Cancellation: 2021

Each year, we say goodbye to a number of celebrities. Not from death, but something arguably worse. Where death provides immediate release, being canceled leaves a person in a state of limbo, unsure of their place in the public eye anymore. Well, we still care about them enough to look back on their PR hiccups in the last year that made us hate them.

Influencers don’t always know best

Teen Influencer Jim “Gimme Jimmie” Schultz lost a few million followers after he was asked if he thought he was contributing to the gentrification of East Central Los Angeles with the influx of content creators to their cheap rent prices. When he didn’t understand what most of those words meant, the interviewer pushed further by asking his opinion on redlining, the practice of real estate developers segregating where people can live using clauses in deeds. He thought that the question was in reference to the red ink that teachers use to correct papers and went on to praise the education system (which was also segregated for many years).

He tried to come back from the mistake with an NAACP image campaign with the tagline “Gimme Racial Equality,” though the slogan never really took off. Last we heard from him, he was repeating his high school US history class.

Don’t believe everything you see on TV

Lifestyle guru and talk show host Regina Jefferson gave up hosting duties for her morning show “Rise With Regina” after details about her personal life became known. Learning that she had been refusing tips to delivery drivers was a surprise, given her positivity-minded persona that preached kindness on camera. It was even more surprising to hear that she had been invoking “Stand Your Ground” on any drivers that asked for a selfie.

There were several things wrong with this. For one, the principle, but it was also in California, a state that doesn’t have Stand Your Ground Laws. And even if it did, attacks with a baseball bat aren’t protected. Once these allegations became public, she was ordered to surrender all blunt objects to a court of law and attend therapy for anger management. She got it reduced to a yoga retreat.

Baby beef

DJ Jumper Cable became the subject of online attacks after a video went viral of him kicking a baby at a meet and greet as it crawled towards him while he was taking a picture with the parents. When asked to comment on the situation, he said “That baby had Uncrustable on his hands. No way he was touching my Fendi.”

When this excuse didn’t gain him any traction, he doubled down on the baby’s apparent dirtiness with his diss track “Bath Time,” in which he called the baby a “dirty bitch” 27 times. The parents have started an anti-bullying campaign that has successfully gotten DJ Jumper Cable removed from several music festival appearances.

An idol of the past

Beloved icon Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols had a public reckoning with the legacy he left behind. Although his band’s album was really good, it’s hard to go in for a second listen when you learn that they only put the one out because Mr. Vicious killed his girlfriend Nancy in a murder-suicide. I was shocked when I googled it this year.

Kourtney Kardashian and her boyfriend Travis Barker dressed up as the late couple this year for Halloween, but it backfired when people spent the night tweeting at Kourtney to share her location. I removed “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” from my Spotify library. I don’t want my streaming money going to such a bad dude.