Cancelling Cancel Culture

i

love social media i’m always on it

i’m constantly scrolling through my for

you page on tick tock and my instagram

explore page for hours

i mean who doesn’t it’s great for

communication

education and raising awareness on

important topics

in this pandemic we’ve all struggled

with keeping those connections and

trying to keep up with social

commitments

i myself have been utilizing social

media to my best advantage to keep those

connections with others

and to even create new ones online

recently i’ve been using social media as

a way to educate myself and raise

awareness on socially relevant issues

i mean in this pandemic we’ve all been

trying to

take notice and realize what problems

are in the world and how we can help

them

with the combination of the constant

exposure to new information

different perspectives on social media

and all of that time cooped up in our

houses

we begin to reflect and notice what’s

right and what is wrong

with everybody educating themselves the

use of the term

cancer culture started to rise

every so often i would see on tick tock

or on somebody’s story that a famous

person got cancelled as i saw more and

more people getting cancelled i came to

realize what cancer culture was

in my own words i would define canceling

somebody as

completely cutting them off after they

said or did something

controversial i like to compare it to

where the judge can just

press a button and x the person that’s

performing

both completely shut down the person

now cancel culture is not some new and

profound thing that somebody came up

with during quarantine and we all just

ran with it

it was first technically used in late

2014

when a cast member of vh1’s reality tv

show

love in hip-hop new york told his

girlfriend she was cancelled

after she revealed that she had a child

after that

people specifically twitter users would

just casually criticize somebody’s

actions

for whatever they said

after that they would casually criticize

for their actions it was like that

and not even too long ago so

how did it go from casually throwing

around with your friends to

potentially ruining your life if it

happened to you canceling people became

more and more mainstream

and everybody thought that it was a step

to a better world

i mean that’s what you would think right

people were finally getting called out

for their mistakes

the thing is cancer culture wasn’t

really as effective as everybody thought

it would be

if you compare a tick-tock creator

claire drake to widely known actor and

comedian kevin hart

with them getting cancelled you would

get different results

keep in mind that claire is a tic toc

influencer and cancer culture is highly

used on that app

so claire has gotten cancelled multiple

times for different reasons

once it was for mocking black and

hispanic women and recently it was for

making an anti-semitic joke about the

holocaust

while she was getting cancelled she lost

thousands of followers and got many

death threats

she was completely torn apart

now kevin hart also recently got

cancelled

some homophobic tweets resurfaced the

internet and cancel culture did its

thing which caused hart to drop

out of hosting the 2019 oscars he took

some time off

and before you know it he was back to

doing roles in

movies and performing stand-up

both were cancelled each had completely

different experiences

majority of things people get cancelled

for are for past mistakes that they have

done it’ll be some screenshot or some

video of something controversial that

they did

people will see this and immediately

spread it to their friends

did you hear that new person got

cancelled oh my god i can’t believe they

would do that

cancelled next thing you know everybody

sends all of this hate to the creator

all of this immediate negativity to the

figure doesn’t allow them to grow

and learn from their mistakes not only

that it prevents the people with the

larger platforms

to educate their supporters and let them

learn from their own mistakes

all those young fans will be scared to

make any mistakes because of what

happened to their favorite person

this has a huge negative impact on all

of those young impressionable minds

on social media especially tick tock

creators are getting cancelled left and

right for past mistakes

while sometimes the person may not have

learned from their mistakes

most of the times the person that was

cancelled truly regrets their actions

and is grown as a person

they just most likely will not gain

their reputation back because

once you’re cancelled you stay canceled

meredith clark a media studies professor

at the university of virginia said that

cancer culture is the obsession of a

purity of that idea or someone that if

that idea or someone

doesn’t fit into a set of values then

they are essentially

disposable this is exactly what cancel

culture is

it sets highly unrealistic expectations

for anybody

and everybody with the platform with

this

people forget that they’re human but

they can make mistakes

i mean like hannah montana said

everybody can make mistakes

so how do we make people learn from

their mistakes then

if we just abolish cancel culture then

won’t people be able to say

and do whatever they want without the

fear of somebody saying something

i’m saying that instead of canceling

somebody we should educate them

let them see what they did wrong and

give them an opportunity to better

themselves

if we do this then social media will

become a much less

toxic place and instead a place where

people are welcome to learn

cancer culture has absolutely no

benefits and that is why

we should think of cancelling cancer

culture

thank you

you