Over the last decade, incidents connected to this idea of cancel culture have only become more prevalent. Even with this being the case, though, the reasons for people being canceled are becoming harder to define and harder to justify.
Growing up, I never heard of “getting canceled” or cancel culture. As I’ve gotten older, I feel like I have a greater understanding not only of what “canceling” someone really entails, but also of the dire consequences it can have on a person’s life.
A news story broke recently about a high school student who posted a video online regarding her personal political views and two students who found it and decided to try and ruin her college career. The two students tried to blacklist her from all sororities and clubs on her campus, while another put together a pre-scripted e-mail which her followers sent to her school faculty by the hundreds.
This one example shows how people use cancel culture against others and turn it into something bigger than it actually is. People have even been “canceled” for using wrong terminology on accident. That girl from that news story used the words “illegal immigrant” instead of “undocumented immigrant” which further drew the ire of the online community.
This blows my mind.
All she did was say a specific word to describe a group of people, yet she’s still being subjected to this harassment online.
Getting upset over things such as racially motivated actions, or derogatory language is understandable and those people deserve to get canceled. But, in my opinion, people getting hate for their political views is insane and unacceptable. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion and views on certain things whether it be politics, social views, or anything else.
I also believe some of the people who try and ruin someone else’s life by taking something they said or did and turning it into a larger issue within a society are just bored and don’t truly care about these things.
Through social media, I often feel bombarded by news of people being “canceled”. The amount of times I have heard about a celebrity or influencer getting canceled is insane and it feels like every week a new person is getting canceled. Half of the time, these people didn’t really even do anything and are getting hate for no reason.
Sometimes, it feels like nobody can say anything anymore without it being turned into some big incident about a systemic issue. I truly don’t know if cancel culture will ever go away simply because you cannot control what people do or say on the internet. Maybe in the future, people will begin to relax the accusations of fault online, but, unfortunately, cancel culture seems here to stay.