freaking geeked out of my mind and didn't feel like trying it. His pals gave him shit, accusing him of wimping out for fear of displeasing his girlfriend's social media celebrity, Lena, aka Lena the plug. Graham Mason tries to play it off, but he admits it's like you want to fuck other girls just to prove to yourself that you have no feelings, but then you kind of want to do have feelings.

And it's like, ah, fuck. Awesome. What's your vibe check on Adam 22 so far in the story? Definitely a word smith. He sounds like the fuck boy that Lena is trying to warn us against in the safe for work video. Yes, I would say so. He's kind of like the quintessential, like, internet degenerate. Like, he's been on every phase of the internet being the exact same level of awful.

And would you believe that most of his cancellation problems that we're going to focus on today has to do with allegations around his behavior with women? So the first bit of trouble, real trouble, comes with a harassment accusation. So Grant's going to play you a clip of a friend of Adam 22's here. who's going to play a key role in this story. Milo Yanopolis here today with us on the podcast. I almost can't believe it. Oh, no.

Stop it. Can we get a sexual orientation check on everybody at this table besides the gay dude across? Does that mean? That's right. Adam 22 decides to have Milo Yanopolis on no jumper. Oh. That's Milo pre-brain-tumor. So Adam 22 asks Milo to like basically send a cyber army a kid.

against, you know, a journalist at this point. They start dogpiling people. This is also the moment where, like, the bad boy persona that Adam 22 is trying to cultivate starts to, like, interact with Trump-era cancel culture. So people are like, wait, this guy's really popular, but he's got all this bad shit in his past and present. And so this is where it all starts to happen. So March in 2018, he's accused of sexual assault by two women on X.

He denies it, but the women speak to pitchfork. Pitchfork writes, the first of the two women commented to Pitchfork under the pseudonym Jane due to fear of retaliation. She first met Graham Mason in 2005. They both posted on the same message board. One day they made plans to get together in Manhattan and Jane ended up taking the subway with him back to his apartment in Queens where he made advances. At first, I was okay with it, but it quickly became uncomfortable as it went further than I wanted to go. Jane said the article goes on to explain that she didn't go to the police, but she did go to a mutual connection and told this guy that Graham Mason had a assaulted her. And according to this pitchfork article, Grand Mason posted her first name online

and pictures of her. And later in a blog post, he would brag about how everything turned out fine when he was accused of rape. Another woman speaks to the Daily Beast. More women come out. So what do you think the consequences are of this big cancellation episode for Adam 22? They probably got a bigger audience. He basically just continued just without any issue. Yeah. Damn, I'm shocked. So from this point, they will manufacture controversy that will pull away from real issues.

So it all just sort of devolves into noise. He makes a big deal about Lena starting to shoot scenes with men and his audience pays a lot more attention to that because he's effectively being cucked. And they care more about that than any. of the allegations of abuse that are surfacing. Oh. In, uh, 2023 on a podcast episode with the trans model, Gracie Jane, it's revealed that she had a relationship with, uh,

Adam 22's co-host Little House Phone. I don't know what any of this means. This is a summary of that according to know you're me in the situation, which occurred. It resulted in a brief falling out between Adam and Little Housephone who purportedly wanted to keep the hookup private. It also inspired online criticism towards, Adam for not making sure all mentions of Lil Housephone's name were edited out of the podcast and backstabbing his friend for views.

Later that month, Housephone and Adam got into an argument over the drama on their podcast and Housephone through his drink at Adam. I mean, it's just like the worst dumbest shit here. In 2023, they bring on Richard Spencer to No Jumper. They've also had Nick Fuentes, the streamer Sneco, and a guy. from the nation of Islam, all of which say exactly what you think they would say on the show. It's a fascinating story for me because, like, as he gets bigger every time he does something outrageous and then, like, people forget about him or, like, don't remember his whole deal

and they, like, try to use cancel culture to take him down again. And it just makes him more popular and makes him act even crazier. So it's like this really interesting cycle between, like, platforms and what they're incentivizing and what like actual human beings want, which is this guy to go away forever. And he keeps up in the ante. So he brings on guests like official purve busters, which is like one of those Instagram like pedophile hunter channels. Though then they accuse Adam 22 not of assault, but of hitting on a minor.

