What deserves to be cancelled in 2022?
Cancelling things is a habit worth keeping from the pandemic era
By Leo Mirani: Asia editor, The Economist
Historians searching for a catchy phrase with which to capture the 2020s thus far could do worse than “cancel culture”. Over the past two years, pretty much everything that could be cancelled has been cancelled: travel, weddings, conferences, sports events, elections, celebrities, intellectuals, minor public figures, even people nobody had hitherto heard of. The pandemic cancelled anything involving human contact in the real world. Activists, journalists and the easily offended cancelled everything else.
As the worst of the pandemic recedes, at least in countries that have vaccinated most of their eligible populations, the cancellation of events is easing. Citizens are voting in person at polling booths. Sports stars are competing in front of crowds. Ageing musicians are resuming their comeback tours. The cancellation of individuals may ebb too, as people step away from their screens and remember that flesh-and-blood humans are more complicated creatures than the caricatures of social media and broadcast news.
