Cancel culture has a reputation for being ruthless, and sometimes it is. One poorly worded tweet from 2013 and suddenly someone is issuing a four-paragraph apology from their notes app and lying low for a tasteful six months. The machine can be swift, brutal, and occasionally completely disproportionate to the offence.
And then there are the ones that just... got away. The scandals that should have dominated the news cycle for weeks, the behaviour that would have ended a lesser-known person's career entirely. Reddit asked people which scandals deserved far more attention than they received, and the answers are infuriating. Some of these you will remember vaguely. Some you will have forgotten entirely. And some you will be reading about for the first time, wondering how on earth that was not a bigger deal.
#21
In 1993, Jerry Seinfeld was almost 39 when he met HIGH SCHOOL senior Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss when she was only 17 years old, and they dated for 4 years.
13points
What this thread captures is the built-up frustration of watching the accountability gap do its thing. The stories happened publicly; they were reported on, and then they were absorbed into the general noise and forgotten. Some of them involve behaviour that would have ended a career at a different level of fame, or in a different week, or without the right people making the right calls behind the scenes.
But what we tend to forget is that the system is not broken. It is working exactly as systems built around power and money tend to work.
Do you know of any other cancellable offences that slipped under the radar? Call it out in the comments!
#22
Two high school football ball players in Ohio put a fake deer in the road and laughed as people swerved to avoid it. Another kid crashed as a result and almost died. Judge decided they need to write an essay and do some community service and hold off an any other punishment to allow them to finish the season. Wouldn’t want to let one mistake derail their promising football careers.
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12points
#23
Not unnoticed but Infantino is going to continue to be the head of FIFA.
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11points
#24
James Charles solicited minors and nothing happened. The victims came forward with evidence and tiktok covered it up and banned those accounts.
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10points
#25
Cee Lo Green allegedly d***ging and r***ng a woman. He pled no contest to a lesser charge. It’s barely a footnote on his Wikipedia page.
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10points
#26
Sunny Hostin claiming to be a hold out juror in a previous high profile case so she could insert herself into the Lyndsey Clancy case. Turns out this kind of thing can be verified and the hold out was a male. No repercussions and very little press on it.
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10points
#27
Sean Penn is alleged to have tied up and a***ulted Madonna. She filed a police report but subsequently withdrew it.
9points
#28
Boris Johnson ditched his security and spent the weekend at the Italian villa of a high ranking ex kgb officer whilst he was Foreign Secretary and NOTHING HAPPENED! Not only that but he later became prime minister. I will never understand how he got away with this.
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9points
#32
This is a little different than a lot of the posts on here, and likely more minimal in its severity, but The Crime Junkie podcast and their multiple obvious plagiarized podcast episodes.
A few years ago a journalist went to Facebook to publicly accuse Ashley Flowers (the host) of blatantly plagiarizing articles she had written for a newspaper. Then, a lot of other podcasters, journalists, and even Redditors shared suspicions that crime junkie utilized their content without credit as well. Crime junkie never included any citations and I do think anyone who studied journalism would find CJs work to be sloppy at best. No accountability or apology from the podcast, just episodes quietly taken down and replaced with “source material”.
If you aren’t into the true crime genre, it’s worth noting that the podcast is consistently rated in the top 5 of Apple Podcasts and Forbes has them (Ashley flower’s production company) bringing in $45 million a year. But the accusations were basically unknown and forgotten about quickly.
I teach an ethics course at a community college and I use this as a case study, but at first I withhold the name of the podcast. Students look at the original podcast episode transcripts (those can be found on way back machine and compare them with the original material written by the accusers. Inevitably they always end up determining multiple examples of the presence of plagiarism. When I tell them the actual name of the podcast it’s super impactful. Especially when it comes to the journalist that originally confronted them. She spent months and months knocking on doors and speaking with grieving family members on a journalist salary. Having her writing stolen and regurgitated by someone with a net worth of $250million must have been nauseating to think about. It gives a lot of impact to the case study.
Crazy that with a fan base as large what theirs it the accusations gained basically no traction at all.
A few years ago a journalist went to Facebook to publicly accuse Ashley Flowers (the host) of blatantly plagiarizing articles she had written for a newspaper. Then, a lot of other podcasters, journalists, and even Redditors shared suspicions that crime junkie utilized their content without credit as well. Crime junkie never included any citations and I do think anyone who studied journalism would find CJs work to be sloppy at best. No accountability or apology from the podcast, just episodes quietly taken down and replaced with “source material”.
If you aren’t into the true crime genre, it’s worth noting that the podcast is consistently rated in the top 5 of Apple Podcasts and Forbes has them (Ashley flower’s production company) bringing in $45 million a year. But the accusations were basically unknown and forgotten about quickly.
I teach an ethics course at a community college and I use this as a case study, but at first I withhold the name of the podcast. Students look at the original podcast episode transcripts (those can be found on way back machine and compare them with the original material written by the accusers. Inevitably they always end up determining multiple examples of the presence of plagiarism. When I tell them the actual name of the podcast it’s super impactful. Especially when it comes to the journalist that originally confronted them. She spent months and months knocking on doors and speaking with grieving family members on a journalist salary. Having her writing stolen and regurgitated by someone with a net worth of $250million must have been nauseating to think about. It gives a lot of impact to the case study.
Crazy that with a fan base as large what theirs it the accusations gained basically no traction at all.
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8points
#33
Kate Gosselin was hurting her 10 year old son. She had him confined in a closet with his hands and feet bound with zip ties. The closet had a padlock on the outside and a camera so she could watch him. When her son was 11 Kate abandoned him at an awful behavioral institution where he was held for 2 years. Kate only visited him once and verbally attacked him. They have been estranged ever since.
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8points
#34
Chris Brown… Jasmine Crockett even handed him a honorary award recently. How is that person still allowed to enjoy fame after what he did.
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8points
#35
Texas politician Ken Paxton was going through a nasty divorce from his wife (big no no for conservative Christians) until she got a fat payday and agreed to stay married. Then he was caught going on vacation with his affair partner.
His campaign is still going strong despite that and many other actions that should be deplorable to his supporters.
His campaign is still going strong despite that and many other actions that should be deplorable to his supporters.
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8points
#37
For me it’s the divas responsible for the 2008 financial crash. Hardly anyone truly faced justice, yet the impact was huge.
Also, how the president of France got together with his now wife. Seems like a case of child grooming to me.
Also, how the president of France got together with his now wife. Seems like a case of child grooming to me.
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7points
#38
Brad Pitt being credibly accused of domestic violence and having his kids go seemingly NC with him and even in some cases change their names.
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6points
#39
The college admissions scandal was wild, but what always got me was how casually people seemed to move on from it. Wealthy parents were literally paying to manipulate their kids’ way into elite universities.
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6points
#40
Genuinely concerned that Travis Scott still has a career and is allowed in polite society...or the GTA games.
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6points
