It's new and bad that unknown authors can face massive backlash while they're still unknown. You can sell twenty copies of your first book and get twenty million calls for a boycott in response, if someone photographs a page and tweets a hot take.

That was technically possible before social media, but only if someone powerful decided to make an example of you. Now it can happen because a random person was bored or in a bad mood.

That's specifically what Ishiguro was complaining about. He even said he wasn't worried about influential people like himself (or all the examples you gave). I don't think he used the phrase "cancel culture," either.

> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important.

Some people suddenly started caring about the free exchange of ideas and others suddenly stopped, but you might be surprised how many just continued. To me, the ones who suddenly stopped are the biggest hypocrites of all.