1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

The photos landed almost simultaneously. They produced a familiar—and to many, tiresome by now—jolt of online outrage. One showed “DoorDash Grandma” delivering fast food to the White House in a made-for-virality stunt to promote Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy. Another captured Guy Fieri greeting Andrew and Tristan Tate at a UFC event, manosphere figures whose notoriety has become shorthand for a certain bleak corner of the internet. In both cases, critics demanded contrition. Yet only one apology came. A “devastated” Fieri swiftly disavowed the encounter and insisted he did not share the Tates’ views or even know about them. DoorDash, by contrast, absorbed the criticism, and its public affairs team openly argued back in a pugilistic show of defiance against those calling them out on social media. The split reaction reveals a key dynamic that still keeps “cancel culture” a potent force in the U.S. even after it was declared dead.