> A boycott is me saying "buzz feed sux, i won't goto one of t heir urls". Cancelling would be me saying Gina Carano sux, i'm gonna call disney over and over until she gets fired.

I guess I'm not sure I see the difference here. complaining about what gina carano says on her twitter is, in a roundabout way, complaining about a disney product. disney didn't fire an actress from one of their popular shows because they got tired of listening to a small group of people complain; they did it because enough people complained that they saw a potential loss in future revenue. this looks a lot like a boycott to me.

What ever happened to the idea that people can express their own opinions without representing their employer? It used to be that many personal blogs had a readily visible disclaimer along these lines: "Opinions expressed do not express the views of my employer."

It was never much of a thing. If your social media posts cause a financial or reputational risk to your employer, they'll take action to resolve that risk regardless of a disclaimer in your bio.

> they did it because enough people complained that they saw a potential loss in future revenue

See, this is something I highly doubt. Do you think that there is such a large part of Disney public that does give a damn about what Gina Carano says? I don't think so. I want to count the ones who actually stop watching "the Mandalorian" because of Gina Carano's tweets. My bet is that they're so few they'd feel stupid after two weeks and start watching it again.

I think the issue here is that taken one by one, each of those who have the power to take decisions succumb to peer pressure and fear of being targeted next. Everyone is replaceable, so everyone prefers to keep on the safe side when confronted by people who are aggressive, determined, and always ready to escalate the pressure to the the next hierarchy level or to to start working out the weakest peers.

So the bottom line is that if the targets of these attacks just stood their ground united and told the mobs to fuck off, the cancellers would just vaporise in a couple of weeks.

Yes, you are correct. Noting that [not] all cancel efforts are the same, and I'm sure there are edge cases and exceptions, it seems that generally cancel culture efforts often gain momentum when the target shows 'perceived weakness' and often lose momentum when the target makes it very clear they don't care. In the case of corporations like Disney, the very idea of telling people to "fuck off" as you say is anathema to PR culture.

A few people have made the point about boycotts being against organizations and cancels being against individuals.

I don’t see the material difference there, what about it being an individual makes you feel it’s different?

Your last point is intriguing to me.

If I were to simply not watch films with Gina Carano in them anymore, would you still say I’m canceling her?

When it's against individuals it starts to become harassment and bullying, depending on the severity. These are not things we generally care about protecting organizations from, just individuals.

I see, that makes sense.

I’m still curious if me choosing to not watch films with problematic individuals in them would be considered cancelling or a boycott?

I'm not sure about that. I'd always heard about it in the context of "deplatforming" people by actively getting them kicked off whatever social media or getting them fired from a job where they can influence society. Maybe that is where the word "cancel" originally comes from for all I know.

There is a long history of people who have been fired due to public outrage. People have different (and a greater number of) means of communicating that outrage today, but the general mechanism hasn't changed.