Cancel culture has become a trend of the late 2010s and has carried into the 2020s. Cancel culture is the process of mass shaming a celebrity or person with a large social media platform. In the past few years, there have been many discussions questioning the fairness of cancel culture.
Cancel culture is not fair to celebrities and people with a large platform because it ostracizes them for mistakes possibly made years ago. Celebrities are exiled from their platform, and it doesn’t teach them to become a better person.
Power also plays a large role in cancel culture. People on the internet are quick to jump onto remarks made by a celebrity and go to extreme lengths to destroy them, just to achieve a sense of strength and accomplishment. Social media grants people who would otherwise never be able to interact with celebrities the ability to speak to them and collect other like-minded people to scold the canceled celebrity. By taking down a celebrity’s platform, the public can negatively influence a celebrity’s career and reputation.
Society’s need for power is evident in their efforts to punish Will Smith. According to gamingbible, some of Smith’s projects have been canceled because of his altercation with Chris Rock at the Oscars. After Rock insulted his wife, Smith went onto the stage and slapped Rock. Although what Smith did was wrong, his projects and career don’t deserve to be jeopardized because someone shouldn’t lose their career based on one mistake.
People who make mistakes can learn from them, and canceling someone’s platform doesn’t give the person a chance to better themselves. Instead, it only punishes them and doesn’t allow them a second chance to become a better person.
Johnny Depp is an example of when the public canceled a celebrity irrationally and didn’t allow for a second chance. According to NoFilter Media, Depp was accused of abusing his ex-wife and was forced to resign from many different movie series he was a part of. However, Depp was innocent and the accusations were found to not be concrete. Depp’s negative, false perception created by the media caused the loss of career opportunities, making him yet another victim of cancel culture.
Some may argue that cancel culture is good for canceling celebrities who commit terrible acts, one example being Dr. Seuss, who was openly racist and canceled for good reason. Seuss’s racist actions crossed the line, leading to the cancellation of some of his books.
In this instance, cancel culture seems acceptable. However, if cancel culture is deemed appropriate in some situations, then it is up to people to determine when it is inappropriate. This subjectivity and judgment is open to disagreement, making for a problematic method of discipling others. It is impossible for everyone to come to an agreeing consensus on where the line should be drawn between someone’s simple mistake and an unforgivable act.
People shouldn’t have the power to ruin the entire life of someone else based on selected, controversial moments. One little mistake or action can result in being canceled as seen with Smith and Depp.
Cancel culture and the extent of its influence on the public and celebrities will be a debate for years to come, but, as for now, cancel culture has done a lot more harm than good. The initial idea of it had a great purpose for attempting to punish people for their racism and homophobia, but now, countless celebrities are being unfairly canceled.