That then goes viral and kind of backfires on him. a bunch of no jumper hosts leave the show. They blame the fact that they brought Richard Spencer on, but it seems like it's largely pressure from the pedophile hunters. They're like, you are a pedophile and have been accused of being a pedophile for like a decade. Rolling Stone then writes another big piece on Adam 22, now in 2023, exposing Adam 22, not just for assaulting women, but regularly pressuring them to make porn. And this all still doesn't really knock him down.

Tell me if I'm wrong. It does kind of feel like if you are able to. to gain enough momentum on platforms, you can kind of steamroll. Like if your audience is awful enough and you have enough viral energy behind you from like algorithms, it does kind of feel like there's not much that can really take you down. Does that kind of gel with what you've seen as well? I think if you can build up enough of an audience to have an us versus them mentality, you really buy into something.

And I don't think you even need that large of an audience to do this. One thing I've noticed is that when a high-profile person gets criticized, especially in the online culture, where you have like fandoms and fandom wars and things like that, you can say, oh, they're trying to bring me down. Like, if this works, you won't get to see me anymore. And so the people who are fans are like, oh, no, we'll defend you. And this works at many different scales. You don't need millions of people out there defending you to make it work.

Like I've had people not to compare myself with this guy. But I've had people try to cancel me many, many times, many times, like more times than I can count. It's because of your Nazi tattoo you got while you were in the Marines, right? Hey, who told you about that? I did used to live in Maine. No, the stupidest one was I misremembered when I got my vaccine. Oh, my God. I made a comment one time about getting the vaccine under Trump when it was really four months into the Biden administration.

You should die, I think. I think you have to die. I actually think you're right. I'm listening and learning. I'm sitting my ass down and getting my vaccine records in order, yeah. But like I was accused of being like a secret Trump like plant in liberal media by like people who I worked with and interviewed professionally. And the only way that I was able to get through that was by very aggressively defending myself and getting my people who had known me for years to defend me. Right. But I think that this works for like evil people who.

have fans too. Hmm. But it reminds me a lot of like the streamer wars that you see with like Hassan Piker and Destiny and the guy from H3, uh, Ethan. Yeah, Ethan Klein and how they all go back and forth. And like, I'm, I would call myself a casual Hassan Piker fan. I tune in when there's big news just to see him freak out because it's funny. But whenever the, the, the, the fandom wars come up,

I tune out. Like I find that extremely disinteresting. Like I don't care. I don't give a fuck. But that's just me. But a lot of people like live for this. Like there's forum wars over this stuff. And I think that all spills over into online.

And what you're saying with, sorry, I'm on an extended rant here. What you were saying with the guy kind of fades away and then he does something and gets canceled and comes back and gets a bunch of attention. I think that's a sick. could call pattern. Yes. What you're saying sort of about like the flame wars

and the, and the fan wars, I think is really important to touch on. If we're sort of like building a unified theory of cancel culture today, like I do think

that there's a point where if the people involved are too messy or their fandums are too complicated or the discourse is like too much, it actually like

floods the zone and it actually gets in the way of anything happening. So, like, for instance, like, I'm also like a casual Hassan fan. I, God love him. If him and Ethan start going back and forth enough,

like, I actually have no idea what they're talking about anymore. And like, so the dog shock collar, not shock collar, drama is the one happening currently. I was there. I was there when the post, the first posts were made, man.

