Cancel culture launched a reckoning that was long overdue — but that doesn’t mean it’s getting everything right. Filmmaker and actor Sarah Jones slips in and out of various characters as she shares her personal experience with cancel culture and suggests a better way to hold others — and ourselves — to account.
If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas:
Follow TED!
Twitter:
Instagram:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
TikTok:
The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.
Watch more:
TED’s videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: . For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at
#TED #TEDTalks
chocomalk
October 23, 2023 at 8:17 am
3:30 false equivalence and sorry to tell you that every race/culture/person experiences this depending on your locale etc. And who in power is getting cancelled?
Dove? No, even with their black to white get clean ad, they are fine. The people getting targeted are those that do not go along with the status quo, regardless of colour.
People with pronouns can dog pile on those that don’t want to use them or don’t like them. In Canada, if you identify as anything but CIS in school, you can bully anyone that is CIS and there are no consequences.
The whole thing is BS cultural appropriation is bad but you want diversity and inclusion. Listen to the music but don’t sing along or dance. Buy the music but don’t get influenced. And oddly, only appropriation when certain colours do it.
Jassica Weaver
October 23, 2023 at 11:18 am
Hello do you care for chat to know each other better
kmrii
October 23, 2023 at 11:20 am
Cracksmoker2k
Tomás Gomes
October 23, 2023 at 1:22 pm
💯
Ryan Chan
October 23, 2023 at 8:43 am
Good stuff, love the Jason Momoa joke on such a sensitive subject
Aldo Valkovich
October 23, 2023 at 9:08 am
👋👋👋
Mojo
October 23, 2023 at 9:23 am
So not only do you want people’s reputations destroyed you want more punishment on top of that? Cancel culture is fascistic. It’s a tactic used to silence people you disagree with. It needs to go away just like this speaker does. If you can’t see that cancel culture is evil at this point then there’s probably no hope for you.
Joshua Daggett
October 23, 2023 at 9:27 am
Cancel culture is stupid. Anonymous people (who would likely never hold up to their own scrutiny) tearing down public figures they never met by making snap decisions about them and simply piling on in a blind mob of ignorance.
Mandrake
October 23, 2023 at 9:51 am
“Cancel culture” is the modern version of the Salem witch trials, or trial by mob rule.
This talk is about descrimination, and I don’t agree with equating or linking it with cancel culture.
Jassica Weaver
October 23, 2023 at 11:19 am
Hello do you care for chat to know each other better ❤❤
John Hoffman
October 24, 2023 at 11:29 am
I think she either doesn’t know what cancel culture is and the destruction it brings, or she is intentionally misleading in order to muddy the conversation.
Meanderin Oranges
October 23, 2023 at 9:52 am
Wow TED, you’re deleting my comments? Canceling Harvard students for their abhorrent opinions is merely application of their side’s rules back onto them.
Crow Feather
October 23, 2023 at 12:07 pm
To be fair, I *think* it may have been YouTube having technical difficulties. I can’t say for sure, of course. But, I had a comment that didn’t appear at first (and I remember there being an error message when I tried editing and reposting it). When I went back and reposted it, it was there. You may want to try again, if you haven’t already. 🙂
Bryan Shoemaker
October 23, 2023 at 8:16 pm
If it happens within 20 seconds of you posting it then it’s a automatic algorithm. It’s something I’ve been fighting with for quite some time.
Meanderin Oranges
October 23, 2023 at 8:47 pm
@Bryan Shoemaker good to know, thanks!
Zandisile Fila
October 24, 2023 at 9:48 pm
It’s not the first time 😢
SHOW me MONEY
October 23, 2023 at 10:00 am
always focus on other one.don’t know how to make up. Just Look.Then back.
Chris Miller
October 23, 2023 at 10:30 am
I’ve only seen white people get cancelled.
Lets Get Smarted
October 23, 2023 at 3:06 pm
Kanye west
Chris Miller
October 23, 2023 at 3:11 pm
@Lets Get Smarted yea, but no. He hasn’t been cancelled. Don’t bring up Will ‘Simp’ Smith either, because he cancelled himself and that’s not how it works
david ortega
October 23, 2023 at 10:31 am
Cancel culture is the tool of fascists and people who does not believe in freedom of speech! Does not need to be reframe, it needs to me stop forever
The Real Kisht
October 23, 2023 at 10:37 am
“As a black woman, I know what it means to have cancellation baked in.” – woman on stage lecturing people
People who are proponents of cancel culture are some of the most vindictive people you’ll ever meet. They have no intention of inviting the people they cancel back into any conversation.
oh by the way, the soviets and the Chinese already did the whole ‘cancel counsel’ thing.
Pootie Putin
October 23, 2023 at 10:48 am
More out of touch garbage from the totalitarian Left.
jammadamma
October 23, 2023 at 10:49 am
No, let’s get a divorce.
ra_bi_ah
October 23, 2023 at 10:52 am
Cancel culture conversations are a surefire way to trigger racists 🎻.
Platypus Paws
October 23, 2023 at 11:44 am
My experince is the exact opposite IF IF IF you are using an equal measure rather than a racist double standard when you use the term “racist”.
