Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have heard of at least one person who has been cancelled in the last year or two. Whether it’s Gwen Stefani, Taylor Swift, Common, Antoni Porowski from ‘Queer Eye’, Kanye West, Bill Gates and more infamously Logan Paul, I would probably guess that nearly every celebrity has been cancelled at some point.
What is “Cancel Culture”?
Cancel culture is the concept of “cancelling” a celebrity when that celebrity has done some considered offensive, immoral or even criminal. The top definition on urban dictionary refers to cancel culture as “a thing that 15 year olds do”.
However it’s not exclusively used by “15 year olds”, some people view the ability to cancel someone as taking back power and in some cases, it can be seen working in this way. For example, Kevin Spacey has been canceled after the sexual assault accusations came out in July 2018. We were taking away the power from an abuser and trying to enforce some sort of justice in a situation where often the abuser is given a lenient punishment due to their wealth, status, race and gender.
Cancellation takes place online and unsurprisingly on Twitter. The only people truly susceptible are those dependent on the public’s attention to continue to make money. Some celebrities have been put out of work and shamed from public appearances due to offensive, or Spacey’s example criminal, behaviour.
Is it working?
To argue that cancel culture is working would be to ignore the vast amount of evidence that for many it has no impact.
Logan Paul was cancelled after his incident in Aokigahara forest.
Yet when you click on his channel on YouTube today, he is still there. He is making money and, according to his social blade, not seen that great a decrease in subscribers — he has actually seen an increase of 204% in the last 30 days.
Despite a rather forced apology for his offensive actions, people still follow him today.
But he was cancelled… wasn’t he? Like many others, the permanence of their cancellation isn’t binding. Many celebrities continue with their careers and only have to deal with minor setbacks. Others such as Harvey Weinstein may never work again.
Comments made online can even become a source of cancellation.
Being rude can result in extreme backlash as Nnedi Okorafor, a Nigerian Dystopian fiction author, recently found when telling another user (who claimed they were going to be the best writer to ever come out of Nigeria) that “talk is cheap”… Complaints about those three words were all over Twitter with people writing paragraph responses. All she said was “Talk Is Cheap” which isn’t a rude thing to say (in my opinion any way, but I’ve received some harsh feedback in my time as a writer so this seems pretty chill).
The nature of cancel culture is putting more people on edge and they now worry about even saying the littlest things wrong in public.
By accident, we are imposing a form of censorship in the online world to prevent any possible offence being taken when we may be better having discussions.
Does cancelling fix the problem?
The calling out of problematic behaviour is creating more awareness about what is and is not okay to say online. It is leading people to question routine behaviours they’ve learned growing up. It is helping people to examine themselves before brain dumping online.
It has led to people calling out and holding those in power to some accountability. It has led to people who have done terrible things being punished. But is it right?
Is it the right way to go about things?
Everyone has made mistakes.
I have seen way too many articles and videos “exposing” celebrities for old tweets, facebook statuses and nonsense posted online. Adults are being held accountable for stupid things they said as teenagers, or even younger.
People are being cancelled for past comments without knowing all the facts about their lives now. I don’t know what that person is like now and if they still believe the things they said when they were 14, then by all means cancel them but let them plead their case first.
People are even being cancelled whilst a criminal investigation or legal case is being made and the whole story hasn’t been released.
We cancel people without context and no reflection on the facts of the situation. At the first sign of immoral behaviour, the pitchforks are out and we are angry.
“Cancel them!” Comes the cry.
Do we have other ways to hold people accountable?
For celebrities, apart from actively withholding our money from their projects, there is not much the general public can do except call them out online. The internet has afforded us the privilege of being able to communicate somewhat directly with people who used to live in another world.
The problem is only when we refuse to use our minds and consider this person’s actions in context. When we ignore the situation, or information available then twist it to suit our goal, we are equally to blame for bad behaviour. When you come at someone with anger, it’s rare for them to respond with acceptance. When someone points out your flaws do you feel happy about it? Or do you call them a hater?
We can cancel celebrities until we run out of anyone to cancel but we are not solving any of these issues, we’re causing people to hide bad behaviour behind closed doors and in private. Or worse, we’re allowing people to use legal loopholes and court cases to cover up worse allegations.
Instead of having discussions or an open dialogue, we shut people down.
Just because someone says something offensive doesn’t mean we get to shut them down — if they truly believe in what they’ve said, we need to understand why because if we don’t understand the root of the problem we will never weed that behaviour out. We will never find the cause and we will never fix the problem.
You can’t force someone to be a better person. They have to do that on their own.
What are we teaching future generations? That if you don’t like someone get rid of them? That doesn’t scream moral high ground to me.
