Hi everyone,

Today I wanted to do the odd post on the topic of media, social and online media mostly. As many of you with any social network such a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram know that cancel culture is a big topic of discussion currently. With constant feuds and scandals with celebrities and influencers, we the viewers have come up with this concept of “cancelling” someone because of one issue or a past mistake. Today we are here to debunk that, explain what it is, why it is absolutely awful and to “cancel” it.

Cancel culture is the act of attempting to worsen someone’s personal image (a famous/popular person) online based on their current or past mistakes. It takes someone’s actions and blows them into huge proportions, which leads to fake news, fake additions to the story and unwanted opinions from fans and just the general public. Cancel culture can lead to influencers or celebrities losing followers, fandom and sometimes even their whole career.

I see cancel culture to be very toxic, but at the same time, I understand it to an extent. Cancel culture is based on quick judgment, people see a story repeated by different outlets and believe it from the get-go and the online discussion begins. People start digging deeper into this influential persons past, reminders of things they have done before come up and people base their opinions quickly from that. It is solely based on the idea that we should humiliate everyone no matter what status, for any sort of mistake they have ever made. There is no basis for communication or forgiveness in cancel culture and it is very damaging to anyone participating or receiving the “cancelling”. The people who cancel the influencer start to lack basic empathy for the situation and begin to forget that this person they are attacking or publicly shaming has a life, emotions and is human just as you. Try and reverse roles and see how you would feel if someone was trying to cancel you. On the other side, you also have the cancelee, who receives this hate and has very little they can do until it dies down, trying to address a whole platform of people in the midst of remembrance what you said 5 years ago and not apologised for is tough. I am not saying that there should be no repercussions for any bad deed the influencer may have done, I am just trying to show people who participate in it that the damage done is on both sides.

 

 

Getting rid of cancel culture would be the only way to properly understand the way that communication between fan and celebrity should actually be. There should be an understanding of mistakes and why this issue happened in the first place. There should also be respect for a certain boundary, I mean you can be a fan by all means but only to an extent, no matter how close you wish you were with this influencer or celeb your only a fan, your opinion and input on their personal issues or doing is just that, an opinion, which most of the time they don’t really care about if it’s negative. I feel that people who mostly engaging with cancel culture don’t really understand this, you can reprimand as much as you can but to them your just another person online trying to be noticed, and just trying to tell them what to do or how to act.

Cancelling someone doesn’t really do anything as most of the time they won’t notice specifically what you say, all you are doing is filling your life with the negativity of another person who most likely does not even see you, wasting your time trying so hard to change someone who might not even know you exist. Trying to make them accountable is only making you angrier and more stressed in life, give it up, if this influencers behaviour is bad enough then their time will come to leave the spotlight, without your cancel input. The truth bomb hurts sometimes and people need to hear it.

To finish off, I am not saying go feel bad for all influential and popular people we have in the world, they should face consequences for their actions just as many of us do in life normally, but cancelling someone completely due to mostly fake news and basic human mistakes that can happen to anyone is not healthy, and is also one of the many reasons that social media is also not the best for our mental health. I think this should be dependant on the situation, look at how big the issue is of this influencer, if it is a past mistake and they have shown change then I do not see a reason for “cancellation”, yet if this is a larger issue that ha never been addressed or apologised for, then yes I agree that there should be some consequences such as loss of followers or money. But never cancelling someone and their career. Everyone should get the chance to change and apologise for their mistakes, no matter how big.

Love, Kasia x