Cancel culture has a reputation for being ruthless, and sometimes it is. One poorly worded tweet from 2013 and suddenly someone is issuing a four-paragraph apology from their notes app and lying low for a tasteful six months. The machine can be swift, brutal, and occasionally completely disproportionate to the offence.

And then there are the ones that just... got away. The scandals that should have dominated the news cycle for weeks, the behaviour that would have ended a lesser-known person's career entirely. Reddit asked people which scandals deserved far more attention than they received, and the answers are infuriating. Some of these you will remember vaguely. Some you will have forgotten entirely. And some you will be reading about for the first time, wondering how on earth that was not a bigger deal.

#1

Rick Scott oversaw the largest Medicare fraud settlement in United States history. His company pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid a $1.7 billion settlement. He invoked the Fifth Amendment 75 times. He walked away with over $350 million. Then the people of Florida decided that was such great experience that they elected him governor and then senator. He’s currently in the Senate and is the third richest member of Congress, worth more than twice as much as Nancy Pelosi.

#2

Foo Fighters were AIDS denialists in the early 2000's. They had links on their website to a group that didn't believe HIV caused AIDS and encouraged HIV positive people to not take anti HIV meds. You'll never believe what happed to that group: They all died of AIDS! Anyway, Foo Fighters just quietly took all references down and never apologized for spreading disinformation.

#3

Well there were those Epstein files that should have imprisoned a lot of people...

Not all scandals are created equal, and the ones that land are not always the worst ones. Timing is one of the most significant factors in whether a story gains traction or disappears within a news cycle. A scandal that breaks on the same day as a major political event, a natural disaster, or a bigger celebrity implosion has a very slim chance of finding an audience.

Ansel Elgort was once thrown into the spotlight of some MeToo allegations that were pretty serious. But the date of these allegations speaks for itself. June 2020. While people were focused on Black Lives Matter protests and a global pandemic, Ansel got to continue in West Side Story as if nothing ever happened.

#4

Chris Brown. Instead he sells out arenas all over filled with mostly woman. Baffling.

© Photo: trixy6196

#5

Those PPP loans they gave out during covid, 792 billion given out and 583 billion forgiven. Straight up fraud.

#6

Joke answer: Ted Cruz, his career didn't even hit a road bump when it came out he is the Zodiac killer.

Real answer: Jon Hamm and Mark Wahlberg's violent pasts don't seem to be a problem for their careers at all.

© Photo: Equivalent_Ocelot159

There is also the matter of news cycle fatigue. Research from the Reuters Institute found that a growing number of people, particularly under 35, are actively avoiding the news because the volume and emotional weight of it has become genuinely overwhelming. When audiences are already saturated, a new scandal requires a very low barrier to engagement to cut through.

Something visually striking, easy to summarize, and emotionally immediate will always outrun something complicated, institutional, or requiring background knowledge to fully understand. The stories that slip through tend to be the ones that need context, and context is the first casualty of a fast scroll.

#7

The Panama Papers came and went without the slightest protest.

#8

Oprah. What a monster.

#9

Oprah's connections to Epstein as well as her platforming guests and their conspiracy theories.

People who know what they are talking about call this the Teflon effect. Certain public figures have demonstrated a consistent ability to survive scandals that would end anyone else, and researchers who study reputation and public perception point to a combination of factors: a large and loyal pre-existing fanbase, a personal brand strong enough to absorb damage, and a media ecosystem that finds them too commercially valuable to abandon.

Chris Brown has had an active and successful music career for over a decade since 2009. R. Kelly released music and sold out venues for years while allegations against him were publicly available. The audience relationship, once formed, is remarkably resistant to new information.

#10

Hegseth putting war details in a group chat. I don’t understand how there weren’t any real repercussions from this.

#11

Not unnoticed but Infantino is going to continue to be the head of FIFA.

© Photo: Escobar1888

#12

Congressional stock trading.

The professional infrastructure that exists to manage this is larger than most people realize. Crisis PR is a legitimate and extremely well-compensated industry, and its entire function is to minimize, delay, redirect, and, where necessary, completely bury a story before it reaches critical mass.

The standard playbook involves releasing a statement on a Friday afternoon when news coverage is lowest, identifying a larger story to direct attention toward, deploying allies to shift the narrative, and where possible, getting ahead of the story with a controlled version before the uncontrolled one lands. Most people who have survived a significant public scandal did not do it through luck. They did it with a team.

