It usually starts before anyone tells you there’s a problem.
A strange comment appears under an old post. A few DMs arrive from accounts you don’t recognise. Then someone you haven’t spoken to in five years sends a message asking if you’re OK. Perhaps they’re concerned. Perhaps they want to know what you’ve done before everyone else finds out.
Soon your phone is full of people “checking in”, a brand wants to pause a partnership while it monitors the conversation, and somebody you once trusted has decided this is the perfect moment to share something private. It might be true, false or technically true with every useful bit of context removed.
I know people end up on this page by searching things like who to hire when being cancelled, crisis PR expert or how to fix my reputation online. If that’s you, I imagine you want to do something immediately. I would too.
But before you post a statement, contact the person behind it or agree to whatever your manager has drafted in a panic, you need to know what you’re responding to. Is the story spreading beyond a small group? Are journalists looking into it? Are the allegations accurate? What have brands or employers actually been told? And is someone quietly supplying information from your private life?
You can’t make a sensible decision from the worst screenshot someone has sent you.
Your usual PR team may need specialist help
I have a lot of respect for traditional PR. Getting somebody the right coverage, building relationships with journalists and planning a campaign are skills. They’re just not automatically the skills needed when someone’s reputation is unravelling online.
I’m often brought in after an existing team has tried to help. They’ve rushed out a statement because silence felt frightening. They’ve contacted journalists who hadn’t yet heard about the story. Or they’ve tried to place a positive article while people are still asking a direct question that nobody has answered.
I understand the instinct. You want to show that you’re doing something. But a response can give a dying story fresh material, especially when it contains a phrase people can pull out and share on its own.
Good crisis PR starts with research. What is actually being said, where did it begin and how far has it travelled? Which claims can be checked? Are people still interested, or are you seeing the same fifty accounts talking to each other? Those are very different situations, even if both feel terrible when you’re the person at the centre of them.
If you’re choosing a crisis PR expert, ask how they would assess the situation before they advise you to speak. You should be able to understand the reasoning behind their recommendation. Be cautious if someone promises a quick fix without asking to see the evidence.
And, frankly, I’d be wary of a publicist who seems delighted to announce that they’re handling your crisis. Your situation isn’t an opportunity for them to build their profile.
Why your friends’ advice can make things worse
Friends and family are often the first people you call, and of course they should be. You need people who care about you when strangers are discussing your life as entertainment.
But emotional support and crisis strategy are different things.
People close to you will tell you to “speak your truth”, “just explain what happened” or “put something out so people know you’re not hiding”. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re asking you to answer an allegation that most people haven’t even seen, or to make a promise you can’t keep because they want the discomfort to stop.
I once worked with a client whose close friend strongly objected to the plan I’d put together. I’d spent a long time researching what was happening, where the story was spreading and what each possible response might trigger. The friend was someone my client trusted, and his opinion carried a lot of weight.
The objection wasn’t really about the evidence. He felt that a different response would be the morally right one. I could understand why he felt that way. I also thought it would leave the central issue unresolved and create problems for the client’s career. I explained those risks, but the client chose to follow the friend’s advice.
Within weeks, several brand partnerships had gone, their podcast quietly disappeared and important contacts stopped replying. I can’t prove what would have happened if they’d followed my plan. I can say that the risks I’d warned about came to pass, and it was painful to watch.
The difficult part is that this friend wasn’t trying to sabotage anyone. He cared about the client. He was giving the advice he would have wanted to hear himself. But he wasn’t the person who had to manage the consequences.
Take comfort from your friends. Let them bring you dinner and tell you to get some sleep. Before you let them rewrite a statement or decide whether you should apologise, make sure they understand what the decision could set in motion.
The story online may be different from the story you know
One of the strangest parts of being cancelled is seeing your own life turned into something you barely recognise.
A screenshot can be genuine but missing the messages around it. A private joke can look awful to somebody who wasn’t there. Equally, a claim you think is ridiculous may raise a fair question that you still need to answer. You have to be willing to look at all of it honestly.
Then there are the people who appear once they realise an audience is listening. An ex, a former friend, a business partner or someone who was once in your inner circle may suddenly have a story to tell. I’ve dealt with situations that felt like real life Wagatha Christie, including private “Close Friends” content being shared with the press.