And yet even though I saw the very beginning of this discourse cycle, It has now become so convoluted and confusing, especially with streamers that are all streaming each other's content and like doing hour long takedowns of each other. At a certain point, I'm just like, I have no idea what's going on anymore. And I think Adam 22 and Lena, the plug, are very, I don't want to call them, I think I said savvy, but I don't think that's the right word. Opportunistic, perhaps. but like they understand on a core level that there are subcultural spaces that are so there are subcultural spaces that are so tacky and obnoxious and icky to normal people

that they can kind of do whatever they want them which is very sad because I think obviously the porn industry has had this problem forever but there's there's other adjacent spaces that they can operate in and they can really just act like like animals and and hurt people and and be obnoxious and nobody cares because to talk about it, you couldn't go and see it and be like, the guy who watches his wife have sex with porn stars said something racist and his grooming teenagers. And it's like,

what are you talking about? Like, oh, oh, the pedophile hunter Instagram channel that beats up like clearly mentally ill people on TikTok canceled this guy who's been a known predator on a hardcore BMX message. Like, this is nonsense.

This is a, it's like something out of Robocop. It's a fucking nightmare. But he is also huge. The paradox is you can't explain it, but also it's like, this guy sets culture. Like 15-year-olds love this dude. That's terrifying. It is.

And it's honestly very vaudevillian. Like it speaks to like the sort of decentralized entertainment world that we now exist in with the internet. We're like, the person next to you on the subway could be watching like anime girls giving birth on the AI, like open AI SORA, TikTok clone or something. thing and they look like a completely normal person. Like, oh, the entertainment that we're consuming has just, like, reached this, like, absolute bottom. And now that, like, there's these very famous popular people that just shouldn't have ever been this.

Like, they didn't, this shouldn't have happened. It's like the, like, the, like, end point of Spencer and Heidi, who I think understand this, but are not, I can't believe I'm going to say this, are not horrible people. They're certainly not behaving like this. This is, like, a whole. other level. For people who don't know, can you say who Spencer and Heidi are? If you don't know who Spencer and Heidi is by first name basis, get off of this show.

Just close it out. Our platform is if you don't understand something that happens here, we don't want you as a listener, but I didn't want to do that to your audience. I didn't know if you have the same policy where we gatekeepers. Do you think that the millennials who listen to our podcast know who Spidey is slash R? They have to. I think our audience knows. We're not explaining it.

It's an out of context cancellation. Look it up. Oh, yeah. If you don't know, fuck you. That's what we're saying. Yeah. To close the loop on Adam 22, looks like he's actually finally been canceled,

which is interesting, but not for any of the reasons we've discussed today. In fact, he was kind of canceled by the, what it feels like is the only thing that can actually truly cancel people in the 2020s, which is that he ran out of money.

He went broke. Oh, yeah. That's interesting that that is what maybe what truly cancel someone. I think there's a way to look at a lot of cancel culture, and not all of it, obviously, not all cancer culture, hashtag, not all cancel culture, that lines up pretty well with, I mean, kind of what you were saying, where it's like if the under, like the perceived underclass goes against the upper class, that's a very common cancel culture narrative. And the perceived upper class, the sort of higher status person in the situation, can kind of

weather the storm if they control their own platform and they have their, their own financial backing. No CEO is going to fire Adam 22 because he's the CEO. Like if you create your own fiefdom, it's like very hard to depose you. And so in April 2025, no jumper announced that they were going broke and doing layoffs. There was a lawsuit that did lead to this, though, for workplace misconduct by former employees that was fired in January of this year. He said it's frivolous, but it has drained the company of money. and there's kind of not been much from him in the last year.

We actually sent Garbage Day and Panic World Researcher Adam Bumis to Adam 22's 420 event in New York City with Caroline Calloway, which Adam said was a nightmare. He went last year. Sounds like it would be a nightmare. Yeah, it sounds terrible. I thought that would be like a fun first assignment for Adam when he joined the company. I was like, good luck. I mean, I had a good time.

but like, teach their own. Well, yeah, you were, you were working for Adam at the time, though.

