With the rise of the internet and social media, millions of people post and upload their information on the world wide web for all to see. Some of it is happy, sad, inspiring, or meme-worthy, but in the age of twitter, Facebook, MySpace, some past posts can haunt you.
Cancel Culture, defined by Vox Media, is “canceling” someone because of polarizing topics/comment made in the past. The main method of canceling them is a sort of witch hunt on social media, where the public rebel against them, either fueled by political reasons or social reasons. It is a kin to mob mentality where people influence others to adopt a certain behavior towards something/someone.
Within social media, this idea of “Canceling” someone because of a past tweet or comment, picture or hashtag, can destroy them. It is holding someone responsible when justice fails.
The topic of Cancel Culture is relevant because of how hateful and fast it goes. On the internet, when someone calls someone else out on bad behavior, the fangs emerge and they rip them into fine grain. It almost limits Freedom of Speech in some cases. An example of this is during 2019 when Kevin Hart was about to host the Oscars, but someone unearth his previous tweets that were homophobic and racist. He never apologized, nor got outright cancelled, but there are other examples like Harvey
Weinstein and Kevin Spacey who are culturally been shut out by this culture. Those two are a special case in my opinion since they were then pursed for legal action and now are cancel indefinitely (mainly Weinstein).
Within the realm of online streaming and Youtube, cancel culture can destroy everything in a matter of hours.
Luke Alexander, a small Youtuber (172k subscribers), discuss how Cancel Culture is both a good and bad thing. It is good to hold people accountable actions like Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, but is bad because it could be a witch hunt. He later talks about how some past posts or videos do not show who someone is now. He uses Shane Dawson, another Youtuber who began his career at the beginning of YouTube, as an example as Shane use to say racist words and do blackface for views. He explains that even though he did this in the past, does not mean he does it now. Mistakes were made and they learn from them. In addition to that he also explains how Cancel Culture is often confused with Stan Culture, where if you hate something, everyone else must hate it too. A hate-train as he called it.
Upper Echelon Gamers, a Youtuber, cover the overall topics of cancel culture, using examples like Jame Charles and Tati Westbrook, Projared Sexual Misconduct, and Zoe Quinn. The Charles and Westbrook case was, in short, about how Tati Westbrook “exposed” James Charles’s sexual misconduct with witness testimony.
The result was a subscriber drop from him to a subscriber increase to Westbrook; however, Charles defended himself, showing evidence that the majority of the claims were false.
Projared’s case was a similar story where someone came out about sexual actions made to them by Projared. He lose subscribers, but came back with evidence that shows he is innocent of the claim; however the resulting backlash aged him. Zoe Quinn’s case has a sad end. She was at the forefront of the GamerGate Scandal (2014), and that is a topic for another day (if interested, link to a video down below). She accused Alec Holowka, a game developer of sexual abuse/domestic violence on social media. This caused a firestorm, resulting in Alec taking his own life.
Each case, he explains that the common theme behind each one of them was an increase of wealth, either by subscribers (Charles and Westbrook), commission/work (ProJared’s victim), or publicity (Zoe). He makes a point that I resonate with: Victims of these cases could be wrong.
Now, I am not victim blaming or shaming; however the point that Echelon made was “Due Process”, innocent till proven guilty. These cases saw a blitzkrieg of angry tweets and videos response against the “abuser” party that resulted in their downfall. Both James Charles and Projared defended themselves with clear evidence, but are left mentallly scarred. Alec Holowka committed suicide because of the media backslash and it could be possible false.
If any of these major accusations like sexual misconduct or abuse are true, then report them. Let the legal courts do their job, not post it on twitter and let the court of public opinions sentence them to 2nd Death (removing them from history). It is insane how some of their careers are broken and in-repairable. For the minor complaints, like the homophobic tweets or racist images, it was a mistake! People now forget that ideas and taboos were different in the past, and that people make mistakes all the time. If we don’t make mistakes, then we can’t learn from them and move along! People cannot seem to critically think about things anymore. They just reaction to everything at face value and more along. People need to stop and think to understand the context and make their own judgement.
Links:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate
Note: Upload the Draft at 3:38pm. Checked my dates and setting on wordpress and it is on the right settings. Just to let you know.
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