He talked about the YouTuber James Charles, who was canceled by the platform’s beauty community in May after some drama with his mentor, Tati Westbrook, also a YouTuber, and a vitamin entrepreneur. That was a big cancellation, widely covered, that helped popularize the term. Teenagers often bring it up.

Ben, 17, said that people should be held accountable for their actions, whether they’re famous or not, but that canceling someone “takes away the option for them to learn from their mistakes and kind of alienates them.”

His school doesn’t have much bullying, he said, and the word carries a gentler meaning in its hallways, used in passing to tease friends . Often, the joke extends beyond people. One week, after students were debating the safety of e-cigarettes and vaping, some declared that Juul was canceled.

[Here’s what Barack Obama has to say about cancel culture.]

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It took some time for L to understand that she had been canceled. She was 15 and had just returned to a school she used to attend. “All the friends I had previously had through middle school completely cut me off,” she said. “Ignored me, blocked me on everything, would not look at me.”

Months went by. Toward the end of sophomore year, she reached out over Instagram to a former friend, asking why people were not talking to her. It was lunchtime; the person she asked was sitting in the cafeteria with lots of people and so they all piled on. It was like an avalanche, L said.

Within a few minutes she got a torrent of direct messages from the former friend on Instagram, relaying what they had said. One said she was a mooch. One said she was annoying and petty. One person said that she had ruined her self-esteem. Another said that L was an emotional leech who was thirsty for validation.