Cancel Culture: Good or Evil?

You open your phone. There’s some alerts about your favorite celebrity, but wait, what do they say? This person is getting cancelled? For being rude to a reporter?

What if they were just having a bad day? Suddenly, everyone hates this person and no one will hire them.

The next day, your phone pings. Another celebrity is cancelled, but this time it’s for allegations of sexual misconduct. Good riddance, you think. They should be cancelled. We never want to see them again.

The difference in these two scenarios is the reason for the cancellation. The similarity, however, is they’re both cancelled from popular culture. Cancel culture, which is the culture of celebrities being outcast for various reasons which range from being extremely terrible, to doing almost nothing wrong. The culture creates a mob mentality, in which people will jump on the hate train and ride it until the end. If they see someone make a small mistake, they will use it to get rid of them.

Perhaps this is a backlash of the seemingly easy path many take to celebrity. In the age of people getting famous for “no reason” the audience loves having the power to take it away. All they need is one slip up. It could all stem from a deep jealousy and resentment for getting somewhere without putting in the supposed “work.” Instead of being happy for celebrities for achieving this success, some people get hateful. This hate then translates into encouraging the downfall of many unworthy people.

Take, for example, Taylor Swift. After Kim Kardashian published the infamous phone call tapes in 2016, the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsCancelled was trending on Twitter. For some context, Kanye mentioned Taylor in one of his lyrics in the song Famous. The lyrics were, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, why, I made that b**** famous.” He stated he got permission from Taylor, but she denied it. Kim was fed up with this supposed victimizing of herself, so she released the phone call tapes. These tapes seemed to show Taylor Swift giving permission to Kanye to use the lyrics, without the expletives. She was cancelled for all intents and purposes, and basically had to go into hiding for a year. Despite being an award-winning, feminist sweetheart, she was forcibly removed from the spotlight. Thankfully, being such a huge star, she had the ability to come back from this. She made an album about the situation called Reputation in 2017, and used the criticism for her benefit. While she was able to make this comeback, not everyone has this ability. Smaller tier celebrities with less money and influence wouldn’t be able to come back from something so damaging. Since she made her comeback, she still has haters, but has gained a huge fanbase. The entire mishap was almost forgotten, to everyone but Swift.

In 2020, it was found the tapes Kardashian had released had been edited. They’d been cut down to make Kim and Kanye look good, and to damage Taylor’s reputation. In essence, all of her cancellation had been for nothing. If she hadn’t persevered and continued making music, despite no one wanting her to at the time, she would’ve been gone in the wind. She would’ve been cancelled without a second thought, because we didn’t want to find the truth. We wanted to cancel.

One of the greatest problems with cancel culture is the lack of evidence in many cases. People will jump on something before the celebrity has a chance to defend themselves. In the case of Swift, people had been building resentment towards her for a long time. Whenever someone is successful and powerful (especially if they’re a woman), there will always be the question of, “Does she deserve to be there?” This will be in the back of people’s minds and will infiltrate their judgement. Therefore, once an opportunity arose for people to cancel her, they didn’t bother to listen to her side or look for further evidence. They heard what they needed to hear and ran with it.

If you look on social media posts of people you follow, there will be exorbitant amounts of hate. There are people who’ve done nothing wrong, nothing problematic, and people will still be chomping at the bit. They’ll insult their appearance, their interests, and even their family. Thus, if enough people are on standby to cancel anyone at any time, there barely needs to be any evidence for it to happen. There is a mob of people ready to contribute, saying things like, “I’ve been waiting for this one.” People will pray for your failure, because they want your success for themselves. Why else would people hate on others constantly on the Internet? Cancel cultures takes away second chances, and it takes away learning. People need to learn from their mistakes. Next time you’re thinking of contributing to cancel culture, ask yourself if you’d cancel your friend for whatever the celebrity did.

This is all to say celebrities shouldn’t get cancelled for no reason. While some should be cancelled, as there are many good reasons to cancel someone, many are treated unfairly. Especially women, who receive less breaks than men for the same behavior. They’re put on the chopping block without any evidence, and without the opportunity to defend themselves.

Now, there is another side to cancel culture. It can be warranted. Sexual predators, for example, shouldn't have an ounce of the power they currently possess. They should lose their job, as well as respect from their friends, family, and strangers. Despite them being deserving of critiques, these same people will use anti-cancel culture in their favor. They will preach about how awful cancel culture is, and how people get ousted for no reason. Even if there are boatloads of researched proof against them.

In the case of Harvey Weinstein, for example, cancellation was justified. Weinstein is a powerful film producer who used his position to harass and assault women. Despite the audiotapes and testimonies proving this, there were still defenders. People stating how cancel culture goes too far. In his case, it didn’t go far enough. It’s arguably a long overdue removal of power. Celebrities are finally getting punished for behavior they’d previously gotten away with. As society modernizes, less and less can be pushed under the rug.

This is similar to a consumer boycott. A boycott is when customers decide to collectively stop purchasing from a company. It is often due to reasons unrelated to the product, such as the CEO making a controversial remark. Since holding back money is one of the only thing consumers can do to hurt companies, they decide if their voices won’t be heard, their money will be. As celebrities, especially influencers, commodify themselves and turn themselves into a brand, the consumers can boycott them. These influencers can’t fire the CEO of their company and stop the boycotting, because they are the CEO of their company. When you make yourself a brand, it takes away some of your liberties. You’re relying on yourself to bring in the money for your company, so you have to manage your public relations carefully. This is what gets people in trouble.

It’s difficult to have free speech while maintaining a perfect public image. Unless every single thing you say is going to be perfect and offend no one, you may run into difficulties. There are levels to this, of course. We aren’t talking about dropping slurs, which people arguably should be cancelled for. But things like giving a waiter a mediocre tip? Small things like this shouldn’t result in cancellation. When influencers or other celebrities are criticized for small things, they lose commercial value for themselves. They forget they’re their own product, and instead think they should be able to do what they want, and say what they want, with no consequences. You don’t have a backburner when you’re the product, unfortunately. So, when consumers decide to cancel you, or boycott you as a product, there’s not much you can do to avoid the situation. You have to either confront it, hope it passes by, or crawl into a dark hole and avoid the public. Either way, the boycott is towards the person as if they’re a product. The consumers know views and business are important for maintaining a celebrity’s livelihood, so they use their power against them.

Since it’s essentially a boycott, this could be seen as long overdue injustices being rectified. For awful people, such as Weinstein, cancel culture gives the people their power back in a capitalist society. The only power they have is with their money, so they use it to put people out of work, success, and fame. (Or, freedom, in Weinstein’s case, since he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.) People like him will use cancel culture to defend his title. They’ll say, “Back in my day people were given second chances.” Second chances are important, but it’s wrong to conflate the negative aspects of cancel culture with the real reason for their demise. Many people’s own actions lead to their downfall, and they have to no one to blame but themselves.

In summary, cancel culture is both sticking it to those who have it coming, while bringing innocents along as collateral damage. Many people are cancelled who don’t deserve it at all, and it is unfortunate. People should be able to have second chances and learn how to be a better person. On the flip side, many are brought to justice for behavior that would have previously been swept under the rug. Therefore, the current cancel culture climate requires extra caution, but can be used for good.

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