It didn’t take long for the bad takes to come flowing in after the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Saturday night. Left-wingers from Tenacious D guitarist Kyle Glass to no-name blue-collar workers have made the same joke: It’s just too bad the shooter had poor aim. 

Conservatives may act as if cancel culture is a uniquely Left-on-Right crime, one that targets right-wingers for “misgendering” on social media or making jokes that weren’t likely to offend as recently as 10 years ago. But the power to shut down critics for a single comment is an attractive one, and once conservatives discovered they could wield it, they stopped caring about cancel culture at all. 

Libs of TikTok, the X account of 29-year-old Chaya Raichik, once criticized a journalist as wanting “free speech for everyone besides the people she disagrees with.” This seems to be true of Raichik herself, as well as conservatives more broadly. We believe in the principle of free speech until we hear speech that’s bad enough. 

With 3.2 million followers, Libs of TikTok has incredible power to wield, for good or ill. Lately, the account has been using that influence to get everyday citizens fired from their jobs for wrongthink.

“Btw I slept a total of 8 hours the past 2 days and have been sifting through HUNDREDS of messages from followers and spending hours researching,” she tweeted on Monday. 

What has been demanding all this energy? Finding and punishing anyone who posts online that they wish the shooter hadn’t missed.

Some targets of Libs of TikTok’s ire are fair: Public figures and elected officials, for example, should absolutely be held to account in the court of public opinion and at the ballot box for the abhorrent things they choose to say online. A cashier at Home Depot, however, is a much different story. 

Thanks to online crusaders, millions of people can now see the unfortunate posts of a hairstylist in Denver, an elderly retired woman, a guy who owns a boat rental company in Nowheresville, Michigan, and more. None of these people deserve to have millions of angry disciples harassing them online, nor do they deserve to lose their jobs, a fate that has befallen many of them, including the poor Home Depot clerk who had a disgruntled man find her at her place of work and take a video recording of her to share online.

After Libs of TikTok tagged Home Depot in a post about her, the home improvement giant responded, “We can confirm she no longer works at The Home Depot.”

Thanks to one bad comment, a woman has been launched to infamy and lost her livelihood. Left or Right, under the cancel culture mob’s lust for blood, there’s no room for mercy. 

Also likely looking for new employment is Kyle Glass, the aforementioned Tenacious D guitarist, who said onstage, “Don’t miss Trump next time.” Bandmate Jack Black, who appeared to find the comment funny at the time, soon afterward condemned the message and canceled the band’s entire tour. Glass was also dropped by his agent despite releasing an apologetic statement saying, “What happened was a tragedy, and I’m incredibly sorry for my severe lack of judgement [sic].”

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Conservatives have spent years decrying cancel culture and rightfully so. Now they will argue that doxxing random citizens and ignoring apologies isn’t called “cancellation” — it’s called “consequences.” Funnily enough, that’s just what the Left says about its own attempts to name and shame people for saying the “wrong” things. Some conservatives will contend that if we let the Left “monopolize” cancel culture, then we become weak. I think that’s a funny way to spell “principled.”

Cancel culture isn’t a problem that’s only on the Left or the Right. It’s a problem of human nature given access to a 24-hour news cycle and an elephantine internet that never forgets. The solution for those who believe in the spirit of free speech isn’t to beat the Left at its own game but to let people suffer the natural consequences of their actions, not the high-stakes repercussions that stem from an online horde sicced on an unsuspecting person when it’s already too late to repent.