Brooke Schofield's Canceling Teaches Us To Never Bend The Knee To The Digital Taliban

Popular 27-year-old content creator Brooke Schofield and ironic co-host of the Cancelled podcast has spent the past two weeks groveling for the social media mob's approval after resurfaced tweets from a decade ago led to her fall from social media darling to reviled "racist." All in all, it was only a handful of tweets that erupted into the firestorm that took the influencer with 2.2 million followers' comment sections hostage, pressuring her to make a statement, apologize, grovel on her knees, and beg for forgiveness.

Unsurprisingly, she didn't waste any time. Schofield posted several videos making Sisyphean efforts to exhibit just the right temperament of not too stoic, not too tearful, somber but not too self-pitying remarks of regret, remorse, embarrassment, and shame. Her friends and colleagues wasted no time throwing her under the bus, regardless of their own controversial pasts that put hers to shame. 

The Tweets: Racially Insensitive Jokes and MAGA Support

Brooke Schofield's tweets were a mixed bag of racially tinged jokes befitting of the less trigger-happy times and controversial opinions on police brutality, some of which were posted when she was only 15 years old. "What do you call a Mexican baptism? Bean Dip." Okay, surely there are worse ones? Sure, there are. Some include tone-deaf comments about having "nappier hair than most African Americans.” Others included the F slur or jokes about her friend screaming "racist profanities" in a movie theater. Still others implied support for Donald Trump winning the 2016 election. They may not have aged well, but they're nothing more than some politically incorrect jokes and tweets touting a more conservative worldview. But her biggest crime is in failing to uphold left-wing accounts of alleged racially motivated incidents of police brutality.

The tweet that really did her in was a remark about Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black teenager who was gunned down by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman back in 2012. It's the case that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, and as we know, any espoused opinion that contradicts the codified doctrine of BLM is sacrilegious. The most damning tweet being held up as indisputable evidence of her flagrant racism states, "Guarantee if Zimmerman shot a white guy this wouldn't even be a story. NEWS FLASH THIS WASN'T A CRIME OF RACISM IT WAS SELF DEFENSE." This is what all the fuss is about, and they're saying the quiet part out loud: accept our version of reality or disappear. 

Mind you, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges for the killing of Trayvon Martin because the jury concluded the prosecution hadn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman had not acted in self-defense when he shot Martin. By Zimmerman's account, Martin attacked him first, and, fearing for his life, he shot him in self-defense. There was no body cam or security footage of the altercation and no direct eyewitnesses of the entire incident. However, several witnesses who overheard or witnessed part of the altercation testified. Several notable witness testimonies gave credence to Zimmerman's version of events.

Whether Zimmerman told the truth or spun a convenient lie to cover himself, I cannot tell you for certain, but liberal social activists would have you believe only one indisputable version of events happened that night. It cannot be questioned or approached with a modicum of skepticism. It wouldn't be the first time BLM activists have mischaracterized cases of self-defense as racially motivated. Whether Trayvon Martin was an innocent victim or an aggressor, believing one account of a contentious police shooting over another is hardly a human rights violation, never mind an admission of racism. Zimmerman himself was not white, by the way, and while it's not an impossibility to be non-white and racist, the media certainly tried to spin the story as a racist white guy gunning down an innocent black teenager. BLM and their supporters have been so successfully manipulative in their framing of these issues that any healthy skepticism of their narratives is recharacterized as irredeemable bigotry.

The Never-Ending Apology Tour

In Schofield's first apology video, she makes a considerable effort to hold back tears, knowing all too well the allegations of "white women crocodile tears" that crying would invite. She was caught in a Catch-22, expected to demonstrate sincerity of emotion and remorse, but any indulgence in vulnerability is immediately met with implacable eye rolls. Hoards of "brave" 14-year-old social activists raided her comments, questioning why she sounded like she was going to cry and refused to take accountability. This is a masterclass in gaslighting: Make a big deal out of something someone said ages ago, destroy their reputation, slander their character, all to jeopardize their livelihood, and then ask passive-aggressively, "lol, why are you so upset?" Not only did they succeed in convincing Brooke she had committed some grave irreparable harm, but she pulled out every trick in the book short of flogging herself while wailing, "I'm sorry I'm white." Self-awareness and remorse, unfortunately, do little to appease the spiritual Soviet informers.

