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