Matt Damon Says Some Stars Would Rather Go to Jail Than Be Canceled: ‘It Just Never Ends’

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon shared their thoughts on cancel culture and Hollywood’s reaction while promoting their new action movie, The Rip.

The duo, who are longtime friends and collaborators, appeared on the Friday, January 16 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where the host brought up the topic of cancel culture. Damon, 55, was the first to agree with Rogan’s thoughts that cancel culture is a negative thing, alleging that some people who have been canceled would have much rather been incarcerated instead.

“I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, ‘I paid my debt. Like, we’re done. Like, can we be done?’ The thing about that getting kind of excoriated, publicly like that, it just never ends. And it will just follow you to the grave,” the Martian star noted.

Affleck, 53, then likened the situation to a “kind of sixth-grade instinct” where kids would point and “ooh” at someone who was in trouble.

“Humans have dark, f**ked up instincts too sometimes to isolate people or get joy out of someone else’s… they’re in trouble, maybe because part of it is saying, ‘Hey, it’s not me.’ So if you can point the finger, everyone’s looking over there, we feel safer, you know?” he added.

The Argo director also explained that he feels taking forgiveness out of the equation makes it impossible for someone to learn from their mistakes.

“I don’t think anybody wants to think the sum total of who you are is your worst moment,” he concluded, clarifying that he doesn’t mean to absolve “people that are, over and over again, doing horrible s**t and don’t care…. But you remove the ability to forgive people.”