"Oh she's over. At 16, you very much know these things are racist and insensitive," said one account with over 16k followers. Schofield's TikTok and YouTube comment sections were no less forgiving. For days, think pieces, videos, and viral tweets circulated, analyzing inconsequential tweets, relics from when she was a teenager that predated her internet fame and ideological evolution into the good little milquetoast influencer she's known as today. Despite her repeated apologies, both tearful and stoic, virtue-signaling platitudes about how she's "listening and learning," and searching for resources on how to educate herself and become a more active anti-racist ally, the internet seemed unwilling to hear out her "white woman tears." Her brand deal with Boys Lie also appears to be in jeopardy, as they ominously referenced "adamantly working on a solution."

Their concern is not with truth, character, or remorse, but with humiliating you.

Schofield conceded that her tweets were racist and disgusting, and emphasized that she could not make excuses for them or blame anyone else for her comments. She admitted that she didn't undergo a shift in her worldview until after college and that white people should stop trying to defend her in the comments nor accept her apology because she isn't looking for white people's approval. Stunning and brave! Yeah, who cares about your white audience, am I right? Mix in some word salad about reparations, how much work there is to be done, support for Kamala Harris, and desperate appeals to the racial justice crowd, and you have yourself the official process for seeking liberal salvation through confession, repentance, and undying faith in liberal orthodoxy. Such appeals included mentioning that her college thesis was on racial disparities, that she donated to the Trayvon Martin Foundation, and that she would be looking into more reparation initiatives.

Schofield explained that when she was younger, she was like a sponge that soaked up the opinions of everyone around her. Because her parents were addicts, she was raised by her grandparents, who were Fox News-watching conservatives, and she grew up in red-state Arizona. She admits to believing the talking points that were constantly relayed to her via family members or Fox News, mindlessly parroting political talking points she heard about hot topics to feign knowledge without ever educating herself first. Schofield's attempts to contextualize her comments only made her seem like she was refusing to take accountability, and internet sleuths were already digging for more past crimes. They tracked down a tweet from 2016 in which Schofield admitted to faking liberal views when writing college papers, and she mentioned that it was "concerning" how much her grades had improved once she began doing so. 

They had watchdogs all over her social media, waiting for her to slip up so they could continue the momentum of the cancellation machine. In their search, they discovered she liked an Instagram post in real-time of internet streamer Adin Ross posing with Trump. Despite vowing she doesn't support Trump in a since-deleted video, they got her in a position where she has to perpetually defend herself based on past thoughtcrimes. Her attempted liberal credentials were even less impressive to leftists unsatisfied with her backing of a "war criminal pro-police democrat." Are you seeing the futility of engaging in this battle? Once you bite, they won't let go. So the story goes – prove to us you aren't still a Trump supporter, explain why you liked the photo, why aren't you supporting a candidate even more left of center? All of your past comments are used to presuppose guilt for any presently charged crimes. Their concern is not with truth, character, or remorse, but with humiliating you. So, refuse to play.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

What's most indefensible about this situation isn't that a young teenager made some questionable tweets between the age of 15 to 18, but the damning lack of spine and loyalty that her supposed "friends" have demonstrated in prioritizing social media clout over a friend whose world is collapsing around her. Young "activists" who achieve nothing outside reputation destruction will use deceptive language about how holding your friends "accountable" is actually one of the hallmarks of a true friendship, but this is disingenuous. Rage-baiting performance artists like Trisha Paytas, who got her start in the noughties with an Andy Kauffman-esque provocateur persona, have no leg to stand on when it comes to denouncing Schofield's "problematic" tweets. 

Paytas and fellow best friend and co-host of the Cancelled podcast Tana Mongeau wasted no time in "condemning" Schofield for her supposedly horrific and indefensible comments. Welcome to clown world, where serial cancellers who built their careers off problematic rage bait and owe their staying power to the repeated forgiveness and belief in rehabilitation that people have afforded them over the years delight in the canceling of their own friends. Paytas's career up until the past couple of years, when she has considerably matured and tone-policed her content, consisted of intentionally racist bits as she played the persona of an offensive Anna Nicole Smith. She made intentionally ignorant comments that she played off as her sincere personality, including defending Hitler and making so many problematic comments on race, gender, and mental illness over the years that they fill a near-infinite number of compilations. For her to suggest Schofield isn't entitled to forgiveness and that this scandal will rightfully follow her for the rest of her life, requiring her to perpetually apologize ad nauseam, isn't just hypocritical but delusional. 

