by Lauren Roensch. Social media platforms grow everyday with new accounts, apps and influencers. Social media’s importance and impact on society increases every day, making it an important factor in our lives. The content and media that people produce has more of an impact than ever before. Social media’s growth has led to more jobs and employment, moving it from entertainment for teenagers to a full blown business. Influencers now have the ability to reach out and connect with their audience making their content available to a large audience.
Social media now has the power to make or break someone’s life.
What is Cancel culture? Professor Anne H. Charity Hudley describes cancel culture as “It is the withdrawal of financial support, political support, social, economic support, often in pop culture in the form of attention of a particular media star, a political figure, a business figure”. (CBS NEWS).
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/cbsn-originals-presents-speaking-frankly-cancel-culture/
Many see the purpose of Cancel culture as to hold a person or a brand accountable for their previous actions. Whereas before this new trend, celebrities or role models might get away with their negative actions, now these same people must hold themselves accountable for their mistakes because of Cancel Culture.
Cancel culture has shifted social media and its creators, making media influencers more self aware and conscious about what they post. This has led to a pattern of change shown by influencers taking initiative to use their platforms for the good of society. For example some influencers have promoted the Covid-19 vaccines while others have spoken out against bigotry in high profile industries.
Cancel culture is seen throughout many forms of social media, but the app it is seen most actively is on Tik Tok.
For example a previously well respected youtube star David Dobrik was recently canceled on Tik Tok for unacceptable behavior on his videos. This new information has poorly shifted his audience and fan base leading to him being “cancelled”.
I think this trend will have a greater impact on future generations as people become more comfortable behind their screens. As people become more comfortable on social media they will be empowered to speak up against wrongdoing.
Overall as social media expands and grows, it is important to have something such as cancel culture to help media grow in the correct way by holding brands and individuals accountable for their current and past actions. Social media will continue to flourish in a way that holds the public accountable.
I thought this was a very timely post, cancel culture really broke out this past year. I also agree with you I think it is important to hold brands and organizations accountable. I also think social media gives people that otherwise wouldn’t a platform to be able to speak up about or against high-profile people and organizations.
This is such a recent and more prevent topic lately through all social media. People are often scared of calling people out, but now it has become a trend to hold people accountable. Hopefully, this creates a better foundation for acceptable behaviors, especially what people present on the internet.
Cancel culture is definitely a hotly debated topic with social media holding others accountable. I agree to an extent with your argument, in which it is important to hold others accountable for their actions. However, I believe cancel culture does not acknowledge how people can change. I think a measure of someone’s accountability is whether they have changed or not. Many of those who have been “cancelled” were cancelled due to mistakes they made years ago. If they were perpetuating the same behavior now or in very recent times, then I think it is justified. But to cancel someone for saying something over a decade prior without allowing them to either explain themselves or represent how they have changed, is unreasonable.
I love that you brought this topic up. This is something that is so prevalent in our everyday lives and will remain to be for the foreseeable future.
I think you brought up an important topic that isn’t talked about enough in our society. We see people getting “cancelled” more often times than not, but it doesn’t happen enough. If someone does something that doesn’t fit in the social norm, or something society denies to be right, generally that person gets cancelled. I see people get away with crazy things that aren’t socially acceptable, but they go on about their business a week later.
While it is important to hold people accountable for their actions, cancel culture is hardly ever the answer. To be met with threats and violent callouts rather than a conversation about actions is never the type of solution that I would side with. The same people that claim they want to see “change” are the same one’s who are not willing to put in the real effort to educated those who lack the correct knowledge on a subject. Regardless this was a well written and researched article.
Your blog post is so important and is a conversation we need to be having. Cancel culture, to me, is one of the worst things to come out of social media influence in recent years. I was raised to believe, “Innocent until proven guilty.” With cancel culture, people have flipped the script. This is bad for both public and private citizens because of what the implications of this means. With cancel culture, we start pointing the fingers based on accusations before a court case is heard. Brands have stopped sponsoring people based on the accusation before the verdict. Just being accused of something is enough for someone to lose just about everything. If the person is guilty, then they deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But for the people who are falsely accused or aren’t allowed to apologize for past mistakes or actions, it can mean the end of their longstanding careers. We need to stop ending careers before they deserve to be ended.
Hi Lauren!
I enjoyed your blog post and it was insightful as to how cancel culture has shifted since Covid started over a year ago. I think to an extent, canceling someone is important because someone shouldn’t hold high authority on social media apps or be an influencer if they are going to have pasts of mistreating certain types of people or being racist or homophobic to a certain group of people. I’ve always thought that it’s good for people to having differing opinions its how we see different sides of a coin and broaden our horizons but racism xenophobia and homophobia have no place online or in real life. If you cant respect other human beings and be kind to someone different from you, you don’t deserve a public platform, and that’s when cancel couture can be important to have.