It’s anecdotal, but I had a friendship dissolve over one friend kind of “canceling” another for a prolonged period.
It was very much by the modern playbook, though it looked slightly different. Something offended some sensitivities, though it was a benign as an unexpected break up. My previous friend made a great effort to convince others of how immoral and cruel our other friend was, and some people kind of bought into the drama I guess.
It was a matter of reputation assassination based around some collective sense of what’s proper and what’s not. The path from reality to the conceived reasons for the cancellation was long, grey, and blurry, but they pushed hard on it.
One very common thread was how often I would think “wow, I could so easily get put in the same bucket. We all could. None of us are much better, we all make mistakes like this”. It seems true then and it’s true now. I say the wrong things sometimes. I’m accidentally insensitive. I don’t know as much as I could in order to navigate some social situations better.
What caused the dissolving of the friendship eventually was when I asked my friend why I’m any different from the person he was targeting. His response was totally irrational, unkind, and seemed almost pathological. I realized I had a very unhealthy friend who was harming my other friends and social circle. And that eventually I could be his target, too. I just had to upset him in such a way that I would be dead to him. What a precarious and unsettling way to be friends.
Anyway, all that is to say it seems familiar going back most of my life now. The only difference now is that it seems to be very identity-oriented and politically driven. It’s not as personal. That is a very eerie thing to me.