Canceling | ContraPoints 

ContraPoints is now a drama channel.

When a series gets cancelled and comes back as a movie

How to Beat the System as ContraPoints: 1. Draft a RU-vid video essay 2. Buy a month’s supply of liquor 3. Film yourself drinking from every bottle 4. Edit and release the video 5. Write off booze as work expenses on your taxes 6. Slay

"the people who cheer at your execution are the same people who cheered at your coronation. People just love a show." Can't remember who said that, but I feel like it sums up 'cancelling'

Broke: Die Hard is a Christmas movie Woke: In Bruges is a Christmas movie Bespoke: Contrapoints's 2019 feature length video on cancelling is a Christmas movie

“No one thinks I’m cute” You’re allowed to be wrong, queen.

I don't have a Twitter account, so everytime I go on it says "Join the fun". It doesn't look like fun over there.

on dualism and essentialism: it's curious how a single "bad" action can make a "good" person "bad", but a single "good" action cannot make a "bad" person "good".

“I intend to live as long as possible out of pure spite” now THERE’S a 2020 mood

Was it FDR who said, "The only thing we should Cancel, is Canceling itself, gorge!"

Jeffree Starr calling James Charles a ‘danger to society’ was the funniest moment of 2019 without a doubt

In retrospect, misgendering and deadnaming someone online cause you think they're transphobic is truly batshit wild

Local woman literally too angry to die

This is honestly the most rewarding parasocial relationship I have ever been in

I can't believe Natalie just canceled cancel culture, truly transconic

The fact that Abigail was trans all along yet was being accused of being transphobic for not cancelling another trans woman puts all of this in perspective.

Natalie has thus proved she has more integrity, wisdom and courage than her detractors could hope for.

Natalie doesn’t sell bathwater: she gives away the whole goddamn tub

We treat minor transgressions from our allies more harshly than open hostility from our enemies. We have to do and be better about this.

The fact that both James Charles and Buck Angel got worse after this date and the video still holds up this well is remarkable.

Twitter: you are dead to us! Contrapoints: news of my death has been greatly exaggerated

"can't uncancel myself, i must cancel the act of cancelling itself" you're a genius natalie

The next time you get cancelled & you’re feeling low, just remember- For every person at your digital door with a pitchfork, there are 10 people who don’t have Twitter or tumblr and don’t participate in the mob mentality, but they eagerly count the days until you gift us with your next work of art. Your videos sincerely bring me joy. Thank you for making them!

It’s scary how similar cancelling is to bullying. I was bullied and ostracised a lot in school because I was on the spectrum (although no one knew at the time), and a lot of what you said in this video hit home to me. I’d be fairly well-liked, then I’d make a slip-up and immediately be seen as the enemy. I was then seen as an evil pyschopath, and any attempt at apology, niceness or learning whatever social rule I’d broken got twisted into evidence of my manipulativeness. It’s a viscious cycle, that in my earnest attempts to rectify whatever wrongdoings I had supposedly done ended with my mental health being so badly damaged I became the sterotypical “I’m sorry you probably hate me” suicidal person - i.e the poster child for “evil manipulative people”. Nobody wins. All I ever wanted was someone to take me aside and gently explain where I went wrong.

She opened the bottle using the lesbian solution. Foreshadowing

"Not really my 2020 vibe" What could possibly be MORE 2020 than binging alone on alcohol, surrounded by piles of garbage?

