I very recently learned that the term “boycott” comes from someone’s actual name: Charles Boycott. Boycott was an English land agent who tried, in 1880, to collect unpayable rents from Irish peasants on behalf of an English aristocrat landlord. When he failed to collect the rents, he tried evicting the tenants. The Irish Land League responded with a campaign to ignore Boycott’s orders and isolate him socially and economically.

They not only ignored his eviction orders and threw manure at his process servers, but refused to deliver his mail or sell him food.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

It was pretty effective—the British government eventually had to deploy a thousand soldiers (naturally, because the state works for the propertied class and none more than the 19th century British state) at a cost of some £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops. Boycott had to be evacuated by the soldiers, who even had to drive him out, as no locals would agree to drive his carriage out of the region.

Imagine being cancelled so hard that your name becomes permanently associated with getting cancelled.

Charles Boycott - Wikipedia

@HeavenlyPossum When we learn about Boycott as 10-year olds in history class, every Irish kid feels like Ché Guevara! ☘️💚
@TonyFlynn @HeavenlyPossum pretty much what I was thinking when I read this toot. It’s something that has stayed with me, whenever I hear the word boycott I think of the day I learnt about it in school.
@johndelaney @TonyFlynn they do NOT teach that in US history class
@johndelaney @HeavenlyPossum
Not in Canadian history classes, either. Uncomfortably close to what we did here, I suspect; until very recently, we did’t teach *any* colonial atrocities.
@HeavenlyPossum @johndelaney @silvermoon82 Ireland was basically Britain’s R&D lab for its colonial practices.