Cancel culture

COURTESY OF UNSPLASH

Originally published January 24, 2023

Brittanica describes cancel culture as “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure” but despite the pairing of words sounding like a relatively new form of capital punishment, it’s something that’s been around for years.

An early example is the novel "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne which follows a woman being shamed and ostracized for committing a wrongful act against her husband who she had presumed dead.

Although it may have worked in Puritan New England, is it really a practice that is still necessary or even morally right? While the modern acts of the movement were originally targeted toward people who committed serious crimes and engaged in wrongful acts, the practice has since become misused and contorted. Making the practice begin to seem immature and childish.

Singer, Lizzo, disagrees with the movement and tweeted, “This may be a random time to say this but it’s on my heart.. cancel culture is appropriation. There was real outrage from truly marginalized people and now it’s become trendy, misused, and misdirected.” Many people agreed, one person writing, “I don’t want people to be canceled. I want people to be *held accountable* and to receive consequences according to the bad action/crime that they did. Is this too much to ask?”

One of the first big stories including cancel culture was in 2014 after comedian Stephen Colbert created a controversial tweet. A woman named Suey Park ended up responding and launched a massive movement on Twitter with the hashtag “#CancelColbert.” The movement ended up not successful, and Colbert still having his show and fame. While Park on the other hand was treated with so many threats that she ended up moving to New York and being “stalked and hunted” for months afterward. The “#CancelColbert” movement is what really put cancel culture on the map for a lot of people and because of what happened, it didn’t give people a lot of hope for people to be held accountable for their actions.

In a survey MBMS students were asked, “What do you think of cancel culture?” and while some agreed and disagreed many were undecided. One student, seventh-grader Vanessa Liddicoat said “I'm kind of in the middle about it. I do think it's dumb to call people out on things they did in the past because there is room to grow in that time period. But if it's something like recent racism or homophobia, I think we should still take action against that, like taking them off the internet to have room to grow.”

While cancel culture is something that was supposed to hold people accountable for their actions, if you look back at examples of it it hasn’t really done much. Many big people like Kanye, James Charles, and Ellen Degeneres still have their platforms, money, and fame even after being canceled despite the efforts of many people online. Cancel culture is something that's probably not going away anytime soon, and while in hindsight it hasn’t caused much of a difference for some people, hopefully, something will change and we can find a better way for people to be held accountable for their actions.

“Cancel culture is not a thing, no one gets canceled no matter what someone will still follow and support them,” eighth-grader Samantha Montgomery said.