Broke: selling bath water Woke: selling the bathtub

Back in 2015, I had a fairly popular blog. I wrote stupid porn scenarios and poetry and for SOME god awful reason this caused teens to reach out to me about their problems. And the issue was that I cared. I cared a LOT about protecting these kids. If anyone came to me in crisis, I would give them steps to make a burner skype account and try to help - sometimes this involved teaching them how to find local health resources, work through scary social issues, or just talk about whatever they wanted until 6am and they safely got through the night - then I'd immediately head out to work at my shitty cafe job directly afterwards. I like to think I saved a lot of kids. I can't count how many times one of these kids would reach out later and say something like "it's been six months since we talked. I'm still here." Or "things DID get better. I almost didn't get to see it." I only ever "lost" one kid. She was a stranger from scottland who reached out to me on my personal skype. She was the first kid to ask for a video call, and I obliged. The way she was typing made me nervous. She was already overdosed and dying in front of me. I stayed calm and talked with her while my boyfriend furiously researched in the background how we contact poison control in Scotland - hell, how we could even send help to the right place. She didn't cooperate. She was committed. The last thing she said was "I'm glad I don't have to die alone. I'm glad you were nice." It damn-near broke me. So now, DRAMA. This one lady (she was twenty six, I was twenty one. Idk) was pretty vocal about her disdain for my "self-righteous goody-two-shoes fakeness" or whatever. She heard from someone about my literal, current truama of watching a child die and then .. used it. She started a rumor that I purposely talked that girl into committing suicide. That rumor spread into this concept that I'd done this MANY times. People who I previously helped were now going "oh my god that could have been me I was one of the lucky ones" Once the DOXing and death threats started, I deleted everything. Just went totally nuclear. Maybe that looks like an admission of guilt, but at the time I feared that maybe what I was doing was well and truly dangerous to these kids, and it was the only responsible thing to do. Haven't really done anything online since. Best decision of my life to delete my blog and all my social media, though. Massive detox I tell yeah

Can we start calling this the “ContraPoints Christmas Special?” Like time to start a new holiday tradition

I have to say that "Tati Westbrook" sounds pretty much like one of ContraPoints alter ego characters.

How to trick straight men into thinking theyre gay? Meth and tigers

As a almost boomer. You have shined. You have taught me about trans individuals. Fuck the haters. You are killing it lady. Keep up the good work.

“The snowflake doesn’t feel responsible for the avalanche” is such a fantastic quote in more ways than one

Alternate title: Twitter Was A Mistake | ContraPoints

2016: Quick 15 min breakdown of a nazi propaganda 2020: Contrapoints: Cancelling - The Motion Picture

I can’t believe I used to be friends with people who were actually like this in real life. Someone literally called me an “abuse apologist” for saying that a 16 year old having normal conversations with a 12 year old isn’t grooming.

"Sometimes, just talking to someone with some patience and understanding is all it takes" - Natalie This sentiment is what brought me to your channel in the first place, why I have been coming back for years, why you have made such a difference in my understanding of so many subjects, and why I recommend you to all of my friends and partners.

"if I was a persuasive genius, maybe I could talk myself out of being cancelled" - natalie, talking herself out of being cancelled

“The Last of the Old School Transexuals” is lowkey the most underrated Star Wars movie

Turns out drinking liquor straight from the bottle WAS the 2020 vibe

I've watched this a few times and it's so bizarre that these are Natalie's 'gotcha-secret-terrible-person' tweets. Like maybe they're tonally blunt or not worded with the care of someone defusing a bomb, but to find anything problematic in pretty much all of them you have to apply the most unhinged bad faith interpretations possible.

Me after seeing the title and the length of this video: oh shit, we’re going there. Buckle up kiddies

0:40 Natalie: it's not really my 2020 vibe narrator voice: actually, it was. it was everyone's 2020 vibe

“But I don’t think it feels like abuse to the people who are doing it”. If you find yourself confused about which side to take, just think about how hard Natalie is working to understand people who would never give her the same consideration. Beneath all the flash and glamour is a genuinely kind and thoughtful person who has time after time shown a saintly patience towards the wrong headed and misinformed and has demonstrated a stunning and humbling willingness to put herself in painful or vulnerable positions to help us all understand one another better. We are, all of us richer for her being here.

I know this is 2 yrs old so you prob will never see it, but I'm a bit drunk so I'll say your "transtrenders" video genuinely helped me break out of some very bad mindsets i had about trans people. I was going through my "problematic internalized homophobia" phase (I wasn't fully out to everyone yet). I'd had some bad influences and tried to separate myself from queer culture as a part of some weird defense mechanism, and that video helped me work through those ideas and see why i was being hurtful and I'm thankful for that experience.