We got you, we got you from no jumper. I was actually just there as a fan, you know. Yeah, you were too, you were too much of a racist

racist for no jumper. And so they let you go. So that's my favorite canceled person. And favorite is probably the wrong word there. But that's the canceled person I think about the most. But after the break, we're going to hear from you to about who your quote unquote favorite canceled person is at the moment.

but first a word from our sponsors what's another canceled product the cuck coin that that adam 22 grifted his his his his fans oh yeah a word from our sponsors adam 22's cryptocurrency which is called cut coin which he was using to finance a video where men had sex with his wife that's real

so yeah I'm very excited to hear who you guys have brought to the show today good luck topping mine in terms of grossness and irrelevant. Well, good news for you, I'm a bottom. So is Adam 22. You get, apparently. I'm sad that I know that.

I wanted to wrap the story of Adam 22 up by saying, this just reinforces my view that nothing good has ever come out of Nashville, New Hampshire. Yes. New Hampshire, you know, know, serves a purpose for New England. It is a place where you can buy tax-free liquor and shoot fireworks and live in the woods. Tax-free liquor?

Yeah. That's a high-old. When you cross the border, there's the state liquor store right off the highway. Which I would argue is socialist. I actually think having a state liquor store is socialist New Hampshire. No. Just come to New Jersey where they'll, like, pump the class for you. Drink free and die.

Yeah. I mean, New Hampshire won't do anything for you. They barely have roads there. Although I do think there's something useful about having like a super liberal state directly next to a super conservative state. And if we had to rebuild the country that way, I do think everyone would be happier. Because right now, New Hampshire people can come down to Massachusetts and buy marijuana.

And for a while, they could get gay married before that was possible in New Hampshire. They could get a college education or the dentist. And then people from New Hampshire can go. People from Massachusetts could go to New Hampshire and buy liquor and fireworks. And, like, that's it, basically. When I was at- When I was at UMass, we used to play UNH in hockey. I'm reppping my UMass.

Zoom ass, dude. Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah, dude. And our chant for UNH was, excuse me, I'm going to sing a little bit here. The wheels on your house go round and round. Fuck. That's some classic New England classism right there. My girlfriend at the time was from New Hampshire.

She did not appreciate that one. Once people from New Hampshire get the internet, I'm sure they'll be able to tell you exactly how mad they are. Do you want to do the honors, Christine, with our canceled person of the day? Yeah, we're canceling Dave fucking Chappelle again. What did he do something again? Yeah, he went to Saudi Arabia. Okay, you went to Saudi Arabia, sure. With our finest representatives.

The ones who are actually like already problems, you're just like, well, of course they went. But Bill Burtr, you know, like, Like, like, it didn't even process my mind that Chappelle what. I was bummed about Billber because, like, he had a good run there for a second of, like, saying some good stuff on the TV about Trump. And then that kind of ended. Yeah. I mean, I wrote about this for my newsletter on burnsnotice.com. But it was basically my first line of the piece was, oh, Billber, what have you done?

That was really heartbreaking. But Dave Chappelle, I mean, he is the bane of all trans people. Yeah, how many times did you and Oliver cancel Dave Chappelle? We did a two-part series on him. So we had Amara Jones from the Translash podcast on to talk about his negative impact on the trans community, particularly on black trans people who she felt were particularly effective. by his transphobia because he is such an icon in the black community. And then our follow-up episode was actually with the two Netflix employees who led the internal protest against the special that he had at the time.

