The Cancelled

Ethan Cole was trending — but not in the way he ever wanted to be.

The morning it happened, he woke to hundreds of notifications on his phone. His name was plastered all over X, Instagram, TikTok. The hashtags were merciless:

> #EthanColeExposed

#NotMyRoleModel

#EthanCanceled

Half-asleep, he scrolled through a barrage of comments:

“You disgust me.”

“How could you do this to her?”

“Career OVER.”

He didn’t even know what “this” was.

It took several more confused, panicked minutes before he found the video — a shaky clip of a man who looked like him at a party, yelling at a woman, throwing a drink in her face. The caption read:

> Ethan Cole caught assaulting a woman at a Hollywood after-party. Proof enough?

The man in the video did resemble him. Same dark hair, same jacket he wore at his last public appearance.

But it wasn’t him.

It wasn’t.

At first, he did everything the PR blogs advised:

Issue a statement.

“This is not me. This video is misleading and false. I respect women and condemn violence in all forms.”

Nobody believed him.

His agent stopped returning his calls. Brands dropped him. Paparazzi camped outside his apartment, shouting questions. Reporters dug up unrelated old tweets, jokes he made in college. Strangers sent death threats.

Within a week, his social accounts were locked. He’d lost his job as a creative director at a rising media company. His “friends” stopped replying to his messages. His rent was overdue.

By the end of the month, Ethan Cole — once an influencer with 200K followers, a modest career in advertising, and a growing reputation as “one to watch” — had become invisible.

And it was starting to feel like maybe he didn’t even exist anymore. Two months later, broke and living in a friend’s spare room, Ethan decided to disappear voluntarily.

He created a new name: Derek Shaw.

He grew a beard, cut his hair shorter, bought clothes at thrift shops.

And then he started his mission:

Find out who had set him up.

Because he knew.

Someone had done this on purpose.

The video was fake.

In his new identity, he started hanging out in the same circles he used to frequent. Hollywood parties, influencer meetups, club openings. Nobody recognized him anymore.

That was when he began to notice something he’d missed before.

The same man was always there.

The one in the video.

At first it was just glimpses — at a rooftop party, ordering a drink at the same bar. He was close enough to see the man’s jawline, his build, the cruel smirk he wore.

They were nearly identical.

Ethan… or rather, Derek… tailed him quietly, gathering proof.

The doppelgänger’s name was Ryan Vale.

Or at least, that’s what he called himself.

Ryan was a professional — an actor of sorts. Not for movies or TV, but for blackmail schemes and online takedowns.

Ethan learned from whispers in back rooms and drug-hazed conversations that there was an entire underground industry:

Cancellation-for-hire.

If someone wanted a rival ruined, all they had to do was pay the right people. They’d find someone who looked like you, doctor some footage, leak it to the right accounts.

Ryan was one of their best.

It made Ethan sick to his stomach.

It also gave him something he hadn’t felt in months: purpose.

He began filming Ryan at every opportunity — capturing the man at parties, on dates, on sets where he rehearsed new “scenes” meant to ruin other lives.

Once he had enough evidence, he slipped it anonymously to a journalist he trusted. A woman named Mariah who’d once interviewed him for a magazine profile.

She was skeptical at first, but once she saw the footage, her eyes went wide.

“This… could blow up everything,” she whispered.

“Good,” Ethan said. “Blow it up.”

The exposé dropped two weeks later.

“Inside the Industry of Cancellations: How Influencers are Framed and Destroyed for Profit.”

The story named names, posted video evidence, listed victims — and included Ryan Vale front and center.

It went viral within hours.

But even then, Ethan didn’t feel triumphant.

Nobody came to apologize to him.

Nobody reached out to make things right.

The narrative shifted to outrage at the industry — but his name, Ethan Cole, was still synonymous with that doctored video.

He was still… cancelled.

He wondered if he’d ever be able to live under his own name again.

Or if “Derek Shaw” was who he’d have to be now.

When he walked past a newsstand that afternoon and saw his own face — the headline above it reading “THE CANCELLED FIGHT BACK” — he didn’t feel victorious.

He felt tired.

That night, he sat in a quiet park, scrolling through his phone.

He opened his old Instagram account and stared at his last post: a grinning photo of himself, captioned “Good things are coming.”

He almost laughed.

Then he powered down his phone, slid it into his pocket, and walked away — into the darkness.

For the first time in months, no cameras followed him.

No hashtags trailed behind him.

No one screamed his name.

Just the sound of his own footsteps.

And, faintly, the thought that maybe — just maybe — he could start over.