Blog #5: Cancel Culture

According to The New York Post, cancel culture is "the phenomenon of promoting the "cancelling" of people, brands, and even shows and movies due to what some consider to be offensive or problematic remarks or ideologies." Cancel culture has always existed but has become a pretty big problem in today's society especially with the rise and influence of social media. It seems like people are getting cancelled left and right. People aren't just cancelled because they said something recently; it doesn't matter when it happened. It could have happened ten years ago, and if someone doesn't like what you have to say, you could be cancelled. 

This cancelling happens a lot to influencers and those in the public eye. Shane Dawson is a great example of this. Shane Dawson was known for many years as the King of YouTube.  He has been on YouTube for a very long time and has gained popularity for his documentaries, skits, and just overall goofy personality. He was beloved by many. It seemed to come out of nowhere when some of his old, offensive content was brought to light. Honestly, no one expected someone like Dawson to have such a dark past on YouTube. Content of him being racist, saying inappropriate things about people who were underage resurfaced. It was shocking to so many of his followers. Dawson made numerous apology videos as it has become a trend to do when a YouTuber has messed up publicly and many forgave him, but he still lost a significant part of his fanbase. 

Dawson has since then continued to stay in drama as he has been brought up by numerous other popular creators like Trisha Paytas and Tati Westbrook. He has tried to take some of his old videos down and discredit those bringing to light his faults, but to no avail. Our cancel culture has finally caught up to the King of YouTube. Shane Dawson has been cancelled by out society like so many other influencers today.

Unfortunately, this cancelling can happen to anyone. It happens to both celebrities and normal people alike. Take Felix Ngole for example. He was a student studying social work at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom. He made a comment online voicing his opinion on a news story that "the Bible and God identify homosexuality as a sin." Soon after, a fellow student found his comment and decided to report it to the University. Without hesitation, Felix Ngole was expelled and deemed unfit "to practice within the rules of the Health and Care Professionals Council." This ruling has since been overturned, but Ngole did not have an easy time doing so.

Cancel culture has become such a big problem in our society today. Nameless, faceless people have the ability to cancel someone and change the course of their life forever whether they deserve it or not. The issue here isn't that horrible things are resurfacing from people's past, like rape accusations for example. The problem is that there isn't a clear line determining when it is ok for a whole society to cancel someone. No one should have their entire voice cancelled because of a different opinion. That's why it is so important to protect dissent. Even if you don't agree with what someone is saying or doing, obviously assuming that it's legal, you need to think twice before completely disregarding a person. 

Our society needs to find the line between holding people accountable for their actions and completely cancel a person. There comes a time and a place to officially cancel someone, but it should never be a first resort and it should always be backed up with factual reasoning. For example, I find it completely understandable to cancel a celebrity who admits to sexually assaulting underage girls. I think that they need to both be help accountable for their actions but, in this case, it's ok to go a little bit farther than that. However, it's not ok to cancel a celebrity who posted an insensitive tweet ten years ago. You don't know if they still believe what the tweet said or if they've changed since then. Also, the tweet might not be offensive to everyone. You need to look at it objectively and come to a conclusion after that. It's not necessary to cancel everyone who messes up in their life. If this were ok, we would all be cancelled. With this being said, I think it's about time to cancel cancel culture.