“I honestly think that most of the James charles is a sexual predator crowd just wanted to bring him down a peg” cut to Shane Dawson saying James needed a slice of humble pie. The foreshadowing

I’m non-binary and I was a $25 a month donor. I want you to know I didn’t stop because of anything you said, but because I was and am broke AF. ❤️

As a “generation Jones” boomer, I had to deal with 2nd wave feminism. I joined a feminist art group, because I felt I belonged, until I heard them trashing their mothers for working as secretaries. This was in the late 70s, and women still didn;’t have much of a choice career-wise. I finally realized that feminism as it was at that time benefitted primarily middle to upper class white women. I stood up to them and their cluelessness, and was shunned by most. As an artist, it did affect the support I received from the feminist art community. The difference was that I was trashed in the analog world. But I think it consistently affects my ability to exhibit, when I call out the TERFs in the art community. Oh fucking well

Rewatching this as a black woman, I find myself so disappointed in what the term cancelling has come to mean. I was so in support of this movement way back when we were calling for justice for the victims of Kelly and Cosby. Now all I see are Twitter mobs starting witch hunts.

Its super frustrating that there are people on Twitter already commenting how they refuse to watch this video in its entirety.

I'm sorry this has been such a shitty time for you. Thank you for doing all of the good things you do.

"contrapoints more like disappoints" kills me every time.

I truly love the line: "I won't give them the satisfaction of comitting suicide. I will survive out of sheer spite!" This might save my life someday, because the only thing that's stronger than my selfloathing and selfdoubt is my hatred towards idiots and my burning urge of revenge. Might be a dark way of thinking but darkness is an old friend. Thank you very much, Natalie.

Side note: I don't think I've ever seen someone look so glamorous drinking a 40 in a pile of garbage.

Natalie is the only person powerful enough to un-cancel herself. Watching Twitter desperately try to defend their bullshit after this video came out was so vindicating.

I am not even a content creator, but I am beginning to wonder if the social anxiety I experience, actually relates to seeing people getting canceled like this. I am doing the essentialism thing to myself - if I make a mistake I have come to believe that I am a flawed and bad person because of it. Because that is how I see other people react on mistakes made by celebrities. I think it is important that we reconsider what effect cancelling has on the psyche of ordinary people as well, and that doesn't mean that we should stop holding anyone accountable, but perhaps we need to figure out a better and healthier way, not just for celebrities sake but for our own sake as well.

it is so CATHARTIC to hear someone talk about cancel culture so eloquently. I could never completely understand my guilt at refusing to participate in online witch hunts and cancellations. I felt like I was supporting abusers with my silence, but I also felt adamantly that standing back was the right thing to do. It’s very confusing. So I thank you for bringing insight to my experiences.

Natalie drinking a 40 in a bathtub is VERY 2020 in hindsight

The most ironic thing about that ‘line in the sand’ tweet is that a line in the sand IS A MEANINGLESS AND EASILY COMPROMISED DIVISION

four years later and this video still brings me so much... comfort? relief? validation? i've been cancelled (albeit on a much smaller scale) myself a few times, and one of them resulted in a suicide attempt. but natalie lists out exactly what i experienced and breaks it down in a way that brings me to tears. like, YES! that's it, that's what it is! i'm very grateful that, even in her own pain, natalie created this analysis of this phenomenon.

"Ignorance is not the same thing as hatred. Not understanding someone is not the same thing as wanting them dead." That, I believe, is one of the main issues with the severity of online cancel culture and is not NEARLY addressed enough. Thank you for this whole video Natalie. As a nonbinary person, I wish you the best of luck.

"This is not really the most feminine moment for me" *chugging alcohol alone while wearing a sweater in front of a pile of trash* I dunno, seems pretty feminine to me, yo.

God, it’s like the whole internet’s a high school, and we’re all 16 again.

Between this and Lindsay Ellis' video it seems super hard to be female online while also being on the forefront of Twitter. Love this channel!

As an 18-year-old boomer, I appreciate Natalie explaining internet culture to me.

"Nobody thinks Im cute." That´s a filthy lie and you know it.

