Cancel culture as it is understood today started rising in prominence in the mid-2010s with social media playing a crucial role, especially through Black Twitter and movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. The practice evolved from earlier roots as a form of social ostracism and public boycott, but "canceling" became a more organized and widespread phenomenon around this time, fueled by the ability of social media to rapidly amplify calls for accountability or boycott. The phrase "cancel culture" itself came into common use around 2016 to 2018. The concept has philosophical roots going back to mid-20th century thought about tolerance and suppression of viewpoints, notably Herbert Marcuse's 1964 essay "Repressive Tolerance," but its modern social media-fueled form is much more recent. Some trace the cultural use of "cancel" in related contexts back to the 1980s in music and movies, but the social phenomenon as a widely recognized term and practice is largely a product of the 2010s and exploded during the late 2010s and early 2020s. In short, cancel culture originated as an online practice around the mid-2010s, gaining major traction through Black Twitter and social justice movements, with the term becoming widespread in the late 2010s and the phenomenon exploding by 2020.