And I think he's had like two or three more specials out since then with like no protest. But our argument that we're coming to this show with is he is possibly the most successful quote unquote canceled person. In history, although I think I would probably put Barry Weiss slightly ahead, but again, we just canceled. We talk a lot about the cancel culture of grift economy on our show. And that's the same. And it touches on what we said with Adam 22, where like it's the cycle of attention and then profit, basically, where he was doing what, I think at one point he had a company tour called the canceled tour. Yes. And he was going around. and every time a new venue would be like,

we're canceling the show because of this reason, he would use it to promote his next show, which would sell even more tickets at even higher prices. And you see it today. Like, he's just not cancel. I don't think he's cancelable, let's be honest with you. He has a lot of powerful fans in his corner, including the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos.

yeah i mean i don't have a blow by blow like you do with adam 22 because i think it's oh no i just i just i have that all tattooed on my body like memento and i read it every morning you've been waiting for the day yeah yeah i wake up every morning i'm like who's adam 22 and i just read the whole thing did you get that to a new hamps yeah they do it to you at the state toll when you went to the the state um they're like would you like to hear about i'm 22 no i i i actually wanted to ask like with regards to Dave Chappelle, what does it mean to be this far down the road and for like the culture war scientists to have created an uncancelable man? Like I guess like this is sort of similar territory that we got into with Kattenbarge in our episode about the postme 2 era. Sort of like reckoning with these things that defined the first Trump administration that ultimately like changed the world but didn't not in the way we were.

thought. You know, I sort of compare things like Black Lives Matter, Me Too, cancel culture, to things like Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring, where like the world changed, but like the direction of that change was just like in ways we could have never anticipated. So it's like to have someone like David Chappelle who's been able to factor being canceled over and over again into the marketing of a comedy tour or into the streaming metrics for Netflix versus comedy shows, like what does that mean, I guess? I think what you have nowadays. is you have a large contingent of people for whom like Dave Chappelle sucks and is irredeable

and they will never consume his content, right? And then you have people who have decided that they're all in with him. It's like a there is no in between. Have you ever met like a halfway Dave Chappelle fan who's like, yeah, he's transphobic, but like, I'm imagining someone I'm actually very jealous of where they just woke up from a coma they went into in like 2008. They walked out of the theater after seeing con air and then they passed out for 20 years. They put on whatever Kanye album just came out at the time. Could you imagine? Could you imagine getting hit by a car after completing graduation for the first time?

And then you're just like, I'm back, guys. What's happened to all my favorite people? They just read prisoners of Azkeban. They just have Kanye on in their headphones or reading prisoners. basketball they go, can't wait to watch the Chappelle show tonight. Yeah, they just get hit by a car. Yeah. Yes, we can. That's that sounds great actually. Um, yeah, I mean, it's frustrating as somebody who's been watching this and as a trans person who's

directly affected by it. Although, uh, from what I hear his material these days is less about trans people, which I think is good probably for everybody, but it got really bad for a while. He claims to have a trans friend. I don't know that that's been substantiated with reporting. But he blames the trans community's reaction to his comedy for the suicide death of his trans friend. And he talks about it repeatedly. I've heard this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is like really heinous. I mean, listen, trans people can go over the top. We're also highly targeted and often have to defend ourselves online from a lot of stuff. You know what? Taking a step back, I don't really want to, like, judge on this. But I don't think that that's something that you use in a comedy routine. No, it's not. Like, to make a political point. You're not being a comedian at that point. Yeah, and I would also even say that, like, say that that's true.

So let's imagine that that's 100% true and everything Dave Chappelle is saying, he's remembered correctly and he understands. To use that then as like a content marketing strategy is even if all that were true, is heinous. And like I think very, very much in bad faith. I remember the clip because like even in the buildup to that point, he was still making fun of her, this theoretical person that exists. It like worked in story structure of like emotional arc like rugpole.

