The Opposite Of “Cancelled”: The Cult Of Nick Sandmann

Well, you’ve probably seen the story about Nick Sandmann getting $250,000,000 from The Washington Post. Sandmann had previously settled with CNN in January after suing them for $275,000,000.

A cynical mind would say Sandmann is nothing more than a camera hog trying to get his fifteen minutes of fame back. Some might also say it’s unfair that a couple of mean words on the internet can result in a major organization giving you a quarter-billion dollars.

Sorry if it sounds like I’m annoyed, but I thought the fear of “cancel culture” (an idea I have dismissed in the past) was related to it ruining the life of the person being cancelled. Sandmann hasn’t had his life ruined, a year and a half after everyone forgot about him and he’s richer than the vast majority of Americans will ever be.

Let’s actually look at the saga of Nick Sandmann to see how his life has been post-cancellation:

• A picture of Sandmann smiling at a member of the Black Young Israelites is taken at the 2019 March For Life. (This is the event that got him cancelled.)
• While many did mock, threaten, and attack him (Wait, I thought you were a coward if you let “mean words” get to you. Isn’t that what we hear everything time a transgender person complains about being misgendered, or someone complains about an offensive joke), those who do are quickly seen as monsters and attacked to Hell and back. Even helping Sandmann later on, to the point of providing him legal advice like Ben Shapiro did, is not enough for some of the hardcore Nick Sandmann defenders.
• Everyone except a few people forget about Nick Sandmann and move on with their lives. He is only brought up as an example of people acting hysterical over nothing or to dismiss anyone who did not kneel at the alter of the new god Nick Sandmann.
• Sandmann becomes one of the richest men in America.

This is not someone who “had his life ruined,” as much as it is someone who has a cult of personality formed around him. L. Ron Hubbard was more “cancelled” than Sandmann, and his followers were also much less of a cult.

Maybe I’m just jaded because I remember CNN, of all people, using this phrase in response to the Steubenville trail. And who could forget Brock Turner’s dad worrying about how his son’s “twenty minutes of pleasure” would effect his life — something he should have worried about before said “twenty minutes of pleasure,” but that’s besides the point.

Some of what I’ve said in this article may have offended you, and is that’s the case, please cancel me. I’m being dead serious. Do you know what I could do with $250,000,000? I don’t — but I would sure love to have $250,000,000. I’ll even make sure to put it in an offshore bank account so I can keep as much of that money as possible.

I end with this, recently animation reviewer PieGuyRulz make a list of twelve awful things done by Butch Hartmann (including laughing about a suicide, scamming people out of $200,000, running a seminar that claims it can “cure autism,” and much more). After that, PieGuy had to say the following after some accused him of “cancel culture”:

Canceling someone over something they’ve owned up to and proven that they can do better, is not the same as trying to hold someone accountable for scummy things they continue to do with no remorse. I’m trying to shame Butch into accountability.

Wait a minute, I thought the fear of cancel culture was people being afraid to speak? Now, we are seeing that some people might become afraid to speak their mind because of the negative backlash associated with “engaging in cancel culture.” A claim that does not need evidence, nor does it need any context to what the person is being “cancelled” for.

But go ahead, be the brave defender of Sandmann, or J.K. Rowling, or PewDiePie, or whatever rich person is getting criticized this week over a controversy nobody will remember the next week. You’re wasting your time, but I also waste tons of my time scrolling through TvTropes, so I have no right to complain. However, all I ask is you don’t pretend you’re fighting the battle to save Western Civilization or stop an innocent person from having their lives destroyed. You aren’t, you’re just wasting time defending someone who someone who will never meet you, and who more than likely is going to survive just fine.

You know, the term SIMP gets thrown around quite a bit, but I think it should expanded to include people who obsessively insist on defending people who get criticized for a couple of days, to the point where if you aren’t bending the knee to their new lord and savior you’re considered a bad person. Anyone who spent the past year and a half doing nothing but defending Sandmann (even after you ran out of people to defend him from), you’re all a bunch of SIMPs far as I’m concerned.