ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 spotlights how prominent users become entangled in online scrutiny and shaming. This includes influencers and content creators who establish followings in the millions, but also those who labour in the hundreds or thousands. Theirs is a visibility in which reputation and legitimacy are continuously built up and contested. High follower counts are a pathway to capital, power and privilege. Yet they may remain vulnerable to attacks on their reputation precisely because of this prominence. This chapter offers a close reading of cancel culture discourse as polarising and contested. In practice it typically amounts to an ideological curation of grievances. It also considers prominence as an attribute that helps make sense of contemporary regimes of visibility in media and entertainment. This informs a broader discussion of cancel culture as both a tangible media practice and a selective framing of incidents. This approach situates routinised denunciation as both productive for media engagement and damaging to the reputations of those attaining prominence.
