Matt Damon Says Celebrities Prefer Jail to Cancel Culture

Celebrities would rather serve a jail sentence than be cancelled, according to Matt Damon. The Oscar-winning actor said the never-ending nature of public shunning meant some actors would rather pay a “debt” and be done with it. The 55-year-old Hollywood star said cancel culture followed those who were affected to their graves. The Good Will Hunting actor was talking about the topic on the Joe Rogan podcast alongside Ben Affleck. Speaking about how people could be cast out of civilisation “in perpetuity” by being cancelled, Damon suggested some celebrities would rather spend time in prison. “I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, ‘I paid my debt. We’re done. Can we be done?’ “The thing about that getting kind of excoriated, publicly like that, it just never ends. It will just follow you to the grave.” Affleck, 53, agreed with Damon, claiming that humans had “dark instincts” in taking enjoyment out of someone else’s misfortune. “It’s that sixth grade instinct to be like ‘oh he’s in trouble,’” he said. “We have dark instincts to sometimes isolate people or get joy out of someone else being in trouble. Maybe because part of it is ‘hey, it’s not me’. “If you point the finger and everyone’s looking over there, you feel safer.” He continued: “To take any forgiveness out of it, is a really f----- up thing. “I don’t think anybody wants to think you’re the sum total of who you are as your worst moment.” Affleck said cancelling people made it “impossible” for those to apologise and come back from mistakes they have made because they are typically already “outcast”. In 2021, Damon battled against controversy after reports that he had only stopped using the word “f-----t” after his daughter told him to. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said his daughter had written him a treatise on “how that word is dangerous” after he used it in a joke. Damon said his daughter had left the table despite his pleas, telling the newspaper the word was “commonly used when I was a kid with a different application”. In a later interview with Variety, he claimed to have never used the word in his “personal life”, nor “slurs of any kind”. Cancelling often comes as a result of comments made online or in public by celebrities, which are deemed to have crossed a moral line. The threat of such damage to lucrative careers is so real that an insurance company last year introduced insurance for such events. Samphire Risk gives anxious high net-worth individuals access to a 24/7 help hotline in case they are attacked online. Other celebrities to face damage to their careers as a result of their views include JK Rowling and Graham Linehan, who are both vocal gender critics.