Just a disclaimer here, this is a question about violence. Now, I'm known as what might be considered an established pacifist. I do not exclude violence from the list of things that intrude on peoples' boundaries. That is to say I don't support it, which, in ultra layman's terms, is acknowledged to be because it's a form of escalation and often has no possible form of compensation. And I look at everything I see with what people actually do get away with, and I want to know why.

We live in a society trying to put in more effort to maintain what it sees as a kind of righteous balance. If an artist, writer, singer, etc. says something, the even the art is not exempt. If JK Rowling blasts her mouth off again, her stocks have been known to plummet. If Elon Musk tries to appeal to the wrong people, his own stocks have been known to plummet. The people are speaking, as many say. However, one area of what one might call controversy that I notice the people never speak on is terrorism (and anything related to death, if it's random and not related to a specific group of people). And I was thinking about this while reading Mistborn, where the heroes get away with some nasty stuff and one of the messages amounts to the whole "the ends justify the means" vibe. But if the way they think is par for the course, why even put this thing some people call "cancel culture" on a high altar? Once in a while, it's common to have to answer to some misunderstanding, but I notice violence (if nothing else is attached) is often just an "unconventional view". And that kind of thing is all we see in the news on some days, and nobody feels like it, I don't know, misrepresents anything? Bottom line, why is general violence treated so differently?

Alright. I'm gonna take a stab at this based on my own understanding and readings, and the assumption that you asked in good faith. We're going to break this up into a few things to answer your question.

The short answer is that murder/violence and cancel culture are not in the same box. It is a comparison of apples, oranges, and bananas.

The Merriam-Webster definition of cancel culture is: "The practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure."

Murder

The reason there isn't cancel culture (from my perspective) around this is that it is a direct violation of the social contract. You took a life, and it is up to the criminal courts to hold you accountable for the action. In essence, you're arrested for this and tried; you're already canceled, but by the state that's trying you.

Violence

Cancel culture does exist around this, but it depends on what is known. I believe that you only see it when there is a perception that the justice system has failed and the conscience of the masses thinks it needs to exact some sort of justice. That's where you see people being ostracized for domestic violence, accusations of sexual assault, etc. The criminal justice system hasn't acted on it for whatever reason, so others feel that it is their responsibility to do so.

The Moral Contract

Cancel culture is a social weapon that is used against people who are believed to have violated the moral social contract, and they are ostracized for those reasons. For example, Colin Kaepernick was canceled because he was kneeling for the Super Bowl (even though he didn't break any law, as the action is protected by the First Amendment), but because of the social moral conscience in 2016, his action was seen as an affront and thus had to be punished.

Hopefully this helped answer your question.

I do not use the term "cancel culture" to be pejorative ot derogatory, just that it's the commonly used term used for the sharp side of our current half-tapped-into honor system, if that's why there is doubt over whether I ask in good faith. To clarify, the thing I struggle to understand is why or how one's collective of social stances do heavier lifting in regards to what would be called their dishonor than death. I've been in a number of communities where this question comes up in my mind; in one (unrelated to any community we're in), I've been told to leave on the basis of having what I can best described is a stigmatized type of dysphoria because it was thought to be in bad faith to come out of the closet about it, all the while the second-most popular individual in the community is a known supporter of Islamic terrorism who keeps returning. Imagine being told "I'm sorry, but we're ordering you to leave due to people raising a stink", all the while you have what you at least would think is the most obvious opportunity to ask "but what about that guy". Surely so many people in the world don't prioritize that. And cancel culture is about the masses, so...

And this then leads me to think of past instances. Like, Harry Potter is homophobic and implicitly racist, etc. and so might something like Ender's Game be. But how dare I say that the ableistic murder at the end of Of Mice and Men delivered by the protagonist was uncalled for. Or how dare I say super heroes like The Punisher are overkill.

Or to put it another way, suppose we were talking about the Godfather. They kill people, they steal, they cheat, they ruin lives. That makes the story. It's a mafia story. I'm in no way saying they should be discriminatory, but... if they did, the story has all that other stuff, so what does that add? The mafia was all old timey Catholics. One could say "realism is realism" or "idealism is idealism" and so forth, but it's like each only applies sometimes. I don't grasp a lot of it. There are even authors who have themselves committed murder, like Kouri Richins who murdered her husband before writing a book on how to grieve over a family member of all things. She was locked up, but her book is flying off the shelves. Like holy shit.