That can be personally devastating, quite apart from the public reaction. It also changes the practical question. You’re no longer dealing only with comments under a post. You need to know what information might be shared next, who has it and whether any of it is inaccurate or confidential.
This is why I don’t recommend treating every cancellation as a debate you can win by writing a clever paragraph. Sometimes you need to correct a specific falsehood. Sometimes there’s a genuine mistake to acknowledge. Sometimes a journalist needs information before they publish. Sometimes you need legal advice alongside PR advice. And sometimes the most useful thing you can do that day is save the evidence and stop feeding the conversation.
The right response depends on the facts, not on whether strangers are demanding a statement by 5pm.
What digital crisis PR actually involves
I specialise in digital crisis PR, so I’m looking at what happens when somebody searches your name and where the conversation is taking place now.
That might include press coverage, TikToks, Instagram reels, Reddit threads, forums and posts that keep being copied from one platform to another. I look at which claims are gaining attention, which ones are falling away and whether somebody is actively pushing the story.
Then comes the less glamorous work. Checking facts. Speaking to people privately. Asking for corrections where reporting is wrong. Considering whether a response will clarify anything or simply give everyone another post to analyse. Working out what a brand, journalist or potential employer is likely to find when they look you up in six months.
People sometimes ask whether I can get an article removed. Occasionally there’s a valid reason to request a correction or removal, but it depends on the article and the publisher. Nobody credible should promise that they can erase every unfavourable result from Google. I’d rather tell you what can realistically be changed and spend our time on that.
I also don’t have a rule that everyone should apologise. An apology can be necessary and meaningful when you’ve done something wrong. It can also be a terrible response to an allegation that isn’t true. Even when an apology is appropriate, the wording matters. People can tell when it sounds like it was assembled from other people’s statements.
The same goes for silence. Staying quiet isn’t automatically clever, and speaking isn’t automatically a mistake. My job is to work out which choice makes sense in your situation and explain why.
Privacy matters more than a public success story
I keep my clients private. I don’t name them to impress other people, post photographs of our meetings or ask them to tag me when a crisis settles down.
You might know about cases I’ve worked on without knowing I was involved. I’ve even sat at dinner while friends discussed a client’s story and had absolutely no idea I’d spent months dealing with it. It’s a peculiar experience, but it means the arrangement is working as it should.
Some people assume that crisis PR means a dramatic statement followed by a redemption interview. Occasionally a public conversation is necessary. A lot of the time, the most effective work is much quieter. There may be private calls, research, corrections, difficult conversations and long periods of monitoring something that nobody else can see.
If you’re a public figure, founder or influencer, you may already feel as though you’ve lost control of what’s private. You shouldn’t have to give up more privacy to get help.
What to do first if you’re being cancelled
I wrote a longer guide to protecting yourself after going viral for the wrong reasons, but if this is happening right now, start here:
Pause before you post. Write down what you want to say if you need to, but don’t publish it while you’re shaking, furious or working from one screenshot. You can decide what to do once you’ve seen more of the picture.
Keep the original evidence. Save links, emails, messages and screenshots with dates. Don’t rely on a friend’s cropped version of a post if you can find the original.
Work out what has actually reached people. What has been posted publicly? What has been sent privately to brands, journalists or colleagues? A story circulating in one group chat needs a different response from a story a national newspaper is preparing to publish.
Don’t answer every account. It’s tempting to correct each person who gets something wrong. In practice, that can keep drawing attention to claims that were barely travelling.
Be honest with the person advising you. If there’s a message, an earlier incident or a detail you’re worried will come out, say so. A crisis plan built around half the story won’t survive contact with the other half.
Get help that fits the situation. You may need a crisis PR specialist, a solicitor, your manager or all three. Ask each person what they’re handling so important decisions don’t get lost between them.
Being cancelled is frightening partly because everything seems to happen at once. People form opinions quickly, your phone never stops and even the people who love you can disagree about what you should do.
You don’t have to solve the whole thing tonight. Start by finding out what’s true, what’s spreading and what needs your attention. If you need someone to help you make sense of it, you can contact me below: