For years, Americans have been fed up with cancel culture – the endless cycle of outrage, public shaming and neatly packaged Notes app apologies.
Now, Hollywood seems to have finally caught up.
The same controversies that once triggered frantic PR cleanups, deleted posts and late-night statements are now met with a new kind of rebellion: silence.
From Kristen Bell’s refusal to back down after a social-media storm, last month, to Taylor Swift’s quiet defiance in song, celebrities are rewriting the rules of crisis management and experts say the age of the automatic apology may be over.
When Bell posted an anniversary tribute to husband Dax Shepard last month, she likely expected the usual flood of heart emojis.
Instead, the actress found herself accused of insensitivity after an inside joke about men murdering their wives coincided with Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Critics called the joke ‘tone-deaf.’ Hashtags calling for accountability trended. And Bell? She said nothing.
She didn’t delete the post or issue a statement. Within days, the uproar vanished, drowned out by the next trending topic.
For years, Americans have been fed up with cancel culture — the endless cycle of outrage, public shaming and neatly packaged Notes app apologies (Sydney Sweeney pictured)
‘Kristen Bell didn’t owe the public an emotional reckoning because her “offense” was more about audience projection than actual harm,’ Sarah Ekenberg, a communications veteran, told The Daily Mail.
‘These moments tend to flare fast and fade faster, and by not feeding the outrage, she let the news cycle move on naturally.’
Ekenberg says this marks a major cultural reset: ‘We’ve entered an era where the public is exhausted by performative apologies. When a celebrity issues a Notes app statement or teary video within 24 hours, it often feels like crisis choreography rather than genuine reflection. Silence, by contrast, can signal confidence and perspective.’
Even Taylor Swift has been staying quiet when the internet demands her commentary.
Swift, whose fanbase is predominantly liberal and female, has faced backlash for cozying up to Brittany and Patrick Mahomes, who’ve hinted at support for President Donald Trump.
Her engagement to Travis Kelce, a wholesome Midwestern NFL star, only added to the narrative that she’d gone ‘MAGA-coded.’
But instead of issuing a clarifying post or interview, Swift did what she always does and turned her thoughts into art.
On her latest album, she sings in her track, CANCELLED!: ‘Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal.’
Kristen Bell’s refusal to back down after a social-media storm, last month, may be proof that the age of the automatic apology may be over; seen in October 2025
Bell recently found herself accused of insensitivity after an inside joke about men murdering their wives coincided with Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Later, she teases: ‘Welcome to my underworld / Where it gets quite dark / At least you know exactly who your friends are.’
And then the dagger: ‘Everyone’s got bodies in the attic / Or took somebody’s man.’
The message is unmistakable: she’s done saying sorry.
‘Taylor is one of the most empathetic and self-aware artists of our time,’ says Grayce McCormick, founder of Lightfinder PR. ‘Her lyric, “Sad as it seems, apathy is hot,” feels like an observation of society’s growing emotional detachment. She’s not endorsing it, she’s holding up a mirror to it.’
McCormick calls Swift’s restraint ‘strategic sovereignty.’
‘She’s recognized the shift in power dynamics,’ she says. ‘When your fan base is loyal enough, silence doesn’t cost you – it can reinforce your control. The apology, once a reflex, has become a deliberate choice.’
This new approach has become increasingly common across entertainment, as publicists and crisis-management experts grow skeptical of the traditional ‘apologize fast’ model.
‘Silence is power,’ says Karla Cobreiro, a PR and communications executive with over a decade of experience managing celebrity and brand crises.
‘Responding to issues or backlash from your platform often lends them the very validity and attention critics are seeking. Not responding can actually minimize the problem.’
She points to how short modern outrage cycles have become.
‘Remember the Astroworld tragedy?’ she says. ‘Travis Scott’s brand and career took a huge hit – Coachella dropped him, partnerships paused – but he’s now on a world tour. Public memory is short. Keyboard warriors don’t always translate to real-world consequences.’
Cobreiro says the digital environment rewards patience over panic: ‘We live in a hyper-fast media environment. Something can feel like the end of a career on Monday and be forgotten by Friday.’
Even Taylor Swift has been staying quiet when the internet desperately demands her commentary; seen in 2024
Baruch Labunski, founder of Rank Secure and a reputation-management specialist, agrees.
‘Silencing criticism is a method used by public figures to protect their brands, and currently, silence is preferred,’ he explains.
‘When public contrition isn’t genuine, audiences ‘rate’ the apology as fake – which creates a second crisis. Silence avoids that trap.’
But Labunski cautions that silence only works when the controversy lacks moral weight. ‘Stars like Kristen Bell or Sydney Sweeney work with a silence PR strategy because the perceived issues had no ethical dimension,’ he says. ‘Silence will not work, however, when the issue is one of integrity, ethics, or social responsibility.’
