Dylanrockin

Can try!

Okay, so. Basically, to "cancel" someone in the discourse sense of the word basically means to boycott them. Essentially, it's like this: famous person does a bad thing, people point out bad thing to others (often referred to as "callout", i.e. as a "callout post" that compiles information on the incident(s), ideally with sources/proof), and ask others to stop supporting famous person because of bad thing. As more people pick up news about it, social media spreads it, and more and more people pull their support from the person to show that they are displeased w the shitty thing.

Sometimes cancelling is meant as a tool to get the person to re-evaluate their actions or views - "hey, this thing you did was awful, please apologize and consider what you did, or I won't support you any more". Other times cancelling is meant to be final - "jfc this person abused their children, no way I'll ever give them money again and neither should you".

Originally, "cancel culture" was a term that people used to criticize a rise in behavior where people started making callouts over far-fetched things, like going years through someone's social media to point out a minor ploblematic thing the did a long time ago (think 'said something offensive and has since expressed different views', do NOT think 'murdered someone in cold blood').
The issue was that with how accessible everyone's past has become through digitalization, it was easier to find out about past mistakes than ever, and people rightfully pointed out that people deserve to have some room for error before you try to outright destroy their base of support.

However, in recent years the term has become a little... contested, because it got picked up more and more by people who applied it to cases where "cancelling" the person was wholly justified.
I think part of the blame simply lies in the structure of the internet: it's so easy to spread news now, and there's so many people that do crappy things, you certainly FEEL like every day there's a new scandal happening. And that gets tiring, processing this much information is tiring. So it's easy to think "ugh, what happened NOW".
So you've got a climate in which a lot of people are already ready to say "man, stop it with the callouts, you're going overboard". Now add to that that there's a tendency for fans of famous personalities to be willing to defend them no matter what, for various reasons. And now add to THAT that there's actual bigots out there who find it very much convenient to cast themselves as the victims of "cancel culture" and censorship. 

And voila! You've got the recipe for what's going on now:
People whining about "cancel culture" whenever someone gets called out for shitty behavior, even if that shitty behavior is actually something very serious.
 

So what I was trying to get at here:
- Cancel Culture by itself refers to criticizing a perceived over-reaction to people making mistakes, basically disproportionate retribution
- However, when someone complains about cancel culture, it's worth looking into why that particular person is complaining.

Addendum: "callout" as a term is a little older than the term "cancel", and the words "callout culture" and "cancel culture" can often be used interchangeably.
The internet really likes adding "[x] culture" to things.