Do you ever find yourself having a controversial opinion that you’re too afraid to share? Join most of the society who are terrified of getting canceled. Cancel Culture is the easiest and fastest way to ruin someone’s reputation by exposing the “real” person behind a fake persona. Originally, cancel culture was the way that the internet was holding celebrities and influencers, with a huge following, accountable for inappropriate behavior. For a while, Cancel Culture was used as a way to progress our society from unacceptable behavior from the people in the spotlight. Typically when the internet tries to bring justice to the situations, they tend to make it worse.  Let’s use the Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber drama that happened back in June for example. At the time Selena Gomez was getting fat-shamed for a post she had shared on Instagram. After the situation started getting around on the internet Hailey Bieber took to TikTok to post a video with the sound saying, “I’m not saying she deserved it, but God’s timing is always right”. Even though it was never claimed that these two situations weren’t correlated fans quickly put two and two together and started canceling Hailey for being a mean girl. Although to some this might look like justice to strip a celebrity of their influence when used negatively, alternatively she started getting death threats and a lot of hate from seemingly everybody. We get so caught up in serving justice against the “mean” girls by being mean to them. This happened months ago, and she has still been receiving constant hate.

So, what are we even justifying when we as a society decide that someone should not hold the power they do? Cancel Culture has spilled out of the celebrity world and into our personal lives. It could be as simple as a difference in political opinions that could potentially get you canceled. There are some situations where it is clear when a person is in the wrong with concrete proof.  Unfortunately, a lot of things that get people canceled are super small or not properly addressed. Realistically if there is an issue that we have with something someone says or does the most effective way to deal with it is to see why they believe what they do; and have a real conversation about the issue. 

That’s the problem, isn’t it? There are not many conversations about the solutions to the things we don’t like it just turns into a social cycle that feels irreversible. Cancel Culture is a huge contradiction to the social justice persona most of the internet has collected. After all, when something is canceled there is no talking about what went wrong or how we can fix the issue. If we continue to follow this cycle, we will never solve the issues we deem “cancelable”. Truly the only way that we can solve this is to be open to hearing other people’s side of the story. Sadly, our society is so divided by our definitions of good and bad.