These people are oozing with opportunism – capitalizing off the goodwill that people have afforded them while denying others with less offensive scandals the permission to move on. Mongeau, likewise, has been caught in scandal after scandal for years, always pleading ignorance as her defense, whether it's for screaming the N-word, being racist to her work colleagues and friends, or tweeting problematic comments to her close black friends like "go back to the plantation" or mocking a Cuban immigrant by asking him if it hurt when he was thrown over the border and referring to him as a "Cuban piece of sh*t." Forgiveness for me, but not for thee.

Is Brooke Schofield a Monster or Just a Fallible Human Being?

It's laughable that Brooke Schofield and her detractors treat conservatism like an infectious disease that one needs to be quarantined from to avoid contamination rather than just, you know, a different point of view. The mob’s indifference to her regret and embarrassment is nothing short of demonic, but unsurprising. Schofield has built the bulk of her audience in recent years on TikTok, an app whose largest demographic is under 20 years old. The consequence of an audience this young driving the conversation is that you get histrionic reactions to things that are really not that big of a deal. The echo chamber of moral indignation, however, presents the illusion of consensus, and the consensus is what you did wasn't just bad, but that you're a fundamentally irredeemable, evil person, and you need to do a humiliation ritual before we consider letting you move on.

In these circles, rehabilitation is a privilege reserved for murderers, gang members, and drug kingpins, not 15-year-old girls with questionable tweets.

I don't have a dog in this fight either way, but here's why I believe Brooke Schofield's backstory regarding her inflammatory tweets. One detail that stuck out to me was her insistence that she mirrored whatever the people around her were saying in order to present the facade that she knew what she was talking about concerning political hot topics. Her lack of political knowledge didn't stop her from tweeting political opinions. As a teenager, that's hardly out of the ordinary.

Complicating things even further is the deeper reason she was tweeting about Trayvon Martin in the first place. It turns out that she was tweeting back and forth with her estranged mother over the case. Pop Crave has posted archived tweets between them, wherein Brooke's mother, Fawn, praises her for "paying attention." Commenting on the case appeared, in a sick but not unusual way from how most people engage with tragic breaking news or highly publicized trials, to serve as an opportunity for bonding between the two of them. It's kind of like how far-left social authoritarians bond over destroying people's lives over tweets written when they were teenagers and refuse to let them move on. Is that not also exploiting "tragedy" for your own social benefit?

Schofield's digital footprint may have revealed offensive tweets when she was a teenager, but they also prove she did a 180 on her political and social views at least four years ago, before she even had a public platform as an influencer. You can witness her real-time evolution into a more socially left-leaning, race-conscious young woman around 2020, with posts calling out family members for making racist comments and dismissing the concerns of people of color after the killing of George Floyd. This makes her backstory all the more plausible. When Schofield says, "I think it's amazing now that people are learning earlier on about politics and forming their own opinions outside of what their parents think or what they're hearing or whatever it is, but that just wasn't the case for me. Whatever I heard, I passed on," it's the natural inclination for most to laugh and dunk on her as though she should have "known better." This is, however, the natural predisposition of most young women, whether they realize it or not, especially if they have a personality disorder whose symptoms include mirroring others. This is, ironically, the natural predisposition of most people making a fuss about this faux controversy.

The outrage and cowardice this scandal has inspired is indisputably disproportionate to the content of the tweets. Am I here to die on the hill that Brooke Schofield has a human right to be liked by everyone online? No, but if you don't feel at least a modicum of empathy for someone facing overwhelming social censure over tweets made before her prefrontal cortex even developed, then you're lacking humanity. For such intense reprobation to come from the audience that propped up a self-proclaimed "subversive" podcast called Cancelled makes this scandal all the more laughable. If anything comes out of this, it should be a name change at the very least. The Cancelled title should be reserved for influencers who at least live up to the subversive hype, such as Azealia Banks or HRHCollection, not flip-flopping influencers. That's stolen valor. 

Speaking of controversial content creators, do you know why no one pressures people like Azealia Banks to apologize? Because they don't expect her to. She's impressed upon the public that she doesn't care to participate in performative mind games, which ironically makes her uncancellable. No amount of virtue signaling, apologies, explanations, or repentance is enough for the digital Taliban. They just shift the Overton window, find new things to be outraged about (all from the past), and invoke "white woman crocodile tears" so you can never be redeemed. In these circles, rehabilitation is a privilege reserved for murderers, gang members, and drug kingpins, not 15-year-old girls with questionable tweets. Whatever you do, never bend the knee.