#13

Um OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Claude models hacking various companies and no executives being brought up on charges + jail time.

#14

Kate Gosselin was hurting her 10 year old son. She had him confined in a closet with his hands and feet bound with zip ties. The closet had a padlock on the outside and a camera so she could watch him. When her son was 11 Kate abandoned him at an awful behavioral institution where he was held for 2 years. Kate only visited him once and verbally attacked him. They have been estranged ever since.

#15

Sean Penn is alleged to have tied up and a***ulted Madonna. She filed a police report but subsequently withdrew it.

© Photo: Upper_Raspberry1

Power determines consequences more reliably than behaviour does. A 2021 study found that high-status individuals consistently receive more lenient judgments for identical transgressions than low-status individuals, and that observers justify this leniency by unconsciously attributing more complex motivations to powerful people.

The wealthy hire better lawyers. The famous have platforms to respond. The institutionally protected have colleagues with an interest in keeping the story small. The person without any of those resources faces the full weight of public judgment. Cancel culture's reputation for ruthlessness is almost entirely built on cases involving people without significant structural protection. The ones with it rarely make the list.

#16

You do know who the current US president is?... hes got plenty to choose from and still nothings has happened to him.

#17

Didn't Usher basically hand deliver Bieber to Puffy?

#18

It’s mind-boggling that Jared Leto is still getting plenty of roles. He has no obvious box office draw and isn’t THAT good of an actor.

At this point I just assume he has dirt on a bunch of people.

The actual long-term track record of cancellation is also considerably less permanent than the discourse suggests. One analysis found that the vast majority of public figures who faced significant online backlash had returned to their careers within two years, often with minimal acknowledgment of what happened.

Louis CK won a Grammy in 2024, and Mel Gibson directs major films. The list of people who are genuinely, permanently cancelled is short, and most of them were facing criminal charges rather than public opinion. The internet has a long memory and a short attention span, which means the outrage is real and the consequences are negotiable.

#19

Reposting this every time because f**k Dre.

Dre got his feelings hurt by an interview with Ice Cube and tried to beat the journalist who produced it to d***h, in public at a party. Her name is Dee Barnes and he beat her, stomped on her, repeatedly smashed her face into the wall and a mirror, and threw her down a flight of stairs. She tried to seek refuge in a ladies restroom and he just followed her in, beat her there, and dragged her out of it to beat her some more. It’s a miracle that she survived. He also punched a guy who tried to intervene in the face.

But nobody cares. Never got even slightly cancelled for it. He got probation and settled out of court when she sued. It virtually ended her career while we went on as though nothing happened. He only “apologized” thirty years later when he was trying to sell Beats to Apple and they made him issue a meaningless marketing-crafted statement. He’s played the Super Bowl halftime and countless huge events while Dee faded into obscurity, and she’s just one of many women he has brutalized.

Like I said, f**k Dre.

#20

Kanye West has expressed open admiration for H**ler and written a song praising him. He still fills arenas.

#21

Tom Cruise has been accused of horrible a**ses done in the name of Scientology, yet he's still getting work and is even praised as saving cinema during Covid.

What this thread captures is the built-up frustration of watching the accountability gap do its thing. The stories happened publicly; they were reported on, and then they were absorbed into the general noise and forgotten. Some of them involve behaviour that would have ended a career at a different level of fame, or in a different week, or without the right people making the right calls behind the scenes.

But what we tend to forget is that the system is not broken. It is working exactly as systems built around power and money tend to work.

Do you know of any other cancellable offences that slipped under the radar? Call it out in the comments!

#22

Caitlyn Jenner for what was tantamount to vehicular mansl**ghter.

#23

Cornell University allowing frat boys to d**g and r**e a victim, and then only giving essays as punishment for five of the seven perpetrators. Cornell should be canceled as an Ivy League in general because they exploit the local community. They are a part of and the employees.

#24

Sunny Hostin claiming to be a hold out juror in a previous high profile case so she could insert herself into the Lyndsey Clancy case. Turns out this kind of thing can be verified and the hold out was a male. No repercussions and very little press on it.

#25

This is a little different than a lot of the posts on here, and likely more minimal in its severity, but The Crime Junkie podcast and their multiple obvious plagiarized podcast episodes.

