Cancel culture – which sees individuals and brands spurned due to comments, actions or stances that some perceive to be wrong – is nothing new. Fundamentally, cancel culture is about shame. Shame emerges in response to the feeling that we have transgressed against some agreed social rule and lost status within the group. Evolutionary psychologists believe shame played a role in our survival – one upon a time, doing something that got us expelled from our tribe would have been life threatening.