Cancel Culture: Where do we draw the line?

Like a lot of you reading this, I spend most of my time split between school, homework, spending time with friends or family, and scrolling through social media for what seems like endless hours on end. Whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snapchat, or Facebook, social media is constantly evolving and seems to have a new purpose every day.

Originally, social media appeared to be a place to communicate with your loved ones with easier access. As well as this, it was a great place to be creative and to be bold. It was a place where you could put forward your ideas and also have them challenged, with limited fear of threats or violence. Social media was also extremely helpful to businesses wanting to grow and capture an audience, no matter how small or large the business is. It has its positives but also its negatives, and this is the very same today. 

Today, social media still has its key uses communication, business, ideas, and freedom of speech. However, as I mentioned earlier, it is constantly evolving. We now have waves of online activism and people using the web to fight for what's right, for example the #blacklivesmatter movement which originated in 2013 but has become even bigger since with millions of posts being added to this hashtag on almost a daily basis. Social media has become a place to educate yourself , as well as others on what matters, whether it be local Covid-19 updates or international stories or lessons and  tales of the past. That being said, keeping ourselves educated is sometimes harder than we think, and even if we are educated now, our old uneducated selves can come back to haunt us in ways we don’t expect due to social media.

I now want you to pause and think, have you ever been following an influencer online when they did something deemed as unacceptable as well as stupid and you had to unfollow them and stop supporting them? 

I know for a fact that I have.

A 2020 poll, taken in the USA by Politico asked this same question and 40% of people said that they had. This poll also questioned how regularly this ‘thing’ happens. 8% of people said they unfollow influencers on a regular basis due to their actions. Whilst 44% of people disapprove compared to the 32% of people who do think it's okay, 46% believe ‘it’ has gone too far.

I haven't used the term yet and apart from it being in the title of this article, you may already know what term I am referring to. Let me introduce you to something called ‘cancel culture’. Now, you’ve probably heard of this term before and I would be surprised if you haven't actually taken part in it before. If you have, you are very much not alone, it’s incredibly easy to do. Unfollow. Stop support. Be upset and maybe even angry. Repeat. Cancel culture is defined as ‘a form of public shaming that tries to hold someone accountable for their actions by publicly calling out their behaviour as problematic’ as well as to then ‘stop giving support to that person’.

Most of you would have heard of people being cancelled for various things such as a non-black person saying the n-word, making misogynistic comments, and even old tweets from several years ago which were completely out of taste. However these stories seem to happen so often the person ‘cancelled’ manages to sneak back in to society and end up thriving anyway which defies the whole point of being ‘cancelled’. Sometimes, sneaking back into the presence of people is not always easy and cancel culture has had some people face some real life consequences that are life changing.

Below is an example of 'Cancel Culture' in Action. Keep in mind the outcomes in the two different antidotes I use below.

First of all we have Adam Smith. In 2012, the president of Chick-Fil-A made a statement in which he spoke out against gay marriage and admitted to sending money to openly homophobic organisations. Adam Smith was living what seemed to be a great life. He was young, successful, a businessman who had just earned $1,000,000 dollars in stock and was enjoying life with his family. However, he saw how hard it was for his brother-in-law to come out and felt that as an ally, he should speak out. A protest sparked out in which people ordered free cups of water to take away money from the Chick-Fil-A company. Adam joined in and filmed himself doing this, he also decides to say some words. Little did he know that his life as he knew it, would change in the matter of hours. His video went viral and he was quickly fired from his job as well as having to forfeit $1,000,000 in stock. He couldn’t find work again and was faced with threats on a daily basis. It got to a point where Adam thought the only way out was to take his life. His family were living off food stamps a whole two years later and facing eviction. Smith knew that if he died, his life insurance would take care of his family. Fortunately he didn’t and Smith is still picking up the pieces 9 years later, although things are looking that bit brighter and Adam is now living with his family in Costa Rica. In his own words. Adam believes that he ‘needed to be humbled and nothing was going to humble him like that’. But was all the public shaming really necessary?

On the other hand, here is a more well-known name. Kanye West. Kanye happens to be an open supporter of Trump which lots of people were upset by. This was taken a step further when Kanye decided to make a statement in which he called slavery ‘a choice’ and worse. People took to social media to express their upset and this was Kanye’s turn to be ‘cancelled’. But did he have too big of a platform to be cancelled anyway? Kanye continued to thrive and even ended up running for the presidency of the United States and although he lost, he still had a bigger number of people supporting him than expected.

See the contradiction?

As well as this, cancel culture seems to affect some people more than others. Some people feel that it even makes marginalised groups ‘even more hesitant to speak out for what they feel is right’ but then again, when the media is ready to pounce at every word, wouldn’t you be scared to speak out?

In conclusion, looking back at the very first question I asked you (have you ever been following an influencer online when they did something deemed as unacceptable as well as stupid and you had to unfollow them and stop supporting them? ), I want you to think about everything you've read in these last couple minutes and ask yourself... 

What did you do about it? Was that holding them accountable or was it purely ‘cancelling’ them and adding to the restriction of any chance of them allowing themselves to grow?

Because, at the end of the day, it’s okay to learn better and then be better. And when debates about cancel culture come up, the question ‘what about people who just won’t change?’ often comes up.  To that I say, well, perhaps we shouldn’t give those people platforms in the first place.