by By: Taryn Reed
Every day we witness users expose celebrities on a variety of different social media platforms by pointing out their mistakes, bad behavior and misconduct. This can be categorized as cancel culture, which is defined as, “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.
Cancel culture is not only seen affecting celebrities, content creators, and well known personas, but all users on social media platforms. Tik Tok has played a large part in cancel culture’s quick nature. Tik Tok’s outreach algorithm shares content from users with small followings to millions of other users on the app. This makes the app unique because it gives users an equal opportunity to reach a large audience on the app, no matter their follower count. Tik Tok has been a main platform used to cancel individuals because of it’s ability to spread information to a large audience in such little time. This was no exception when La Bonita used the app to share her experience with bullies.
Jackie La Bonita, a Tik Tok user, attended a Houston Astros baseball game where she was bullied by two women. As she was posing for pictures in the stands, the two women were photobombing her while laughing, making fun of her and flipping her off. The bullying was captured on video and later posted to Tik Tok, where La Bonita explained her experience and condemned bullying. The video quickly spread to a wide audience of Tik Tok users and blew up overnight. Viewers quickly identified the two women as Litzareli Madrigal and Alondra Poullet. In addition, viewers found where Madrigal and Poullet went to school and worked. La Bonita’s post reached 50.6 million views on Tik Tok and was shared on Instagram, as well as Twitter where even Cardi B shared her thoughts on the situation. After users viewed the post, they immediately sided with La Bonita without a second thought and spread hate in the comments of the two women shortly thereafter. Users bullied Madrigal and Poullet for bullying La Bonita.
Tik Tok users that viewed La Bonita’s post left the two women hateful comments, and death threats, as well as contacting the dean of students at their university and causing Madrigal’s place of work to be permanently closed. Users also left comments on the company’s reviews page, the women’s boyfriend’s social media pages, and everything that has any association to them.
What now? The bullying caused the two women to turn their social media accounts on private and turn off their comments. In addition, Madrigal and Poullet’s actions affected the employees at Madrigal’s workplace as the business was permanently closed. This is the outcome of the extreme nature of cancel culture. One mistake or bad decision can ruin your career and potentially your life if exposed on the internet for millions to see. Is cancel culture too extreme? Are the hateful comments caused by cancel culture just as bad as the original bullying?
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Wow. This whole story is crazy. I can’t believe those two random women were able to be identified based on almost nothing, aside from what they look like. I think this is karma at its finest, but also I do not think they were actually being “bullies”, just 2 people being annoying. Nevertheless, this just goes to show that no one is safe from being canceled and that we should be mindful of our actions in public.
I’m so glad you addressed this topic. Cancel culture is a fascinating phenomenon tied with social media use. The process of “cancelling” an organization, influencer or the average person oftentimes displays a mob mentality towards condemning someone’s actions or speech. Truthfully, I’ve noticed myself hopping on the cancel bandwagon after seeing situations similar to the one explained in your blog. I think you made some great points about how cancel culture can result in the “bullies” becoming the “bullied.” If cancelling is seen as a sort of modern social justice method, then those participating in such online conversations should keep in mind the greater impact of their words and actions.