guess what she like tried to hurt herself but the whole setup there was like a way of just like fitting in more jokes at trans people my as people as like you've you've deep dive on dave previously what I think makes him most bewildering to me is that lots of other like a louis k a barry wayce they pivoted to being edge lords because they like they were like excommunications from the community or from like from like from like mainstream success this seemed like totally his option do you have a theory as to why was was it just like I think the savvy move here the most like money making move here is to focus my attention on on trans women when like before that he was like largely beloved by everyone I think that's a tough question to ask I think that yeah I don't know if

it's money or megalomania yeah I think he got a lot of cultural support from very powerful places by targeting trans people. Like you have to remember this is right around the time of like J.K. rallying coming out as a turf and you know, everybody losing their mind about Leah Thomas swimming in the Ivy League, which they don't give scholarships, by the way. And it was very much being anti-trans was considered like counterculture and I think it's easy to look back on that and be like yeah this is this is right at the beginning of like the Austin comedy scene where everybody just gets up and they make fun of either people of color women or trans people so I think it was part of the comedy zeitgeist of the time but again he

didn't have to go there I think he felt that this was a way to make himself more relevant again. I wanted to look at like a timeline of his career just to see like when this started. And what's really interesting is it is all post-COVID. Like everything that we're talking about is starting to happen for him after 2020. And what's super interesting is like his most like politically charged socially progressive politically charged special 846, which is the the amount of time that, Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd's neck.

That special comes out in 2020. And he does like a year of sort of press of being just sort of like the like the most politically important comedian. And then in 2021, he does a Netflix special, the closer. And the closer is when he starts with the anti-trans stuff. So like something happened in the in that like between that year or maybe this is stuff that's already been there and sort of like radicalized during like because we've we've talked about this on the show a bunch where like a lot of these figures jk. Rallying conge west they have this stuff

in them all the time and then the isolation of COVID and the sort of like heavily online life that people start building Elon Musk is another one where it's like he's always been kind of a dickhead but like clearly the isolation of COVID like cracked something in his head and I'm curious i i would be curious to go and like try to figure out like what exactly happened to chappelle like did he go down to austin and like network with rogan and all these people like what happened because it is uh it is kind of an abrupt turn i feel like that's why people were so upset about it is because like wait a minute like this guy has always kind of been on the right side of stuff why is this happening historically trans people have been the punchline for comedians

for a very very very long time i would say up until around 2015 when a started when people started noticing, hey, that was kind of shitty. Like all of a sudden, everybody woke up and was like, hey, wait a minute. Ace Venturo was incredibly transphobic, right? Yeah, there's old Simpsons episodes I've come across her. I'm like, whoa. Yeah. I forgot about that.

There's a trans woman on YouTube, Lily Simpson, who does a great job of like going back into the before times and seeing how shows handled trans people. If you're interested in that sort of thing. I was actually watching the first season of ER the other day, just because of the pit. And there's a trans episode that is like quintessential, like heart in the right place, absolutely horrible execution of like 90s TV that is a fascinating document in regards to what you're saying. Like it's worth maybe not watching, but it's worth like reading the Wikipedia summary because it's it is so bizarre by today's context. Yeah. And so you have like the trans tipping boy in 2015.

You have the great historical moment of my coming out. Yes. I remember. I remember. That's tattooed on my body. Well, Ryan has Adam 22's story there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's why you've been a great war warrior.

That's what they call me. I haven't paid for a macho latte in years. It's all. And I think that for a long time, like the trans jokes didn't fly. And I, I suspect that for Chappelle, like, 2021 hit, you started to see a cultural backlash more broadly to trans people. You have JK Rowling come out. And I felt, he felt comfortable being like, hey, I haven't been allowed to make fun of these people for a decade. I'm going to take my shot at it.

Yeah. I think you're both onto something. I do think that, like, that circle, the Joe Rogan. Elon Chappelle Circle, they all kind of like converged around this at a similar time. I mean, there's a

great clip on Stavros, Halkeus. I don't know how I've always just called him stabby. His podcast recently where he has a friend comedian on and she starts going on an anti-transterre and he's like, you've been living in Austin

way too long. And it's like clearly something that like other, the comedians are aware of that if you go down to Austin, like, you will be radicalized into being anti-trans. Who's the most transphobic out of Elon Musk, Dave Chappelle, and Joe Rogan, or the least transphobic? The least transphobic is probably Joe Rogan. I think you can convince Joe Rogan anything. If you gave me an hour at Joe Rogan, I could turn him into a socialist.

