In “Cancelled at 17”, a New York magazine cover story that has ignited a Twitter and media storm, the features writer Elizabeth Weil profiles an “enormously appealing, but also very much cancelled” high school boy, Diego (all the names used were pseudonyms). While drunk at a party, Diego showed his friends nude photographs of his girlfriend, Fiona. After Fiona found out, Diego’s friends began ostracising him and later, as the school pupils launched a campaign against sexual harassment and abuse on campus, Diego was identified (along with around 20 others) as one of the worst offenders. On campus he became a pariah, known to all as an abuser and a rapist (even though no one had accused him of rape).
