Cancelled!

Have you ever been excited to share with a friend a new project, be it a movie, song, TED Talk, etc by your favourite celebrity only to be shut down by said friend because we have 'cancelled' the person? Saaaame! I remember a few weeks back one of my friends was super excited about this new Tyler Perry movie and I had to educate her real quick about how we had cancelled him. She was obviously not happy. But this new habit, often referred to as cancel culture is becoming increasingly popular. With the COVID19 lockdowns in several countries, people had so much time on their hands that they started scrutinizing their love for celebrities which resulted in many of them being cancelled. 

So what is cancel culture? This refers to the practice of withdrawing support for public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered to e objectionable or offensive. It usually happens on social media, specifically Twitter where users are ready with receipts to prove why a certain person or company is cancelled. During the lockdown period I have seen many celebrities get cancelled including Tyra Banks, Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Lana Del Rey, to name a few. Most of the time it is with valid reasons, either the person in question is seen not supporting an important issue, or they are racist or not paying their workers enough. But it wasn't until I saw a Miss South Africa contestant cancelled that I started questioning just how effective cancel culture is. 

A young Miss SA hopeful was forced to withdraw herself from the competition after public outrage from racist tweets she made when she was 14. I am anti racists of course and I am in no way defending this young lady's behaviour but I realised an important part of cancel culture through this particular case; cancel culture has no room for change or improvement. When we collectively cancel someone for their unacceptable behaviour we do not make room for them to change or learn from the experience. Let's take this  Miss SA contestant for example, she made very racist comments at 14 years old but has since reformed her thoughts, presumable because she got more educated on the matter. It is evident in her latter tweets that she does not hold that opinion anymore, yest she was still cancelled. Is the point of cancelling someone an act of trying to get them to reform or change their behaviour? If that is so then how come we do not give them the chance to change their mind once they have been educated? It makes no sense to me to withdraw support for an artist who is abusive to their partner for example, who later sees the error of their ways and decides to seek help. 

Or is cancel culture just another fun way to pass time on social media while we are stuck at home because of covid19? A recent article by Insider showed that social media users felt that quarantine canceling made their online lives feel more morally important. In essence, we want to justify the amount of time we spend online by doing 'some good' in the world. A social psychologist from Stanford University noted that "Social media has given us more access to the details of celebrities' lives than ever before. Digging around for clues about a celebrity's life may give people a sense of accomplishment. It can feel like celebrities aren't human, and some people may find comfort in realising that celebrities are imperfect too."  So maybe cancel culture is just another form of schadenfreude? What are your thoughts?