Not a problem. Like, not a problem at all. I'd be like, yeah, I know how to do it. I've thought, I've rehearsed it in the mirror. Joe, we're down. Head us up. Joe, come on. Bring me on their Gerbergen experience.

I will make you a proud fanboy of the IRS and National Rail and everything. Yeah. I did want to make one more point about all of this. And it's less about Dave Chappelle and more about going back to the fandom wars because I wanted to talk about how the press gets involved in all this stuff. Sure. Like, Steve and I are both journalists. Ryan, you're a journalist as well.

like my theory of cancel culture is that amongst a certain set of established journalists, they will automatically fandom for people who are right of center, or even center, who are being canceled. Like their default position is to be like, the left must be wrong about this person. 100%. And I think you see it with Dave Chappelle. I think you saw it with J.K. Rowling.

And those people are not immune to the fandom mind virus of we're going to be a jerk, like defend this guy or this woman to the death. But the problem, of course, when you have that, is that a newspaper has just as much reach as the internet does. Right. Like this is how Barry Weiss built her career. Yeah. She was a New York Times, you know, op-ed editor. She was not a writer.

She wrote occasionally. But her big thing was she was able to get her anti-woke friends in the pages of the New York Times. She invented the term intellectual dark web, which just means racist transphobes with a platform. I feel like a missing piece of context for people who aren't journalists. When I entered journalism, most of my editors were Gen X. And they all kind of had the Barry, even the liberal ones, liberal ones had the Barry Weiss attitude. that I think is very common among older people in journalism, which is that they believe that the media is inherently liberal

and that it's kind of dangerous or exciting to have mildly conservative views. And I think this is like a hangover from the Clinton era. I think it got worse during the Obama era. And like it also just like wasn't evolving fast enough as the right was consolidating power. in the 2010. So like, when I hear Barry Wye speak, I'm just like, oh, yeah, you're like every editor I've ever met in New York where they're like, you know, it's, you know, what you don't be really renegade is if we said something kind of conservative.

It's like, oh, wow, yeah, well, that's crazy. And it's an attitude that just seems very pervasive still to this day in a weird way. Yeah. Some of what you were saying about Adam 22 really reminded me of Donald Trump and just kind of the cycles of sheer antics that he'll come out with and then maybe get quiet for a few days and then all of a sudden last night you're just breaking down the east wing of the white house and wires are being exposed and i don't know like nothing really sticks to him nothing sticks to him but he also has that money to insulate himself that adam 22 seems to be losing

in rapid succession yeah everything is owning the libs uh speaking of the libs to uh to close the loop on what we open with uh graham platiner naz tattoo definitely real just saw some alerts come through it's it is yeah it's it's a real tattoo yeah damn sorry Ryan are you okay yeah i'm bummed he was really exciting he still might win i mean it's main like i don't know politics in america are complicated but uh not a good look for sure how recent do you need to have gotten a nazi tattoo removed for for for for for you to be like you know what i i still think he's got my vote. We're real

a lot here. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is like, probably not going to be the last time we have this exact conversation about a male politician in America based on the last 30 years of American history. And this is cancel culture. I mean, he got, he got

nuked by Opsack. He did, but I... A couple research. I think this is actually an interesting place to land, though, here today where it's like, cancel culture is, existing simultaneously at a time when political extremism, particularly for men, has never been higher, right? The grand plan of the far right in the 2010s worked. And so the way I've been

describing is like, okay, imagine if extremism, political extremism was COVID, now assume that every man in America has at least long COVID, if not active COVID. Like if you grew up online in the 2000s, 2010s, like you have been around Nazis in a way that like, I don't think the average American man was pre-internet. Like you are in Minecraft with them. You are listening to hip-hop blogs or hip-hop podcasts by like groomers and pedophiles. Like this is a thing that just because of the nature of the internet. And the idea of cancellation happening simultaneously is interesting.

