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Digital Humanities 2026

María Pardo, Endika Gutiérrez, Ane Martínez, Zaira Solance, Ava Allen and Leah Nolan

Introduction

In Digital Humanities, Internet Death isn’t about the end of a biological life. It describes the collapse of a person’s social capital and the erasure of their digital presence. It is a symbolic execution carried out through platforms, algorithms and collective user behavior. Instead of mourning, the internet performs a ritual of disappearance.

Traditionally, accountability meant acknowledging harm, apologizing and repairing trust. Online that process has shifted into something sharper and more absolute. The dominant response is now erasure, unfollowing, blocking, mass‑reporting and algorithmic burying. You aren’t corrected, you’re deleted. The community doesn’t wait for growth or reflection. It performs a clean cut, removing you from timelines, feeds and shared spaces. In this framework, “being held accountable” often means being rendered invisible.

But the internet complicates death. Unlike the physical world, the digital space refuses to let anyone fully disappear. Even after a person is socially “killed” their digital remains like cached posts, archived screenshots and resurfacing content can still be found. The most familiar example is the resurfacing of old celebrity tweets years later, long after the original context has dissolved. The past is never truly past online; it still lingers and is searchable and screenshot‑able, creating a strange form of data immortality where the internet remembers even when people don’t want it to.

This tension between erasure and permanence is at the core of Internet Death. It’s not about whether someone is gone but about who has the power to decide what remains.

Methodology

We don’t need complex software to understand digital death; we witness it on our social media feeds every day. Cancellation always follows a clear pattern: public sentiment instantly flips from support to a massive wave of hate, and then comes the cancellation. We can see this unfolding right before our eyes as comment sections become toxic, likes shift towards dislikes, and users begin to report the account massively. This negative reaction is quickly reflected in the numbers: on sites such as SocialBlade, the creator's follower count abruptly drops, marking the end of their career. By observing how this hatred spreads, we can see the online crowd connect like a giant spider's web, spreading a single hashtag or clip like a virus, until the creator is completely isolated. Ultimately, these everyday examples of viral cancellations and mass unfollowing turn our regular social media experience into clear evidence of how an online execution is achieved.

Cancel Network

To truly understand how an influencer is erased, we must examine the anatomy of the cancel network itself. Social media algorithms are explicitly designed to reward high-arousal emotions, among them, moral outrage. When users feel outraged, they interact, and this outrage generates hyper-engagement, which in turn triggers massive algorithmic amplification. The platform prioritizes keeping users hooked, making anger an incredibly profitable metric. This massive wave of moral outrage is not an accident; it is a structural symptom of corporate platforms utilizing "algorithmic violence" and engineering a "war of all against all" to manipulate attention and maximize their own profit (Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group, 2023). 

In this digital environment, modern cancel culture has been effectively recategorized as a normalized lynching culture. Heavy aggression directed at a target is frequently disguised as offensive humor, sharp satire, or just spilling tea. The hostility becomes socially acceptable, and even encouraged, just because the people making the jokes are laughing. It turns public execution into a collaborative form of digital entertainment.

However, a cancellation cannot sustain itself on rumors alone; it requires a burden of proof. This is where the digital archive becomes a dangerous tool. Screenshots, screen recordings, and Wayback Machine links are quickly surfaced to serve as undeniable digital evidence. These artifacts act as a weaponized reminder of the past, strategically stripping context from old mistakes to execute the cancellation.

Case Studies

Case Study A

On the one hand, we have divided the cancellation into two types. The first case study we have called it the “slow fade”. This is when an influencer loses their platform gradually. It does not happen because of one single new mistake; rather, it is triggered when a creator’s past is suddenly revealed and used against them in the present.

We have seen this exact pattern dismantle multiple high-profile figures. Think of Ellen DeGeneres, whose "be kind" empire wasn't destroyed overnight, but slowly eroded by a steady drip of old clips and employee testimonies. Look at Shane Dawson, whose cancellation required the internet to act as digital archeologists, digging through thousands of hours of uncensored early-YouTube footage to build an undeniable case file. We see it in Blake Lively’s past interviews being harshly re-examined or even J.K. Rowling’s legacy facing systematic deconstruction. The mechanism connecting all these downfalls is the digital archive. In the context of Digital Humanities, curation implies holding custodial responsibilities over these remains of the past, as well as an interpretive role in the present (Presner et al., 2009). Because the internet acts as a permanent database, modern users take these archived remains and maliciously "re-curate" them to build an argument for an influencer's downfall.

