Cancel culture has taken over the public discourse, but people don’t seem to be seeing the bigger picture.
By: James Calidonna
Whether it be a celebrity, person of interest, or some random person online, anyone who says something that is deemed “unacceptable” is at risk of being boycotted and essentially “cancelled” by people online.
This trend has actually helped bring light to many cases of racist or homophobic tweets that have been lost with time. The new phenomenon has taken the world by storm and doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.
In the long run. this trend of canceling culture and toxic tribalism is negatively affecting our youth today.
Now someone may ask… “What is Toxic Tribalism and how does it have an effect on anyone today?”
Well the answer is simple: Toxic tribalism is the idea that a group of people have undying loyalty to their own group.
Throughout our lives, we have been conditioned to the idea that one group is “wrong” and one group, most likely the group you identify with, is “right”. Because of this, it makes it difficult for our opinions to change.
If people are unwilling to change their opinion on a matter even if new evidence is brought to light, how useful can cancel culture really be?
Cancel culture for the most part, focuses on celebrities or people of influence, and specifically hopes to put forth evidence of their “wrongdoings”. Oftentimes, evidence will come up in an old tweet, or an old interview. If any evidence found is deemed worthy of public outrage, you’d better believe the celebrity or figure will be receiving backlash for it.
Now, we have these groups of people, these “tribes”, who will not change their opinion on their moral opposition. When the public becomes so polarized and unwilling to see the other side, no progress will be made. Nobody can say anything anymore lest it be subject to deep research and heavy scrutiny.
Is it all worth it though? After all. what does withdrawing support from someone who made remarks two decades ago do?
Take Kanye West;
Loved by many and perhaps hated by more
Kanye West has been in the public eye for the better part of a decade, and it’s oftentimes not for the best things. West has been scrutinized in the past for his antics, ranging from disrupting the Grammys, to his more recent anti-semitic remarks on twitter.
Objectively. his latest statements were not okay.
Adidas dropped their deal with West worth over $2 billion for Yeezys, and millions of tweets seeking to cancel Kanye West.
People were right to be outraged about what he said. Anti-Semitic remarks are not acceptable under any circumstances.
How much did this outrage really accomplish though? Is Kanye not still a multimillionaire who never cared about how people viewed him anyway?
The phrase being “cancelled” itself is an odd phrase. Could we not just call it justified repercussions of someone’s past behaviors? The idea that this needs to be made into a whole movement to justify punishing someone for their actions is a little much.
It’s been debated by many as to how successful and rational this push to “cancel” people has really been. Many feel like people can be canceled for anything at anytime even if what they said or did was acceptable at the time.
People should be held responsible for their actions. However, I think the public has becomes very trigger happy when it comes to throwing people under the bus, electing to “cancel” them as opposed to having a critical discussion or simply explaining why their actions were wrong.
Some would even go as far as to say that canceling people doesn’t accomplish anything at all. After all, there have been plenty of instances of “canceled” celebrities resuming their career after the talk died down.
Overall, this is a complicated issue that should be taken on a case by case basis as opposed to people forming a mob to burn proverbial witches when anyone makes a mistake.