He describes it as a ‘corrective approach’ to brand management -one that ‘projects autonomy and control over the public conversation.’
Still, he warns that ‘exposed negligence loses accounts.’
The balance between autonomy and accountability, he says, defines reputation in the post-cancel-culture era: ‘The absence of a response can be a response – but when the public senses avoidance, the silence itself becomes the scandal.’
Experts agree that the strategy can easily backfire.
‘Silence works when the controversy is fleeting, personal, or born of internet nitpicking,’ says McCormick. ‘But when silence meets issues of representation, equality, or justice, it almost always backfires.’
Swift, whose fanbase is predominantly liberal and female, recently faced backlash for cozying up to Brittany and Patrick Mahomes, who’ve hinted at support for President Donald Trump (pictured in 2023)
Instead of issuing a clarifying post or interview, Swift did what she always does and turned her thoughts into art, raising eyebrows with her defiant track, CANCELLED!
She cites Sydney Sweeney’s backlash over her American Eagle campaign – accused of racial insensitivity – and her family’s political party photos that featured MAGA hats.
‘Ignoring cultural criticism isn’t empowerment,’ McCormick says. ‘It’s avoidance. Fans might forgive a missed note, but not a missed moment to show humanity.’
Even silence, when paired with tone-deaf imagery, can look performative.
‘Doubling down can project confidence,’ McCormick continues, ‘but it also walks a fine line between brand control and arrogance. Taylor Swift’s silence reads as sovereignty; Sweeney’s reads as defensiveness. True confidence doesn’t need to posture – it requires perspective.’
Across the industry, experts say audiences are experiencing apology fatigue. The formulaic cycle of outrage → apology → forgiveness → relapse has numbed public empathy.
‘What once signaled humility now often feels like a PR script,’ Ekenberg explains. ‘Combine that with social-media exhaustion, and silence has become the new power move.’
McCormick calls it ‘algorithmic morality.’ ‘PR teams literally track sentiment graphs,’ she says. ‘If outrage dips after 48 hours, they’ll let it pass. Outrage has become data – and compassion, a calculation.’
That cold calculus has changed the emotional landscape of celebrity culture. ‘It’s made compassion transactional,’ she says. ‘Every post is a risk assessment.’
At its core, this evolution reflects the shifting balance of power between stars and the public.
Baruch Labunski, founder of Rank Secure and a reputation-management specialist, cautions that silence only works when the controversy lacks moral weight
‘Social media gave celebrities direct access to fans,’ McCormick notes. ‘It cut out the press as gatekeepers. That means some no longer need to apologize because their own platforms provide enough validation to drown out dissent.’
That self-contained validation loop can make them seem untouchable – but also isolated. ‘To fans, silence can look like grace under pressure,’ she says. ‘To critics, it reads as detachment and privilege. Silence has become the new performance art – a way to control narrative by withholding emotion.’
Still, all four experts agree that not every scandal can, or should, be ignored.
Ekenberg puts it plainly: ‘Silence works when the issue is subjective or open to interpretation. It fails when it’s ethical, moral, or involves a breach of trust. A CEO caught in an affair with a subordinate can’t stay silent; that’s a workplace issue, not an image problem.’
McCormick adds that moral clarity still matters. ‘Fans may no longer demand an apology, but they expect awareness. Accountability hasn’t vanished – it’s just being expressed differently.’
Cobreiro believes this marks the next chapter in PR evolution: ‘Public memory is short. Outrage is entertainment. But accountability still matters – it just has to feel authentic, not performative.’
‘Stars like Kristen Bell or Sydney Sweeney work with a silence PR strategy because the perceived issues had no ethical dimension,’ he says. ‘Silence will not work, however, when the issue is one of integrity, ethics, or social responsibility’
McCormick calls it a pendulum swing.
‘After years of cancel culture, there’s now rebellion fatigue. The future of apology culture lies in transparency and timing, not theatrics. Quiet ownership of one’s actions, followed by visible change, will resonate more than any grand performance of regret.’
Or, as Labunski frames it: ‘The reputation of silence leaves the negative discourse to explode cryptically in public. The stars who survive are the ones who know when to let the explosion burn itself out – and when to walk into the fire.’
At the end of the day, this new wave of celebrity silence says as much about society as it does about them.
‘The public is over moral outrage as entertainment,’ McCormick concludes. ‘We’ve mistaken numbness for strength, and compassion for weakness. Apathy might look hot – but it’s hollow.’
In 2025, silence has become Hollywood’s loudest statement – not because stars have stopped caring, but because the audience has stopped listening.