In Digital Humanities, there is a concept called “context collapse”. This happens when data created ten years ago, under those specific social norms, is suddenly dug up into the present. It is stripped of its original framework and judged entirely by today’s moral standards. A tweet that was culturally acceptable, or just ignored, in 2014 becomes a career-ending controversy in 2026. This highlights a reality of our digital age: the internet acts as a permanent, perfectly searchable database of our past. We are allowed to grow, but our data is frozen in time.

Furthermore, we have to recognize that the slow fade is not just a result of human outrage, it is a highly profitable technological process. The algorithms powering platforms like TikTok, YouTube and X are designed to push whatever keeps people scrolling. Instant removals actually cut off engagement. But a slow fade? That generates weeks of reaction videos, multi-part video essays, apology breakdowns and endless debate threads. The algorithm quickly detects that moral outrage is a goldmine for user retention, so it actively amplifies these old, problematic discoveries, pushing them onto millions of screens.

In conclusion, the “slow fade” proves that modern cancellation is a collaborative effort between human psychology and corporate algorithms. The creator is systematically brought down, with their own permanent digital footprint serving as the weapon.

Case Study B

On the other hand, we examine what we have determined as case study B: the “instant death”. This occurs when a platform is instantly removed; overnight or over the span of a few days. Here, we have several examples of people who have undergone this process. Firstly, the case of Andrew Tate, a streamer banned in 2022 from platforms like Instagram or X for promoting extreme misogyny and violence against women. In other words, he made use of his platform to radicalize men, especially young men, toward violent sexism. However, he moved to other available platforms like Telegram.

In addition, the singer D4vd is a clear example of instant death. He was charged with murder in 2026, and as a consequence, his music was removed from some streaming platforms and gaming sites (like Fortnite). Also, his tour was cancelled and was demonetized from Youtube. His Instagram account still has over 1,6 million followers, however.

In addition, these examples clearly reshape online communities. Instant death cases also disrupt datasets, which lead to network reconfigurations. The followers of the “cancelled” person do not simply vanish, but they scatter in dozens of smaller and more radicalized nodes, in other words, the community reconfigures itself on other nodes. Moreover, these changed nodes are really hard to track or analyze.

DH studies often examine power structures in digital spaces. Many people wonder about who has the power to decide what is and what is not dangerous in platforms, and what is “cancellable”. Also, the bias in the algorithm must be mentioned: who does it protect, and who does it delete first? Instant removal raises questions about authority, bias, and the social responsibility of platforms as digital gatekeepers. When a platform suddenly de-platforms an influencer, they are acting as the absolute authority; this highlights how platforms hold creators and audiences hostage within "walled gardens," locking them in to exploit them before the platform inevitably decays (Doctorow, 2023). In addition, de-platforming may reduce visibility on mainstream sites (Instagram, Tiktok, X, etc.), but as seen in Andrew Tate’s case, alternative platforms, like Telegram or private servers on Discord, often allow harmful networks to persist. This shows a tension between immediate public safety and long-term cultural shifts, a key concern in digital humanities research.

Additionally, many researchers describe the instant death of celebrities’ platforms as a data integrity crisis. Digital Humanities scholars are interested in tracing digital traces over time. Instant removals can erase primary sources from mainstream platforms, complicating research into cultural trends, online discourse, or radicalization patterns. In other words, if a researcher is interested in analyzing discourse trends or network connections, losing larger nodes overnight creates gaps in the historical record. That is why the following question arises: does removing content help society or does it hurt researchers who want to study radicalization and how this starts?

Conclusion

After everything we’ve discussed the punishments of the algorithm, the public outrage and the way the Internet decides when someone should be labelled “cancelled”. We're left with the strange realisation that an online death isn’t a complete disappearance, but actually it is being pushed out of the spotlight while your past remains available for everyone to continue criticising. We are reminded that the internet remembers everything even if we don’t want it to.

And this leaves us wondering whether the digital guillotine even works. We've studied some controversial figures like James Charles. An influencer who lost millions of followers overnight, apologised in a way that many people felt was more for his survival rather than sincerity, and is now still trying to rebuild himself regardless of these scandals. This reminds us that the digital punishment is never fully final, some people manage to be redeemed, while others don’t.

People aren’t just cancelling influencers anymore, instead they are now questioning the whole system. They are tired of constant ads, fake authenticity and endless overconsumption. This frustration feeds into de-influencing, and when trust breaks down like this, forgiveness becomes something people struggle to give and struggle even more to trust.

So, we end up here stuck in a system that never forgets but still expects people to grow. A system that demands accountability but still traps people inside their worst moments. A system where redemption might be possible but is never guaranteed.

We are going to leave you with this question: In a world that remembers everything can anyone truly be forgiven?.

References

Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group. (2023). Algorithmic sabotage manifesto. https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/manifesto/  

Doctorow, C. (2023, January 23). The ‘enshittification’ of TikTok. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/