It was really unnerving when someone in a friend group of mine started a statement with "I know we're not supposed to like contrapoints anymore...", like, you don't have to like someone because someone else told you you couldn't

thank you. my friend laura was the victim of a bullying campaign and killed herself. it really opened my eyes on the messed up things that can happen in big facebook groups, etc.

For every nasty tweet, there’s a hundred people who support and admire you and yet say nothing at all, either because they don’t use social media, they don’t want to get caught up in online slapfights, they’re busy dealing with their own problems in the real world etc. I’m one of those people. I’m commenting now because I want to help drive the RU-vid algorithm to this video so it can be seen by as many people as possible. I also wanted to be the voice of the silent majority. We love you, Natalie. The videos you make are so important; you say so much with your platform that we cannot and by doing so you are helping to shape the future into something better. We’re sorry we don’t repay the debt, especially by failing to show our support online when you most needed it - but I hope you know we’re here anyway, standing beside you, like ghosts. Thank you for being you.

Can we take a second to appreciate the incredible PACING of this video? That did not feel like a feature-length film.

"Hey, what are your favourite feature films of all time?" "Oh you know, The Shining, Parasite, the Truman Show, Canceling..."

As someone with a history of mental health and Scde struggles it both baffled and frightens me that anyone could see canceling behavior and not see s**c*de as the natural end result. That has always terrified me

I heard more than one person on my daily life say "i hope x person does something bad so they get cancelled" because they didnt like them. This times are getting scary.

"There's a lot of people on the internet who would be *very* entertained if I killed myself -- and i just refuse to give them the satisfaction" somehow, same

"Shoot drunk, edit sober." -Ernest Hemi-uhh Natalie Wynn

As a non-binary person, I am grateful for your content.

This is university-level RU-vid, and I’m here for it.

I love how you included the Queen of Hearts sweater as a nod to the impulsive, emotionally-oriented "off with her head," mentality of cancel culture.

next time on contrapoints: Natalie appologizes to Denmark after a month of angry tweets in a language nobody understands.

i’m a pretty new fan so obviously experiencing/learning about all of this years after it actually happened lol, but i love how natalie handles topics, even ones as close and personal as this, with so much nuance (and humour). this really helped me see “cancel culture” in a more complex light, as someone who’s always been very “cancel culture doesn’t exist it’s just the concequences for your actions sweaty🙄”

I publicly associate myself with Contrapoints.

I just went back and re-watched "Opulence" today in anticipation of this new video, and I'm glad to hear you say that you think it's the best video you've ever done, because I agree. The sets, the lighting, the costumes, and the exploration of what our cultural definition of "success" are were absolutely stunning. That video is a work of art from start to finish.

That statement about "imagine actually wanting someone to learn, imagine actually caring" sealed it. I now know that of all the people on the internet, I agree with you most. Your sarcasm there was perfect. I love what you do. Thanks.

Honestly the fact that people immediately heard about an openly gay person doing something wrong and immediately labeled him as a sexual predator is pretty fucking gross, especially when there was no evidence provided from the accuser, who made it blatantly obvious that they had something to gain from sullying his name

I love the quote of “Life hates you, so, to spite life, survive.”

I remember a few weeks back I wanted to play kiss by a rose in the car and my friend stopped me by saying “no I heard Seal is cancelled we can’t listen to that” and alarm bells went off in my head. Seal?! Cancelled?!?! It took 2 minutes for me to look up that Heidi Klum in her divorce with Seal mentioned he was not a present dad because of his constant touring and they had had loud arguments with one another in the house. Maybe doesn’t paint him in the light of a great person but definitely not someone deserving being “cancelled”. It’s absurd how quickly the word spreads and how little thought goes into looking into the statements. Feels like we are back middle school shaming other kids based on nonsense rumors

“Created by Natalie Wynn and no one else” She didn’t drop the mic, she spiked it through the floor.

