Written by: Manit Bhattarai - 21112, Grade XII
Posted on: 01 October, 2020
If you’ve been living on the internet for a while, I’m sure you’ve heard about artists, influencers, shows /show hosts, brands, entertainers, or some sort of celebrity, in general, getting “canceled”. For those unaware, cancel culture is a phenomenon of withdrawing support from companies or celebrities after they’ve done something considered offensive or questionable usually leading them to the end of their career. Cancel culture began around 2014/15 but has been really popping off for the past couple of years.
Twitter is basically a place where things get political and out of hand. When you voice your opinion on twitter, depending on whether the majority of people agree with you or are against you, your tweet will either blow up and get a lot of support from others or get so much hate you would want to shut down your account forever. This is also the place where cancel culture spreads and truly gets out of hand. I won’t deny that there have been some good events due to this culture. For example, #OscarsSoWhite trend, which brought up the topic that Oscar wasn’t diverse enough, and the majority of awards only went to straight white people. This trend expanded as a call for greater inclusion of marginalized groups in all aspects of filmmaking. Twitter also helped elevate the complaints about sexual assault, sexism, and unfair treatment of women during the #MeToo movement.
All that being said, the strength of canceled culture can ravage lives and ruin careers. There have been cases when people see hashtags going around saying cancel this person or cancel that show and just join in on them without thinking for themselves because twitter or the internet, in general, has created such a sheep-like mindset that people can’t even voice their own opinions anymore. Due to which people just join in on the popular trend whether it’s right or wrong. Another thing I don’t like about this trend is when people dig up someone’s post from 10 years ago when they did something wrong and use that to cancel the person. Shane Dawson, a YouTuber who recently got canceled for this very reason. Shane has made some super edgy content in his past like joking about pedophilia, zoophilia, and somewhat racist content in the past. Though it was kind of obvious he was playing an offensive character that gained people’s attention and he wanted to keep growing in popularity by riding that wave, people got very angry recently and canceled Shane. Though I can see why people are angry and they have the total right to be so, why bring it up now? If they were talking about this back when it
actually happened, I am sure no one would have had any problem with it. Shane has grown a lot as a person and he had recently started making documentary-type videos which amassed a ton of views and likes, which means people really enjoyed it. So, I don’t understand why people are trying so hard to end his career instead of making him take accountability for his past actions and try to look at him from a new and improved perspective. Another case, with a recent movie on Netflix ‘cuties’, which by the way they advertised it, seemed like it was aimed towards pedophiles, which is absolutely disgusting and Netflix didn’t even take accountability for their actions. So, I can definitely see why people are mad but going as far as to cancel Netflix completely? It just doesn’t seem right to me. The man at the top of Netflix should be held accountable for the company’s misconduct but canceling the entire platform is just a toxic behavior. People are not thinking how many people have jobs at Netflix and canceling the entire company means a huge amount of people going unemployed. But it seems people are too blind to see that. Also not to mention all the other great shows on the platform getting canceled as well.
All that said, is canceling culture toxic? Definitely. But can we make proper use of it if done well? Definitely as well. People need to be more open-minded about certain things and try to think things through with a proper mindset which will benefit the community and decrease the amount of toxicity on the internet.