Which defintion are you using?
People who have been TAUGHT (& it is always taught imo) to use racist double standards do tend to like cancel culture based on double standards, because there arguments dont tend to stand up if they have to make their case as equals.
Platypus Paws
October 23, 2023 at 11:46 am
Likewise, are yiu1 really saying that it is right for me to suppress anything you say, just because i could be more powerful than you, and i invent an accusation?
That is the situation – both an abuse of power & double standards toward political advesaries – that the term cancel culture refers to.
Platypus Paws
October 23, 2023 at 11:48 am
Also, note historically that cancel culture was never seen as a good thing in hindsight, and an essential tool for dictatorships & authoritarian govts and corporations.
Eskede
October 23, 2023 at 8:03 pm
Hello. 😊
Khairul Mufidz Zain
October 23, 2023 at 11:21 am
❤
unholyrevenger72
October 23, 2023 at 11:37 am
Cancel culture doesn’t really exist. Not in the way Conservatives think it does. It exists as an expression of capitalism or Conservative hatred. For example for the former Roseanne was canceled by DISNEY, an evil corporate entity, not the woke mob. For the latter Martin Luther King jr. was canceled by a conservative or if you’re into conspiracies, a conservative government.
Thomas Bryant
October 23, 2023 at 12:03 pm
This is a great explanation, and perspective. Unfortunately, it won’t stop those “Cancellers” from enjoying the simple act of cancelling someone. These particular people thrive on negativity, hate, and causing fear. They are also the demographic that find it all wildly entertaining, especially when it causes pain and suffer for others. Perhaps the cancellers should be canceled…LOL Now thats a paradox.
Michael Crededio
October 23, 2023 at 12:12 pm
Very positive
James Earl
October 23, 2023 at 12:14 pm
Cancel culture, is a cancer, destroying lives for no objective reason.
Yasha
October 23, 2023 at 12:54 pm
I saw her playing first character and it’s a turn off. I stopped the video immediately. Mid school kinda performance. Couldn’t watch it.
Matt Alley
October 23, 2023 at 3:38 pm
So introspection is the cure for both sides of this issue, cancelers and cancelees? That’s a reach. The wealthy elite, who have created the second gilded age we are in, know what they are doing, they just don’t care. Those trying to cancel them are so other-focused that they are unlikely to look within and see that they are creating injustice with their own actions. What a nothing-burger of a recommendation
Donavan Miller
October 23, 2023 at 4:48 pm
This message brought to you by Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street.
Carlos Gonzalez
October 23, 2023 at 5:35 pm
3:30 the comparison doesn’t apply. Cancel culture is coming from activists dominating media, trying to police everyone who doesn’t agree them with concepts like gender pronouns, CRT and anything that goes against ESG views of powerful corporations.
Eskede
October 23, 2023 at 8:02 pm
Consider the source. Look who’s doing the presentation….
Bryan Shoemaker
October 23, 2023 at 8:12 pm
Cancel culture is literal Nazism and the funny thing is, those are the people calling others Nazis for not agreeing with their opinion. Then add insult to injury, they are right now showing their support to a entity that has stated all Jews must be exterminated.
The left is literally their own enemy.
Isaac Grant
October 23, 2023 at 9:24 pm
Who cancelled conversation?
Laura Susanna Lisa Harley Lilith Santera
October 24, 2023 at 12:20 am
Agree.
Tìm Kiếm Đầu Tư
October 24, 2023 at 1:21 am
Very interesting video. Thank you❤
Pete Bigner
October 24, 2023 at 7:03 am
Sarah Jones is safe. Coleman Hughes a black man, talking common sense that goes against the liberal narrative, is not safe. TED let’s cancel him!
Iasso
October 24, 2023 at 2:56 pm
Watching this is like listening to Alanis Morrissett’s “Ironic” and knowing what she describes is not irony. The presenter is pretending cancel culture is the same as discrimination and that it’s ok because the people being cancelled didn’t experience discrimination and that the whole thing is “equitable discrimination”. This is just someone trying to justify why even comedians refuse to come to campuses anymore. The whole thing boils down to the old adage that what the further left you go the more it is really about is hating the wealthy than helping the poor.
Laughing Man
October 25, 2023 at 7:57 am
Cancel cancel culture.
WHYLER
October 25, 2023 at 12:41 pm
I hoped this video would be anything, but what i expected it to be. Unfortunately, it turned out to be exactly what I expected.
Double Apple
October 26, 2023 at 9:29 am
15 minutes of pumping a film and mansplaining cancel culture
Andy Cordy
October 26, 2023 at 1:16 pm
Thank you, firstly, for a clearer understanding of what cancel culture means.
I support these endeavours 100% but I am afraid that knee jerk reactions are common throughout our shared history and the web has given this kind of short sited and hasty opinion so much oxygen, I cannot see a way to rein in those who shout first and think later.
The power of tabloid journalism drove me to shield myself from mainstream media as much as possible long before the realisation that social media could generate hate far faster than TV, Radio and Newspapers. Once we could put a finger on the divisive haters because their channels were limited, now they can hide behind layer after layer of synthetic credibility.
This gofer is staying in his hole.