Non-binary checking in from 2024 - I honestly avoided your content for awhile after this all went down. I hadn’t seen anything of yours before and it’s not that I believe everything on the internet, on the contrary - I just tend to avoid things that elicits that sort of drama. When I did come across your RU-vid, I think I *vaguely* remembered that something happened but couldn’t even tell you what it was. Google doesn’t even turn up much anymore. I went in with a little skepticism just to make sure we were on the same wavelength as far as values and didn’t see a single thing of concern. I actually really love your perspectives on things, and think you hit the nail on the head with this vid 🙂

Quarantine = binging contra vids

the moments when natalie breaks character and laughs are worth living for

I'm nonbinary, I've been watching this channel for years and every time I see someone on Twitter try and pull a "ContraPoints hates nonbinary people" claim I just assume they have never actually watched anything you have made or if they did, they either a) did it after smoking crack, or b) are 10 years old and can't figure out how costumes and characters work.

I'm nonbinary and you HELPED ME GET HERE!!! I was so worried like "What if I transition to nonbinary and then REALISE I'M ACTUALLY BINARY TRANS" Total, TOTAL disaster, I told everyone the wrong pronouns, I dressed the wrong way, I made a total fool of myself!!! Travesty. And then I watched a video by TheHealthyGamerGG in which you told Dr K about your transition process of thinking you were nonbinary on the way to realising you are a woman. And this totally fucking calmed me down. You helped me realise that I could just... change things later if I did them wrong. There's no pressure. My trans journey is mine and it's nobody else's fucking business. And stubborn cis people may hate on me for it. And stubborn trans people may also say that I "think that nonbinary is just a phase on the way to becoming binary trans!!!" But I'll know otherwise. I can deal with the hate. I don't owe any of those people anything. And in turn, that idea led to me realising that I don't owe anyone androgyny either, or femininity, or using the "correct pronouns", even that the only type of "correctness" associated with pronouns is whether they help expressing oneself in the way one wishes to express oneself. In other words, Natalie, coming across your content for the first time was pivotal in my questioning and helped lead me to being the bad bitch nonbinary they/she SJW I am today! (I don't do a lot of activism yet and I am definitely not a bad bitch - I am working on both of these tho lol, also on becoming one of Ryan's transgender furry anarchist friends in antifa ;3) And in the year since then that I have been slowly eating my way through your past videos, I have never felt like you hold any judgement or contempt against nonbinary people. I have always felt accepted and understood. I love you ContraPoints. Seriously. These people should actually watch your videos before making snap judgements about you.

Canceling is more dangerous to marginalized people. THAT!

Thank you for having a backbone. I really respect that despite your high levels of visibility, you're still willing to stay human, express your concerns and not capitulate to nonsense in order to please a demographic. As someone who's been the target of the kiwifarm cancel mob, this sort of pushback from prominent creators is very appreciated. People need to get that this is not the way to achieve social justice, its catharsis seeking and its incredibly harmful to any cause. It ends up wounding and alienating rather than creating room for growth and solidarity. Cheers for the vid and I hope you're doing better.

The whole phenomena reminds me of a divorce with children involved, where one or both parents bitterly fight over custody of a child not out of the child's best interests, but for the validation that comes of seeing the "other side" lose.

I’m coming here in 2024 as I watch through your videos in reverse order after first meeting you in the triumph that is your Twilight video. It’s so strange to listen to things that were released right before the pandemic. However hard a time you were having before I’m sure Covid didn’t help. I just wanted to say that this video and all of your videos are exceptional, and they have all delighted and informed me even when (as with this one) the subject matter has been heavy. I’m so glad you made it through. Come to think of it I’m glad I made it through too. Here’s to living on, through sheer spite if necessary. Cheers. I am eager to see what you do next.

Cancel culture is the reason why I never want to become a public figure, especially on the internet. I'm such an anxious mess already and I KNOW this stuff will literally kill me.

I'm glad you're finding healthy support systems! I appreciated this video. Love you ♥️

"How do you trick straight men into thinking they're gay?" Thank you for saying this out loud. This has always baffled me since I first heard about it.

This video has aged extremely well. Fuck the haters Natalie. You’re the most creative, thoughtful (and yes, hilarious) content creator I’ve ever subscribed to, and I hope you keep going forever.