And I don't really know what to make of that happening at the same time. It's like we're trying to sort through this toxic sludge. And like this is kind of the only mechanism we have. But it is an interesting time to see these two four. forces collide. I have a theory based off of today's conversation to what you're saying, Ryan. It can only work if you have an ideology, if you have some sort of principle. Cancelling.

Yeah. On either, on like any end. Like Adam 22 is only, like, his whole thing was just like, I'm going to diversify my investments so that I have something that sticks. You know, he's all over the map about like associations because it doesn't. doesn't really matter. It's just like, is this going to help me? Is this not going to help me? So like nothing can knock you down if you don't have a principle. Somebody like Nick Fuentes, who actually like believes in something might be easier to have like have the rug pulled,

even though like all of the things he believes are vile because like he like cares about like he says to care about an idea about something. You have to like have that as like the starting base to be able to have it taken from you, I think, I think is the, the, the trend we see. It's much easier to cancel supposedly liberal figures because they're supposed to be representing some sort of beliefs like oyster should be less money. Well, that's a shots fired at a platinum right there. Well, yeah, I, I would just say that like canceling cancel culture exists on the right wing. They just go about it very differently. Like, we don't like, Like Madison Cothorn was ethered from political life, like, by Republicans.

Because he was like, they're all having co-courgies. And then that motherfucker disappeared overnight. And they don't do. It's actually kind of like the great irony of American politics right now where it's like, the Republicans are pretty much completely operating in public online, except for the inner mechanisms of the party. And like when they turn on you, like they will turn on you. Whereas the Democrats are. are still much more traditional.

So, like, they are deciding the popularity of their candidates, of their figures, of their pundits in public, but they are not operating in public the same way the Republicans are. It's almost like an inverse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Nick Fuentes has been canceled several times by the right and will continue to be until he's too powerful and then they'll bring him in because they're much more flexible. I think it's just different, different philosophies. Also, we talked about Milo Unopoulos earlier and he was also.

somebody who is canceled. My hot take with him is he was really canceled because he's gay. Sure. Also, rumor is that he owes a lot of people a lot of money. But then now he's like saying that he's an ex-gay and he's straight. And he's starting to build a profile again. And I'm like, this is the grift. Like he found his way around the objections of the other people.

It's really interesting. And now he's coming back again. Yeah. I was just going to say go brain tumor. Brain tumors are the true cancellation, actually. Yeah. And obviously speaking tongue and cheek. Please don't cancel me.

Please don't. I can't. Canceling just like, I don't want to rule my weekend, you know, having to deal with it. Weekends are for me, not for the internet. I always end by asking people where they can listen to your show. So let's assume that it's our listeners listening right now. So where can they go and find you guys online? I think it's Cancel Me underscore Daddy on YouTube, actually.

And anywhere you listen to podcasts. We also have a Patreon. We do have a Patreon. Cancel me, Daddy. Please give us money. Please. Well, and you get your episodes early and they're real good. And I'd be remiss without mentioning that we are Flytrap media production.

The Flytrap is a independent co-op, feminist co-op. and we write cultural criticism. Thanks. This was great. Yeah, thank you. And where can our listeners? My idea. Yeah.

If you want to cancel me, I'm on Blue Sky. My username is Ryan hates this. That's also my username on Instagram. My username on X.com, the everything app, which I almost never check in a personal capacity anymore, is Broderick. And you can listen to Panic World. On all platforms, that's the name.

And our Patreon is patreon.com slash panic world. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator, and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Devin Barone, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMeseo is their VP of Brand and Social.

Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, YouTube, and podcast growth marketer, Samantha Hollos. And Tracy Kaplan is the senior vice president of sales and distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Be sure to check up the Panicworld YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube.com slash at PanicWorldPod. And please give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny.

review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.