A few years ago a journalist went to Facebook to publicly accuse Ashley Flowers (the host) of blatantly plagiarizing articles she had written for a newspaper. Then, a lot of other podcasters, journalists, and even Redditors shared suspicions that crime junkie utilized their content without credit as well. Crime junkie never included any citations and I do think anyone who studied journalism would find CJs work to be sloppy at best. No accountability or apology from the podcast, just episodes quietly taken down and replaced with “source material”.

If you aren’t into the true crime genre, it’s worth noting that the podcast is consistently rated in the top 5 of Apple Podcasts and Forbes has them (Ashley flower’s production company) bringing in $45 million a year. But the accusations were basically unknown and forgotten about quickly.

I teach an ethics course at a community college and I use this as a case study, but at first I withhold the name of the podcast. Students look at the original podcast episode transcripts (those can be found on way back machine and compare them with the original material written by the accusers. Inevitably they always end up determining multiple examples of the presence of plagiarism. When I tell them the actual name of the podcast it’s super impactful. Especially when it comes to the journalist that originally confronted them. She spent months and months knocking on doors and speaking with grieving family members on a journalist salary. Having her writing stolen and regurgitated by someone with a net worth of $250million must have been nauseating to think about. It gives a lot of impact to the case study.

Crazy that with a fan base as large what theirs it the accusations gained basically no traction at all.

© Photo: Afraid_Gold_2040

#26

Chris Brown… Jasmine Crockett even handed him a honorary award recently. How is that person still allowed to enjoy fame after what he did.

#27

Brad Pitt being credibly accused of domestic violence and having his kids go seemingly NC with him and even in some cases change their names.

#28

James Charles solicited minors and nothing happened. The victims came forward with evidence and tiktok covered it up and banned those accounts.

#29

Two high school football ball players in Ohio put a fake deer in the road and laughed as people swerved to avoid it. Another kid crashed as a result and almost died. Judge decided they need to write an essay and do some community service and hold off an any other punishment to allow them to finish the season. Wouldn’t want to let one mistake derail their promising football careers.

#30

Texas politician Ken Paxton was going through a nasty divorce from his wife (big no no for conservative Christians) until she got a fat payday and agreed to stay married. Then he was caught going on vacation with his affair partner.

His campaign is still going strong despite that and many other actions that should be deplorable to his supporters.

#31

Bill Gates talking to Epstein about the best way to give his wife meds for an std he contracted from two s*x workers.

#32

Cee Lo Green allegedly d***ging and r***ng a woman. He pled no contest to a lesser charge. It’s barely a footnote on his Wikipedia page.

#33

Mike Tyson. Reddit always treats him like he’s a sweet and thoughtful human being. And unlike most celebrities convicted of SA, he gets a pass, and the victim essentially called a liar.

F**k Mike Tyson and f**k his Reddit apologists.

#34

Genuinely concerned that Travis Scott still has a career and is allowed in polite society...or the GTA games.

#35

A guy I know got caught embezzling thousands at work and still got promoted like nothing happened, wild how that flew under the radar.

#36

Boris Johnson ditched his security and spent the weekend at the Italian villa of a high ranking ex kgb officer whilst he was Foreign Secretary and NOTHING HAPPENED! Not only that but he later became prime minister. I will never understand how he got away with this.

#37

In 1993, Jerry Seinfeld was almost 39 when he met HIGH SCHOOL senior Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss when she was only 17 years old, and they dated for 4 years.

#38

RFK Jr. multiple extra marital affairs.

#39

The college admissions scandal was wild, but what always got me was how casually people seemed to move on from it. Wealthy parents were literally paying to manipulate their kids’ way into elite universities.

#40

A video used to circulate of a current nfl announcer saying he liked girls real young and that by like 18 they were too smart, this is while he was an active nfl player.

#41

Justin Trudeau wearing blackface.

Cancel culture was alive and well but once it became inconvenient to apply it across the isle people largely shrugged it off.

#42

Travis Scott Astroworld.

#43

I’m going to get a ton of hate, but Kobe.

#44

For me it’s the divas responsible for the 2008 financial crash. Hardly anyone truly faced justice, yet the impact was huge.

Also, how the president of France got together with his now wife. Seems like a case of child grooming to me.

#45

Not that it went "unnoticed" but I really thought Clinton was going to resign when the Lewinsky scandal broke. That was sort of the rhythm for politicians up until then: Scandal -->Deny -->Scandal exands, political support collapses --> resign in disgrace.

Sort of like that movie "Seven Psychopaths" of Christopher Walken where he refuses to put his hands up when the bad guy pulls a g*n on him.